Abstract
Stephen argues that Elena Poniatowska’s use of oral testimony in her crónicas—often containing descriptions of intense suffering, trauma, and resilience—results in the construction of strategic emotional/political community. Stephen focuses on Elena Poniatowska’s crónica: Nada, Nadie (about the 1985 earthquake) and the ways that this book of testimonies and then a museum exhibit and gathering commemorating 30 years since the earthquake connected the trauma of the earthquake in 1985 to the trauma of the disappearance of 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa in 2014. The author seeks to demonstrate how testimony, its textualization, and dissemination link together a wide range of victims and survivors of the 1985 earthquake to non-sufferers and empathetic listeners through time.
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Notes
- 1.
The genre known in the United States as slave narratives was an important part of the abolition movement in the United States.
- 2.
Shoshona Felman and Dori Laub, 1992, Testimony: Crises in Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge, xv–xvii; Bhaskar Sarkar, and Janet Walker, 2010, Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of Suffering. New York: Routledge, 7.
- 3.
For example, the genre known as slave narratives which recounted the experiences of those who escaped slavery were an important part of the abolition movement in the United States (see Smith Foster 1994).
- 4.
7:19 AM was the exact time of the earthquake.
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Stephen, L. (2018). Testimony, Social Memory, and Strategic Emotional/Political Communities in Elena Poniatowska’s Crónicas . In: Macleod, M., De Marinis, N. (eds) Resisting Violence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66317-3_3
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