La promoción de justicia social a través de un testimonio: el caso de Juana Doña

Ana Belén Álvarez

doi:10.31261/RS.2023.23.08

Published: 2023-06-29

Vol. 23 No. 1 (2023)

Testimony and the Promotion of Social Justice: The Case of Juana Doña

Ana Belén Álvarez

Section: Articles

https://doi.org/10.31261/RS.2023.23.08

Abstract

Juana Doña describes her book Desde la noche y la niebla as a novel-testimony, but not an autobiographical one. This story about her life as a militant in the communist ranks, the Spanish Civil War, and her imprisonment mark the narrative evolution that transgresses any taboo imposed by Francisco Franco’s censorship. Doña relies on her memory and her present self-awareness to remember and decide, respectively, which events are related, and which are silenced; how actions are reaffirmed, and which information is omitted; and how the narrative pronoun changes according to her own life or the collective struggle. The book functions as an individual catharsis, both for the author and the readers. I propose to analyze the writing process of this book as a promotion of justice weapon, following Kimberly Nance’s theory about the ethical decisions made by the author of the testimony and inferring a new role for the reader as a timeless agent in social struggle.

Keywords:

testimony , Spanish Civil War , social promotion , social justice , perpetrators

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Álvarez, A. B. (2023). Testimony and the Promotion of Social Justice: The Case of Juana Doña. Romanica Silesiana, 23(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.31261/RS.2023.23.08

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Ana Belén Álvarez

aalvarezvivo@ua.edu
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3360-0494

Affiliation:

University of Alabama United States

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

Ana Belén Álvarez es graduada en Criminología por la Universidad Internacional de La Rioja. Tras conseguir su maestría en Literatura española por la Universidad de Alabama (EE. UU.), actualmente es doctoranda en la misma universidad. En su tesis explora la representación de la victimización infantil en el cine y la literatura peninsular. Concretamente aplica estudios victimológicos a dichas fuentes primarias para comprobar la verosimilitud de estos. Además, le interesan los estudios de género, culturales, memoria y trauma, estudios transatlánticos y pedagogía.

Vol. 23 No. 1 (2023)
Published: 2024-09-25

ISSN: 1898-2433

eISSN: 2353-9887

Publisher

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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Testimony and the Promotion of Social Justice: The Case of Juana Doña

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Ana Belén Álvarez

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