Memory, Remembering, and Oblivion in Active Narrative Interviewing. (February 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gemignani, Marco
• Other Names: Gemignani Marco guest-editor.; Benozzo Angelo guest-editor.; Brinkmann Svend guest-editor.; Cisneros Puebla César A. guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Qualitative inquiry. Volume 20:Number 2(2014)
• Page Start: 127
• Page End: 135
• Publication Date: 2014-02
• Subjects: data -- interview -- memory -- narrative -- representation; Social sciences -- Methodology -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Research -- Periodicals; 300.72
• DOI: 10.1177/1077800413510271
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1077-8004

Abstract

Research interviewing is not just a practice of exchanging data through communication and collection. Rather, the qualitative interview is an active process in which participants and researchers take part in a situated co-construction of meanings and memories. In this article, I argue for viewing memories and the acts of storing, accessing, and telling the past as relational processes in which the researcher's position shifts from collector to co-constructor. Moving away from seeing participants as "informational commodities" and data as merchandise, I problematize the assumption that participants' memories may simply be accessed through narratives, which serve as sources of "data." I suggest that a possible way to gain a complex view on memory and remembering is by focusing on both the told and the untold, the remembered and the forgotten. From this epistemological viewpoint, a narrative focus on the untold and forgotten contributes to the constructive potential of the inquiry process.