The Unexpected in Oral History: Case Studies of Surprising Interviews

ISBN-13: 9783031177484 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023 / 274 str.

Ricardo Santhiago; Miriam Hermeto

Opis

How is an oral historian to react when the unexpected emerges, whether in field research or interview analysis? Answers tend to be scattered throughout the scholarly literature or confined to backstage conversations. This book brings the unexpected to the center of the scene and promotes a collective reflection about ways of dealing with uneasy encounters, surprises, and interviews that seem to have gone off the rails. The contributors come from a dozen countries, especially Brazil, where a classic piece about a “great liar” paved the way for this discussion. Rather than eccentric descriptions of unusual situations, these chapters evoke a dense web of reflections about dialogue, the production of oral sources, and the complexities of personal narratives. Theoretically informed but written in an engaging language, the book presents readers with fascinating case studies of the eruptions of the unexpected that occur in oral history research.

Spis treści

1. Foreword

2. Introduction

Part I Scratching the Silence: The Unexpected as an Outbreak

3. Introduction to Part I

4. My Grandfather’s Unknown History

5. Florence Richard, Childhood Sexual Violence, and the Unsettling of Local History

6. An Unexpected Gift: Oral History and the Documentation of Michfest

7. Commentary: The Elaboration of What Has Been Lived

Part II Between Lies and Half-Truths: The Unexpected as Falsification

8. Introduction to Part II

9. The Must-See Play that so Many People Staged: A Mosaic of (False) Memories

10. New Looks at Old Interviews: Racism and Privilege Around Black Folk Festivities

11. “Sincere Lies Interest Me”: The Power of Falsehood in Oral History

12. A Love Story That Never Happened

13. Commentary: Leftovers, Their Unexpected Forms, and the Act of Gleaning: Re-encounters with Interviews

Part III Deviating Routes: The Unexpected as a Mnemonic Device

14. Introduction to Part III

15. “Who rode in my car? Who do you think? Jesus!”: Subversion and Displacement in the Rereading of an Interview

16. Metabolizing the Leftovers of Memory

17. The Unexpected in an Archive: Interferences in a Soccer Memory Collection

18. Commentary: Revisiting Oral Sources: The Unexpected and the Anticipated in Oral History Praxis

Part IV The Answer Is Another Subject: The Unexpected as a Generative Device

19. Introduction to Part IV

20. Looking for Heroes, I Found Conventional Workers: A Labor Community in the Argentine Dictatorship

21. The Devious Paths of Memory: Reflections on the Experience of Interviews with Residents of the Caparaó Sierra

22. “Everything Has Been Said”: Surprising Encounters from Oral Histories in Ireland

23. Commentary: The Answer is Not Only Another Subject: It Is Also Another Set of Questions

Part V Nothing but Surprises: The Unexpected as a Given

24. Introduction to Part V

25. The Case of the Baffling Bandit

26. Tragedy, Trauma, and the Transformations of Local Memory

27. Uncomfortable Stories and Tensions in the Official Memory of an Institution

28. Commentary: Oral History as a culture of Research

Part VI Avenues and Openings: The Unexpected as a Method

29. Introduction to Part VI

30. Listening to Young Geeks in a Different City’s Cosplay Scene

31. “Ain’t You Afraid to Be around a Drifter Like Me?”: Beyond the Nothingness and the Fragments of the Life on the Streets

32. Struggling Through Speech in the Midst of Grief: A Non-interview and the Indigenous Xakriabá Cosmopolitics

33. Ethnic Classification and Trauma During the Rwandan Genocide

34. Commentary: How Do We Face the Unexpected? Constitutive Practices of Oral History
34. Afterword: Expecting the Unexpected

O autorze

Ricardo Santhiago is a professor at the Institute of Cities at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), Brazil. An oral and public historian with a focus on Brazilian culture, he is the author of articles and books on Brazilian popular music, oral history methodology, urban cultures, and memory studies. He is a National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) Productivity Fellow.

Miriam Hermeto is a professor at the School of Philosophy and Human Sciences at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. Her research is on the teaching of history and the memory of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Also a singer, she creates and performs historical-themed concerts that combine music and documentation.