Testimony, Documentary, Fiction: The Remedialisation of Stolen Children

TY - CHAP

T1 - Testimony, Documentary, Fiction

T2 - The Remedialisation of Stolen Children

AU - Hansen, Hans Lauge

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - This paper examines the remedialisation of the abduction of the children of “rojas” by the Francoist regime. In 2006 the Spanish author Benjamin Prado published Mala gente que camina, a novel that shares most of the characteristics of the fiction published after the turn of the millennium dedicated to the memory of the Civil War and Francoist repression: the detective plot, the divided plotline between present and past, and metafictional reflections. But what role did it actually play in the development of the case of the stolen children? This paper studies the relation between different social discourses (testimony, fiction, investigative journalism, historiography) and different media (printed books, TV, cinema and theatre) in the development of the case, and explores the specific relation between documentary and fiction in this context. The article follows a line of dialogic interaction between social discourses and media from the feminist movement in the 1980s and until today, through which oral testimony and the losing part of the population’s “forgotten” memories are turned into docu-fiction and fictionalised documentary with the purpose of reading history against the grain and presenting memory as an act of justice.

AB - This paper examines the remedialisation of the abduction of the children of “rojas” by the Francoist regime. In 2006 the Spanish author Benjamin Prado published Mala gente que camina, a novel that shares most of the characteristics of the fiction published after the turn of the millennium dedicated to the memory of the Civil War and Francoist repression: the detective plot, the divided plotline between present and past, and metafictional reflections. But what role did it actually play in the development of the case of the stolen children? This paper studies the relation between different social discourses (testimony, fiction, investigative journalism, historiography) and different media (printed books, TV, cinema and theatre) in the development of the case, and explores the specific relation between documentary and fiction in this context. The article follows a line of dialogic interaction between social discourses and media from the feminist movement in the 1980s and until today, through which oral testimony and the losing part of the population’s “forgotten” memories are turned into docu-fiction and fictionalised documentary with the purpose of reading history against the grain and presenting memory as an act of justice.

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978 87 7184 387 3

T3 - Acta Jutlandica. Humanistisk Serie

SP - 313

EP - 340

BT - Exploring Texts, Media, and Memory

A2 - Sætre, Lars

A2 - Lombardo , Patrizia

A2 - Tanderup Linkis, Sara

PB - Aarhus Universitetsforlag

CY - Aarhus

ER -