{"id":118758,"date":"2018-09-27T10:18:40","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T14:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=118758"},"modified":"2018-09-28T13:40:59","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T17:40:59","slug":"what-i-mean-when-i-say-stephanie-pridgeon-and-testimony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/09\/27\/what-i-mean-when-i-say-stephanie-pridgeon-and-testimony\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Mean When I Say: Stephanie Pridgeon and \u2018testimony\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

For many of us, a testimony happens in a court of law, or perhaps in a church. <\/span><\/p>\n

For people who study Latin America, like Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish Stephanie Pridgeon, testimony also refers to a literary genre born from violence and authoritarianism in the 20th century. <\/span><\/p>\n

A <\/span>testimonio <\/span><\/i>is \u201can oral, written, or transcribed firsthand account of political violence and social issues,\u201d Pridgeon says. \u201cIt\u2019s a text whose social currency and cultural value are based on the fact that the person witnessed something firsthand.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

During Banned Books Week in 2017, Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish Stephanie Pridgeon talks about confiscated books in Argentina. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

A famous example is <\/span>I, Rigoberta Mench\u00fa<\/span><\/i>, a recounting of one woman\u2019s experience of violence during the Guatemalan civil war, as told to a Venezuelan anthropologist. Mench\u00fa is a K\u2019iche\u2019 Maya human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pridgeon\u2019s research on <\/span>testimonios <\/span><\/i>focuses on the value a <\/span>testimonio <\/span><\/i>has when the line between fact and fiction blurs. For example, how much value does a <\/span>testimonio <\/span><\/i>have when its accuracy<\/span> is called into question, as was the case with <\/span>I, Rigoberta Mench\u00fa<\/span><\/i>? What happens when artists merge <\/span>testimonio <\/span><\/i>and documentary filmmaking to show the limitations of both? <\/span><\/p>\n

Overall, <\/span>testimonios <\/span><\/i>offer a glimpse of the intersection of personal identity and politics. \u201cHow are people going against what people have assumed about them, based on having been a political prisoner or an insurgent or part of one political faction or another?\u201d Pridgeon says. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt gets into some pretty juicy issues of identity politics and the ways in which people understand themselves vis-\u00e0-vis broader coalitions, alliances, or political blocs.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201dIt gets into some pretty juicy issues of identity politics and the ways in which people understand themselves.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":118911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[11434,10116],"class_list":["post-118758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","tag-stephanie-pridgeon","tag-what-i-mean-when-i-say"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118758"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118913,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118758\/revisions\/118913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}