Description
Book SynopsisInspired by Susan Sontag's examination of the impact of photography of conscience in Regarding the Pain of Others, Kimberly A. Nance's Responding to the Pain of Others: Ethics of Witness in Global Testimonial Narratives takes as its point of departure Sontag's speculation that in combatting human rights abuse, a narrative seems likely to be more effective than an image. Building on her own earlier research on Aristotelian rhetorical theory and testimony, along with other interdisciplinary approaches, Nance analyzes the socio-literary narratives of Elvia Alvarado, Medea Benjamin, Peter Dickinson, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Clea Koff, Delia Jarrett-Macauley, Valentino Achak Deng, Dave Eggers, Uwem Akpan, and Alicia Partnoy. Each of them, she finds, confronts a human rights discourse in which wordsand witnesseshave become disconnected from actions. Recognizing that the genre's own conventions have become an obstacle to its projects, these testimonialists draw on humor, irony, satire, parody, a
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: Better Off Going Out on the Town? Addressing the Witness in Elvia Alvarado’s Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo Chapter 2: Choose Your Own Testimonial Adventure? Witnessing Alternative Futures in Peter Dickinson’s AK Chapter 3: Border Testimonies, Restricted Crossings: Questioning the Act of Witness in Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s “Exile: El Paso, Texas” and “Alligator Park” Chapter 4: Hundreds of Bodies on Two Continents, Telling a Single Story: Witnessing the Testimonial Uncanny in Clea Koff’s The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist’s Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo Chapter 5: Use Beginning, Middle, and End: Witness and the Work of Reintegration in Delia Jarrett-Macauley’s Moses, Citizen & Me Chapter 6: Survivors Tell the Stories that the Sympathizers Want: Countering the Comfort of Lost Boy Narratives in What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng Chapter 7: You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught: Ethics Lessons for Beginners in Uwem Akpan’s “What Language Is That?” Chapter 8: My Life Is Based on a Real Story: Recursive Witness in Alicia Partnoy’s “Rosa, I Disowned You” and “Disclaimer Intraducible: My Life / Is Based / on a Real Story” Conclusion: Deliberative Testimonio and the Reactivation of Human Rights Discourse
