Reading and Writing the Stasi File
On the Uses and Abuses of The File as (auto)biography
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9853149 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alison Lewis (0000-0001-6544-1227) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 377-397 |
| Publication date | 2003-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | German Life and Letters (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-8777 • E-ISSN: 1468-0483 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1468-0483.00263 |
| OpenAlex | W2016647255 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
The opening of the Stasi files in 1992, made possible by the Stasi Documents Legislation, was an important symbolic act of reconciliation between victims and perpetrators. For victims, reading their file provided a means of re‐appropriating stolen aspects of their lives and rewriting their life histories. This article argues that the Stasi file itself can be viewed as a form of hostile biography, authored by an oppressive state apparatus, that constituted in GDR times an all‐powerful written ‘technology of power’. The analogy of secret police files to literary genres enables us to pose a number of questions about the current uses to which the files are being put by victims and perpetrators. Are victims and perpetrators making similar use of their Stasi file in the writing of their autobiographies? What happens when the secret police file is removed from its original bureaucratic context and ‘regime of truth’ and starts to circulate as literary artefact in new contexts, for instance, as part of victims’ and perpetrators’ autobiographies? How is the value of the Stasi file now being judged? Is the file being used principally in the services of truth and reconciliation, as originally intended in the legislation, or does it now circulate in ‘regimes of value’ that place a higher premium on accounts of perpetrators, as can be witnessed in the publication of the fictitious ‘autobiography’ of the notorious secret police informer, Sascha Anderson
Analogy · Biography · Bureaucracy · Context (archaeology · Database · File management · Legislation · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · Rewriting · Value (mathematics · Computer Science · European history and politics · German History and Society · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Philosophy
Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, 2002-2003
Secret Police Files, Tangled Life Narratives
Comrades in Arms
Memoirs of Our Nervous Illness
Disclosing the Self
Secret Police Files from the Eastern Bloc
Artistic Forms of Shaping Ukrainian National Identity by Leon Getz
Unsettling German Memory Culture
Conflicting Evidence
| Unique citing works | 9 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,39 |
| Citation span | 2003 - 2025 (23) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |