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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Unbribable Witness: Image, Word, And Testimony Of Crimes Against Humanity In Mark Twain’S King Leopold’S Soliloquy (1905), Nora Nunn
Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal
In the creation of King Leopold’s Soliloquy, a textured, visually irrefutable, and darkly satirical account of crimes against humanity in the Belgian Congo Free State, Mark Twain aimed to evoke his Euro-American audience’s empathy by activating their imaginations and inaugurating political reform. Informed by the work of cultural and literary critics such as Roland Barthes, this paper considers how the visual imagery in Twain’s text engender questions about fact, testimony, and witnessing in the realm of human rights and collective violence—both in the Congo Free State and, indirectly, in the United States. I ultimately argue that the relation (or …
“You Could See Rage”: Visual Testimony In Post-Genocide Guatemala, Lacey M. Schauwecker
“You Could See Rage”: Visual Testimony In Post-Genocide Guatemala, Lacey M. Schauwecker
Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal
Since the Guatemalan genocide against Maya populations (1981-1983), domestic and international human rights groups have organized truth commissions, forensic exhumations, and legal cases. These efforts to secure justice have achieved minimal success, prompting a reconsideration of the relationship among narrative testimony, visual testimony, and institutional standards of truth. Engaging the ideas of visual studies scholar, Nicholas Mirzoeff, I argue for the political importance of testimony that is critical of such standards, including those enforced by human rights’ legal paradigm. Following Mirzoeff’s understandings of “visuality” and “countervisuality,” I analyze “visual testimony” as that which acknowledges the dynamic interplay between word and …