Memory, Beyond the "Truth" of Actual Deeds

by Professor Laura Benadiba
Historian. Specialist in Oral History.
President of Asociación Otras Memorias: www.otrasmemorias.com.ar
Director of the Oral History Program at Escuela ORT http://campus.almagro.ort.edu.ar/cienciassociales/historiaoral


“A narrated memory is a product of a selective process, and is thus accompanied by silences and forgotten elements. When we remember, we seek to create an identity for ourselves that harmonizes the past and the present. At the same time, it demonstrates a desire to leave our mark on our world, discussing what we are for and what we are against. Memory thus represents an active arena where we continually negotiate our perceptions of being and living in the world. The factual evidence appears, therefore, in the context of our interpretation of life, and so the activity of remembering is itself historically significant. For this reason, the hard facts that are found in an interview, though important, are not as valuable as the historic process of remembering.” (1)
When I first read this excerpt several years ago, I had already discovered the oral history methodology and had ample experience conducting interviews and training different sectors of the community in the construction of oral sources. Today, as I write this article, I lead with this quote because I believe it is the starting point from which interviewers should analyze oral testimony.
The definition of memory as an “active arena” is what comes to my mind when I think about this subject. How could it not be an active arena when it is through a person’s memory that we can access his recollections and experiences, and, at the same time, bear witness to the different and often times ignored (prior to the interview) “perceptions of being and living in the world”?
If we think back to the time when the nation state of Argentina had consolidated (in the late 19th and early 20th century), we can see how the teaching of history was then considered as a means of homogenizing the idea that the dominant classes had about what the nation should be; in other words, the dominant classes planned to use the State to establish an official, true history to promote the economic-political model that they wanted. This required defining a common past for all, one that would even consider the great affluence of the immigrant communities that had their “own past, their own truths,” a fact that could pose an obstacle to the “truth” the dominant classes wished to impose. Some of the leaders of the time determined that the social and cultural process could not be left to develop spontaneously; from their positions in the national state, they began focusing their efforts on national celebrations, the national seal and symbols, the statues that were placed in school patios, and the teaching of the past. These were the tools that were used to reinforce the “established hegemonic truth” in the collective imagination..
“Truths” Established by Decree
At the age of 13—I remember it well—I decided, for various reasons, to study History. One of my motivations was a desire to search for the truth of what we were being taught (at that time, there was no talk of historical processes). Although I loved to read, what my teachers and professors transmitted was a fractured past, with heroes who made our nation possible by fighting battles, battles that to me were nothing more than the icon of crossed swords on a map that I couldn’t even understand. (2) What’s more, different teachers had different opinions on which “heroes” were good and which were bad. We were also never taught why; we were simply told this was the “truth” of history and we had to memorize it. Years later, things got even worse with the last military dictatorship, when there was only one truth and we were all required to accept it. During those years, History was a verdict!
Alfonsín assumed the presidency on December 10, 1983. The generations that experienced that moment remember the enthusiasm and fervor of the majority of Argentines. It was as if suddenly, we all wanted to break with the past, which was very much alive among us, but which we wanted to leave behind.
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In my case, as an adolescent, it was a past that I had not been completely aware of and that seemed to have happened all at once, suddenly, and reinterpreted by all the information that was broadcast over the media. (3) And it made sense that it would seem this way to me. Till then, the “true, official history” had been transmitted to me through books that covered events up to 1955, a history that praised achievements that it deemed only the military had made possible.
Later, in 1985, the Trial of the Juntas (the judicial proceedings against members of the de facto military government) gave people the sensation that things were changing and a new historical cycle was beginning in Argentina, one that would forever breakaway from the past. The trial came to represent a “certain kind of re-founding” of the State and society. But the sentences handed down by the courts did not succeed in settling the issue of human rights violations, nor did they break with a past that we were now told “should be forgotten,” a posture that was embodied by the successive impunity decrees that became known as the Law of Due Obedience and the Full Stop Law. Between 1986 and 1990, the possibility that the justice system would intervene, investigate, and sanction the perpetrators was severely restricted.
By that time, I had finished high school and I noticed abrupt changes in daily life. Students could go to school with their hair down, co-ed schools became more common, and the organization of student governments was permitted. My first year as a History professor included student marches in favor of human rights and the discovery of a horrible past that filled me with helplessness and fear. If reality was filled with tension and conflict, my memory, constructed through the experiences of others and through my own need to reinterpret my own experience, was not going to be an exception. (4) Later, during the administration of President Carlos Menem, the prevailing wisdom was that the country needed to look forward and forget its past in order to strengthen the transition to democracy. The act of forgetting was becoming national policy. Now not only were you better off not knowing what had happened, but also the past needed to be covered up. “Pardon by decree opened the prison gates but did not erase the crimes committed from memory; those who began searching for the truth during the years of State Terrorism continued their search.” (5)

It was at that moment, when I was teaching, that I began my search for the “truth,” challenging what I read in books and what I heard from those who had lived through the traumatic, historic process that was the last military dictatorship (1976-1983). And I discovered that the “truth” I was seeking was to be had elsewhere. The education I had received amounted to a succession of “truths established by decree.”
And it was at that moment that my memory became an active arena and I began to find explanations for my own recollections and experiences, which, until then, I had never been taught to question (for we were not supposed to do so).
In 1993, I discovered oral history (6) and realized that an adolescent conducting an interview (of a Polish immigrant who had arrived in Argentina in 1922) could glean historical knowledge from another’s life experiences and that his construction of the oral sources—which is to say the testimony—was achieved by prior research from other sources.
Oral sources are valid informative sources and provide revealing testimony on past events, but the most unique and precious thing about them is the speaker’s subjectivity. For this reason, oral testimony, because it is constructed from the present, constitutes a valuable source that represents how individuals and society have extracted meaning from past experiences. When the interviewee remembers, he does so from the present, and therefore his memories may not necessarily relate with what he experienced. As Portelli indicates: “Oral sources tell us not only what people did, but also what they wished they had done, what they believe they were doing, and what they now think they did.” (7) After all, when we research the History of Education, for example, and we resort to written sources such as the official books, is there not a possibility that what is written down there is not actually what happened but rather what people felt was necessary to document? In other words, historical truth can’t be found there, either.
Through oral testimony, we can analyze how the past is present in today’s daily practices and how it influences the way people think and act. “Oral history is not simply the voice of the past; it is a living record of the complete interaction between the past and the present with every individual and in society. If history is not only about exploring the past, but also about the impact of the past on the present, then oral history is one more key to opening and deciphering that relationship.” (8) This characteristic is important because it differs from the way we were (or at least I was) taught History. The past isn’t over, and when we conduct an interview, we see that the past persists in some of our habits; for example, in political practices, in what we eat, etc.

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(1) - Necoechea Gracia, Gerardo. “Después de vivir un siglo.” Ensayos de Historia Oral. Biblioteca INAH. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. México. 2005. Pp. 15 and 16.
(2) - Historical maps use the icon of two crossed swords to indicate where a battle took place
(3) - Benadiba, Laura: “Historia Oral, Relatos y memorias. Editorial Maipue, Buenos Aires,. 2007, reprinted 2011. Page 123
(4) - Benadiba, Laura: “Historia Oral, Relatos y memorias. Editorial Maipue, Buenos Aires, Página 2007, reprinted 2011. Page 126.
(5) - María Dolores Béjar and María Amieva. Educación y Memoria. La Justicia Silenciada. 1886 – 1990. (Dossier). Revista Puentes. 2000.

(6) - Oral history can be defined as an established practice of constructing new sources for historical research based on the systematic collection of oral testimony via theoretically explicit methods, problems, and starting points. Its analysis supposes the existence of a theoric body that is organized to implement a methodology and a set of specific techniques, among which the recorded or filmed interview is fundamental. In Benadiba/ Plotinsky: “Historia Oral. Construcción del archivo histórico escolar. Una herramienta para la enseñanza de las ciencias sociales.” Published by Novedades Educativas. Buenos Aires. México. 2001. Pg. 21.
(7) - Translator’s version of an excerpt from Alessandro Portelli’s “The Peculiarities of Oral History.” The author cites a Spanish-language translation titled “Lo que hace diferente a la Historia Oral” found in Dora Schzwarztein (comp) La Historia Oral. centro Editor de América Latina, 1991, pg. 47.
(8) - Translator’s version of commentary on a conference by Alistair Thomson. “Unreliable Memories? The Use and Abuse of Oral History.” Op. cit.; pp. 28, 29 and 30.

In an interview with the Italian historian Giovanni Levi, I asked: “What are the principal methodological precautions one must take when relying on oral testimony?” He responded: “At the same time that these sources are created—and it is very important to create them—they have profound problems that are not always kept in mind by those historians who use oral history. I think that the work of Alessandro Portelli, for instance, or of Maurizio and Gabriella Gribaudi, are important correctors of the dominant pathologies that afflict this methodology, because they explicitly focus their work on a discussion of the fallacy of memory and narrative. Ethically speaking, all historians should treat their ancestors with respect and humanity. It is the living who tell us of their experiences. That is the important lesson for us; it is a difference that we should understand and respect.” (9)
That is why historical truth is just the goal I strive for when I’m interpreting history through written and oral sources, and I attempt to reconcile the two. Luckily, my experience has shown me that that “truth” is constructed considering the diverse experiences of each person, the historical context in which they live, and, above all (and this applies to the historian as well), the present in which an interview is conducted or a written document interpreted, and, above all, the need that leads the historian to find a response in the face of a present problem.
For this reason, I wish to conclude this reflection on my experiences with the words of Alessandro Portelli: “[…] I am specifically fascinated by the pervasiveness of erroneous tales, myths, legends, and silences, such as those that have been woven around these events. Though oral history is careful to distinguish between events and narratives, history and memory, it does so in order to treat narratives and memory as historical facts. When an incorrect reconstruction of history becomes popular belief, we are not called on only to rectify the facts but also to interrogate ourselves on how and why this common sense took shape on its meanings and uses. This is where the specific reliability of oral sources arises: even when they do not tell the events as they occurred, the discrepancies and the errors are themselves events, clues for the work of desire and pain over time, for the painful search for meaning.” (10)
Therefore, to give the reader some food for thought and to paraphrase Ronald Fraser: Whom does historical truth belong to? To those who have lived it or to those who have written about it? Neither, of course, because it belongs to no one; rather, it is a continuous debate of indefinite duration”

(9) - Benadiba, Laura: Entrevista a Giovanni Levi . El reto de interpretar. La Historia Oral como “didáctica de la diferencia causada por el tiempo” http://www.12ntes.com/wp-content/uploads/entrevista-agiovanni-def.pdf
(10) - Portelli, Alessandro. The Order has been Carried Out: History, memory, and meaning of a Nazi massacre in Rome. Palgrave Macmillan. New York, 2006. Page 16.

 
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