Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense – 7

How oral history should be presented

Maryam Rajabi
Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2019-4-30

According to the website of Iranian Oral History, the third session of the meeting "Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense" was held in the Qasr-e Shirin Hall of the Islamic Revolution Museum and Holy Defense on Tuesday 19^th of February 2019. In previous parts of the series of reports of the meetings, you read the text of speeches by Gholamreza Azizi, the Head of the Research Center of the National Library and Archives of Islamic Republic of Iran and Faezeh Tavakoli, the Secretary of the Oral History Group Work of Iranian Association of History.

What imagination is the basis for historian's work?

In continuation of the third session of the meeting " Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense", Yaqub Panahi, a participant of the meeting and an author and activist in the area of oral history said, "We are mixing the area of literature with that of history. I don't want to say that they are far from each other but history has another nature. Its language is another language. Its language is fact; it's language is data. Its language is historic argument and proof, but there is an imagination in literature ultimately. There is exaggeration, genre and hero and in my view, these two area are separate from each other and we should not consider them as the same. To me, depending on the community of the audience that we have and depending on the two areas that Mrs. Dr. Tavakoli said, namely an individual and a subject, we have to define from the very beginning for what strata we are going to produce a book. We may want to produce a book for a university historian or even a history student which is completely different. For example, we who are now working in the Center for Sacred Defense Documents and Research, want to define the war from the language of a combatant; it is possible that memories of that battalion or company in which the combatant had been a member are reproduced and represented and literature is also involved. But for instance Mr. Rezaee has so far hold 180 oral history sessions with us the basis of which are the documents which have been registered by the center's narrators exactly at the time of the occurrence of the events and he narrates the war according to the same documents, and if it is not exaggeration, later, it will become the first source of the history of the war. Naturally, this may be a rigid narration of the sacred defense. Of course, Mr. Rezaee in some cases talks about the characteristics of the martyrs that they had great spirit and you see feeling and emotion in them and the narration is completely documented and does not sacrifice history, because he is at the level of the war commandership and his main and first source is war.

Mrs. Tavakoli took the example of Mr. Lajevardi which in my opinion is admirable, because as Leopold von Ranke has said, she wants to narrate the same event that has happened in the mind of the interviewee word by word; without missing an atom. If you say this to a historian, he or she admires it and says I am just looking for it. We have events, narrations and reports. All three are respected but the level of reliability for each of them is different. For people of history and those who want to work oral history, naturally, more documented, reliable and closer-to-event narrations are important. In my view, we with a critical and skeptical view should go for the narrations supported by the reference people. The combatants who want to narrate their memoirs and the works carried out Sooreh Mehr Publications are general works mixed with literature. At the same time, I should confirm that Dr. Zarinkoob says that imagination is the basis for historian's work, because the historian's mind should be so strong to bridge the past and be able to imagine himself or herself in that atmosphere. For instance, in Safavid era, he or she should know how to represent the Afghan’s attack. But this imagination is the one which is based on historical data completely, and never enters the area of exaggeration. There is never any prejudice and an ideological view in it. There is never any political, ideological, intellectual, religious and verbal prefiguration in it. To me, we have to define the areas a little more transparent that each friend has a specific definition of oral history and its function and purpose according to that area and their specific atmosphere.  At the same time, all areas are respectable and are the necessity of our today’s community and I confirm her viewpoint that we need heroes.”

Interpretations are different

Then, Faezeh Tavakoli said, “The approach of oral history is fully interdisciplinary. It means that it can borrow from literature, philosophy and the area of anthropological communications. We can use all of these areas for our research questions. In oral history, the oral narrations of the war commanders and the policy makers of the war and sacred defense should be brought precisely and word by word depending on the subject-oriented objects. It means that not only Mohsen Rezaee is interviewed but also other commanders who were active in staff departments are also interviewed. I believe that we can also involve even literary discussions for the attraction of some of these books.”

In continuation, Seyed Salman Saberi, a participant of the meeting said, “What Mrs. Tavakoli says now is in contradiction with what she said at first a little. What does oral history mean? Oral history has a definition. According to what has been brought here, it is the same “live history”. Oral history is the same that we carried out here (The Museum of Islamic Revolution and Sacred Defense) for eight years. The words of commanders have been recorded. Why have they recorded? Because they remain alive and are archived with no corruption. It means that oral history should be real history. We don’t want to write Shahnameh with oral history in which we grow mythopoeia. If we were supposed to make Shahnameh and grow mythopoeia, then why did we record them? We came and wrote about the Operation Karbala 5 like Chaldoran, we had nothing to do in what the commanders said. We wrote a war like Rostam’s war in Haft Khan. Mythopoeia belongs to literature. Oral history is the same that you said in the end; historiography is carried out according to a specific science. Oral history is not supposed to be attractive. Oral history should be real.”

In response, Gholamreza Azizi said, “I think the interpretations are different.  My interpretation of Mrs. Dr. Tavakoli is different with that of you. About the book “Voices from Chernobyl”, she said that sometimes it is felt that the oral history text which is going to be published should be in the form of dialogue and question and answer, no! The eyewitnesses who are still wounded, disabled and ill as a result of nuclear radiation are interviewed for the book but it has been set, processed and presented in three chapters and in monologue form, namely it has been interpreted as a dialogue, not that the text has been changed. So, that how I present my oral history interview has nothing to do with my oral history interview. I conduct an oral history interview in the form of question and answer, but in presentation, I remove my questions and answers for more impression. Thus, it tuned into a monologue text and like a narration and memory, but it is still oral history. She also talked about the book "The Atlas of Lasting Battles". The discussion is so important in the oral history of the sacred defense that in my view, we should take the book, go forward in a subject-oriented way from the very first operation and conduct oral history interviews. It means two fully different interpretations have been taken from her words in the first meeting.  

I said that we have three types of reading of history: formal reading, state reading and professional and scientific reading. I did not open my example very much but Mrs. Tavakoli did so and said that at a time when the Islamic Republic of Iran's Army has been considered as Daesh supporter in the minds of the European people, the Islamic Republic must propagate an Iranian who has been martyred by Daesh in order to show that Iran does not support Daesh, but she did not say that this is oral history. I mentioned these in order to say that there are two different interpretations now."

Faezeh Tavakoli also added, "I in the book "Oral History: Theoretical Discussions (Principles), Methodology", have brought up the issue of the typology of questions, and what kind of questions we should ask in order to be able to respond to our research questions in oral history. Oral history is an approach and method. Now, I say that there will be no problem if someone likes to turn a produced text to a novel and receive the Nobel prize of literature. I believe that it is possible to give such outputs out of these documents. Until now, our university professors said that an oral history text had to be just in the form of question and answer and if we take book and see it is not in such a form, we say that it is a memory. The issue has now been challenged."

  Live History: A Study of Forty Years Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense-1: Flourishing and the culmination of oral history in Iran

Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense – 2: Oral history is the same as history

Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense – 3: Why was oral history brought up?

Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense – 4: Next step in oral history

Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense – 5: An oral history interviewer should be professional

Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense – 6: Language and expression in oral history