In thinking about identity, about the stories
we tell and what they have to do with the "historical other," I want us
to think about place, location, geography.
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where are we "from" (Kate Millett, army life,
Chellis Glendinngin)
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how is writing a story like mapping -- what would
"mapping an identity" mean?
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language evolves from environment -- Nancy Lord's
"Native Tongues"; relationship between "place" and "self"
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
and The Vanished Gallery: Calling on the Witness, establishing historical
relation, mapping location/identity
http://www.truth.org.za
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The site's point is to bring all parties to the
violence of Apartheid into a direct and honest confrontation with the truth
of their experiences-- the only possible road to healing from trauma.
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The Register
of Reconciliation is a space in which speakers come into historical
relation
The Disappeared in Argentina's dirty war have
the complex task of testifying against the government's efforts to deny
and silence the atrocities to which they were subject. The Vanished
Gallery is an example of locating identity quite literally naming the
tortuerers and mapping the detention center and sites of torture
The need for all parties to trauma to testify
to the experience of trauma is essentially about re-locating oneself: extreme
violence dis-connects one from oneself and other; meaningful relation is
severed, and the participants to violence must, in order live after and
beyond trauma, re-connect to themselves and others, re-locate themselves
vis a vis their past, present, and future.