What Is Different In Oral History? Cover Image

CE FACE CA ISTORIA ORALĂ SĂ FIE DIFERITĂ
What Is Different In Oral History?

Author(s): Alessandro Portelli
Subject(s): History
Published by: Argonaut
Keywords: oral history, narration, orality, individual and collective memory

Summary/Abstract: The intellectual community of Italy received in a suspicious way oral history from the very beginning, almost rejecting it. There was a fear that once orality begins, writing (and rationality, they say) will loose territory. In fact, neither written sources nor oral ones do suspend the other. They have common and also different characteristics, proper for each of them. What is proper for oral history? This article tries to reveal some of these specific features: orality, narrativity, the impact of the event on individual or community, the fruitful aspects of witness’s subjectivity, the relationship between the interviewer and interviewee. Also the plurality of views and not them only make oral history surprisingly interesting.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: XII
  • Page Range: 229-244
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Romanian
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