Review of Michael Richardson. gestures of testimony: torture, trauma, and affect in literature. New York, London, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2016

Onega, Susana (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: Michael Richardson's Gestures of Testimony. Torture, Trauma, and Affect in Literature makes a significant contribution to the state of the art of trauma studies by adding recent insights from affect studies to the field and experiences of creative writing. It is the “unrepresentability” of torture, manifested not only in the incapacity of the survivors to speak torture but also in the social and political unwillingness to hear and bear witness to it (p. 9), that provides the starting point for Richardson's “aim both to read torture and, elaborating theories of power, affect, trauma, and testimony, to speculate on the possibility of its writing” through the power of storytelling (p. 10). The purpose of advancing the theoretical frame is carried out through the intersection of “three trajectories of theory”: the imposition of power on the body; the experience of tortured and torturing bodies in the act itself; and the apparent unrepresentability in language of torturous trauma. The reading of torture is based on a convergence of “the perspectives of power, affect, and trauma [in] relation to literature” (p. 19) and is aimed at developing “a sequential argument driven from chapter to chapter by internal necessity” and forming “a gesture,” or “meaningful movement of a body through space and time” (p. 19).

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1111/oli.12165

Año: 2018

Publicado en: Orbis Litterarum 73, 1 (2018), 101 [1 pp.]
ISSN: 0105-7510

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.109 - Literature and Literary Theory (Q2)

Tipo y forma: Revisión (PostPrint)

Área (Departamento): Área Filología Inglesa (Dpto. Filolog.Inglesa y Alema.)