Troubling Testimonies

Analyzes the narrative agency of women who have come forward to break silences around wartime atrocities

In Troubling Testimonies, Annika Björkdahl, Kristine Höglund, and Johanna Mannergren explore the power of women's voices in the aftermath of war. Demonstrating the importance of personal testimony, this book analyzes the narrative agency of women who have courageously come forward to shatter gendered silences around wartime atrocities and who have produced crucial new knowledge about women’s experiences of war and its aftermath.

Employing a feminist lens, the authors highlight women's powerful testimonies from different post-war contexts; Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, and Iraq. They examine how these testimonies provide insight into complex forms of gender-based violence, such as wartime rapes in Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the enslavement of young Yazidi women at the hands of ISIS, and the trauma of "secondary witnessing" in Sri Lanka. Most importantly, they examine how the act of testifying provides agency to the women themselves. The book develops an innovative theoretical framework for understanding narrative agency, offering scholars and practitioners a new tool for analyzing how testimony contributes to transitional justice, peace and transformation after war.