Cultural Studies Seminar: Andrea Petö (Central European University)

 Sabancı University
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

CULTURAL STUDIES SEMINAR

Testimony and Emotionality:

Methodological Problems of Studying Political Justice

Andrea Pető

Department of Gender Studies

Central European University

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

15.30 – 17.00

FASS 2034

Abstract:

The talk covers the history of post-WWII transitional justice period as a space where the full emotional burden of the crimes committed during World War II was manifested. Trials were crucial institutions in post WWII normalisation because they were redefining citizenship and served as civilized form of hate to create emotional standards of that time. Based on an analysis of transcripts of people’s tribunals, the talk seeks to connect the emotions; cultural meanings and social organization (the post-WWII people’s tribunals in Hungary) that were expected to “deal with” the emotion of hate from both by the perpetrators and by the victims, with the aim of preventing social explosions, such as lynching, and in order to “normalize” the post-war situation. The lecture explains the construction of a divided memory and competing narratives about World War II, by showing how the testimonies given at people’s tribunals served as a space for the articulation of emotions, while shaping the discourses on emotions and on emotional normalization.

Andrea PETŐ is an associate professor at the Department of Gender Studies at the Central European University, Budapest. She has published three monographs in Hungarian, English, German and Bulgarian, edited twelve volumes in English, six volumes in Hungarian, two in Russian. Her works appeared in different languages, including Bulgarian, Croatian, English, French, Georgian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Russian and Serbian. She serves on the board of several journals in the field of women's history (Gender and History, Clio) and Contemporary European History. She is the co-president of AtGender. She was awarded by President of the Hungarian Republic with the Officer’s Cross Order of Merit of The Republic of Hungary in 2005 and Bolyai Prize by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2006.

P.S: The seminar will be held in English.