Oral History Throughout the World:
Present and Future Prospects.
Dora Schwarzstein University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
In recent years, we have seen an extraordinary burgeoning and enthusiasm for recovering the past, in terms of both history and traditions. This veritable mania for preservation seems to affect every sector of society. Pierre Nora offered an explanation for this “obsession with memory” by “rehashing the present,” that is, the acceleration of historical processes in recent years. This phenomenon is evidenced with particular intensity in the interest in personal accounts and the growth of oral history.
This general interest in recovering the past has broadened the practice of oral history, to the point of transforming it into a tool that is not limited to historical research, but is itself becoming a more general practice of creating a historical heritage. The increasingly abundant collection of oral accounts in the most diverse fields raises serious problems of retention and access. In order to understand properly the challenges this presents for today’s archivists, it is appropriate to analyse a host of issues related to the recent development of oral history in various social and national contexts. That is the aim of the present study.
Oral accounts should be classified according to their different contexts of production, as well as the subjects touched on and their particular production techniques. We are thus able to distinguish between accounts produced in the following contexts:
- university research,
- records creation,
- political, social and ethnic commitment,
- civic action,
- municipal and neighbourhood practices,
- school experiences,
- institutional memory,
- public presentation of history (museums, radio, production of CD-ROMs, television, and theatrical performances).
The dawning of oral history is such that it challenges the possibility of a single definition of its practice. The production of oral accounts for different ends and in different contexts prompts debate surrounding the very nature of the sources produced.
The international phenomenon that is oral history is born of the tension between two major trends: one, an oral history of the leading figures of politics; and the other, the concern to salvage the voice of those at the margins of history. In recent years, a predominance for the latter trend has asserted itself, making possible significant advances in the analysis of aspects of the historical experience that might have been difficult to study based on other types of written or graphic documentation. Through the various national experiences, today we are latching onto such subjects as migratory phenomena, the workworld, gender-related issues, the construction of ethnic identities and the different forces in society.
The gathering of oral accounts has at the same time provoked wide debate about whether these sources are where the voice of popular and subordinate communities makes itself heard. We have thus gone from a problematic and empirical notion of the interview to the methodological discussion of its presuppositions. The latter favours three aspects. Firstly, there is debate about the role the interviewer plays in the production of the interview, rendering it an element inseparable from the oral source. Secondly, issues related to the reliability of memory and the presence of subjectivity in witnesses’ accounts are tackled. Finally, in academic circles, the relationship between history and memory has raised new questions and new challenges for the interpretation of oral sources.
The rapid development of new technologies has transformed and disseminated the mechanisms for the production of oral accounts and the way such accounts are presented in various forms of “public history.” Thus, new ethical and legal problems arise, relating to intellectual property, privacy and the limits to be imposed on the consultation of sources of considerable historical value.
The diversity of the sectors of the production and deposit of oral accounts, their disparate nature and their varying historical value, the range of their technical media (tapes, cassettes, digitization, video, etc.), and the varying reliability of their cataloguing and indexing tools, are all factors that must be taken into account by archivists concerned for their protection, their preservation and their present and future access.
Dora SCHWARZSTEIN
M.A., University of London; Ph.D. University of Buenos Aires; Professor of Argentine Contemporary History, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires; Director, Oral History Program, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Buenos Aires; Director, “Oral History of State Terrorism Project,” Memoria Abierta (Alliance of eight Human Rights organizations), since 2001; Review Editor, 'Routledge Studies in Memory and Narrative. New International Debates', London, since 1996; Member of the Steering Committee, SEPHIS (South-South Exchange Programme for Research on the History of Development), Amsterdam, 2001-2005;
Consultant to various Oral History Projects for Archives, Museums, and Schools; Visiting Scholar, Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, 1995, and 1999-2000; Member of the founding Council, International Oral History Association, 1996-2000; “René H. Thalmann’ Fellow of the University of Buenos Aires at the Centre de Etudes des Mouvements Sociaux, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1996-1997; Senior Staff, “Collective Memories of Repression: Comparative Perspectives on Democratization Processes in Latin America’s Southern Cone” Project, Social Science Research Council (USA), 1999-2000.
Selected recent publications:
- "The experience of exile: the process of identity construction among the Spanish Republicans in Argentina" in Communicating experience. IX International Oral History Conference 1. Migration and Ethnic Identity. Goteborg, 1996. 90-98;
- "Oral History in Latin America" in David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum (eds.), Oral History. An Interdisciplinary Anthology, Second Edition. Altamira Press. 1996. 416-424;
- “Los otros podrán olvidarlo, nosotros no’. Exilio y memoria del franquismo” in José Manuel Trujillano Sánchez and José María Gago González (eds.), Jornadas “Historia y Fuentes Orales”. Historia y Memoria del Franquismo. 1936-1978. Avila, 1997. 39-51;
- "Actores sociales y política inmigratoria en la Argentina. La llegada de los Republicanos Españoles", Exils et migrations ibériques au XXe siècle, 5, CERIC (Centre d'études et de recherches inter-eropéennes contemporaines), Université Paris 7, Paris, 1998, 249-271;
- “New trends in Argentine Oral History”, Words and Silences. Bulletin of the International Oral History Association, 3, Brighton, 1998, 21-23;
- “The Perception of Dictatorship. Spanish Republican Exiles between Franco and Perón” in Oral History: Challenges for the 21st Century. Xth International Oral History Conference. Proceedings, vol. 3, Rio de Janeiro, 1998, 1768-1779;
- “Entre la tierra perdida y la tierra prestada: Refugiados judíos y republicanos españoles en la Argentina” in Fernando J. Devoto and Marta Madero (eds.), Historia de la vida privada en Argentina, tomo 3. De 1930 a la actualidad, Buenos Aires, Taurus, 1999, 111-139;
- “A percepçao da dictadura: exilados da República espanhola entre Franco e Perón“, Revista de la Associaçao Brasileira de História Oral, 2, Rio de Janeiro, 1999, 23-39; (with Mirta Zaida Lobato), “El pasado debe pensarse en términos éticos. Una conversación con Alessandro Portelli”, Entrepasados, IX, 17, 1999, 127-137;
- “El auge del pasado: la Historia Pública y la Historia Oral frente a las demandas sociales.”, Estudos Leopoldenses. Série História. Vol. 4, año 1, Universidade Do Vale Do Rio Dos Sinos, Sao Leopoldo, Brazil, 2000, 19-28;
- “Oral History in a Museum of Terror. Reflections on the representation of the past in contemporary Argentina” in Crossroads of History: Experience, Memory, Orality. XIth International Oral History Conference. Proceedings, vol 2, Istanbul, 2000, 624-627;
- Entre Franco y Peron: Memoria e identidad de los Exilados Republicanos Españoles en la Argentina. Barcelona, Crítica, 2001; Introducción al uso de la Historia Oral en la Escuela. Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001.