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Autobiography as Testimony

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Abstract

Stone and Woods understand all autobiographical material as a form of testimony and examine how it is mediated both by its authors and its consumers. The chapter offers guidance on how those who gather and use autobiography as testimony can deal with the ethical risks of voyeurism, co-option, and failing to do justice to survivors as individuals.

The authors present analytical approaches to autobiography as testimony that take us beyond the conclusion that its value resides primarily in the insight in gives us into the subjective experience of history. They also ask whether perpetrator autobiography can be accommodated within existing analytical approaches, and they conclude that it presents in extreme form the challenges faced when assessing any form of autobiography as testimony.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This collaborative production of autobiography is, of course, not new. For instance, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) resulted from the collaboration with the human rights activist and journalist Alex Haley. On collaborative autobiography, see Lejeune (1989), Eakin (1999) and Couser (2001). What is new is the intercultural dimension of the collaboration in ‘hybrid testimony’, as well as the explicit framing of the testimony for the western market.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Katherine Stone

  2. University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Roger Woods

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  1. Katherine Stone
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Correspondence to Roger Woods .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Sara Jones

  2. University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Roger Woods

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Stone, K., Woods, R. (2023). Autobiography as Testimony. In: Jones, S., Woods, R. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Testimony and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13794-5_8

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