106139 20210616191541.0 doi 10.1111/oli.12165 sideral 102331 ART-2018-102331 eng Onega, Susana Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0003-1672-4276 Review of Michael Richardson. gestures of testimony: torture, trauma, and affect in literature. New York, London, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2016 2018 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). Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess All rights reserved http://www.europeana.eu/rights/rr-f/ 0.109 2018 Literature and Literary Theory 2018 Q2 info:eu-repo/semantics/review info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion 3004 345 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Filolog.Inglesa y Alema. Área Filología Inglesa 73, 1 (2018), 101 [1 pp.] Orbis litt. Orbis Litterarum 0105-7510 138904 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/106139/files/texto_completo.pdf Postprint 1842533 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/106139/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Postprint oai:zaguan.unizar.es:106139 articulos driver 2021-06-16-18:28:05 ARTICLE