Culture and its Uses as Testimony

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.

Culture as a way of giving testimony has relevance for academics and non-academic practitioners from diverse areas. The research provides producers of culture, teachers, civil society activists and those involved in the political processes of transitional justice with new methods and insights that will be of direct relevance to their practice. The collaborative research process ensures that practitioners have a role in defining and answering research questions and provides new perspectives on scholarly work in this area. The network outputs, in particular the handbook, website and teaching resources, are addressed to both academic and non-academic communities.

As described in the Pathways document, academics, practitioners, stakeholder organisations and groups are full members of the network and are directly incorporated into the research process through involvement in the workshops and conference. Practitioners from three different areas are represented, reflecting the thematic focus of the three workshops. These are: producers of culture; teachers and civil society initiatives participating in history and civic education; and individuals involved in political processes of transitional justice. One important partner is the National Holocaust Centre (NHC), which has expressed a research interest in different mediations of testimony. Three network participants are members of the NHC's academic advisory board (Niven, Mills and Wollaston) and the Centre is also host to the second workshop. The participation of non-academic practitioners in the workshops, conference and network publications ensures that their experience of using cultural forms of testimony feeds directly into the research outputs, as well as into the current and future research of the academic members. In turn, non-academic practitioners have the opportunity to discuss and reflect on their practice and gain theoretical insights developed in a scholarly context. Participation in the network also aids their understanding of the related fields with which they interact. The involvement of key representatives from these different areas ensures wider distribution of the research impacts, as they bring the outputs to the communities and existing networks of which they are part.

These new connections have a long-term impact on future practice; for example, one output of the network is recommendations and resources for practitioners that deal with questions of authenticity, value and complexity in the use of cultural forms of testimony in school curricula and in the formulation of political responses to dealing with past atrocities. The global turn towards discourses of reconciliation and symbolic justice means that the questions addressed by the network are urgent and resonate across a broad range of practitioners involved in efforts towards democratic transition, as well as with those groups who seek to contribute to these processes through testifying to past injustice.

The network initiates a dialogue between scholars, practitioners and producers of culture, which shapes future academic and non-academic engagement in this field. In this context, the network brings together scholars from diverse disciplines, many of whom have strong links with practitioners and local communities in their research. Participation in the network and knowledge exchange with academics and non-academics from different fields promotes the development of new approaches in their relationships with these communities. This ensures that the dialogues created in the course of the network's activities have an ongoing impact in the course of a series of follow-on projects conducted by network members. These include work with: memorial museums in Germany and Romania (Jones); the National Holocaust Centre (Niven, Mills and Wollaston); the Nottingham New Art Exchange and the Cuban artist Alberto Rey (Lewthwaite); Child Soldiers International and the Centre for Digital Storytelling (Gready).