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- Convenors:
-
Geoff Goodwin
(University of Leeds)
William Booth (UCL)
Hilary Francis (Northumbria University)
- Location:
- Malet 252
- Start time:
- 4 April, 2014 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel will explore the prospects and difficulties in creating oral histories of the radical present and past in Latin America. We also welcome papers that consider methodological issues related to the interview process.
Long Abstract:
This panel will explore the prospects and difficulties in creating oral histories of the radical present and past in Latin America. Papers are welcome on any of the methodological concerns which surround the practice and production of oral history, with an emphasis on the junctures between radicalism and oral history.
We will consider the uses of oral history, and the process by which those uses are agreed. How are the parameters of political engagement (radicalism, socialism, identity politics etc.) defined by the interviewer, and the interviewee? What happens when their definitions are different, and how is that difference negotiated? Are there limits to the applicability or ethical appropriateness of oral history? How do different settings (e.g. conflict/post-conflict) influence the construction of oral histories?
We also welcome papers that consider methodological issues related to the interview process.
The panel is organised by the Radical Americas Network. For more information on the network please see: www.radicalamericas.org
Accepted papers:
Session 1Sandra Rios (University of Aberdeen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the challenges for researching the construction of social memory after atrocity in interviews with victims of the massacre of Bojayá (Colombia). It argues that a focus on the present and the future in the interviews allows interviewees to explore the past in their own terms.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in Chocó (Colombia) that suffers a humanitarian crisis due to the conflict. The research was focused on the construction of social memory by grassroots communities after a massacre occurred in Bojayá in 2002. This attracted the attention of a large number of researchers, and governmental and non-governmental organisations who aimed to implement humanitarian help and reparations to victims. As a result, victims have suffered research fatigue. On one hand they feel that they have been over-researched and on the other hand they do not feel that they have been benefited by research.
This paper explains some of the strategies used during interviews avoiding creating feelings of discomfort or the re-enactment of painful emotions in the participants. For instance, questions that were directly referring to the massacre were avoided. Instead, the questions addressed victims' present and expectations for the future. This perspective allowed victims to explain their experiences in their own words, emphasising risks, suffering, and decision making in their own terms. In their accounts they took from the past what was meaningful to their present. In this way the painful accounts were not limited to the experience of the massacre but they included experiences of displacement, discrimination, sexual harassment, and being victims of corruption and impunity. This approach led to a broad comprehension of the impacts of violence and reparation in the everyday life of people.
Hilary Francis (Northumbria University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper, based on thirteen months of interviews in northern Nicaragua, explores the ethical and epistemological difficulties of representing interviewees’ diametrically opposed views of the Contra War, and asks what a ‘radical history’ approach to interviewing might look like.
Paper long abstract:
The development of oral history is closely allied with radicalism, and the impulse to rescue the voices of those excluded from traditional historical accounts. This tradition emphasizes the empowerment of the interviewee via an attempt at faithful representation of their lived experience and their interpretation of it. But how does this approach translate to work in areas of conflict and post-conflict, where the trauma of war inevitably generates multiple opposing accounts of the past?
This paper explores the ethical and epistemological dilemmas which arose in the course of thirteen months of fieldwork in northern Nicaragua. Ex-combatants and victims of the Contra War, on all sides of the conflict were interviewed. Many former Sandinistas now actively repudiate the actions of the current and former Sandinista government, whilst others situate their memories firmly within a narrative of continuing revolution. This paper asks how we negotiate and define what 'engaged' scholarship means in the context of this kind of controversy.
Sue A. S. Iamamoto (Queen Mary University of London)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will explore the role of collective memories and popular oral narratives about the past during social mobilizations in contemporary Bolivia. It focuses on two particular cases: the memory of Tupac Katari rebellion in La Paz department and the image of the Cerro Rico in Potosí department.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will explore the role of collective memories and popular oral narratives about the past during social mobilizations in contemporary Bolivia. It focuses on two particular cases: 1) the memory of Tupac Katari rebellion in La Paz department during the "Gas War" (October 2003), and 2) the image of the Cerro Rico in Potosí during 19 days of civil strike (August 2010).
Most literature on collective memories emphasize their stabilizing nature, on how they help to maintain the status quo. However, the study of those social mobilizations show us that the narratives about the past are of crucial importance to define a collective identity of the social actors involved and to understand their mobilization as a struggle for historical justice.
In this regard, this paper will explore: 1) how those memories were kept or reproduced within the mobilized social groups, and 2) the role of those narratives in questioning the power relationships between social groups themselves and between them and the state.
This paper is a preliminary result of a one-year fieldwork, in which more than seventy social activists were interviewed in urban and rural areas of La Paz and Potosí department.
Zoi Vardanika (University of Reading)
Paper short abstract:
Do national identities have their own ‘oral histories’? Can these ‘oral histories’ of identity construction be radical? And how is this radical element of identity construction reflected upon foreign policy discourses? These are the question that this paper seeks to address.
Paper long abstract:
Do National Identities have their own 'Oral Histories'? Can these 'Oral Histories' of Identity construction be radical? And how is this radical element of identity construction reflected upon Foreign Policy discourses? These are the question that this paper seeks to address. By adopting a conceptual framework that considers identities as discursively constructed, this paper will focus on three key issues. First, it will analyse the oral construction of national identities in the Andean states. Then it will focus on the oral representation of patterns of amity and enmity, as represented in the regional official foreign policy discourses. More precisely, it will analyse how the identities of the state as the Self and the enemy as the Other are represented within the discourses of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and their representatives abroad. Finally, this paper will assess the impact that ideological radicalism and the rise of Pink Left had upon the discursive construction of the Andean identities. The paper builds upon my personal research with regard to the discursive construction of identities in the Andes, and evolves to raise the methodological concerns with regard to interviewing diplomats as State representatives. Thus, an important element of the paper is the contextualised reflection upon definitions of notions such as state, identity, security, justice, development etc.
Mariana Affonso Penna (Universidade Federal Fluminense)
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to conduct a reflection on the different forms of political engagement in a Brazilian social movement, Movimento das Comunidades Populares – based on Alessandro Portelli’s work in oral history.
Paper long abstract:
"There are men who struggle for a day, and they are good. There are others who struggle for a year, and they are better. There are some who struggle many years, and they are better still. But there are those who struggle all their lives, and these are the indispensable ones." (Bertolt Brecht)
In his poem, Brecht considers the longevity of personal political commitment as criteria to evaluate the relevance of an activist. The lifetime devotion to political work is usually an indicator of the degree of involvement of a militant. However, the way individuals are embedded in social struggles is also differentiated. There is room for many forms of engagement in the Movimento das Comunidades Populares (MCP), an existing Brazilian Social Movement that emerged in 1969. But there is a nomenclature used by the activists themselves that highlights what would be Brecht's "indispensable ones": "the most interested fellows". According to Alessandro Portelli, there is a necessity to achieve a "crossing of subjectivities" through Oral History so as to identify and characterize a social group. Oral sources produced for the purposes of this research revealed issues that contribute to understand the meaning of political activism in the lives of many participants of MCP. From the analysis of these interviews, it's possible to identify common elements shared by those among them who can be considered "the most interested fellows", in other words, those who take militancy as a central part of their lives.