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Paper short abstract:

Everyday life in totalitarian Romania brought about experiences of uncertainty at every level. I seek to explore some methodological issues regarding life story interview as way of accessing memories that enhance the symbolic value of a place representing freedom for a group of intellectuals.

Paper long abstract:

Everyday life in totalitarian Romania brought about experiences of uncertainty at every level in society. Life story interviews seem to be a very useful tool for bringing these experiences in the anthropological discussions.

The interviews analyzed here focus on memories of intellectuals regarding a particular place in a town from Romania that was invested with symbolical value during the communist period. A cafeteria in the center of the town became a meeting place for intellectuals and came to symbolize freedom in a society of total surveillance - its unofficial name, Arizona, stands up for this. Those interviewed are those who managed to keep the place alive two decades after the fall of communism, reinvesting it with value each time they came back, and making a ritual out of it.

As with any life story interviews, several methodological discussions are required considering the interviewer - interviewee relation, as well as the ethical way of gathering and processing the information and the level of involvement the interviewee has in these processes.

It is important that the researcher manages to convince the interviewee to trust him/her and to share his/hers experiences, especially if they are traumatic ones. When the researcher is younger than the interviewee he/she will have to prove him/her self worthy and able to understand the experiences of a different regime.

One can try approaching the interviewee as a collaborator and involving him/her in the gathering and processing of the information in order to create the life story narrative that represents his/her experiences.