It feels like it has been a while since I have written a blog. And over the past couple of weeks we have covered a lot in regard to memory. We have mostly switched our medium of learning from academic articles to narratives which has provided are class with a very nice and well deserved break from scholarly language, in my opinion. We were introduced to a graphic narrative called Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco, which centers around an American journalist who goes to the former Yugoslavia during the civil war, attempting to find the “real truth” of the civil war. In this narrative he takes the testimonials of survivors living in the United Nations safe are of Gorazde and places himself in their story as they guide him through the war.

This idea of the real truth begins when Joe Sacco arrives in Yugoslavia and encounters a man at the bar who brags about the war in which he fought and along with this declares that he has found the “real truth.” At first I glazed over this while reading but as we discussed the true meaning and essence of the concept in class I really started to think if there was such a thing as “real truth.” Sacco recorded all of these testimonials and put himself inside the stories as a third party who was there mostly as a witness to the events. Throughout all the different stories he is seen as a mediator of truth who travels from individual story to individual story trying to find this real truth. What I have learned and what I think he is getting at is that truth is not merely the empirical facts or objective memory. Memory and by extension truth is not complete with out the feeling and emotion attached, which some people call bias but I call perception. I think about the story of the man whose former basketball teammate became a sniper and shot at his daughter once the war broke out. That memory is truthful but only to the man and father of the daughter; although the sniper shot a little girl, he has a totally different viewpoint and memory of the event.

All in all I am beginning to think very highly of Joe Sacco for the fact that he tried to act as a mediator of truth in the testimonies that he recorded. He had a very diverse account of the war, thanks to the many journeys he took us on, even though he couldn’t find any real truth. I’m beginning to think there is no real truth or the real truth only applies to the individual in which it was created. Which one is true I am not sur