Abstract

In the 1990s Stuart Hall described the “cultural revolution” of the historically silenced “coming into representation” while Nancy Fraser defined “subaltern counterpublics” for oppressed groups to articulate identities and memories. In this chapter, Martínez García and Karner ask whether the digital age provides evidence of such a revolution of self-representations and subaltern testimonies. The authors explore this through a quasi-Socratic dialogue, spelling out and challenging assumptions. Key to their argument is their analysis of digital testimonies by victim-turned-survivor human rights activists Malala Yousafzai, Yeonmi Park, Nujeen Mustafa, or Nadia Murad. The discussion illuminates the political, ethical and epistemological implications of social media testimonies, accounting for the contexts of production, circulation, reception and re-appropriation