Report of the Second Meeting of the Specialized Roundtable on Iranian Oral History

"Second Generation Oral History" is Based on a Critical Perspective and Historical Semantics

Prepared and compiled by: Maryam Asadi Jafari
Machine Translation edited by Mandana Karimi

2026-7-7

According to the Iranian Oral History website, the "Second Meeting of the Specialized Roundtable on Iranian Oral History; With the Approach of Sustainability, Sacred Defense, and Resistance" was held online on Sunday evening, June 21, 1405, with the efforts of the Deputy of Science, Research, and Technology of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army in cooperation with the Foundation for the Preservation of Works and the Propagation of Sacred Defense Values, with the aim of "Making Decisions on Second Generation Oral History; The First Step in Perspectives", "Reviewing the Measures Taken in the Field of Launching the Oral History Academic Field at the Master's Level" and "Reviewing Strategies for Strengthening and Developing the Efficiency of the Army's Oral History”.

“The War of Narratives” is Exactly the War of Oral History

At the beginning of this meeting, Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia, a faculty member of the War University and Iranian Army spokesperson, welcomed the attendees and spoke about the importance of recording oral history in the army. Then, Dr. Morteza Nouraei, a faculty member of the History Department of the University of Isfahan, explained the topic of “Second Generation Oral History; The First Step and Prospects” and stated: “This is a theory that was designed last year and is constantly being hammered out. But what do we mean by “second generation oral history”? Undoubtedly, oral history is seen with the first generation. The first generation is the traditional oral history that is done in the country; that is, it is based on research and interviews. It is very natural that it has followed its own path of development and gone through various stages. However, second generation oral history is not a competitor to traditional oral history. I am the founder of the "Oral History Studies Core" at the University of Isfahan, which has also been registered. This Oral History Studies Core consists of a team of 12 graduate students who focus solely on oral history. This vision was raised because the post-World War II world needed oral history and became the source of its formation. Second, modern historiography no longer responded to the needs of retrospection. That is why in the 60s and 70s we encountered 24 branches of historiography, one of which was oral history, local history, etc. These branches also have their own research methods. Of course, they are somewhat similar in terms of procedure and order, but each requires more technical and specialized methods. But the 21st century has given oral history more momentum, and for this reason, the discussion of the war of narratives has now been raised. The war of narratives is precisely the war of oral history. That is, the multiplicity of narrative production. We saw the “narrative war” in the “Second Perspective of Oral History” in 8 components and extracted them: “synonymous”, “parallel”, “contradictory”, “dissimilar”, “contradictory”, “inconsistent”, “incomplete” and “similar”. These 8 types of narratives exist within the scope of a type of oral history. When we examined these 8 components in the research of the first generation of oral history, we realized another disaster. That oral history in its usual form cannot respond to the diversity of narratives or the war of narratives. Therefore, the reflection of these 8 components in narratives and its production is important because whoever can confiscate or possess history in some way will undoubtedly possess the future. The fact that the attention of the military forces is focused on oral history – that is, living history – is a timely and important move. So, the geography of the postmodern perspective is in the diversity of composite narratives or composite warfare and the confrontation with composite challenges. Second-generation oral history is not a simple and linear narrative; it is a network. That is, it is a view and perception that is not from one area and axis, and is in a state of upheaval and movement in various axes of a narrative. The second point is that these perspectives in the field of production are focused on multiple goals. The third point is that the nature of oral history is living history; a history that is not complex and a narrative that is not complex. That is, a narrative that is not closed and is fluid. Fluidity exists and waves in the narrative of oral history. No narrative and no interview are finished, and these narratives can still be defended and rejected. So, this type of historiography is called non-complex history and composite non-complex narrative. The view should be a composite and network-oriented view, and perhaps it can be called “network knowledge”.

 Second Look is Criticism and Content Production from Between the Unwritten Lines.

Dr. Nouraei continued, describing the second generation of oral history: “Unconventional history or living history requires a different kind of perspective and reimagining. What led me to this issue was the collection of a thousand books in the field of oral history that were provided to me in 1403 for the selection of the Jalal Prize. I came across a series of information that required a different kind of perspective. In the second generation’s view, we do not have an interview as a basis. The basis of the work is that we consider the work that has already been done and we will work with another mechanism that will also be assisted by artificial intelligence.

The second generation is parallel to the first generation; it is the same conventional oral history. Only the perspective of second-generation historians is different from the conventional perspective on oral history products. The second generation does not deal with witnesses and observers of events. Rather, they are with those who narrate from the narration. The considerations of the second generation are based on four axes: one is “perspective”; that is, the way of looking at oral history; not at the production of oral history. The first generation is focused on the production of oral history, but we are focused on the production of oral history. The second is “interpretation”; that is, the type of interpretation we make of oral history productions. The third is “summarizing an area or topic” and the fourth is “perception”. With these four observatories, we focused on the production of oral memories or oral history of the martyrs of the shrine and Syria and realized what a disaster has happened in the type of production of the martyrs of the shrine and the oral history of Syria. The collection of these books is about 400 titles and beautifully depicts the royal history of the first generation. But when we entered into the research of these works with these four perspectives, we realized what a big mistake the authors of these books had made!

All the mechanisms, techniques, and military tactics of the Iranians are presented in these books under the title of oral history of martyrs or a special situation. All the technical and specialized factors are presented in these books of Syrian oral history, and I think that if anyone can, they should collect all these books. So, writing these types of books is good, but in a classified manner. But the second generation’s view is that it is not very necessary to open our fists in techniques and even subtleties, roads, and maps in oral history. That is why we entered the topic of the second generation. The scope of the second generation’s corpus and its set of questions are mentioned on four axes. While in the first generation, most of the effort is on collecting information. But in the second generation, it is for collecting meanings and concepts. The first generation of information gathering had three stages: “re-imagining events,” “interpretive re-imagining events,” and “re-imagining the annals of events.” But in the second generation’s perspective, we go through these three stages. The philosophy of the second generation’s perspective is distributive and critical. Here, we are no longer looking for an interviewer and an interview. We are studying the unwritten lines among the written lines. Our concern is to create a methodology and a conceptualization mechanism that will allow this living history, which is twinned with narration, to progress and lead to a semantic analysis and textual analysis. Therefore, the proposed area is the development of the diversity of concepts of historicity in the laboratory of living history or oral history. Historicity is one of the very interesting topics of critical philosophy that we included in the modeling of ancient Iran and even modern and postmodern history, and we realized that historians are basically looking for meaning. My concern in training oral history researchers is to move towards meaning in history. We have a huge number of first-generation historians who are working at various levels. But undoubtedly, in the second look, the look is very specialized. Because you enter into criticism, but your criticism is the production of content from between the unwritten lines. So, our kind of look in historicism is to discover the intentional or unintentional conceptualizations in the interview and to be able to live in the world of narrative warfare and not be disarmed. »

Narratives of an event are endless

Following the “Second Session of the Specialized Oral History of the Country”, Dr. Morteza Rasoulipour explained the strategies for strengthening and developing the effectiveness of the army’s oral history and, referring to the more than 100 years of the army’s history in Iran, he stated in part of his speech: “The images that have been presented so far in oral history interviews in the military sector, war history, martyrs, veterans, and veterans are mostly idealized and this image is not enough. It is better to show the real image. On the other hand, so many air force pilots have been martyred during the 8-year war, and the families and spouses of some of them are abroad and their voices have not been heard. On the other hand, the small narratives that we collect in oral history or even documents from individuals are considered a source and storehouse of information for historiography. These sub-narratives create images in our minds; provided that these sub-narratives are placed together, they can compile a historical narrative in a general way and give relevance to a historical work. Unfortunately, in some ways, this has not happened with the historical events of Iran since the constitutional era. That is why we have not yet reached a general historical narrative that experts have a general agreement and consensus on about events such as the nationalization of oil, despite all these collected narratives. Because one of the main reasons has been having an idealistic view and its priority instead of a realistic view. In the army, grounds must be provided to strengthen questioning. Because the foundation of oral history is based on questions, interviews, and dialogue. Dialogue is based on questions. We are in a situation where, contrary to what many people think, there is little questioning in our society. The importance of questioning is the importance of the essence. Perfectionism also hinders movement. When we look at many of these interviews, we see that the project officials intend to do something that is, so to speak, not to be touched upon, which is fundamentally contrary to the principle of research. In any research activity, the door to research and investigation is still open. No matter how much you try to create a narrative on any subject and add narratives to past data, there will still be other narratives that you have not addressed. Therefore, research activities that are based on questions also give rise to new questions. So, no question is perfect. Our awareness of past events and incidents may be inaccurate, and even our analyses and research may be mixed with our own mental, emotional, and religious inclinations, and we may present untrue narratives in society. These narratives can be criticized and examined, and we should not be afraid of this. We must create new narratives from different perspectives and help extract theories based on those narratives to reach a general narrative in understanding each event or occurrence. Some consider oral history to be a concept separate from history. However, oral history is not a concept independent of history and, above all, must be based on a clear understanding of history.”

Launching a Military Oral History Course at an Army University

Then, Dr. Gholamreza Azizi presented a report on the process of launching the field of military oral history in one of the army universities and said: "The Education and Research Organization of the Foundation for the Preservation of Works and the Propagation of the Values ​​of Sacred Defense has pursued the field of oral history of sacred defense as a major in the master's degree program in history, and the syllabus is being prepared, and initial steps are being taken to launch this field. At the same time, Dr. Reza Jahanfar, Director of Knowledge and Scientific Production of the Deputy of the Ministry of Defense, also expressed his interest in launching the field of military oral history. Its syllabus and initial lesson plan have been prepared and will be presented." Azizi continued by analyzing the situation of oral history of sacred defense in the IRGC, army, and other military institutions, and emphasized the importance of scientific promotion of activists in the field of oral history of sacred defense and military. Then Dr. Mehdi Abolhasani Tarqi, an oral history activist, criticized the status of the oral history of the Sacred Defense and emphasized the need for more activity by army units in this field and the importance of publishing documents and its positive impact on the process of recording the army's oral history.

Jafar Golshan Roghani also considered historical understanding on the part of the interviewer to be the most important pillar of oral history and suggested that three important courses, "Historical Research Method", "Historical Writing", and "Philosophy of History", be included in the syllabus of oral history courses. Because these courses will provide students with a deep historical understanding.

Dr. Javad Kamvar Bakhshayesh was the last speaker at the meeting. Referring to the challenges facing the field of sustainability literature in the past decade, he suggested that before launching the field of oral history and military oral history, they should first think about producing teaching resources so that they would not encounter problems in launching a doctoral degree, and emphasized focusing on the future of students. He considered the connection between narrative and oral history important, and finally, he addressed the pathology of unitary writing, such as: the enrichment and diminution of roles, the contradiction of narratives in military organizations, and serious contradictions in war narratives.