TY - JOUR
AB - A fundamental concern of memory studies is the process by which historical events, as experienced and remembered by individuals, come to be collectivized and inscribed with social, cultural and political meaning. What effect does the collectivization of personal memory have on our understanding of the past, and what function does this individual testimony continue to play in the context of a disputed past, such as that of the GDR? These questions are addressed by Sara Jones’s in-depth and interdisciplinary study. Beginning with a rigorous survey of the existing research into both the nature of the GDR and its memory, the introduction then sets out the crucial context of the key events which have shaped the conflicted terrain of East German memory since 1990. Against this backdrop, the study aims to investigate ‘how different media incorporate witness narratives on the same theme’: one of the most controversial, the Stasi (p. 22). An excellent first chapter, which will be of value to anyone researching memory theory, establishes a working understanding of testimony that moves beyond the more restrictive definition of the ‘moral witness’ and incorporates the experience of both victims and perpetrators of the Stasi, before persuasively theorizing the centrality of mediation to collective memory. This forms the theoretical underpinning for the two ‘authenticating mechanisms’ (p. 37) postulated by the study. Firstly, ‘mediated remembering communities’ are forged by diachronically-produced texts in which the narratives of individuals overlap into a single cultural product. Secondly, the cumulative effect of this multiplicity of voices produces ‘complementary authenticities’, provoking an affective and political response. Over five subsequent chapters, the volume then applies these dynamics to a series of diverse case studies, analysing the mediation of testimony in the form of literary auto/biographies, museums and documentary films. As a whole, then, this study makes a significant contribution to our understanding both of the GDR and of its legacy in memory. It is innovative in its exploration of testimony from the point of view of mediation and reception, rather than production, and as such takes memory studies in a productive direction. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532.
TI - Jones, Sara. The Media of Testimony: Remembering the East German Stasi in the Berlin Republic
JF - Forum for Modern Language Studies
DO - 10.1093/fmls/cqx059
DA - 2017-10-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/jones-sara-the-media-of-testimony-remembering-the-east-german-stasi-in-sHaRzoBBHV
SP - 508
VL - 53
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -