ABSTRACT

Performing artists in Colombia began to work with both victims and offenders of abuses of human rights in order to produce collaborative performances informed by or even fully based on the real-life stories of those whose lives have been directly affected by the armed conflict. In John Borneman’s words, voicing in a post-conflict context is about ‘telling the truth,’ and it is about making the value of lived experience matter in the public sphere. Elizabeth Jelin argues that such voicing and listening is ‘social’ and coincides with Borneman, but rather than third-party listening, she lists ‘alterity’ as a key element of social, post-conflict listening. According to both Borneman and Jelin, in a post-conflict context there must be either third-party listeners, or there must be the sense of alterity in the encounter between the one who voices memories and the one who listens to them.