Credibility of testimonial truth on the experience of collective violence

Credibility of testimonial truth on the experience of collective violence

Coordination : Anna Krykun, Emmanuelle Käes, Roxana Ilasca et Liudmyla Harmash (chercheuse invitée LE STUDIUM 2025-26 au sein de l’UR ICD)
 

• Damien Accoulon (University of Tours/CITERES, History): “Violence in testimonies: revisiting a French historiographical controversy on the First World War”

In the early 2000s, French historiography of the First World War was shaped by a major controversy between two opposing interpretations of war testimonies. One of its central parameters resulted from the place given to violence in a “culture of war,” which would be widely shared in European societies. In their debates, academics drew on testimonies that differed in form and origin. This led to a serious misunderstanding, before new, enlightening studies transcended the divisions. This talk offers to draw the main lines of this divide and to set out the main lessons to be learned from it regarding the place of testimonies of violence in the writing of modern history.

Suggested reading: Pierre Purseigle, « Controversy: War Culture », 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer D. Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, 2020-03-30.
 
Damien Accoulon is Associate Professor of Modern History in the University of Tours (France). His research focuses on the history of military and civil aviation, with a special focus on France and Germany in the first half of the 20th century. His work combines social and cultural history through a thorough study of individuals, technology transfers, and représentations, especially during times of transition between war and peace.
 

• Paola Lamberti, Vittoria Di Porzio and Andrea Orio (University of Salerno, Visual Culture – Communication Studies – Sociology): “From declared to vernacular memory: environmental violence between collective recall and smartphone testimonies”

This contribution explores the tension between local memories of environmental risk and globally circulating images of ecological crisis. Drawing on data from the RETURN Program, which surveyed 1 000 Italian young people aged 16–35, it reconstructs territorially situated memories within open-ended narratives and identifies distinct narrative models of risk, from civic-territorial to familial-affective forms. These rooted memory frameworks are analyzed alongside smartphone-based micro-testimonies produced by young people. The study shows how everyday media practices negotiate the gap between local memory and global crisis. Methodologically, it combines thematic analysis with visual and media analysis across local and digital environments.

Suggested reading: Liz Austen, 'The social construction of risk by young people' (2009).

PhD candidate in Visual Culture at the University of Salerno, Paola Lamberti investigates the affective ecologies of youth audiovisual practices, with particular attention to the remediation of ecocinematic forms on digital platforms and to the vernacular construction of environmental imaginaries. Her research lies at the intersection of ecocriticism, media and youth studies, assemblage theory, and eco-anxiety studies, and looks into how Generation Z articulates new ecological sensibilities through micro-narratives, post-ironic aesthetics, and digital care dispositifs. She collaborates with the Audiovisual Storytelling Laboratory (LABSAV) at the University of Salerno and has participated in the PRIN projects Aesthetics and Therapeia and within the RETURN – A Multi-Risk Science for Resilient Communities under a Changing Climate Program, under the CURE – Collaborative Urban Strategies and Capacity Enhancement Project.

Vittoria Di Porzio is PhD candidate from the Department of Political and Communication Sciences at the University of Salerno and a member of the research group at the Observatory on Communication, Participation, and Youth Cultures (OCPG). Her research lies at the intersection of sociology, sociolinguistics, and public communication, investigating the processes and practices that foster youth active citizenship in contemporary contexts of environmental crisis. Her work deconstructs the dynamics of "reflexive trust" – a paradigm where institutional legitimacy is based on a critical evaluation of scientific evidence and decision-making – and aims to overcome the "risk perception paradox". She explores how public communication acts as a strategic interface to transform individual awareness into collective agency and active participation in building community safety. Her broader interests include territorial inequalities and social regeneration in Southern Italy. She is an active member of several scientific associations, including the Italian Sociological Association (AIS - within the “Methodology” and “Mediterranean Studies” sections), the Italian Regional Science Association (AISRE), the European Sociological Association (ESA).

Andrea Orio is PhD candidate in Sociology and Social Research at the University of Salerno, where he also works as a researcher at the Youth Observatory OCPG – Department of Political and Communication Sciences (DISPC-UNISA), and as a teacher in Sociology at the Department of Economics and Statistics (DISES-UNISA). His research interests mainly focus on youth studies, with particular attention to youth transitions, youth cultures, and intergenerational dynamics. He is also interested in social research methods and techniques, both quantitative and qualitative, as well as in the evaluation of public policies, with a specific focus on issues affecting inner and marginal areas in the Italian context. Throughout his career, Andrea Orio has collaborated as a methodologist and data analyst with leading research institutes, including CNR-ISMED, the Toniolo Institute, and the IARD Institute.

• Beatriz Valverde and Paula García-Ramírez (University of Jaén, English-speaking literatures): “Bearing witness or domesticating violence? War correspondents, narrative ethics and the limits of objectivity”

This talk examines the ethical and narrative pitfalls involved in representing violence through the figure of the war correspondent, focusing on the tension between journalistic objectivity and what has been termed a journalism of attachment (articulated by figures such as Ryszard Kapuściński and Martin Bell). Taking as its premise that any account of violence is inevitably political and ideologically charged, the panel explores whether literary representations of war reporting can avoid both the instrumentalization of suffering and its aesthetic or narrative anesthetisation. Particular attention is paid to how these novels problematise neutrality, expose the risks of voyeurism and self-legitimation and question whether narrative strategies—such as aesthetic distance, fragmentation, or reflexivity—can resist the commodification of violence without lapsing into silence or moral paralysis.

Suggested reading: Martin Bell, 'The truth is our currency' (1998).

Beatriz Valverde holds a Doctorate in English Philology from Universidad de Jaén and an MA in Spanish from Loyola University Chicago. Currently, she is Associate Professor at the Department of English Philology at Universidad de Jaén. Her main research interests concern relationship between theology and literature, specifically in the work of Graham Greene; journalism and literature; literature and cultural studies in English and Spanish. On these topics, she has published extensively in international journals, such as Anglia, English Studies, European Journal of English Studies and Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, among others. In 2025 Routledge published her book Burn-Out Reporters: Fictional Representations of (Un)ethical journalistic practices in Graham Greene’s Work.

Paula García-Ramírez graduated in English Philology by the Universidad de Granada (1988), she obtained a PhD in the same university in 1998 with a thesis dissertation dealing with Chinua Achebe's narrative production. She started teaching in higher education in 1990, and in 2000 she became Associate Professor at the Department of English Philology at the Universidad de Jaén. Paula García-Ramírez is a specialist in English-speaking postcolonial literature, with particular attention to African literature. Within this field of research, she has published several studies on authors like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, among others. She has also paid attention to issues like Australian aboriginal poetry, the narrative of Michael Ondaatje, John. M. Coetzee, Hanif Kureishi and others. In 2014, she was invited to be a plenary speaker at Chinua Achebe's tribute events at Brown University (Providence, USA) and, in 2025, to deliver a session on Critical Approaches to Chinua Achebe at All Souls College (Oxford, UK).