'Eloquent chaos' in the oral discourse of killing fields survivors: an exploration of atrocity and narrativization.
If "narrative" implies a form of discourse in which sequenced events are meaningfully connected, an "anti-narrative" is a chaotic discourse form "of time without sequence, telling without mediation, and speaking about oneself without being fully able to reflect on oneself" (Frank 1995: 98). This paper examines narratives and anti-narratives in the oral discourses of survivors of the Cambodian killing fields. Through an extended analysis of two cases, we demonstrate the internal logic and "eloquence" of anti-narratives--i.e., the ways in which anti-narrative patterns vividly express and reveal a survivor's complex and continuing experience of atrocity.
Uehara
E S
ES
University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
Farris
M
M
Morelli
P T
PT
Ishisaka
A
A
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000739:Anecdotes as Topic; D002160:Cambodia / Q000208:ethnology; D003068:Coercion; D005260:Female; D006076:Government; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011057:Politics; D012944:Social Support; D017741:Survivors / Q000523:psychology*; D023481:Terrorism / Q000523:psychology*; D014861:Washington