Authors

Sara Nesteruk¹;  ¹ Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Discussion

This paper explores global approaches to Holodomor using Lawrence L. Langer’s theories of the literary imagination as a starting point. The claim of art’s importance to bridge literal truth with imaginative reality is central to Langer’s arguments on the role of creative work following atrocity. In Langer’s work, this relates to the Holocaust. Exploring debates on disruption and the power of testimony I focus on witness evidence from Holodomor, letters from South African engineer, Jerry Berman. This collection spans Ukraine, South Africa, London and New York, providing objective and subjective accounts of the Great Famine in Ukraine, 1932–33. The results of the project are a digital archive. I am exploring the role of the artist, as Langer describes responsible for finding style and form to represent the atmosphere of the work.¹
This work relies on literature exploring the importance of oral traditions and testimony. In particular, Rebecca Comay’s work on commemoration and memorialisation in art. Like Langer, Comay explores possibilities after Adorno’s statements on the impossibility of art after Auschwitz.² In oral testimony, Paul Thompson’s seminal work focuses on the value of human perception, the subjective and the practicalities of oral testimony to “unpick the layers of memory” in relation to historical analysis.³ Precedents for the project include The Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project. An online archive using digital genetic editing.⁴ The focus of the project is not to memorialise Holodomor but to use technology to undo rather than threaten the silences of the 20th century.

The paper focuses on personal testimony and its role in decolonisation practice. I present work in progress including analysis of the original data, the collection as a whole and XML coding to future-proof the archive. I include early prototypes of the final work – due to launch in summer 2026.



References:
 
1. Langer, L. L. (1975) The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 1–30.
2. Comay, R. (2017) ‘Material Remains: Doris Salcedo’, The Oxford Literary Review, 39(1), pp. 42–64. doi.org/10.3366/olr.2017.0209.
3. Thompson, P. (2000) Voice of the Past: Oral History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [26 October 2024]. p. 173.
4. Beckett, S. (2016) The Beckett Digital Manuscript Project. Edited by Dirk Van Hulle, Mark Nixon and Vincent Neyt. Brussels: University Press Antwerp (ASP/UPA), [26 October 2024].