“Oral History School”-1

From “Event-oriented” Oral History to “Hermeneutics” and “Holiyat (Circumstances)”

Adjusted by Maryam Asadi Jafari
Translated by Ruhollah Golmoradi

2024-7-22

According to Iranian Oral History Website, the first online session of “Oral History School” was held by Iranian History Association on Saturday evening, July 6, 2024. In this session, Dr. Morteza Nouraei gave a lecture about “History and Perspectives of Oral History.”

In the first part of this session, Dr. Morteza Nouraei explained what and why oral history is, which you can read here.

He further stated, “The criterion of oral history interviews is producing collective experience. For example, a thesis was conducted based on interviews with students of the 1970s about the Islamic Revolution, and facts were extracted based on collective experience. The diversity of views and questions in the current era has made the traditional historiographical procedures unable to answer them. Active oral history interviews transform multiple voices into collective experience and then into oral evidence. Before oral history, there was oral tradition; it means narrating based on written narrations. But how is it possible to verify a historical text? This is why, in today's world, oral history archives trump the archives. That is, it is so wide that if people are interested in verifying the oral history books, the audio or video file is available in the oral archives.”

Dr. Nouraei explained the differences between oral tradition and oral history, and emphasized, “Basically, oral tradition is not oral memories. For example, it is mentioned in historical books that a certain person heard a story from other person and wrote it in the book. Can you be sure of its authenticity? But there is oral history documentation, and you can listen to the interview again and see if the author's impression was wrong. In fact, oral history has an order and procedure, and an independent and technical life. Sometimes we are faced with a huge number of oral practitioners who are not very deep. From this point of view, the discussion becomes confusing and what they produce is often oral memories. In addition, its accuracy is not known and it is not even possible to verify it. In Iran, only a few books include an interview CD. There is a tradition in the world that the book included CD of the interviews so that verification to be possible. The needs of today's society are different from the past. Historians have stepped into the postmodern world where they are faced with a variety of events. Therefore, many events of this era are beyond the scope of traditional recording. Historians have stepped into the field of social life in order to transfer reliable experiences to the future generations so that we have cultured and enlightened citizens in the future generations. Pay attention to the fact that social life is expanding. For example, when I was coming from Isfahan to Tehran in the 1970s, the road was narrow and if the buses met, they could not pass at the same time. The roads gradually became multi-lane and the same thing has happened in social life. This expansion of life is not compatible with traditional historiography. This is where additional history come into play. Oral history has gone through different periods since the middle of the 20th century and these periods do not mean saying goodbye to the type of mechanisms of the previous period. Rather, they are parallel and complementary to each other. Oral history in the early decades until the 1980s was interested in reviving and recording events that were beyond the credibility of written narratives. That is, written narratives could not record them. So they wanted to record the events in a different way. It is possible that many people have faced an event and reconstructed the essence of the event with oral history.”

In the final part of the first online session of “Oral History School”, Dr. Morteza Nouraei interpreted the theoretical and practical evolution of oral history as follows, “The oral history of the first decades was event-oriented. For example, if the soldiers were interviewed, it would be about different operations and in an incident-oriented manner. Even in the case of the Islamic revolution, industries or old guilds that have disappeared or new guilds, proceeded with the same process and with the view of the “firsts”. Then another type of local history was born, which was hermeneutic or based on people's interpretation of events. For example, in the dissertation question package that I mentioned at the beginning, our question was based on what you, as teenagers aged 17 to 19, thought about the revolution at that time and how did it proceed? What did you want and what happened? That is, the interpretation of people in the interview was important, not the same event. From this perspective, oral history is the history of the future, and future historians are supposed to make decisions about it, and oral historians produce data. Historians made a wave of interpretation from 1970s to the present century. Most of oral practitioners were looking for why this event happened? Because the event itself was recorded in newspapers and other media, but its reason (why) should be determined which is called “hermeneutic oral history”. It means that several people should be talked to in order to extract the cause and root of an event. These interpretations tell us how to look at the past and this is a kind of decoding of the recent past. This process continued and another development took place in the early 21st century in oral history. Along with the discussion of the event itself and its interpretation, oral history went towards considering the circumstances of the events. It means that small events happened on the sidelines of an event that led to a big event. That is, circumstances and series of small events are effective in writing that history. Therefore, the question package should be flexible and extract the details of an event, which is called “oral history of circumstances”. It means to look at events geometrically. Historians' view of the past can be linear or multifaceted. The second method is basically not taught in history. Because it is hard and a deconstructive and postmodern model.”

At the end of the meeting, Dr. Nouraei answered questions of the attendees.

To be continued...