Difference in Memory

Abstract

The study of popular memory is necessarily relational. It involves the exploration of two sets of relations: (1) that between dominant memory and oppositional forms across the public field, including academic productions; and (2) the relation between public discourse and a more privatized sense of the past generated within lived culture. 2 This paper is concerned with the second of these two constitutive relations in the study of popular memorythe often vexed but close linkages between public constructions and private reminiscences.The project began with what seemed to be a simple question: what might we learn about the final decades of colonial rule in Bengal, and especially about Acknowledgements: My biggest debt in writing this paper is, of course, to the women I interviewed for generously sharing their experiences with me. Professor Hossenur Rahman and the late Mrs. Gaur Ayub helped me with my first contacts with members of the Muslim middle class in Calcutta. I am deeply indebted to them. Many of my contacts in Bangladesh, in turn, came through the personal networks of the women I interviewed in Calcutta. I am grateful for the hospitality of Mrs.

Between Craft and Method: Meaning and Inter‐subjectivity in Oral History Analysis

“…As one recent commentary on the ways in which oral history has evolved as a method succinctly puts it,

The shifting in the terms of the debate [on objectivity and empirical validity] can be traced in the difference between a book such as Paul Thompson's The Voice of the Past , with its essentially defensive posture concerning issues such as objectivity, the failings of memory and representativity, and a text such as The Myths We Live By , published a decade later and edited by Thompson and Raphael Samuel with its explicit celebration of the unique status of the knowledge generated by oral sources (James, , 122).

Perhaps the two most important features of this particular shift within oral history is a heightened awareness of how inter‐subjectivity – especially in terms of the relationship between the oral historian and the interviewee – informs the kind of knowledge that oral history produces; and the growing influence of inter‐disciplinarity on the way in which oral historians frame their understanding of their own work, especially by borrowing from theoretical and methodological developments in a number of fields, most notably, critical/reflexive anthropology, biographical and literary criticism, qualitative sociology, cultural studies, linguistics, life review psychology, and a whole range of interdisciplinary work on the connections between memory, narrative, and identity (Thomson, ; James, ). Much of the work I have done with oral history, including the brief analysis in the final section of this paper, can be located within this third paradigm shift in the discourse and praxis of oral history as a method (Sarkar 2006; 2008). But first, a few words about the most salient features of oral history, as I see it.…”

“…Perhaps the two most important features of this particular shift within oral history is a heightened awareness of how intersubjectivity -especially in terms of the relationship between the oral historian and the interviewee 8 -informs the kind of knowledge that oral history produces; and the growing influence of interdisciplinarity on the way in which oral historians frame their understanding of their own work, especially by borrowing from theoretical and methodological developments in a number of fields, most notably, critical/reflexive anthropology, biographical and literary criticism, qualitative sociology, cultural studies, linguistics, life review psychology, and a whole range of interdisciplinary work on the connections between memory, narrative, and identity (Thomson, 2007;James, 2000). Much of the work I have done with oral history, including the brief analysis in the final section of this paper, can be located within this third paradigm shift in the discourse and praxis of oral history as a method (Sarkar 2006;2008). 9 But first, a few words about the most salient features of oral history, as I see it.…”

“…At the same time, it bears stressing that if oral history offers a way to grasp something of the "subjective in history" -what Daniel James describes as the "cultural, social, and the ideological universe of historical actors" (James, 2000, 124) -it does not do so uncomplicatedly. For one, oral narratives are typically marked by the tensions arising from the vexed relationship between personal recollections and public discourse or official history (Sarkar, 2006;2008;Popular Memory Group, 1998). It is tempting, of course, to think of private memories as ready-made sites of resistance to official history that simply need tapping into, or as repositories of alternate truths (Stoler and Strassler, 2000;Summerfield, 1998;Sarkar, 2008).…”

“…For one, oral narratives are typically marked by the tensions arising from the vexed relationship between personal recollections and public discourse or official history (Sarkar, 2006;2008;Popular Memory Group, 1998). It is tempting, of course, to think of private memories as ready-made sites of resistance to official history that simply need tapping into, or as repositories of alternate truths (Stoler and Strassler, 2000;Summerfield, 1998;Sarkar, 2008). However, as scholars have pointed out, private memories often reconsolidate the very categories which make up the stuff of public discourses -viz.…”

“…However, as scholars have pointed out, private memories often reconsolidate the very categories which make up the stuff of public discourses -viz. conventions of gender, class, community, caste, sexuality, and race regimes (James, 2000;Thomson, 2007;Sarkar, 2008). What is more, in the process of narrating, the speakers typically seem to reconstruct the past in ways that both legitimize it to the researchers and make sense of it to the narrators themselves (Summerfield, 1998).…”