Surviving Repression

Surviving repression tells the story of the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of the 2013 coup. It is the first book of its kind to analyse the movement's recent trajectories by showcasing the experiences of its individual members, analysing how their responses to repression are affecting the movement as a whole.

This international study of children's experiences of organized persecution, explores the Holocaust and its aftermath as prototypical social trauma. Traumatized persons' feelings of shame and guilt as well as a sense of being different may prevail, and they may attribute great power to others, seek safety in isolation, or search for a rescuer. Nevertheless, as a group, the child survivors of the Holocaust have achieved remarkable success as adults. Drawing on the wealth of personal and interview information, the contributors create a synthesis of personal history and psychological analysis. Adult memories of traumatic childhood experiences are accompanied by discussions of their effects and by analysis of the various coping mechanisms used to establish a viable post-war existence. These accounts are distinguished by the fact that they are by and about individuals who grew up in undistinguished Christian and Jewish families; not those of prominent figures or resistance fighters or rescuers. All experienced unrest and many suffered trauma during the Nazi regime, as a result of the war, and during the post-war turbulence. An important collection for students and scholars of the Holocaust and for those professionals in a position to help surviving victims of other organized persecution, civil violence, strife, and abuse.

Honorable Mention, 2019 Distinguished Book Award, given by the Sex & Gender Section of the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, 2019 Marysa Navarro Book Prize, given by the New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS) A profound reflection on state violence and women’s survival In the 1970s and early 80s, military and security forces in Argentina hunted down, tortured, imprisoned, and in many cases, murdered political activists, student organizers, labor unionists, leftist guerrillas, and other people branded “subversives.” This period was characterized by massive human rights violations, including forced disappearances committed in the name of national security. State terror left a deep scar on contemporary Argentina, but for many survivors and even the nation itself, talking about this dark period in recent history has been difficult, and at times taboo. For women who endured countless forms of physical, sexual, and emotional violence in clandestine detention centers, the impetus to keep quiet about certain aspects of captivity has been particularly strong. In Surviving State Terror, Barbara Sutton draws upon a wealth of oral testimonies to place women’s bodies and voices at the center of the analysis of state terror. The book showcases poignant stories of women’s survival and resistance, disinterring accounts that have yet to be fully heard, grappled with, and understood. With a focus on the body as a key theme, Sutton explores various instances of violence toward women, such as sexual abuse and torture at the hands of state officials. Yet she also uses these narratives to explore why some types of social suffering and certain women’s voices are heard more than others, and how this can be rectified in our own practices of understanding and witnessing trauma. In doing so, Sutton urges us to pay heed to women survivors’ political voices, activist experiences, and visions for social change. Recounting not only women’s traumatic experiences, but also emphasizing their historical and political agency, Surviving State Terror is a profound reflection on state violence, social suffering, and human resilience—both personal and collective.

Honorable Mention, 2019 Distinguished Book Award, given by the Sex & Gender Section of the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, 2019 Marysa Navarro Book Prize, given by the New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS) A profound reflection on state violence and women’s survival In the 1970s and early 80s, military and security forces in Argentina hunted down, tortured, imprisoned, and in many cases, murdered political activists, student organizers, labor unionists, leftist guerrillas, and other people branded “subversives.” This period was characterized by massive human rights violations, including forced disappearances committed in the name of national security. State terror left a deep scar on contemporary Argentina, but for many survivors and even the nation itself, talking about this dark period in recent history has been difficult, and at times taboo. For women who endured countless forms of physical, sexual, and emotional violence in clandestine detention centers, the impetus to keep quiet about certain aspects of captivity has been particularly strong. In Surviving State Terror, Barbara Sutton draws upon a wealth of oral testimonies to place women’s bodies and voices at the center of the analysis of state terror. The book showcases poignant stories of women’s survival and resistance, disinterring accounts that have yet to be fully heard, grappled with, and understood. With a focus on the body as a key theme, Sutton explores various instances of violence toward women, such as sexual abuse and torture at the hands of state officials. Yet she also uses these narratives to explore why some types of social suffering and certain women’s voices are heard more than others, and how this can be rectified in our own practices of understanding and witnessing trauma. In doing so, Sutton urges us to pay heed to women survivors’ political voices, activist experiences, and visions for social change. Recounting not only women’s traumatic experiences, but also emphasizing their historical and political agency, Surviving State Terror is a profound reflection on state violence, social suffering, and human resilience—both personal and collective.

Memories of Mass Repression presents the results of researchers working with the voices of witnesses. Its stories include the witnesses, victims, and survivors; it also reflects the subjective experience of the study of such narratives. The work contributes to the development of the field of oral history, where the creation of the narrative is considered an interaction between the text of the narrator and the listener. The contributors are particularly interested in ways in which memory is created and molded. The interactions of different, even conflicting, memories of other individuals, and society as a whole are considered. In writing the history of genocide, "emotional" memory and "objective" research are interwoven and inseparable. It is as much the historian's task to decipher witness account, as it is to interpret traditional written sources. These sometimes antagonistic narratives of memory fashioned and mobilized within public and private arenas, together with the ensuing conflicts, paradoxes, and contradictions that they unleash, are all part of efforts to come to terms with what happened. Mining memory is the only way in which we can hope to arrive at a truer, and less biased historical account of events. Memory is at some level selective. Most believers in political movements turned out to be the opposite of what they promised. When given a proper forum, stories that are in opposition to dominant memories, or in conflict with our own memories, can effectively battle collective forgetting. This volume offers the reader a vision of the subjective side of history without falsifying the objective reality of human survival.

Written as a book for undergraduate students as well as scholars, Surviving Dictatorship is a work of visual sociology and oral history, and a case study that communicates the lived experience of poverty, repression, and resistance in an authoritarian society: Pinochetâe(tm)s Chile. It focuses on shantytown women, examining how they join groups to cope with exacerbated impoverishment and targeted repression, and how this leads them into very varied forms of resistance aimed at self-protection, community-building, and mounting an offensive. Drawing on a visual database of shantytown photographs, art, posters, flyers, and bulletins, as well as on interviews, photo elicitation, and archival research, the book is an example of how multiple methods might be successfully employed to examine dictatorship from the perspective of some of the least powerful members of society. It is ideal for courses in social inequalities, poverty, race/class/gender, political sociology, global studies, urban studies, womenâe(tm)s studies, human rights, oral history, and qualitative methods.

Memories of Mass Repression presents the results of researchers working with the voices of witnesses. Its stories include the witnesses, victims, and survivors; it also reflects the subjective experience of the study of such narratives. The work contributes to the development of the field of oral history, where the creation of the narrative is considered an interaction between the text of the narrator and the listener. The contributors are particularly interested in ways in which memory is created and molded. The interactions of different, even conflicting, memories of other individuals, and society as a whole are considered.In writing the history of genocide, "emotional" memory and "objective" research are interwoven and inseparable. It is as much the historian's task to decipher witness account, as it is to interpret traditional written sources. These sometimes antagonistic narratives of memory fashioned and mobilized within public and private arenas, together with the ensuing conflicts, paradoxes, and contradictions that they unleash, are all part of efforts to come to terms with what happened. Mining memory is the only way in which we can hope to arrive at a truer, and less biased historical account of events.Memory is at some level selective. Most believers in political movements turned out to be the opposite of what they promised. When given a proper forum, stories that are in opposition to dominant memories, or in conflict with our own memories, can effectively battle collective forgetting. This volume offers the reader a vision of the subjective side of history without falsifying the objective reality of human survival.

Based on extensive original research, including studies of autobiographies and biographies, reminiscences and memoirs, archived oral history data and interviews conducted by the authors, this book provides a rich picture of how women experienced repression in the former Soviet bloc. Although focusing on key years when repression was at its height – 1937 for the Soviet Union, 1941 for Lithuania and Poland, 1948 for Czechoslovakia and 1956 for Romania – the book ranges more widely. It demonstrates that although far fewer women than men were the direct victims of repression, women experienced severe repression in many ways, including exile, deportation and as family members of those arrested, imprisoned and executed.