I den här artikeln undersöks vittneslitteratur från Gulagarkipelagen skriven av västerländska återvändare under åren 1946-1953. Hemlighetsmakeriet kring Gulagsystemet gjorde att författarna förväntade sig att bli misstrodda och ifrågasatta. Den misstro författarna själva föregriper aktualiserar frågan om vad det innebär att vittna i avsaknad av bevis, inför en omvärld som ibland är ovetande och ibland politiskt obekväm med den verklighet som omskrivs. Syftet med den här artikeln är att visa hur vittneslitteratur förutsätter en ömsesidig tillit. För att vittnesmålet ska kunna tas emot krävs det att läsaren litar till författaren. Omvänt krävs det att författaren litar till att läsaren har både viljan och förmågan att ta emot vittnesmålet för att berättandet ska vara möjligt.

How can Jan Patočka’s phenomenology of afterlife enable us to understand the historiographical process in general and the role of testimony in the historiographical process, in particular? Patočka presents a phenomenological analysis of co-existence and afterlife where others continue to be with us, as a part of our lifeworld and our constitution of ourselves, even after they are gone. We see ourselves through others and we continue to experience our lifeworld with them, a relation that is transformed but not disrupted after their death. In historiographical discussions, historical knowledge is often defined in opposition to memories, on account of its distance to our immediate, personal relation to our past. Such discussions were famously undertaken by thinkers such as Paul Ricoeur and Pierre Nora. The aim of this paper is to place the phenomenological analysis of death and of loss within discussions surrounding the relation between memory and historical knowledge. In particular, it examines how we constitute and re-constitute collective memory and historical knowledge through testimonies and archives. It argues that we can understand testimonies and archives as different modes of being with the dead, modes that continue to constitute both our individual field of experience, and our collective historical situation.

Several hundred Swedes emigrated to Soviet Karelia in the beginning of the 1930s. Many of them remained there when the Great Terror began, and they became targets of repression. As of now, there is no coherent public narrative in Sweden that acknowledge the Swedish survivors; most survivors never talked publicly about their experiences, let alone wrote about them, and the few who did, did so reluctantly. This article discusses four memoirs written by Swedish survivors of the Soviet repression and the silence that still surrounds these memoirs. The narratives themselves, as well as the reception of the narratives, bear witness to the difficulty of narrating experiences that have not yet been publicly acknowledged. Based on the Swedish witness accounts, this article aims to examine 1) the difficulty of testifying in the absence of a public narrative, and 2) the ability of witness literature to challenge and change established historical narratives.

This article discusses the role of Gulag literature in connection to testimony, literature and historical documentation. Drawing on the thoughts of Jacques Derrida and Hannah Arendt, the article examines the difficulty of witnesses being believed in the absence of evidence. In particular, the article focuses on the vulnerability of the Gulag authors, due to the ongoing Soviet repression at the time of their writing. It examines the interplay between the repression and the literature that exposed it. The article contends that the fictionalization of Gulag literature enabled the authors to go further in challenging Soviet repression. Focusing on the fictional accounts written by Varlam Shalamov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, it argues that the fictionalized Gulag literature makes the experience of the camp universe possible to imagine for those outside, allowing readers to believe in an experience that otherwise seems incredible.

Hva innebærer det å skrive virkelighetsbasert litteratur? Hvilke krav kan vi stille til den? Hva sier den om det livet den hevder å skildre? Diskusjonen om sannhetslitteratur handler om grensen mellom virkelighetsbasert fiksjon og selvbiografisk skriving. En filosof som mer enn noen annen har utforsket dette spørsmålet, er Simone de Beauvoir. Hun undersøker både fiksjonens grenser og den selvbiografiske skrivingens mulighet for å forvandle den gjennomlevde erfaringen. Hele Beauvoirs forfatterskap kan ses på som én sammenhengende streben etter å prøve å forstå hva det er å være menneske – gjennom fiksjon, memoarer, essay og filosofiske tekster, og gjennom å tilbakeføre filosofiens abstrakte teorier til vår konkrete erfaring med verden.