Cirrus@Austlit

'The following analysis looks at current discussions surrounding testimony in the form of life writing. In particular it looks at how competing theories of mediation fare when applied to concrete examples of testimony as it is shaped by its authors and re-presented by its users, and it examines how the concepts of dominant narratives and the subjective experience impact on individual testimony’s form and status. Dominant narratives are demonstrably present in individual testimony, but their presence may be detected in authors’ resistance to them. Doubts about the referential value of testimony have encouraged one line of research to relocate its significance in the emotional sphere, but this relocation leaves it with little explanatory value. Against this background I examine three critical approaches to testimony that strike a balance between author agency and critical evaluation: relationality, innertextuality and intertextuality. Rather than deploying testimony as a series of ‘soundbites’ to prove a pre-existing theory, these approaches reveal the internal dynamics of testimony and its particular affordances.' (Publication abstract)

'Playwrights crafting work from real-life sources have heightened links with both the affective subject material of such work, and the sources themselves, particularly when the life stories derived from such sources are traumatic in nature. Being drawn to and dealing with difficult individual, social, historical and political stories implies a complex writing process of reflexive iterations of responsibility to sources and subject. Such a process requires ethical sensitivity to the concept of ‘truth’ as an amalgam of subjectivities and attention to ‘authenticity’ as a complex and accurate encapsulation of that truth. Creativity demands ongoing highly conscious self-knowledge to develop and strengthen both practice and product. This essay explores the point of view and experience of an artist-practitioner working with traumatic subject matter. Drawing on theory from theatre studies and trauma studies and discussing the process and centrality of ethics in relation to creative methodology, the essay reflects on the personal impact of the making of fraught work, and the uncovering, sharing and responsible transformation of fraught stories for a wider audience. It offers an outline of this experience that is relevant for other, similar artist-practitioners and researchers.' (Publication abstract)