‘It is because we could not write that it came to you’: women's history in testimonial narratives of resistance

Abstract

ABSTRACT For feminist historiography, polyphonic women's testimonials of resistance struggles present several critical questions, most importantly about the mediating role of the feminist intellectuals who conduct the interviews, translate, edit, write, and analyse the testimonies. The extended editorial commentaries in a collection of testimonies by women who participated in an armed peasant revolt in India from 1945 to 1951 traces and critiques the assumptions and disciplinary agendas the intellectuals bring to their women's history project. We Were Making History: Women and the Telangana Uprising (1989) throws light not only on the uneven relations of power, agency, and communication that undergird testimonial production, but also the ideologies of gender and community that stand guard over the self-representation of the testimonial narrators.