Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History

Subaltern narratives: An intersectional analysis of knowledge production by men deprived of their liberty in Chile.

“…NP is a methodological project based on situated knowledges, but one that does not assume that these knowledges are either innocent or strategic. This methodology also springs from the need to resituate subaltern knowledges through diverse practices of social justice methodologies, for example, participatory action research (Fine & Torre, 2004;Ramírez-March & Montenegro, 2021) and feminist oral history (Gluck & Patai, 1991;Srigley et al, 2018).…”

“…In this sense, we also reference the numerous conflicts that have emerged concerning memory, imperialism, and racism in the academy, power differentials between "interviewer" and "interviewee," and the authority of the testimonial voice (Arias, 2001;Beverly, 2004;Geertz & Clifford, 1998). This occurs even in feminist research, which often portends to build more horizontal and "equal" relationships, for example, by narrative inquiry, ethnography, and oral history (Gluck & Patai, 1991;Savaş & Stewart, 2019;Srigley et al, 2018). This path seeks to decenter the academy in the solipsistic production of knowledge and, at the same time, implies not only critical reflexivity and epistemological vigilance of the researcher (Galaz & Rubilar, 2019) but also a search for dialogues, conversations, and connections with other popular knowledges.…”

“…Ranahit Guha has proposed the need to break with "statist," top-down approximations to history by using new archives and lifting up subaltern voices, particularly those of subaltern women (Guha, 2002). In parallel with methodological discussions in subaltern studies, during this same period, feminist historians and social scientists were also increasingly concerned with how to do feminist oral history, particularly with women feminist activists and subaltern women (Gluck & Patai, 1991, Passerini, 1992. Key to this discussion were voices, such as that of Judith Stacey (1991) regarding feminist ethnography, that cautioned us about the dangers of oversimplifying or underestimating the power differentials and inequalities inherent in social science research, even that done by feminists.…”

Oral Histories and Futures: Researching crises across the life‐course and the life‐course of crises

“…With an emphasis on hidden subjects, marginalised accounts and revising received knowledge (Davis, 2017, Gluck & Patai, 1991), Oral Histories are advocated as a method to explore unaired experiences, from the unique to the ubiquitous. As such, it is argued that Oral History ‘can challenge existing assumptions and traditional historical accounts’ of marginalised groups (Davis, 2017, p. 126).…”

“…Whilst claims about the commonalities between Oral Histories and feminist ethnographies were often based on a shared subject of focus, that is women (Scanlon, 1993), more critical perspectives have addressed this totalising supposition. Gluck and Patai's (1991, p. 2) interventional introduction, for instance, opens with an acknowledgement that within early feminist Oral History,…”