ABSTRACT

The following analysis looks at current discussions surrounding testimony in the form of life writing. In particular it looks at how competing theories of mediation fare when applied to concrete examples of testimony as it is shaped by its authors and re-presented by its users, and it examines how the concepts of dominant narratives and the subjective experience impact on individual testimony’s form and status. Dominant narratives are demonstrably present in individual testimony, but their presence may be detected in authors’ resistance to them. Doubts about the referential value of testimony have encouraged one line of research to relocate its significance in the emotional sphere, but this relocation leaves it with little explanatory value. Against this background I examine three critical approaches to testimony that strike a balance between author agency and critical evaluation: relationality, innertextuality and intertextuality. Rather than deploying testimony as a series of ‘soundbites’ to prove a pre-existing theory, these approaches reveal the internal dynamics of testimony and its particular affordances.

摘要

以下分析着眼于当前围绕生活写作形式的证词的讨论。特别是，它着眼于相互竞争的调解理论在应用于具体的证词示例时如何发挥作用，因为它是由作者塑造并由其用户重新呈现的，并且它研究了主导叙事的概念和主观经验如何影响个人证词的形式和状态。主导叙事明显存在于个人证词中，但它们的存在可能会在作者对它们的抵制中被发现。对证词的参考价值的怀疑鼓励了一项研究将其在情感领域的重要性重新定位，但这种重新定位使其几乎没有解释价值。在此背景下，我研究了三种在作者机构和批判性评价之间取得平衡的证词批判性方法：关系性、内在文本性和互文性。这些方法不是将证词部署为一系列“声音片段”来证明预先存在的理论，而是揭示证词的内部动态及其特定的启示。