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Catherine Richardson, "The 'Testimonial Story': The Textual Genre of the Twentieth-First Century?" The many and diverse textual forms related to the auto/biography have emerged as components of perhaps the genre of the twenty-first century. Reasons for the importance of the genre include the Enlightenment, which upheld the representative "I" at its centre, and the subsequent cultivation of various discourses of selfhood; and links between auto/biographical genres and the therapy-driven "culture of confession" and "culture of testimony" that developed out of Freud. Examples of such texts are memoirs of the rich or famous; "real life" media, such as "human interest" magazine or newspaper articles featuring subjects of extra-ordinary and ordinary standing, including the traumatised, downtrodden or dysfunctional; personal narratives told on television or radio "chat" shows; and stories or testimonies arising from organisational, therapeutic, relational or conversational contexts. This study considers the "testimonial story" as a definitive and rhetorically significant contemporary generic form that reflects the socio-cultural milieu of today. Characteristics include the social, personal--and textual--fragmentation associated with the influences of postmodernism. Also important is the value that is being increasingly placed upon notions of agency and the construction or revitalising of the subject as an active contributor to the formation, transformation and development of--indeed, in the wake of post/structuralism, the progress made by--social and cultural structures and textual forms. Biography: Catherine Richardson is a doctoral student in the School of EMSAH at the University of Queensland. Her examination of the "testimonial story" forms part of an analysis of the rhetorical strategies used in the debate over the ordination of women in the Sydney Anglican Diocese using Kenneth Burke's cluster-agon methodological approach. Other research interests include the discourses arising from the mental health and personal / relationship counselling contexts. Ph.: (02)67667061. Email: clricho@bigpond.com |
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