A proposal for the analysis and contextualization of the oral history interview

• Autor(a) principal: Necoechea Gracia, Gerardo
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Clio (Recife. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/index.php/revistaclio/article/view/24515
• topic: Analysis of oral sources; Memory and history; Oral narratives; Análise da fonte oral; Memória e história; Narração oral

This essay highlights the importance of analyzing and contextualizing the stories told in the course of an oral history interview. An oral historian carries on a critical examination of oral sources, just as he would do with written sources, paying particular attention to the specificities of memory and oral communication, as well as to the peculiarities of the interview which produces the oral source. The author proposes that analysis should first focus on how the oral narrative handles time and space, how the narrator presents himself and the network of social relationships in which he moves, and how the telling of reminiscences tends to condense in anecdotes symbols and meanings that lend coherence and meaning to lived experience. The purpose of this first step is to understand the interview as a whole. A second step focuses on developing an adequate historical context for what is told while at the same time situating this historical conversation in the context of its time and conditions of production. We may thus understand the oral history interview as a cultural document of its time; this is the sort of work and understanding that differentiates oral history from other kinds of memory work.