Collaboratively balancing stories and identities in Belgian WWII interviews

Abstract

In this study, we scrutinize the collaborative balancing of stories and identities in a corpus of Belgian WWII interviews. Specifically, we zoom in on three dimensions—tellability, morality and credibility—to explore how interactants jointly construct testimonies that are in line with social norms—and are thus acceptable—within the WWII remembrance storytelling context. By relying on a narrative as social practice-approach, we confronted fine-grained analyses of identity work in the interviews with master narratives circulating in the wider remembrance context. Our analyses reveal unique norms regarding tellability (i.e. the tellability of typically untellable topics), morality (i.e. the condemnation of outgroup affiliations) and credibility (i.e. the importance of trustworthy narratives). We argue that these norms not only resulted from the storytelling world’s specific time-space configuration, but were also informed by the WWII storyworld, which may attest to the existence of a WWII remembrance community of imagination.