Impersonating the Witness: What Testimonial Fiction Can Teach Us about Testimony
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This project examines American literary texts produced primarily after World War II and an American film that I define as testimonial fiction because they feature characters who share the writer s name, narratives based on the authors lives, and texts presented as a testimony. These texts are read through the lens of deconstruction and psychoanalysis, leading to a two-fold conclusion: (1) a fictional text is free from the rigid and unrealistic demands of historical accuracy that often accompany testimony; and (2) because of their very fictionality, these texts reveal the testimony s conditions in a manner the latter cannot. The work opens with an examination of Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman, exploring how our understanding of film can be particularly useful in setting out testimony s collective production, performance, and futurity. The following chapters develop concepts introduced in this section, beginning with an investigation of Anne Sexton s p
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This project examines American literary texts produced primarily after World War II and an American film that I define as testimonial fiction because they feature characters who share the writer s name, narratives based on the authors lives, and texts presented as a testimony. These texts are read through the lens of deconstruction and psychoanalysis, leading to a two-fold conclusion: (1) a fictional text is free from the rigid and unrealistic demands of historical accuracy that often accompany testimony; and (2) because of their very fictionality, these texts reveal the testimony s conditions in a manner the latter cannot. The work opens with an examination of Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman, exploring how our understanding of film can be particularly useful in setting out testimony s collective production, performance, and futurity. The following chapters develop concepts introduced in this section, beginning with an investigation of Anne Sexton s p
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