Papers by Ana Belén Martínez García
Biography, 2023
[In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:]
Among testimonies that call for justice and ... more [In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:]
Among testimonies that call for justice and redress on behalf of a community of suffering individuals, Ibrahima Balde and Amets Arzallus Antia’s Hermanito stands out. This polyphonic text builds on the tradition of the collective “I.” Although it was first published in Basque, Hermanito only began to have a major impact on the Spanish cultural scene once it was translated into Castilian Spanish in October 2021.
...
Acknowledgements: This work is part of Grant PID2022-137881NB-I00, funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Regional Development Fund “A way of making Europe.”
Observatorio (OBS*), 2023
As of 2018 the message that urgent measures must be implemented to avoid planetary collapse owes ... more As of 2018 the message that urgent measures must be implemented to avoid planetary collapse owes much to the youth climate movement, led by, among others, activist Greta Thunberg. The main aim of this research is to explore the level of penetration of the urgency discourse, necessary to determine future communication strategies. Our methodological proposal is to measure the presence of the terms "climate crisis" and "climate emergency," in the Twitter conversation, as indicative of the degree of penetration of the discourse on urgency, as opposed to the term "climate change," which we associate to a discourse prevalent before the events of 2018, as well as to assess Thunberg's influence on the dissemination of said terms in the (digital) public sphere. The period under discussion covers 36 days, including the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Madrid (Spain), from which we collected tweets (n=3,324,580) and analyzed the volume of the terms "climate change," "climate crisis," and "climate emergency". We conclude that discourse on the climate urgency is relevant on Twitter and that Thunberg could have played a major role in the increasing use of "climate crisis" over "climate change," though not so for "climate emergency."
This chapter looks at how Hyeonseo Lee imbricates personal memory and collective suffering in her... more This chapter looks at how Hyeonseo Lee imbricates personal memory and collective suffering in her life-writing activism. She has become a spokesperson for North Koreans at both national and international levels, giving public talks where she explains hardships she endured and witnessed. In 2013, TED.com released Lee’s talk. The instability of US-DPRK relations at the time made it an instant sensation, which proves life writing is inseparable from politics. The interplay of offline and online self-construction expands the notion of what used to be separate realms but have become one entangled narrative. Her memoir profited from the viral TED talk and vice versa. Deploying social media for human rights activism, Lee’s life writing succeeds in raising awareness for a collective via multimodal means of self-expression.
Building on academic publications that have tried to assess Malala Yousafzai’s life-writing proje... more Building on academic publications that have tried to assess Malala Yousafzai’s life-writing project in its entirety, this chapter presents each of her life-writing texts as an example of collaborative testimonial narrative. Moving away from an objective, neutral tone, her life writing tends to rely on emotional language and various other discursive strategies aimed at sustaining interest over time. Since Malala Yousafzai started her self-narration when she was 11, technology and traditional media have gone hand in hand. Her appropriation of the hashtag launched under her name proved vital in her reconstruction of an activist self. Yet, the presence of a co-author, either hinted at or made explicit, can be traced throughout all her life-writing texts, from her first blog to her last book on displacement.
This book reveals the ways in which young women resort to social media as well as traditional med... more This book reveals the ways in which young women resort to social media as well as traditional media as part of their ongoing life-writing project. The phenomenon of virality is explored to cast light on the affordances that facilitate synergies among significant social and political actors on the global stage. It does not offer a completely positive view of the digital, but states the possibilities that the combination of online and offline methods offers and opens the door to future explorations in novel forms of narrating the self. New Forms of Self-Narration addresses the strategic use of names, labeling and tagging. Each chapter underscores the multiplicity of approaches to life writing and mediation these young women activists take, showcasing relevant trends in twenty-first-century life writing.
This chapter is the perfect companion to the preceding one, as it features the case of a Syrian g... more This chapter is the perfect companion to the preceding one, as it features the case of a Syrian girl who also left the country under strenuous circumstances and relocated as refugee elsewhere. Both life-writing projects may be read side by side to gauge the strategies at work by these two activists whose competing title as “the girl from Aleppo” is at stake. Instead of precluding each other’s testimony, their voices denounce the situation in Syria and the individual and collective ramifications of leaving their country behind. Born with cerebral palsy, Nujeen Mustafa’s journey into Europe was featured by mainstream media. Nujeen—also a household name—is most famous for her public speeches advocating for the need to move beyond labeling people as numbers, migrants, refugees.
This article explores the way in which life writing is used as a vehicle of human emotion. In the... more This article explores the way in which life writing is used as a vehicle of human emotion. In the fight for human rights, life writing features prominently among the narrative choices that authors have access to. By making their story a claim to those rights that have been violated, their narrative affects us directly. In this article, I focus on a comparison of Malala Yousafzai's memoir and Rigoberta Menchú's testimonio and their ability to move people. I use these Nobel Peace Prize recipients' accounts as tokens of the problematics and complexities of human rights life narratives, and the way these authors have become role models for current and future generations all over the world. I conclude that their success is due to the highly emotional responses they provoke and the impact they may have on society as a whole.
Biography, 2021
Guest article for the journal Biography's feature International Year in Review, found at https://... more Guest article for the journal Biography's feature International Year in Review, found at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/837219. Published by the Center for Biographical Research at the University of Hawai‘i, Hawai‘i University Press, USA. H Index 19 SJR. ISSN: 0162-4962. Online ISSN: 1529-1456. Manuscript submitted 15 Dec. 2020. Revisions submitted 13 April 2021. Published online: 22 November 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/bio.2021.0023.
Human Arenas
Spaniards born in a democracy have no recollection of living through war and what it entails. We ... more Spaniards born in a democracy have no recollection of living through war and what it entails. We can only access those memories via mediation, by listening to our relatives who were there, whose stories we become witnesses to, and which ultimately become our own collective witnessing. The remembrance of the Spanish Civil War passed on to us in this manner is a contested legacy, a complex combination of affects and mediated memories, coming from offline-as in conversations with our elders-and online-such as archival footage-resources. Experiencing war firsthand left indelible marks in our forebearers' minds. Now the elderly must face this violent "war" and "postwar" rhetoric with the potential retraumatization it may cause. Not capable to understand why media and government officials alike call for heroes to resist and fight the crisis, a discourse heavily imbued with emotions and battlefront references does little to assuage citizens' fears. Perpetual news reels on the number of dead per day worsen the psychological strain of a person in lockdown, akin to that of prison inmates, more so if that person endured an actual war and its aftermath. What might be done to lessen such harmful impacts? How can we change the narrative and make it more humane?
Prose Studies, 2020
Climate change and the concerns it raises for the environment and all those inhabiting planet ear... more Climate change and the concerns it raises for the environment and all those inhabiting planet earth, human and nonhuman alike, have prompted waves of activism since the last decades of the twentieth century. Over the last few years, however, a novel form of activism has emerged, apparently led by children and youth from all over the world. This article studies how one of its most prominent leaders, Greta Thunberg, and her climate activism may be read as a lifewriting project. Drawing on traditions of social movements and testimony, rights discourse, rhetoric and strong emotions are strategically deployed to generate affective and effective engagement and action. The self that is in the making in Thunberg’s audiovisual and written life-writing texts is arguably a testimonial “I” to lay bare injustice. Her self-construction hinges upon the denunciation of broader systemic causes than mere lack of attention to the climate crisis.
New Forms of Self-Narration
Biography
This article, published 14 June 2019, covers auto/biographical narratives in Spain published from... more This article, published 14 June 2019, covers auto/biographical narratives in Spain published from mid-2017 to mid-2018. Published by University of Hawai'i Press. DOI: 10.1353/bio.2019.0022. Available at the permanent link: https://doi.org/10.1353/bio.2019.0022. Further details on Project Muse: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/726560
Narrative, 2021
Among the most pressing matters dominating the public sphere is the refugee crisis, but the news ... more Among the most pressing matters dominating the public sphere is the refugee crisis, but the news does not present readers/audiences with a story one can easily relate to. The opposite may be said of human rights activists who turn to life narrative as a counterpart to the dehumanizing practices at the heart of much of public discourse. This essay looks at the major role of agencies such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in mediating refugees' narratives. It builds on a key interview obtained with that organization's former Chief Communications Officer, Melissa Fleming, whose role epitomizes the humanitarian narrative of today. Social media and their affordances play an important role in distributing the message and allowing for private lives to enter the public sphere. Refugees' mediated narratives offer a significant counternarrative to the mainstream media attempts to erase or flatten out individual stories. However, attention must be paid to the problematics surrounding the ethics of mediation, especially in the case of life narratives of human suffering and vulnerable others. Common challenges to mediated narratives are, among others, appropriation and commoditization, questioning who tells whose story, how, and why. The very idea of empathy is subject to criticism. Though admittedly fraught with pitfalls, testimonial narratives have the potential to shake people's consciences and to effect social change.
Human Arenas, 2021
Spaniards born in a democracy have no recollection of living through war and what it entails. We ... more Spaniards born in a democracy have no recollection of living through war and what it entails. We can only access those memories via mediation, by listening to our relatives who were there, whose stories we become witnesses to, and which ultimately become our own collective witnessing. The remembrance of the Spanish Civil War passed on to us in this manner is a contested legacy, a complex combination of affects and mediated memories, coming from ofine—as in conversations with our elders—and online—such as archival footage—resources. Experiencing war frsthand left indelible marks in our forebearers’ minds. Now the elderly must face this violent “war” and “postwar” rhetoric with the potential retraumatization it may cause. Not capable to understand why media and government ofcials alike call for heroes to resist and fght the crisis, a discourse heavily imbued with emotions and battlefront references does little to assuage citizens’ fears. Perpetual news reels on the number of dead per day worsen the psychological strain of a person in lockdown, akin to that of prison inmates, more so if that person endured an actual war and its aftermath. What might be done to lessen such harmful impacts? How can we change the narrative and make it more humane?
AI & Society, 2023
Activists present themselves on- and offline using a diverse range of tools, discursive strategie... more Activists present themselves on- and offline using a diverse range of tools, discursive strategies, and means of self-presentation, all conducive to making both themselves and their cause well known. To that end, of paramount importance is their ability to make audiences and readers empathize, and a key factor all strategies have in common is the repetitive nature of their multiplatform, multimodal discourse. I build on previous research about platforms such as Twitter and TED talks as forms of self-narration to look at the ways human rights activists deploy such strategic communicative techniques to construct a public persona. I focus on young women from the Global South using English as a lingua franca. These tend to re-use rhetoric drawn from famous historical figures who stood for social justice in the past, and nuanced repetitive techniques characterized by emotion and affect to mobilize various constituencies. Both kinds of repetition, enhanced by the affordances of technology, create a new kind of ubiquity and can thus potentially influence policymaking. The article makes the case that the recent global viral popularity of young women activists such as Malala Yousafzai, Bana Alabed, and Nujeen Mustafa deserves deeper analysis. At stake is whether digital affordances of immediacy and reach can not only amplify such activists’ messages, but help them cross new borders and create new kinds of transnational solidarity.
Biography, Sep 11, 2020
A notable trend this year in Spanish life writing has been to give voice to those silenced. Follo... more A notable trend this year in Spanish life writing has been to give voice to those silenced. Following in the footsteps of a long-standing tradition of testimonial life writing worldwide, multiple lifewriting works in Spain have been turning to issues of "voice" and "silence." It is little surprise that some of these stories feature women after the global impact of the #MeToo movement. However, the trends I identified in my contribution to this feature last year (Martínez García) have persisted. Conflict continues to permeate life narratives in Spain, and as will be seen in what follows, both politics and journalism are among the most prevalent fields of study from which life writing comes.
Prose Studies, 2020
Climate change and the concerns it raises for the environment and all those inhabiting planet ear... more Climate change and the concerns it raises for the environment and all those inhabiting planet earth, human and nonhuman alike, have prompted waves of activism since the last decades of the twentieth century. Over the last few years, however, a novel form of activism has emerged, apparently led by children and youth from all over the world. This article studies how one of its most prominent leaders, Greta Thunberg, and her climate activism may be read as a lifewriting project. Drawing on traditions of social movements
and testimony, rights discourse, rhetoric and strong emotions are strategically deployed to generate affective and effective engagement and action. The self that is in the
making in Thunberg’s audiovisual and written life-writing texts is arguably a testimonial “I” to lay bare injustice. Her self-construction hinges upon the denunciation of broader
systemic causes than mere lack of attention to the climate crisis.
Journal of English Studies, 2019
This essay demonstrates the effectiveness of human rights life narratives in garnering global sup... more This essay demonstrates the effectiveness of human rights life narratives in garnering global support through their appeal to empathy. I focus on Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai’s autobiographical texts and their impact on lives outside the written pages, which is first and foremost of an empathic nature. The essay pays special attention to her childhood blog and her teenage autobiography, looking at the narrative strategies employed in both. Autobiographical texts are never neutral, enabling people to see themselves under a new light, spurring them to act. The delicate balance between witnessing and involvement hangs on the creation of an emotional bond.
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Papers by Ana Belén Martínez García
Among testimonies that call for justice and redress on behalf of a community of suffering individuals, Ibrahima Balde and Amets Arzallus Antia’s Hermanito stands out. This polyphonic text builds on the tradition of the collective “I.” Although it was first published in Basque, Hermanito only began to have a major impact on the Spanish cultural scene once it was translated into Castilian Spanish in October 2021.
...
Acknowledgements: This work is part of Grant PID2022-137881NB-I00, funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Regional Development Fund “A way of making Europe.”
and testimony, rights discourse, rhetoric and strong emotions are strategically deployed to generate affective and effective engagement and action. The self that is in the
making in Thunberg’s audiovisual and written life-writing texts is arguably a testimonial “I” to lay bare injustice. Her self-construction hinges upon the denunciation of broader
systemic causes than mere lack of attention to the climate crisis.
Among testimonies that call for justice and redress on behalf of a community of suffering individuals, Ibrahima Balde and Amets Arzallus Antia’s Hermanito stands out. This polyphonic text builds on the tradition of the collective “I.” Although it was first published in Basque, Hermanito only began to have a major impact on the Spanish cultural scene once it was translated into Castilian Spanish in October 2021.
...
Acknowledgements: This work is part of Grant PID2022-137881NB-I00, funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Regional Development Fund “A way of making Europe.”
and testimony, rights discourse, rhetoric and strong emotions are strategically deployed to generate affective and effective engagement and action. The self that is in the
making in Thunberg’s audiovisual and written life-writing texts is arguably a testimonial “I” to lay bare injustice. Her self-construction hinges upon the denunciation of broader
systemic causes than mere lack of attention to the climate crisis.
“Re-orienting Assemblage Theory in Anglophone Literature and Culture” (RELY).
Ref.: PID2022-137881NB-I00
Funding body: Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ERDF A way of making Europe.
engagement in the international arena is, though repetitive, or precisely because of it, successful in shaking consciences and mobilizing youth into action. Thunberg’s deployment of life writing for activism strategically combines the online and of offline worlds, appealing for global justice on Twitter and narrating her life and fight in TED talk and book formats (“School Strike”, No One; Ernman et al.). It is an “I” crying for an endangered future, the “we” of a planet’s children whose future is at stake. As such, climate change life storytelling becomes a vital form of activism.
Inspired by scholarly work in testimonial life writing (Schaffer and Smith 2004; Whitlock 2015), in particular young women activists’ life writing (Douglas and Poletti 2016; Martínez García 2017, 2018, 2019), I approach these texts to explore the ways human rights testimony can appeal to global publics and potentially impact policymakers. Several discursive strategies permeate these narratives, namely a testimonial collective voice, rights discourse, humanitarian emotions, glocal issues, and English as a lingua franca. The radical novelty in how these young women activists act is their simultaneous constantly in-the-making approach to narrating themselves, both online and offline. No text can nor should be read in isolation. Rather they need each other so audiences/readers can more fully understand who they are and what they stand for. Importantly, these women’s faces and names become symbolic, quickly coming to be associated with the activism they perform in the public sphere.
This paper looks at several young women from the Global South whose native language is not English but who have been shown to wield this language as a weapon in their fight against the transgressions they either experienced or witnessed: Malala Yousafzai, Hyeonseo Lee, Yeonmi Park, Bana Alabed, Nujeen Mustafa, and Nadia Murad. English allows their message to reach a global audience at unprecendented rates, gaining followers in the process. Besides their ubiquity not only online but offline, it is characteristic of their life-writing texts that each of them stands for a collective in need of representation. They each offer their voices, metahorically and physically, to speak out against injustice and call for its end. Their “I” is arguably individual as well as collective (Martínez García 2017), promoting what “strategic empathy” (Keen 2016) by confronting readers/audiences with personal accounts of victimization, involving them ethically. The plight described in these witnessing narratives is geared at effecting social change.
By reclaiming their identity, these human rights icons effectively rewrite who they are, defying stereotyped versions of their harrowing stories. No attempt has ever been made to account for what these women’s projects share, understanding it is a novel avenue for life-writing activism. Conclusions will showcase a set of successful narrative strategies that may unpack the global phenomenon the activists pose.
(490 words excluding title, references, and keywords)
References (maximum 150 words) (Chicago style)
Douglas, Kate and Anna Poletti. 2016. Life Narratives and Youth Culture: Representation, Agency, and Participation. London: Palgrave.
Keen, Suzanne. 2016. “Life Writing and the Empathetic Circle.” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 42 (2): 9–26.
Martínez García, Ana Belén. 2017. “Unearthing the Past: Bringing Ideological Indoctrination to Light in North Korean Girls’ Memoirs.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 32 (3): 587–602.
———. 2018. “TED Talks as Life Writing: Online and Offline Activism.” Life Writing 15 (4): 487–503.
———. 2019. “Construction and Collaboration in Life-Writing Projects: Malala Yousafzai’s Activist ‘I.’” Journal of Writing in Creative Practice 12 (1–2): 201–17.
Schaffer, Kay and Sidonie Smith. 2004. Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition. New York: Palgrave.
Whitlock, Gillian. 2015. Postcolonial Life Narratives: Testimonial Transactions. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Keywords (maximum 5) (separated with semi-colons)
Human rights life writing; young women; online/offline activism; discursive strategies; witnessing
Part of the "Poetic Justice: Narrating Personhood, Solidarity, and Citizenship" (virtual) Symposium organized by Anne Kustritz, sponsored by the Utrecht University Gender and Diversity Hub, and supported by a grant from the SSHRC, "Fairy-Tale Justice in Old and New Media: Transforming Wonder" (#890-2013-17).
II Encuentros de Etnografía, José María Satrústegui: Euskaltzale y etnógrafo navarro, Civican, 19 September 2019, Pamplona (Spain). Organized by the Basque Chair at the Faculty of Humanities in the University of Navarra.
Grant PID2022-137881NB-I00 funded by the Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science.
Mesa redonda con el objetivo de proporcionar conocimientos y habilidades para poder mejorar y ser más conscientes del impacto que puede tener en el cuidado la relación que se establece con el paciente, a través del uso de narrativas clínicas.
Organiza: Facultad de Enfermería
Item published 2 February 2019. Accessible at:
https://www.strandlines.london/2019/02/02/in-the-bush-in-the-strand/
Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/882915. Published online 2023-02-22.
EDITED BY: Nelson González Ortega and Ana Belén Martínez García
Sobre todo ello hablamos con Ana Belén Martínez, profesora del Grado en Lengua y Literatura Españolas de la Universidad de Navarra. Durante los últimos años, ha centrado su investigación en las narrativas autobiográficas de carácter testimonial, con especial hincapié en los relatos de jóvenes mujeres activistas.
Aprendizajes del episodio 9:
• Una aproximación al life writing
• Nuevas formas de autobiografía
• La literatura como vía de autoconocimiento
• La literatura como herramienta terapéutica
• La aportación de otras disciplinas a la Literatura
• Relación entre literatura y realidad social
• Cómo iniciarse en la escritura autobiográfica
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ByaMykkRzwp55w9hQXp81
https://youtu.be/A9WDftTcxQ8
Published online 29 May 2024
https://www.unav.edu/web/grado-en-lengua-y-literatura/podcast/episodio-9
Date of event: 25 January 2024.
Location: University of Málaga/online.
Publication date: April 2024.
Project details:
Title: “Re-orienting Assemblage Theory in Anglophone Literature and Culture” (RELY).
Ref.: PID2022-137881NB-I00
Funding body: Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ERDF A way of making Europe.
Estimated duration of project: 01/09/2023 – 31/08/2026.
PI: Prof. Rosario Arias Doblas (University of Malaga).
organized/funded by COST Actions CA19112 - Women on the Move (WEMov) and CA21120 - History of Identity Documentation in European Nations: Citizenship, Nationality and Migration (HIDDEN), Talent Meeting 23-24 July 2024, University of Koç, Istanbul (Turkey).