Living Voices: The Oral History Interview as Dialogue and Experience. (1st August 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Portelli, Alessandro
• Is Part Of: Oral history review. Volume 45:Number 2(2018:Summer/Autumn)
• Page Start: 239
• Page End: 248
• Publication Date: 2018-08-01
• Subjects: dialogue -- interview -- memory -- narrative; Oral history -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; 907.2
• DOI: 10.1093/ohr/ohy030
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0094-0798

Abstract

Abstract: Based on the experience of field research in oral history, this article describes the oral history interview as an exchange of gazes and a cocreated narrative between subjects—the interviewer and the interviewee—who are both observer and observed and speak to each other across the line of their significant otherness. The interviewee is both a tool for historical research and the opening of a narrative space for the subjectivity of the interviewee, which becomes in turn a significant historical fact.