Remembering Contentious Lives 3031734491, 9783031734496

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Mediated Memory: Between Individual and Collective
Life Writing Studies
Life Writing, Memory, Political Contention
Chapter Overview
References
Part I: Narrative Activism
Chapter 2: The Memoir-Activism Circuit: The Afterlives of Guantánamo Diary in Cultural Memory
Remembering Guantánamo in the Post-9/11 Era
Becoming “A Terrorist Suspect”
Pre-publication Memoir Advocacy
Memoir Advocacy: The Literary as an Alternative Jurisdiction
Memoir Activism: Animating and Activating Memoir
Animating Memoir
Activating Memoir
Memoir and Cultural Memory: Mediation and Transmission
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Can the Monster Speak? Ventriloquism and Voice in Trans Activist Life Writing
Introduction
Learning to Speak Trans: The Institutional History of Trans Autobiography
An Invitation to Speak
Formal Limits: Who Is Speaking, and to Whom?
The Open Question: Trans Activism as Scene, Rather than Event
References
Chapter 4: Missing Mum: Reframing Imprisoned Childhoods in Autobiography and Activism in the Iranian Context
Introduction: From Missing Mum to Transnational Activism
Contextualising Missing Mum: “Mum Is a Political Prisoner”
Cyborg Relationality: Meeting One’s Past in Encounter with the Other’s Present
Formation of the Child Subject: Missing Mum in a Hundred Pages
Conclusion: Orienting the Usable Past into the Future
References
Part II: Writing Activist Lives
Chapter 5: Life Writing as Solidarity Work in the 1970s Turkish Left
Introduction
Reading the Autobiographical ‘I’ in Commemorative Writing
Configurations of Solidarity and Memory
The Self-Reflective Remembrance of the ‘Three Saplings’
Behram’s Embodiment of Solidarity
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Writing Louise Michel: The Formation and Development of a Mythologised Revolutionary
Introduction
Michel’s Mythologisation
Michel’s Life and Myth
Witch or Angel: Louise Michel’s Symbolic Availability
Humble Barbarian: Louise Michel’s Memoirs
Insider/Outsider: Louise Michel’s Afterlives
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: Nicaragua in the Rearview Mirror: Life Writing by Leftist US Activists Since the 1980s
Remembering 1980s Leftist Nicaragua Activism
The US Nicaragua Peace and Solidarity Movement
Life Writing in the PSM: Usable Pasts and Present Aspirations
Tracing Left-Wing Melancholia: The Hybridity of Post-1980s Memory-Making of the PSM
“We Have Only Started”:6 Archiving Hope and Mobilising for the Future
“Why Not Make It into a Book?”:11 Personal and Collective Memory-Making
“I Am Certain You Are There”:16 Evoking the Old Activist Self
“They Called Us Sandalistas”:17 Challenging the Cultural Memory of the PSM
“Why Can’t We Think for Ourselves?”:20 Challenging Continuities
“[T]he Sandinistas Made Me Feel Lucky”:29 Campism and Continuities
The Future of the Cultural Memory of the PSM
References
Part III: Epilogue
Chapter 8: The Syrian Prison: From Autobiography to the Creation of Identity
Introduction
Prison Autobiography
Prisoner Autobiography
The Prison’s Autobiography After the Revolution
Assembling the Prison’s Autobiography
Writing the Prison’s Autobiography
Shaping Syrian Identity
Prison Autobiography as Resistance
References
Index