Learning Through Collective Memory Work : Troubling Testimonio in Post-war Peru

This book traces the process of producing testimonio with the children of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), an insurgent group during Peru’s internal war (1980–2000). It examines how the group navigates post-war struggles over memory while dealing with the ‘children of terrorists’ stigma.

Drawing on a cycles of inquiry approach, the book theorizes three movements for memory work: a realist presentation of testimonial narratives, a ‘politics of memory’ engaging with the conditions of production and a ‘poetics of memory’ that troubles memory, voice and representation for qualitative inquiry in post-war contexts.

Challenging the notion of war-torn countries as pure devastation, the author invites readers to see them as sites of knowledge and creativity, with much to offer for education, peace studies and social justice research.

Goya Wilson Vásquez is a researcher affiliated to the University of Bristol. She works on memory struggles and creative/radical methodologies from Latin America by examining the dilemmas of writing violence, the intersections between research and activism, and the uses of creativity/imagination in memory work.