Unbreaking Bonds: Queer Prison Testimonies from the Holocaust to Today
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Date
2022-10-26
Authors
Regan-Maglione, Kevin
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This dissertation examines the queer prison testimonial practices in a graphic novel, three memoirs, and two films that reproduce a new kind of witnessing. The authors are Luca de Santis with illustrator Sara Colaone, Gabriella Romano, Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque, and Pierre Seel and the directors are Pietro Marcello and Jean Genet. Each of these texts offers a mediated and constructed re-elaboration of an original witnessing encounter which emblematizes the community building nature of these queer prison testimonies. From Italian to French, the project is an intervention in discussions on testimonial theory, Holocaust literature, queer temporality, and queer archive studies as these texts function as the original subject’s attempt to mirror and perpetuate a community of listeners. First, I take up the graphic novel’s medium as an entryway to community building as I examine de Santis’ relationship to the original witness. Then, I explore how queer Holocaust survivors establish their own voice through the primary witness and secondary witness exchange. After, I look at how queer films open up a visual horizon into realizing a utopic time and how the films are a guide to imagining similar horizons. Finally, I explore how the body as a personal archive expands upon the queer turn from the archive. Throughout each chapter, I contend that each text functions pedagogically as it shifts the responsibility from speaker and listener to a communal affective labor. The project overall proposes a practice of community building which repeats itself as it reaches other public members: the foundation and framework behind the witnessing, which involves a meditation and another person, builds community and that community then promotes further community with the reader or viewer.
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Keywords
holocaust, prison, queer, testimonies