Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric Apr 2008 Open Access

Invoking Solidarity and Engaged Listening in Publicly Active Work: Translating and Transcribing Jorge Velasquez’s Testimonio

Michelle Bellino

Abstract

This article explores publicly active graduate work that engages with survivors of violence as they become testimonial narrators. Drawing on challenges I faced in transcribing and contextualizing the testimonio of Jorge Velásquez, who narrates his experience with injustice in post-war Guatemala, this analysis addresses some of the tensions that emerge during textual interactions with violence narratives. I explore second-hand trauma, notions of pornography of violence, and the role of accountability in scholarly and public representations. Paralleling Jorge’s testimonial performance, I offer narrative strategies I employed in the process of transcription and ethnographic contextualization into a larger narrative about the lived experience of violence within a culture of impunity.

Journal
Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
Published
2008-04-01
DOI
10.59236/rjv7i3pp24-33
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Open Access
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Topics
qualitative research
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References (11)

  1. Abu-Lughod (1989)
    The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power through Bedouin Women
    American Ethnologist  ↗
  2. Beverley (2005)
    Testimonio, Subalternity, and Narrative Authority. The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research
  3. Chrisman (2008)
    Deconstructing Collaboration
    Anthropology News  ↗
  4. Frisch (1990)
    A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History
  5. Kaiser (2005)
    Postmemories of Terror: A New Generation Copes with the Legacy of the "Dirty War
     ↗
Show all 11 →
  1. Klempner (2006)
    Navigating Life Review Interviews with Survivors of Trauma
  2. Klempner (2006)
    Body of Evidence
  3. Schrager (1998)
    What is Social in Oral History?
  4. (1994)
    Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior Resource Book
  5. Tedlock (1999)
    Finding the Center: The Art of the Zuni Storyteller
  6. Duran (2007)
    Feminicide in Guatemala
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