Oral history is the same as history
Maryam Rajabi
Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan
2019-03-05
According to the website of Iranian Oral History, the first session of the meeting "Live History: A Review of the Forty Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense" was held with the presence of Gholamreza Azizi and Morteza Rasoolipour, on the morning of Tuesday, 29th of January 2019, in the Qasr-e Shirin Hall of the Islamic Revolution Museum and Holy Defense. In the first part of this report, you read the text of the remarks by Gholamreza Azizi, the Head of the Research Center of the National Library and Archives of Islamic Republic of Iran about the meeting’s subject.
In continuation, Morteza Rasoolipour, a history author and researcher said, I wrote an article for an oral history conference a few years ago. The conference was organized by the Martyr Foundation. There, I brought up my viewpoint regarding the compilation and collection of the materials which are about the oral history of the war veterans.
Any or our recognition toward the events that happened particularly during the eight-year war, needs to be reviewed. Two important events happened in Iran: one is the Islamic revolution and the other the Iraqi imposed war against Iran. The two events transformed the totality of the identity of the Iranian people. In such events, the inner aspects of the humans’ characters find the opportunity to be emerged. We did not have such thing before that. It was maybe in the contemporary era, the period after August 1941 that in the light of the relative freedoms provided for 10 to 12 years, a situation came into existence that the documents were retrieved again. The most important achievement of the Islamic revolution in historiography was that the documents related to Pahlavi era were freed. That is, before we saw these documents, we did not know much about what was going on in Pahlavi court. We recognized the regime better thanks to freedom of the documents and on the other hand, the memories of the pre-revolution dignitaries whether inside or outside the country, and were informed of its ties outside Iran, the inner issues of the personalities related to the developments, the court family and the person of the Shah more from the officials of the Pahlavi regime. Until then, any recognition we had was from the perspective of the critics of the Pahlavi regime. It was good too, but our later recognition about those 37 years was to a large extent from the language of the Pahlavi regime’s officials who brought up issues in the form of memories or oral history and published a one hundred-volume collection.
But what has so far been carried out in the area of oral history of the Iraqi imposed war against Iran in the interviews with the family of the martyrs is not acceptable! I have an outer view although I am from the generation of the revolution and was in the war fronts since 1981 and an eyewitness of the bravery of martyr Mustafa Chamran. What we saw has a long distance with what has been reflected. Here, we are from one family totally. To what extent the costs spent for collection of information from the wives and children of the martyrs are in agreement with the reality and what proportion it has with the costs, is a discussion that can be a research subject. But in my view, we need to change our epistemic geometry for this great transformation. When we talk to the wife of a martyr, have you seen her under a martyr that you have come to interview her? Or you want to interview her as an independent figure? What do you do with a woman who has children and one of them has been martyred and the other is the member of terrorist organization of Mujahedin-e Khalq? For instance, the mother of martyr Jahan Ara; how much have we come to interview her? When you speak with that person and saw her under the martyr, she cannot speak. How much difference do you see in the wills of the martyrs? It's like the notes which have been copied continuously. To what extent do they reflect the realities that we were involved with in society? Have we talked about what concerns have had this mother, who sent her son to the front at that time? To what extent the sadness of losing her son has been important for her and how we can reflect it? Everyone is proud and we repeat it continuously. These do not provide any subject for psychological works and film making.
I believe that thinking does not take shape except in the form of a conversation. Thinking has a feature which revolves around conversation. If you look at the works of Plato, apart from his letters, all Plato's works are conversations with people. The subjects are important when they are brought in conversation. Conversation means talking to someone else namely someone who does not think like you. The interviews conducted in TV have confirmatory and complementary aspects. I do not interview a person who does not think like me. Thinking takes shape when two ways of thinking and two types of attitudes are challenged and the people who are the audience see their attitudes in the images. Oral history is not a press interview; it should contribute to cultural and historical researches and the solving of a problem. No historical discovery and intuition happens unless we base it on fundamental questions. Meanwhile, the difference of productions of the people of research is due to the questions with which they start; that what do you want to talk about and what problem are you seeking to solve? Any research is based on this and on the basis of what my question is, the results I obtain are different with those of another researcher.
When we talk to the families of the martyrs and war veterans, it should be something in their words that I don’t know it and if you find it, your work has a good grade; otherwise, you have done a repetitive work. For instance, what has the concept of self-sacrifice differed in our cultural social discourse in 1360s with 80s and 90s solar hijri? Has any research been carried out in this field? Have you ever asked what you have thought about self-sacrifice at that time and what your opinion was and how did we as the war generation think? We cannot say that the people and our children and youth have no self-sacrifice. I think that today with these developments, I should learn many things from my child. Their recognition – toward me – is far more in reaching information. They get acquainted with the fact of the matter easily. To what extent do we know these? We cannot say that today they have distanced from the epistemological atmosphere and the war. How do they think of the society and to what extent am I familiar with their intellectual literature and how much have I been able to make myself familiar with them? We have weaknesses in such fields. We want to meet and solve the problems of the people of 90s with the view of those of 60s which are not possible. Is it correct to say that the idealism of the children of the 60s is more than that of our children in the 90s? On what inductive attitude do the university professors and those who comment say that we have been more faithful in the past and today, our religious beliefs have become weaker? Have you researched? Or have you talked on behalf of yourself? To me, they talk on behalf of themselves. Thus, the families of martyrs and war veterans are not a general conception that we understand it and have a single approach with them in any time and condition. I don’t know to what extent the information obtained from the martyrs and the disabled war veterans, combatants and the missing have been registered in the information banks in a way that they are accessible for the researchers? The obtained information does not respond the question of researchers.”
In continuation, Rasoolipour said, “Oral history does not have a separate meaning from history. Those who comment on theoretical foundations of oral history are like that history is a subject, and oral history another subject. This is false from the bottom. Oral history is also the same as history, but it seems that having access to information through dialogue is a method that leads us to the destination better. Before Immanuel Kant, the concept of history was very different with that of today. It was said in the past that history or an event means a photo that we take from an incident while history does not mean this today. No matter how close you are to an event, it does not mean that you know the event better. For instance, the mourning for the chief of martyrs Imam Hussain ((PBUH) existed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the half 40s and 50s of solar hijri years, an interpretation from the event of Ashura led to a social movement. It means that the revolution came out of it. You did not revolutionize with the thinking of the nineteenth century toward Ashura. It means that It is not clear that the recognition of those who were present in the events of the 1953 coup and the period of oil nationalization is more than me and you and this is of great importance. On this basis, it is said that an incident in modern thinking means the dumping of a stone in a pond; when you throw a stone in stagnant water, wave is created and circles larger than the center is shaped. Your view is different depending on in what age or time you look at the event. This historical perspective and oral history help us to find out better recognition by collecting different narratives from an event that happened in the past. If the event had a tongue, the problem was solved. The whole point is that the event does not have a tongue to explain itself, and since it does not, we explain it. We are also a set of sensualities and polluted with relationships, friendships and hostilities. Thus, the historian examines the issue by bringing documented evidence and having sequence in historiography".
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