Testimonies

This paper highlights the importance of evaluating testimonies, and provides practical recommendations to support practitioners in developing the evaluation process. It includes step-by-step guidelines and a summary of the main challenges. It also presents three potential scenarios of prevention of radicalisation where testimonies
could be used: online, in schools and in prisons. Finally, experiences from both prevention and adjacent fields are analysed, in terms of their objectives, structures and application. All this material could prove a valuable source of inspiration for future initiatives.

This paper unpacks and analyzes the effects and impacts of the securitization of migration on Central Americans in transit through Mexico, with specific focus on migrants’ testimonies. This is done in order to advocate for the recognition of migrants’ voices as reliable sources of knowledge in understanding the process of migration. This study is developed through the lens of de-colonial thinking, as this helps to understand the securitization of migration and the violence performed against migrants as part of the rhetoric of modernity and the logic of coloniality of power, based on the ‘racial’ social classification of the world population (Quijano, 2000, 2010). Migrants disclose how such a securitization dehumanizes them, and also how their collective resistance builds a common memory out of the tragedy, able to promote healing justice and restore their silenced histories. Migrants’ testimonies encourage us to think de-colonially about the whole migration process and to de-link from the idea of migration as a security concern.

In 2018, families of victims of lethal state violence in Nicaragua organized as the Association Mothers of April (AMA) to collectively search for truth, justice, and reparations. This article analyzes the development of the transmedia project AMA y No Olvida, Museum of Memory against Impunity, created for remembering and dignifying the victims by an interdisciplinary team in collaboration with AMA. The digital archive hosts the results of transmedia memory practices engaged by the community: accounts about the deaths via hand-drawn maps, digital maps, video testimonies, and a photographic archive of each victim. In the creation of the archive, the community's needs were centered, and we proposed "modular visibility" against the revictimization caused by the circulation of media that represented the victims' violent deaths. The contribution is centered on the use of participatory design methods to create a community digital archive and a temporary exhibition fostering transmedia activist memory practices that turned the private grieving of AMA members into public mourning, building wider mnemonic communities.

Keywords: Transmedia, memories, media practices, mapping, memory, museum, archive, video, portraits, testimonies, Nicaragua, Latin America, digital media, digital humanities, participatory design, visibility, data, maps, GIS, human rights, violations, dictatorship, necropower, race, gender

The Men Will Talk to Me is a collection of interviews conducted and recorded by famed Irish republican revolutionary Ernie O’Malley during the 1940s and 1950s. The interviews were carried out with survivors of the four Northern Divisions of the IRA, chief among them Frank Aiken, Peadar O’Donnell and Paddy McLogan, who offer fascinating insights into Ulster’s centrality in the War of Independence and the slide towards Civil War.

The title refers to the implicit trust that shadows these interviews, earned through Ernie O’Malley’s reputation as a fearsome military commander in the revolutionary movement – the veterans interviewed divulge details to O’Malley which they wouldn’t have disclosed to even their closest family members. Startlingly direct, the issues covered include the mobilization of the Dundalk Volunteers for the 1916 Rising, the events of Bloody Sunday (1920), the Belfast Pogroms, and the planning of historical escapes from the Curragh and Kilkenny Gaol.

The Men Will Talk to Me is an insightful and painstaking reflection of the horror of the Irish War of Independence and Civil War; in words resolute and faltering, the physical and psychological debts of the revolutionary mindset – those of hardened Pro- and Anti-Treaty veterans – are fiercely apparent.

http://irishacademicpress.ie/product/the-men-will-talk-to-me-ernie-omalleys-interviews-with-the-northern-divisions/

Victim testimony as a source for the study of genocide and mass violence has been the subject of longstanding debate in the social sciences and humanities, especially among historians. This conference aims to deepen the discussion by inviting participants to present on three areas of focus:
1. video testimonies collected from the late 1970s up to the present-day 
2. video testimonies of victims as well as eyewitnesses
3. video testimonies documenting the Holocaust and other mass atrocities

In recent decades Latin American societies have undergone a host of
profound social, cultural, political, economic, and religious changes. This
paper examines one of the most important aspects of these social
transformations with special emphasis on the autochthonous religious
characteristics of Pentecostalism, seeking to interpret them as well as
envision future consequences. It will begin with a brief general
exploration of the characteristics of Pentecostalism and later with general features of Pentecostalism throughout Latin America, while also
considering contributions made from communication and cultural
studies. This will provide a background and set a conceptual framework
for analyses of the characteristics of Latin American Pentecostal
communications.

The “Edifying testimony of the infernal Christian journey” brings together nearly one hundred Latin texts in its cenobitic format of genuine testimonies, a few hundred more in vernacular languages, mainly adaptations, translations or inflections, and, as early as the thirteenth century, allegorical "reveries" of the laity. In this brief analysis, I wish to question the setting up and exploitation of literary matter of Hell resulting from the transcription of these testimonies.
I will consider how the “literary matter” could be revealed in the thirteenth century, in light of two distinct minds which strongly marked their time and their environment: Jean Bodel of Arras (1165-1210) prolific poet of realist literature from the north of France who defined the “trois materes”, and Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248-1298) Franciscan brother, university master, and joachimiste theorist from south-west France who theorized the divine creation of matter.
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Dans l’Occident chrétien du Ve au XIIIe siècle, l’univers infernal inspire une littérature étonnamment variée. Elle est motivée par les théologiens qui tentent de rationaliser un espace théorique, que le canon laisse de côté jusqu’au Concile de Latran IV (1215), tout autant que par des rapporteurs de passages en enfer qui fictionnalisent l’univers interdit ; c’est cette seconde catégorie qui motive notre étude. Le Témoignage édifiant de voyage infernal chrétien regroupe près d’une centaine de textes latins dans son format cénobitique de la « vision » ; quelques centaines de plus en langues vernaculaires, principalement des adaptations, traductions ou flexions puis, dès le XIIIe siècle, de « songes » allégoriques laïcs. Au cours de cette brève analyse, je souhaite interroger la mise en place et l’exploitation d’une matière littéraire d’Enfer issue de la transcription de témoignages. Il s’agira de considérer comment la matière littéraire pourrait se révéler au XIIIe siècle, en regard de deux esprits distincts qui ont fortement marqué leur époque et leur milieu : Jean Bodel d’Arras (1165-1210) trouvère et poète prolifique de la littérature réaliste bourgeoise du nord de la France, et Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248-1298) frère franciscain maître universitaire et théoricien joachimiste du sud-ouest de la France. Nous tenterons de disséquer l’enfer fictionnel, lorsqu’à la substance qui le constitue (le sujet, l’imagerie, les motifs, une cosmologie singulière), s’associe une trame littéraire (un formulaire narratif précis, une terminologie), qui transtextuellement réunies par un corps auctorial fonctionnel, prennent forme sur un terrain discursif commun, l’édification. Il sera dès lors possible de proposer que ce n’est qu’au moment où la matière (la substance en forme) est recyclée vers des situations littéraires distinctes, et remodelée vers d’autres dispositifs pragmatiques qu’elle a atteint sa maturité de matière littéraire.