Voices For The Voiceless Rhetorical Analysis

Georg Gugelberger and Michael Kearney’s article, “Voices for the Voiceless: Testimonial Literature in Latin America,” first discusses the development of testimonial literature as it relates to contrasting the misrepresentations of marginalized groups of people in canonical literature. The article then explains the current importance of testimonial literature in “transforming objects into subjects” (8), moving away from normative Western discourses that inherently maintain power in the Western white man. Gugelberger and Kearney also write about the content of testimonial literature, emphasizing the central common theme of “the violation of human rights of members of the community by agents of the state” (11), as well as countering the dominance of Western ideals and literature, giving power to those who have been historically and systemically powerless. Overall, the article defines testimonial literature as resistance literature (11), differentiating it from conventional literature – a reinforcement of

Moreover, while reading and theorizing from testimonial narratives, as Gugelberger and Kearney discuss that “to doubt referentiality in testimonials would be an irresponsible luxury, given the urgency of the call to action” (11). Similarly, the authors of this genre look to the future, effectively inspiring change in empathetic readers. There are, nonetheless, challenges when using testimonial literature in an academic setting. For instance, questioning the concept of literature thus leads to debates within academic settings relating to the literary canon and to traditional Western scholastics. Regardless of the possible benefits and challenges of testimonial literature, it is powerful in its ability to disrupt the mainstream white Western literary