Understated Legacies: Uses of Oral History and Tibetan Studies

Abstract

This paper aims to stimulate discussion about the complexity of oral history as a practice by recalling its origins and early associations, such as criminal confessions, war-reporting, the novel, exotic art and other early forms of first-person narratives, and by tracing some of their recurrent echoes in contemporary work. It looks at some of the uses to which oral history or related practices have been put in the field of Tibetan studies, ranging from rigorously academic studies through nostalgic political testimonies to wholly invented pseudo-histories. It discusses the importance of silent oral histories, the ones that cannot be recorded, as well as of failed ones, which are recorded but rejected by certain types of researchers because they do not meet their desires for a certain kind of narrative. Commoditisation of the archive is described, not just in the obvious cases where large amounts of money are exchanged, but also an instance in Tibetan studies in which an important archive was stolen, apparently just for the prestige of secretly possessing it. These forms of prototypical oral history and its near relatives still hover on the sidelines of the practice, despite the efforts of scholars to insulate academic practice from them. The widespread circulation of fabricated narratives produced within the contemporary Tibetan exile economy to gain access to western countries underlines the pervasive and under-acknowledged role of the state throughout all these practices, banning, allowing, celebrating, regulating and exploiting all forms of oral history.

Knowing, experiencing, and reporting: Social memory and participant roles in a Tibetan woman's oral history

“…In producing Cho Lhamo's oral history, the interactants mutually oriented to frames that cut across the boundaries of genres espoused by different speech communities. Barnett (2010) identifies American-produced Tibetan oral histories as a genre of written and/or visual media primarily intended for consumption by Western, English-speaking audiences (especially those with the real or imagined capability to intervene in Tibet's fight for independence or the safe-guarding of refugees living abroad). A tradition with origins in the institutionally-supported documentation of the lives of marginalized peoples within America and Europe, American practices of oral history search 'for a narrative that explains itself more or less completely…for an almost literary text, a thing that stands alone and does not require rewriting by an editor or knowledge on the part of the reader' (2010: 79).…”

Feudal villains or just rulers? The contestation of historical narratives in eastern Xinjiang

“…More recently, the place of oral history in contemporary China and its relationship to the state has also become the object of enquiry (Barnett 2010, Bulag 2010, Diemberger 2010. These recent studies demonstrate the intricate entanglement of oral history with larger historical projects and agendas, whether those of the state or those of its critics.…”

The Sociopolitical Lives of Dead Bodies: Tibetan Self-Immolation Protest as Mass Media

“…A total of twenty-two were reported killed in the 2008 Lhasa unrest, eighteen of whom were Han Chinese, many trapped in burning buildings (International Campaign for Tibet 2008; Barnett 2009;Smith 2010;Human Rights Watch 2010). The vast majority of Tibetan protests that year, however, were peaceful.…”