Emma González, Silence and Youth Testimony

Abstract

This paper use life narrative methods to analyse two public speeches of youth activist Emma González as examples of how youth testimony gains traction at times of cultural crisis. Drawing on the work of Leigh Gilmore, we ask, how did González become an ‘adequate witness’ at a time when the testimony of women and children, particularly those from racial and sexual minority groups, are so often ‘tainted’ or discredited in the public sphere? What role did the (en)acting of silence play in González’s testimony? We argue that González entered into the public sphere at a moment when such testimony was sought and when child subjects have particular cachet. González was able to draw on a plethora of recognizable methods, testimonial genres and literary traditions to gain a voice in a cultural landscape that was conducive to her narration; despite this, the reception of her voice has not always been positive. We draw attention to the role of the youth subject within testimonial networks and to a cultural context wherein such subjects are asked to be both knowing and innocent in speaking from experience.

Keywords:

• youth activism
• testimony
• autobiography
• silence
• witnessing

Notes

1 See Paquette (2018); Stevens (2006). This is not unexpected, of course. Hugh Stevens, discussing Judith Butler’s writings, offers the following insight which seems also appropriate to González: ‘those who voice these [dissenting] positions are exposed to unbearable stigmatized modes of identification … traitor … treasonous’ (2006: 255).

2 Her race and sexuality have also, but within a paper of this length, as much as we might like to, we are not able to develop lengthy analysis of the ways that González’s race and sexuality have been variables in her public representations.

3 See Douglas and Poletti (2016: 30) on ‘spectacular youth’.

4 Here, Smith is discussing Zlata Filipovic who wrote about her experiences of the Bosnian war in the early 1990s in Zlata’s Diary but we see this argument as broadly relevant to children’s testimony.

5 Karina Hoshikawa (2018) explains, ‘but while fans might want to interpret Emma's haircut as a symbol of feminism and nonconformity, she has a much more practical reason for cutting her hair off. “People asked me, ‘Are you taking a feminist stand?”’ the Stoneman Douglas High student and activist explained in a recent interview from the Sun Sentinel. “No, I wasn’t. It’s Florida. Hair is just an extra sweater I’m forced to wear”’ (n.p.). But Helen Carr reminds us that feminist bodies can offer potent counter-narratives at such moments that disrupt conventional modes of testimony and storying. Carr writes: ‘non-linear narratives emerge from the destabilizing of traditional hierarchies of power, are these fractured forms also working to fissure the narratives of patriarchy and normative heterosexuality?’ (2011: 322).