Abstract
Christos Tsarouchidis
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
The “life stories” and “versions of truth” as reliable evidence:
the case of homeless people in modern Greece
When study subjects speak, we have to listen to what they say, to seek what they want to say, try to understand. The “versions of truth” derive from the intersection of narratives with ethnographic observation. However, in borderline cases, life stories are becoming crucial due to the silence which is imposed de facto on marginal people, who “voluntarily” withdraw in the shadow. This situation neither favors the relationship between the researcher and his subjects, nor the development of dialogue in the ethnographic practice. The example of homelessness, a borderline case in the present, a “trauma” in progress, is a particularly special case, where the “life stories” reveal by hiding, prove through inaccuracies and, turning the homeless from “invisible people” to “visible narrators”, leave them to write their own history by unveiling it.
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