books review: teoría y metodología práctica de las fuentes orales

8/12/2019 Books review: Teora y metodologa prctica de las fuentes orales.

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The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oral History Association.All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

Book Reviews

ENTREVERSE. TEORA Y METADOLOGA PRCTICA DE LAS FUENTES O

[A GLIMPSE OF OURSELVES: ORAL SOURCES THEORY AND METHODOLOPRACTICES.] Edited by Miren Llona Gonzlez. Bilbao: Universidad del Pas Vasc[University o the Basque Country], 2012. 244 pp. Sofbound, 16.73 .

As the use o oral sources grows in stature as a legitimate oundation or histori-cal, anthropological, and social research, editor Miren Llona addresses in thisbook a still prevalent and troubling lack o rigor and method, not only in theconducting o the interviews but also in the use and analysis o remembranceand memory. A Spanish-language oral history work published in 2012, this book

ocuses on theory and methodological practices in oral history and is a promis-ing re erence or current and uture practitioners in the Spanish-speaking worldo oral history.

In a critical and sel -reecting ashion, the pre ace provides a glimpse othe challenges con ronting oral historians. It addresses a major reticence amongcontemporary historians and social scientists due to the desolate panorama othe teaching o the use o oral sources. While the book mostly explores experi-ences in the Iberian peninsula, the concerns addressed and solutions proposedshall be well appreciated elsewhere. Enriched by a care ully balanced selectiono multidisciplinary contributions, this book openly con ronts a common pointo contention against the use o oral sourcesnamely, the act that they ofenrely on emotions and subjectivity as a ramework, which seems to compromiseseriously the possibility o an objective, valid, and reliable study o the past.According to Llona, using oral sources is about con ronting what Jacques Derridahas labeledhomohegemony that is, the hegemony o the homogeneous.

While the postmodern critique has debunked traditional historiographys

overbearing pretension o its objectivity, the acknowledgment o oral history asa use ul and complementary discipline depends on developing with rigor andclarity the theory and methodological practice that are required to treat memoryas a valid object o studyand source at the same timeo the recent past.The book challenges the notion o memory simply as a repository o experi-ences. Rather, memory is a dynamic system constantly apprehending and rein-terpreting in ormation, modi ying it and producing new interpretations (21).To understand the nature o memory and develop a rigorous approach to oral

sources, Llona proposes to pay particular attention to the role memory plays in

The Oral History Review 2013, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 378479

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the construction o the subject: Understood as a contingent reality, subjectivityis subdued to the time actor, and as such assumed as a act to be made parto history (un hecho historizable ), and a product o memory (23). The inter-subjective nature o memory leads to the discussion o the concept o collectivememory as an important heuristic device and a eld o inquiry where new narra-tives are capable o addressing the contradictions and distance between domi-nant ideals and individual aspirations in what Raymond Williams (with MichaelOrrom, A Preface to Film [London: Film Drama, 1954], and in later works) andmore recently Michael Pickering (History, Experience and Cultural Studies [NewYork: St. Martins, 1997]) have dubbed the structure o eeling. Llona doesnot stop at giving consideration to the understanding o memory rom a theo-retical perspective but soon leads the reader to understand what this means asa reective and intersubjective event in which the source is the very outcomeo the interaction. This is by ar the most power ul aspect o Llonas contribu-tion; she offers the reader deep understanding coupled with the practicality ointerviewing in oral history.

The introduction is ollowed by six chapters with dissimilar intention anddepth but that, as a whole, provide a satis actory selection o themes and ocito illustrate the main orientation that Llona provides to this book. She clearlydesigns three o the pieces as contributions to the main pedagogical nature

o this text: Rosa Garca-Orelln explores the bibliographic intention o oral-ity; Jordi Roca-Girona and Lidia Martnez-Flores explore the determinant ele-ments in the conguration o the narrative structure o li e stories; and PilarDaz Snchez explores the relationship between oral sources and biographicalnarratives. Mercedes Vilanova and Pilar Domnguez-Prats add two importantpieces related to longstanding research work in Europe and America, respec-tively. And the selection o materials also includes an interesting piece romCarlos Sandoval-Garca questioning prevalent images constructed on andaround immigrants and immigration.

Garca-Orelln in her article and Roca-Girona and Martnez-Flores in theirarticle contribute to this book rom the methodological perspective o anthro-pologists. Garca-Orelln explores in depth the importance o the intersubjec-tive character o the oral source that is being created as a result o the interviewprocess, while Roca-Girona and Martnez-Flores dig deeper into the very narra-tive structure o the li e histories. Vilanova explores the experiences o SpanishRepublicans deported to Mauthasen to endure the unspeakable experience oNazi concentration camps. Pilar Domnguez-Prats goes back to a theme thathas been at the center o her research interests or many yearsthat is, thenarratives o the Spanish Republican exiles in Mexico. Her stance and ocus onthe experiences o women go hand-in-hand with the chapter rom Pilar Daz-Snchez on oral sources and the construction o biographical narratives. Thebook closes with an interesting piece rom Sandoval-Garca whose work critically

Book Reviews 379


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challenges prevailing imaginaries o immigration, as he re ers to prevalentviews on immigrants, and explores the potential among immigrant communitiesto create alternative discourses as tools or the positive trans ormation o publicpolicy (228).

The reader might nd as a weakness o this book a level o disconnec-tion between the more theoretical and methodological aim o the book andthe topical ocus and development o some o the chapters. I believe this isindicative o the moment the oral history movement is living today in theSpanish-speaking world at large, struggling with the task o building a strong

oundation or oral history as a disciplinary eld in its own right, while alsocreating a corpus o works as the basis o the discipline, and all this in themidst o tur battles stirred by the arrogant insularity o impermeable localand regional groups.

Juan Jos Gutirrez lvarezCalifornia State University, Monterey Bay

doi:10.1093/ohr/oht063

THREADS AND TRACES: TRUE FALSE FICTIVE. By Carlo Ginzburg. Trans. AnTedeschi and John Tedeschi. Berkeley: University o Cali ornia Press, 2012. 328 pp.Hardbound, $45.00.

Carlo Ginzburg is a noted historian o the early modern period who has pub-lished on a wide variety o topics related to shamanism, early modern olkbelie s, and historical methodology. He is best known, however, orThe Cheeseand the Worms (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980; orig.Torino, Italy: G. Einaudi, 1976), a study o the religious belie s o a sixteenth-century miller by the name o Menocchio, who was eventually tried by theInquisition and condemned and executed as a heretic. The book was remarkableboth or the way it evoked a network o popular debate that existed outside o ,and in opposition to, official church teachings and or its nuanced and creativeapproach to its source materials. Ginzburg relied not on documents producedby Menocchio himsel which simply did not existbut on the transcripts pro-duced by his interrogators. He thus read the documents against the intentionso those who had created them, stubbornly probing them or evidence o thevery belie s the inquisitors were working to suppress.

The Cheese and the Worms quickly became a classic example o the approachknown as microhistory. In contrast to historical approaches that assumed thatperiods or which little written documentation existed could be studied only atthe macro level o large demographic shifs, microhistory ocused on individual

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books review: teoría y metodología práctica de las fuentes orales

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