Neither Victim, Nor Heroine. The Role Played by the Life Stories in Identity Building in the case of Romanian Women Former Political Prisoners Cover Image
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Nici victimă, nici eroină. Rolul „poveştilor de viaţă” în construcţia identitară a fostelor deţinute politic din România
Neither Victim, Nor Heroine. The Role Played by the Life Stories in Identity Building in the case of Romanian Women Former Political Prisoners

Author(s): Claudia-Florentina Dobre
Subject(s): Anthropology, Gender Studies, Cultural history, History of ideas, Oral history, Gender history, Recent History (1900 till today), Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Studies in violence and power, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989)
Published by: Institutul de Istorie Nicolae Iorga
Keywords: Storytelling; Identity; Trauma; Women, Former Political Prisoners; Anticommunism

Summary/Abstract: This study, based on the idea assessed by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition according to which the storytelling is a strategy „for transforming private into public meanings”, and further discussed by Michael Jackson in his book, The Politics of Storytelling, who underlined that the storytelling is also a strategy „for sustaining a sense of agency in the face of dis-empowering circumstances”[ Michael Jackson, The Politics of Storytelling..., p. 34. ], aims at developing even further those two ideas arguing that storytelling is also fashioned by the social, cultural and political context as well as by the „social realms of memory”. Using the findings of a research among women, former political detainees during communism in Romania, this article emphasizes the role of storytelling in helping those women to overcome the trauma of the repression as well as in enhancing their agency while building an identity of anti-communist fighter.

  • Issue Year: 19/2020
  • Issue No: 19
  • Page Range: 195-214
  • Page Count: 20
  • Language: Romanian
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