The Media of Testimony

The Media of Testimony explores testimony relating to the Stasi in different cultural forms: autobiographical writing, memorial museums and documentary film. Combining theoretical models from diverse disciplines, it presents a new approach to the study of testimony, memory and mediation.

Jones' book skillfully combines approaches from memory studies, communication and media studies, and reception studies to give insight into the interaction between individual memories and the social, cultural and political spheres. Jones' study presents a significant contribution to the field. an important and necessary contribution to the study of testimony and its (mass) mediation and remediation in memory culture. (Susanne C. Knittel, H Soz Kult, hsozkult, geschichte.hu-berlin.de, March, 2016)

"The Media of Testimony combines original empirical analyses with the very latest memory studies scholarship. It is a fascinating and highly readable discussion of the way first-person narratives are mediated to produce a one-sided account of a still hotly-contested past, and its discussion of what constitutes 'authenticity' has implications extending well beyond its immediate context. An important book for anyone interested in how the past is reconstructed in the present." - Debbie Pinfold, University of Bristol, UK

Autorentext

Sara Jones is Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her work focuses on the political, social and cultural processes of remembering state socialism in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe. She is the author of Complicity, Censorship and Criticism: Negotiating Space in the GDR Literary Sphere (2011).

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Media of Testimony 2. Literary Autobiography and the Stories that Can't be Told 3. Fragmented Auto/Biographies: Testifying with Many Voices 4. The Importance of 'Being There': Memorial Museums and Living the Past in the Present 5. Whose Memory Is It Anyway? Memorial Museums and Modes of Authority 6. Documentary Film: Being Moved by Memory Conclusion Notes Bibliography