Speaking and Silencing of Violent Experiences As a Social Issue in Biographical Research and Oral History

Inowlocki, Lena

In post-violence societies, social conditions and public discourses highly impact how surviving victims, perpetrators, and bystanders talk about what they experienced and what they keep silent about. ‘Speaking’ and ‘silencing’ are not absolute but find various expressions. In different ways, this might also be the case with the descendants of either group. Biographical accounts gathered through methods of reconstructive sociology, such as the autobiographical narrative interview, or oral history studies can reveal mechanisms of biographization, the operationalization of biography as an effort to reach an interpretation of past events, and de-biographization, casting out life historical and family biographical features from the narration. Since the biographical framework encapsulates historical entities and their memories in current society, both mechanisms enable us to analyze and understand the (un)describable and (un)discussable elements and the ruling conditions at specific times.

We invite proposals for papers that focus on (kinds of) thematization and silencing and reconstruct their specific conditions after violent political conflicts and persecution. Papers can be based on biographical or oral history research. Some of the questions for discussion might be: In which ways are historical processes and their memories in current society encapsulated in biographies? How can we analyze and understand the (un)describable and (un)discussable elements in relation to dominant social conditions and discourses? What kinds of changes can be observed with regard to biographization and other phenomena in family narratives over generations?

Session Organizers:

Eren YETKIN, Catholic University of Applied Sciences Berlin, Germany and Lena INOWLOCKI, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Chair:

Eren YETKIN, Catholic University of Applied Sciences Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Co-Chair:

Lena INOWLOCKI, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Oral Presentations

Violence, Silence, and Migration: Family Figurations in the Biographical Narratives of Assyrian Migrants from Iraq and Syria
Orhan NASSIF, Research Fellow, Germany

Negotiating (Im)Possible Life Stories - Collaborative Storytelling in (Post)Conflict Contexts
Phil LANGER, International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Germany; Aisha-Nusrat AHMAD, International Psychoanalytic University, Germany

Neither a Perpetrator Nor a Victim, and Yet. Questioning the “Years of Lead” in Morocco By a Biographical Approach
Irene BONO, University of Turin, Italy

Refugees on the Polish-Belarusian Border: Between Suffering and Being an “Object” of a Political Game
Katarzyna WANIEK, University of Lodz, Poland

Social Work and Violence - Relativizing Extreme Right Youth Violence in Germany
Christina KOENIG, Germany

Living through the ‘Pact of Silence’: Political Violence in Biographies of Iaioflautas Activists in Spain
Christoph SCHWARZ, University of Innsbruck, Austria

Distributed Papers

Oral History As Literature Versus Silencing
Dilek HATTATOGLU, Independent Scholar, Turkey

See more of: RC38 Biography and Society
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