After reading Brecher’s article a few weeks ago, I was left with a lot of thinking about how the reality of an Oral History project can become distant to what someone has planned in its early conception. I took that as if the author was giving me personal advice on what I should give up if I was ever adventuring myself in this enterprise: maybe do not care so much about what people may think about the project, understand that only practice will improve interviews, and be open to change schemes. Mostly, what kept me wondering was how they imagined that doing a group interview could actually work. Later on, when I randomly chose an article from Hamilton and Shopes’ book on Oral History and Public Memories about memory workshops, I was confronted with a successful group experience headed by Riaño-Alcalá, a Colombian-Canadian anthropologist, in Colombia, 1996. I come back to it now, questioning the validity that it has as a proper OH project, after Abrams and her Oral History Theory (2016, 2nd ed.).
In a superficial analysis, the definition of memory workshop does not collide with OH’s one, since it “consists of a series of guided and facilitated activities in a group format. A question is posed to the entire group, seeking to activate participants’ memories of a specific event, place, or time in their lives. Each participant narrates his or her memory, and then the group reflects on what they have heard” (Riaño-Alcalá, p. 272). As Abrams points out, we should look to “oral history interview as a means of accessing not just information but also signification, interpretation and meaning” (p. 2), and that appears in the core of Riaño-Alcalá project interview on attempting to make sense of the past creating a collective memory from the shared experiences of internal displaced people in Colombia during the 1990s and 2000s (p. 277). On a deeper level, Riaño-Alcalá does not seem to be interested in accessing an information and analysing its significations, interpretations and meanings (Abrams, p. 1) – rather, she specifically used a format that would “allow individuals to recognize social suffering and that encourage collective mourning” (Riaño-Alcalá, p. 286). According to Abrams, this construction of a common ground and a healing process could only be a great surprise, not a value inherent to the project itself. If there was to be a concern with future psychological outcomes, it should be specially with the harm it could endanger by gathering 10 strange people in a room to bond over recent trauma of being forced to leave their homes.
Despite acknowledging that the consequences of the internal Colombian war were still being discussed in peace negotiations between the State and the paramilitary forces, Riaño-Alcalá did not worry about possible negative implications on civil people talking about something that was reverberating in the country’s politics. Abrams makes a necessary statement about our role: again, not only we cannot assure that an interview is going to be helpful (p. 190-191), but also we must keep in mind the safety and security of our interviewees (p. 192-193).My key question this week brings back the theme of sharing authority, a Frisch’ concept that is all about collaboration and redistribution of power between both the interview and the interviewee. Although extensively approached by Abrams (p. 167 onwards), there’s not, in her book, a proper discussion about that in the context of a group of more than three people. The Colombian-Canadian anthropologist points out how her “expertise in facilitation and popular education methods has been crucial in my experience, as these sessions require knowledge of group dynamics, conflict resolution skills, and a deep awareness of the researcher’s power to control the group” (Riaño-Alcalá, p. 274). This statement pretty much synthetises her work and my difficult to qualify it as being OH. Once one (in her case were two ‘facilitators’) have a large group to mediate, it seems to be very difficult not only to maintain the power equilibrium but for the interviewer to engage within the group and everything that this involves. Is it impossible, though?
Bibliography
Abrams, Lynn. Oral History Theory. New York: Routledge, 2016, 2nd. edition.
Brecher, Jeremy. How I Learned To Quit Worrying And Love Community History: A “Pet Outsider’s” Report On The Brass Workers History Project. Radical History Review, 1984.
Riaño-Alcalá, Pilar. Seeing the Past, Visions of the Future: Memory Workshops with Internally Displaced Persons in Colombia. In: Hamilton, Paula; Shopes, Linda. Oral History and Public Memories. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008.