Culture and its Uses as Testimony

这个网络考察了文化在寻求与创伤过去达成协议的社会中的作用。在这样的社会中，文化是一种媒介，通过这种媒介，个人和群体将他们的经历作为一种见证形式呈现给广大公众。我们理解文化形式的证词包括自传、小说、日记、信件、回忆录、电影、戏剧、艺术作品和纪录片。该网络探讨了文化见证如何丰富关于过去和现在不公正的公共辩论，但它也探讨了文化见证如何被狭隘的政治目的所利用。该网络具有创新性，因为它汇集了来自历史、政治学和国际关系、法律、社会学领域的研究人员，以及在各种国家和跨国背景下从事文化、文学、电影和博物馆工作的研究人员。研究人员还与作为网络核心成员的从业人员一起工作。其中包括一位小说家、纪录片剧团、国家大屠杀中心和美国大屠杀纪念博物馆的代表、专家委员会成员和教师。我们主要关心的是文化见证以及它被接受和使用的方式。特别令人感兴趣的是，它可以在克服以战争、种族灭绝和独裁统治为特征的社会的分裂方面发挥作用。以各种形式编写和记录证词在民间社会倡议中发挥着越来越重要的作用，这些倡议旨在确立不限于法律程序的司法规范。这在为子孙后代保存和传递大屠杀记忆的努力中表现得最为明显，例如在美国大屠杀纪念博物馆广泛使用目击者证词。这些纪念国家社会主义和法西斯主义受害者的方法在全球范围内对威权主义的文化反应中得到了借鉴。网络成员及其案例研究来自不同的文化背景，包括英国、爱尔兰、德国、罗马尼亚、阿尔巴尼亚、匈牙利、波兰、斯洛伐克、古巴、墨西哥、波多黎各、阿根廷、南非和卢旺达。因此，该网络为对证词有不同理解的学者提供了合作的机会，并在社会试图接受其过去的过程中，对文化如何作为证词发挥作用产生了新的见解。由于以文化形式生产证词是一种全球现象，国际合作是网络的核心部分。这也反映在网络指导小组的组成上。该网络解释了为什么受害者、加害者和记忆活动人士在争取正义与和解时，会转向第一人称的表达方式。经过深思熟虑，文化复杂来源的证词可以为研究开辟新的方向，突破对过去的概括和将人口简单划分为肇事者和受害者。如果以零碎的、不经思考的或有倾向性的方式使用，同样的证词可以被劫持来支持先前存在的政治立场。在“目击者时代”（Wieviorka, 2006），该网络将文化的特定特征识别为证词，并讨论了我们如何分析这些来源并从中受益。该网络举办了三个讲习班，主题是文化形式的证词的范围和功能、利用文化形式的证词来理解过去的方法论方法、以及作为证词的文化政治，随后还举办了一次备受瞩目的国际会议。这项研究通过一个网络网站和相关的社交媒体、两个半日学校的讲习班、教材和出版物进一步传播，其中包括一本关于文化及其作为见证的用途的跨学科手册。

This network examines the role of culture in societies that are seeking to come to terms with traumatic pasts. In such societies culture is one medium through which individuals and groups present their experiences to a broad public as a form of testimony. We understand cultural forms of testimony to include autobiographical accounts, novels, diaries, letters, memoirs, films, theatre, works of art, and documentaries. The network explores how cultural testimony can enrich public debate about past and present injustice, but it also explores how it is instrumentalised for narrow political purposes.The network is innovative because it brings together researchers from the fields of history, political science and international relations, law, sociology, and those working on culture, literature, film and museums in a variety of national and transnational contexts. Researchers also work alongside practitioners who are core members of the network. These include a novelist, documentary theatre company, representatives from the National Holocaust Centre and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, members of expert commissions, and teachers.We are primarily concerned with cultural testimony and the ways in which it is received and put to use. Of particular interest is the role that it can play in overcoming divisions in societies marked by war, genocide and authoritarian rule. The writing and recording of testimony in a range of forms play an increasingly significant role in civil society initiatives that seek to establish the norms for justice that are not restricted to legal procedures. This is seen most markedly in efforts to conserve and transmit memory of the Holocaust for and to future generations, for example the extensive use of eyewitness testimony at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. These approaches to remembering the victims of National Socialism and fascism are drawn upon in cultural responses to authoritarianism across the globe. The network members and their case studies come from diverse cultural contexts in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Romania, Albania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Argentina, South Africa and Rwanda. The network thus provides opportunities for scholars with different understandings of testimony to collaborate and to produce new insights into how culture functions as testimony as societies attempt to come to terms with their past. As the production of testimony in cultural forms is a global phenomenon, international collaboration is a core part of the network. This is also reflected in the constitution of the network's steering group.The network establishes why victims, perpetrators and memory activists turn to first person forms of expression as they strive for justice and reconciliation. Used thoughtfully, the testimony of culturally complex sources can open up new directions for research that cut across generalisations about the past and simplistic divisions of the population into perpetrators and victims. Used in a fragmentary, unreflective or tendentious manner, this same testimony can be hijacked to support pre-existing political positions. In the 'age of the eyewitness' (Wieviorka, 2006) the network identifies the particular characteristics of culture as testimony, and it discusses how we can analyse and benefit from these sources.The network's three workshops on the range and function of testimony in cultural forms, methodological approaches to the use of cultural forms of testimony in understanding the past, and the politics of culture as testimony are followed by a high-profile international conference. The research is further disseminated via a network website and linked social media, two half-day schools' workshops, teaching materials, and publications including an interdisciplinary handbook on Culture and its Uses as Testimony.