Conferenza di chiusura del congresso nazionale dell'Associazione brasiliana degli insegnanti di storia (ANPUH), Università di Fortaleza, luglio 2009.
História Oral e Poder
Alessandro Portelli
Boa noite. Espero que vocês tenham paciência com meu espanhol, que é horrível e um pouco imaginário, mas é melhor do que o meu português, que não existe. Confiante, porque todas as pessoas que encontrei aqui no Brasil são muito gentis e acolhedoras, vou tentar. Porém quero, antes de tudo, agradecer à Telma , à professora Adelaide , à ANPUH e a todos os participantes deste Simpósio, porque estes dias têm sido muito interessantes e muito agradáveis.
Bem, para dar início ao tema, nos anos 50, o etnógrafo e antropólogo italiano Ernesto De Martino começava uma investigação sobre a cultura tradicional da Itália do sul, de Lucânia, Puglia – as regiões mais pobres e mais subdesenvolvidas, as mais ignoradas e excluídas de toda a nação italiana. Em um de seus artigos, ele escrevia: “Eu entrava nas casas desses camponeses pobres, olhando-os não só como informantes para um conhecimento antropológico, mas como cidadãos de meu país – cidadãos com os quais eu intended to build a shared history, a common history. "
That was us that the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce said he was outside of history, and Ernesto De Martino, as well as other historians and sociologists Italy - Gianni Bosio, Danilo Montaldi, Rocco Scotelaro - tried to include as subjects in the history of assets politics and democracy that would build in the postwar period. So the most important thing in working with oral sources, field work, is that it is not working with papers, or things, or animals, but to work with human beings, citizens, our equals. It is a work of relationship and, like all works of relationship raises political and ethical issues. This is fundamental.
Well, the problem of power and ethics in working with oral sources is placed in different levels: the relationship of the historian, the researcher, with the institutions of political, cultural, academic, and the relationship between the historian and subjects that help us to seek an alternative history, a history another. Why do we seek
oral sources? Why do we work with them? Not only because the people we interviewed have information we need, that interest us. It's more than that. It is because There is a deep relationship, an intense relationship between orality and democracy. All means of communication, computer scanner to exclude a part of humanity. There are people who can not write or read, there are people who do not handle the computer, but the voice, speaking as a means of communication that all humans have, and somehow manage. So when we seek oral sources, the first because we seek in orality find the specific way of communicating all that are excluded, marginalized in the media and public discourse. We seek oral sources because we want these voices - which, yes, there are But nobody listens, or just listening to them - have access to the public sphere, to public discourse, and alter radically.
is often said that in oral history, give voice to the voiceless. Not so. If you do not have a voice, would have nothing to record, would have nothing to listen. The excluded, marginalized, the powerless rather have a voice, but there is nobody to listen. That voice is included in a limited space. What we do is collect this voice, amplify it and take it to the public space of speech and word. This is a political work, because not only has to do with the right to word, the basic right to speak, but with the right to speak and make the case that, to speak and be heard, be heard, to have a role in public discourse and political institutions, democracy. The second level
refers to the relationship between historians and oral narrators we interviewed. Because, as I said before, are not objects of research, but subject to a shared project, a dialogue between interviewer and interviewee. A dialogue in which the roles change, change, that is not always the historian who asks questions, questions asked by the interviewee. There are two agendas that are: the agenda of the historian, who has questions, some things we want to know, and the agenda of the respondent, which harnesses the presence of the historian to tell the stories you want to tell, which are not necessarily the stories that we seek. And maybe, often, are more interesting than the stories they seek.
For example, in Terni, which is an industrial town of steel factories in central Italy, I was looking for memories of the underground resistance against fascism in the 30s. I interviewed a lady whose brother had been in clandestine anti-fascist movement and was a very important person in the Resistance. But you did not want to talk about it, or rather wanted to talk about it, but longer wanted to talk about other things. The important thing was that she wanted to talk about his love story with a failed fascist in the years 20 and 30. When I asked about her brother, she responded very quickly and introduced the story of her boyfriend. I asked her about her brother and she talked about dating.
Anyway, I thought, the art of dialogue is an art of patience, flexibility is an art, let us allow her to talk about what interests you, then come back to talk of his brother. But in the end, did not speak of his brother, because the love story she told a story that was politically historiographically, socially, it was more important than the story of an anti-fascist a mais, que já havia muitas. No livro que Telma acaba de mencionar, “Biografia de uma cidade” , há três linhas sobre o irmão antifascista, entre outras, e um capítulo inteiro sobre essa história de amor. Porque a subjetividade, os sentimentos, as paixões são coisas de História que talvez sejam mais importantes do que as coisas da política; são uma política mais funda, mais radical, que faz parte do sangue e das veias das pessoas com quem falamos. Então, a entrevista não é um ato de extrair informações, e sim o abrir-se de um espaço de narração, um espaço compartilhado de narração, em que a presença do historiador oferece ao entrevistado someone who is there to hear it, something that does not occur frequently.
all know the experience of elders who have children and grandchildren who will not let them talk, "No, daddy, grandpa .... again these stories about the world war, boredom." And there comes a person who, professionally, is there to hear them talk about the history of World War that their children and grandchildren do not want to hear. What it offers is an opportunity to speak, is a narrative space in which the historian's agenda and the agenda are the interviewee. There is a negotiation, there is an exchange of questions and answers, not all questions have answers, not all questions have answers and proceeds dialogically. So put yourself in the interview the question of power: who has the power in the interview?, Who is in control of the interview?
The oral historian Michael Frisch Oral History speaks of a shared authority, shared authority. Because we can be teachers and professors interviewing an illiterate, but in the interview, who has knowledge that is needed is illiterate. We're not there because we know things that the respondents know. This is a learning experience for us, for the historian, and is an experiment in which the relationship between teachers and learners is reversed if the exchange.
In Kentucky, the United States, I was doing interviews with miners. All I was told that in Kentucky, not to speak to strangers, with people unknown to outsiders. Spent a few years and all spoke, all were very kind, very open. I asked one of my interviewees, a woman who worked in the mines and also writes poetry: "Why does everyone treat me so well? Why are all so open? "And she replied:" Well, first, you're not from New York, not Chicago, I mean, does not come from places where they came from the missionaries, sociologists, capitalists, to even the leftists, all of which came a Kentucky para dizer à gente o que tínhamos que fazer, para ensinar-nos coisas. Primeiro, o lugar de onde você vem; segundo, se vê muito bem que você não sabe muito sobre minas e sobre este lugar. Está somente tratando de aprender um pouco, de aprender algumas coisas. E a gente fica muito contente de ajudar.”
Ora, o que eu tinha, o que eu levava para a entrevista era minha ignorância, meu desejo autêntico de aprender. E eles me ajudavam porque o poder estava em suas mãos, porque tinham o saber que me faltava e a possibilidade de oferecê-lo, de proporcioná-lo a mim, ou de retê-lo; de falar ou de calar-se. Tinham esse poder e estavam muito contentes em exercer esse poder, em ajudar esse pobre professor europeu, vindo do outro lado do mar, que não sabe nada de nossa vida e do nosso trabalho, e que trata de aprender algo.
Bem, então a entrevista se coloca em um contexto sócio-histórico no qual existe uma diferença, e essa diferença, amiúde, é uma diferença que cria uma desigualdade entre o historiador, o entrevistador, e o entrevistado. Porque se é verdade que o entrevistado tem o poder do controle do saber que buscamos, socialmente o historiador pertence a uma classe que tem mais poder do que a classe da maioria das pessoas que entrevistamos.
É a diferença que faz com que a entrevista seja interessante, porque aprendemos algo se falamos com alguém diferente, alguém distinto de nós; mas essa diferença é também diferença de poder social e de poder cultural. Na situação de entrevista, a desigualdade é o argumento implícito, não dito, que se coloca subterraneamente, e que é o tema fundamental do diálogo: duas pessoas que vivem em uma desigualdade de poder de classe, de gênero, de educação, de gerações se falam na intenção de se falarem como se fossem iguais, sabendo bem que não o são.
Assim, a entrevista é um experimento de igualdade, é um momento utópico – momento utópico em que tratamos de imaginar como poderia ser o mundo se o camponês pobre e o professor catedrático fossem política and socially equal. It is a utopian moment and also a critical moment, because it recognizes the social injustice that we try to enlighten, to criticize and destroy. So there interviewing techniques, but in the interview ethics: respect, patience, flexibility, genuine passion to know others and be with them in a shared history, as he said Ernesto De Martino.
The next level concerns what we do when the interview ends, because when the interview ends, we return home to the university and began to write our articles, our books, or doing our videos, our documentaries or something . And at that moment, the power is in our hands. Because the word we get is a strange word, but the word we write, this is ours, this is in our name that appears on the cover of the books we write. But the word we, those books that take our names will not only produce our words, we produce them with the words of others who relied on the respondents in the dialogical encounter. For the relationship between interviewer and interviewee is not just to turn off the recorder or video camera, she still remains the responsibility that trust us when we give away or lend these words, these stories do not belong to us , that, as dizia Woody Guthrie, um cantor popular e poeta proletário norte-americano, não são nossa propriedade privada. São palavras que recolhemos, que temos em confiança, para delas fazer o melhor uso possível em nome daqueles que as confiaram a nós.
É preciso, então, que as palavras que utilizamos em nosso trabalho permaneçam propriedade dos entrevistados. Não sei se juridicamente, mas moralmente são propriedade de seus autores originais. Nós as pomos em nossos livros, mas não são propriedade nossa; não estão em nosso poder moralmente, eticamente e politicamente. Porque a doação, o presente, o empréstimo, o confiar das palavras implica a responsabilidade. O poder que temos, o poder do historiador quando termina a entrevista, consiste sobretudo no tipo de poder que falta aos entrevistados. Os entrevistados nos deram a voz, não fomos nós que a demos a eles; eles nos deram a voz que nos permite escrever livros onde estão vozes e, através de nós, através de nosso poder político, acadêmico, cultural, através de nossa atividade científica ou de publicação, jornalística ou o que seja, esta palavra privada e quase nunca ouvida, dos pobres, dos excluídos, dos marginais se torna parte do discurso público, se torna fonte histórica.
Quando escrevi meu livro sobre Terni, “Biografia de uma cidade”, comentado aqui, aos partisanos antifascist I had interviewed did not seem a very significant thing that their interviews, their names appear in my book - "Well, this is Sandra, who wrote his book. They realized that something had happened only when their words, their lives, they were in my book were cited in other books like that, very importantly, Claudio Pavone, who is the classic history of the Resistance in Italy. That was when his words are not found in my book, but the book by a historian far more important than me, they realized that talking to me, their memories, their experiences of resistance and anti-fascist struggle had left do espaço local, do espaço privado, e se haviam tornado parte do discurso historiográfico compartilhado da História do antifascismo no nosso país. Então, o problema é: o que acontece com essas palavras quando as tiramos de seu contexto e as oferecemos ao uso público, quando se tornam fontes históricas?
Vejam, a responsabilidade mais importante que temos é com os entrevistados. Somos mediadores, somos como um canal em que as palavras passam de um espaço comunicativo a um espaço mais amplo. E a responsabilidade, a primeira responsabilidade é a de representar os entrevistados com sua linguagem, com sua subjetividade, é a de apresentá-los de uma maneira que eles queiram aparecer na esfera public. At a time when his words become part of our discourse, we must not harm, let us mention that with respect, without paternalism, not humiliate them.
Line is very complex, very difficult, between respect for the oral expression, which is very communicative power and the desire of respondents did not appear as if they were unable to speak properly. Thus, the negotiations that began in the interview resumed on transcription, and especially the way we edit those words that are alien, not belonging to us, as in the present publicly. One thing that is easier now with all available means, as e-mail and everything else, is subject to the respondents that the quote we use in our publications and see if they recognize them. Possibly because they prefer to change something, or modify it, and sometimes the changes they want changes that are in some way, destroy the communicative power of orality. So the negotiation continues and there is a debate: what words we use? How do we write them?
The ethics of the interview, the ethics of oral history will not be resolved, therefore, to obtain a card with authorization to publish, or is it just a protection for us, so they can not lead us courts. But the most important thing is that respect for people and the living words that work continue, continue the work of publication, in public office. The same goes when we put the tapes or recordings to a file, because the problem is that the file exists so that people who did the interviews have access to it and can use them in a historical work. Well, those words were entrusted us not in the abstract, we have been entrusted personally, so we still responsible for the use of files that users make of them. If someone uses an interview I did and put on file, it is my responsibility to myself that the interviewee knows or, if you do not know, there is a control on the use of ethically and politically correct.
So, what fascinates me in Oral History is the personal experience of the interview is to understand all these extraordinary stories. What I find fascinating is that, when writing oral history - because what we said in the oral history, then we write - we have to write something readable. It's not a question of loyalty, fidelity because there is when we turn a wonderful oral discourse in a written page that you can not read, a mechanical adaptation: we must, instead, that there memory of oral origin. For the words that are in our books does not originate as text but as performance, as the search word in an attempt to find a word just to say something that often never told a stranger, a historian. It is therefore a writing style which is situated in line between text and performance, between fixed words, writings, and words that move, living words spoken. Not only that, but the monologue of academic writing - all writing, moreover, tends to be a monologue - is transmuted into a dialogue, a chorus, in which we operate like orchestra conductors or directors of the scene, which is an expression a plurality of voices and subjects.
Speaking of Oral History, then, is a contaminated speech is a speech multivocal, is a discourse that has a multitude of authors. Not only does the signing or the cover that has the name in the article because the authors are all who spoke and who have been in dialogue for this book, that article was.
Anyway, the hardest level, the political relations, ethics and power. It is the relationships we have as scholars and intellectuals as aware of our social role, with the political, cultural and academic. The Oral History
not originated as academic practice. In Italy, there are academics who have come to the University doing oral history. I teach American literature, others are unemployed, others do other things. The Oral History originated at the margins, not only at the margins of academia, but the margins of politics. Historians, sociologists, activists like Ernesto De Martino, Gianni Bosio, Danilo Dolce, Danilo Montaldi, Bermani Cesare, Luisa Passerini and even, all had problems not only with the academy - many of them never had space in the academy - but also with policy. They have taken seriously the fundamental task of all intellectual work that is speak truth to power.
This is a task we all have as citizens, but that is a more specific task of the word when we are specialists, experts say. Thus, to speak truth to power is a specific task Oral History of field work and work that is founded on personal relationships between individuals. And when I would speak truth to power, Bosio, Montaldi, Dolce also spoke truth to power on the left, also to the power of party leaders of the official labor movement. They were all heretics, were all marginal, and this margin began Oral History as an ideal compromise, ethical, political.
Now we're in this wonderful place, and this symposium so important, and is the first time that we realize that oral history for many years rejected, despised, now has earned the respect of academic institutions, cultural institutions. This is a very important thing, is the result of the work we've all done to refine our methods, to be more aware of the methodological and cognitive paradigms, procedures for investigation, all of this. It is therefore a victory, but the right of Oral History to be respected, not to say that it has become respectable. Not to say that it has become simply a tool like any other in pluralidade de ferramentas do trabalho profissional da História. É algo mais, porque toda História é algo mais: não só conhecimento do passado, mas intenção de mudar o presente e o futuro.
Essa mudança começa no momento mesmo da entrevista. Porque eu sempre acreditei que se você, como entrevistador, não sai da entrevista diferente de como nela entrou, e se o entrevistado não sai da entrevista diferente de como nela entrou, a própria entrevista, não que tenha sido um fracasso, mas não desenvolveu todas as possibilidades do encontro e do diálogo. É fácil ver que o entrevistador muda, pois aprendemos muitas coisas. Porém a entrevista é também um desafio que colocamos ao entrevistado, porque ele tem que organizar a narrativa, o conto, a interpretação de sua vida de uma forma nova, de uma forma mais complexa e de uma forma que alguém que não faça parte de sua comunidade, possa entender. Então esse é o desafio: o de aprofundar sua compreensão de sua própria história, sua própria experiência. A mudança começa na entrevista e continua, porque esse diálogo põe em pauta o reconhecimento do significado, da importância cultural do mundo dos entrevistados. A mudança que buscamos é uma mudança que dê mais poder aos sem-poder. E que lhes dê mais poder para que a sua cultura seja reconhecida como cultura. Para que se reconheça that there is only one culture, the elites, only one way to culture and that this is the way, there is a plurality of cultures, educational levels, and there is a class struggle in culture in the cultural arena - a class struggle no less important than the class struggle that exists at the economic, or political, because the class struggle in culture is the basis for recognition of individuals who have rights, they have knowledge, they have an identity. It is then the beginning of a shift in power relations.
said Gianni Bosio, Italian historian: "The idea of \u200b\u200bcultural work is to set up a class of its own armas, de fazer de modo que os excluídos, os explorados, os marginalizados se dêem conta da importância de suas vidas, de seu saber, de suas palavras. E se dêem conta de que é um saber social, é um saber coletivo. E que nós, os intelectuais, que trabalhamos nessa arena, devolvamos seu saber de uma maneira mais crítica, mais analítica, do que como o recebemos. Trata-se não só de recolher as suas histórias, de recolher as suas palavras. Isso é só o primeiro nível. Então vem o trabalho de analisá-las, de conectá-las, de levá-las a um nível de análise superior, e depois de trazê-las de volta às fontes”. Bosio também dizia que o trabalho cultural só pode desenvolver-se em condições de liberdade e de igualdade. Portanto, o trabalho cultural, para sua própria vida e sua própria verdade, necessita criar as condições de sua própria existência e possibilidade. Isso é dizer que o trabalho cultural precisa tornar-se trabalho político de igualdade, de dignidade, de liberdade, para ser trabalho intelectual, para ser trabalho cultural. Em condições de falta de liberdade, de falta de igualdade, o trabalho cultural está “menorizado”, está em condições de “minoria”, de falta de crédito.
Vejamos um exemplo de como o trabalho cultural se transforma em trabalho político na Itália, agora. Bem, a coisa importante é que quando falamos em memória, não falamos de um “espelho do passado”, mas de um fato do presente, porque o conteúdo da memória pode ser o passado, mas a atividade de recordar, a atividade de contar a história do passado é uma atividade do presente, e a relação que se coloca é uma relação entre presente e passado. É agora que recordamos, é hoje que falamos do passado, que contamos o passado. E a memória não é só um espelho de fatos, mas um fato histórico: a própria memória é um fato histórico em si. Não há apenas uma memória da História, há também uma história da memória: como muda, no curso do tempo, a maneira de recordar fatos históricos.
Na Itália, um dos motivos pelos quais a História Oral tem sido reconhecida é que, desde a metade dos anos 90, a questão política da natureza da democracia se colocava como questão de memória histórica. Porque a base da democracia italiana, a base dessa Constituição italiana de que muito nos orgulhamos, dessa Constituição maravilhosa, se situa no movimento de Resistência Antifascista dos anos 1943-45. A democracia italiana é criada como uma narração de origens, que é uma narração antifascista. Na metade dos anos 90, a direita então no poder, na Itália, é uma direita que diz que is no more fascist, at best, a right that is not considered a positive anti-fascism. It is a racist right, the Northern League, and the political discourse of anti-fascist right which dominates today in Italy, which controls most of the media, is a discourse of historical revisionism, is a discourse that argues against the narration anti-fascist resistance. Thus, the way he recalls the resistance is not just a matter of battle of historians of historiography battle, but a question that implies the questions: what country are we living? What are the values \u200b\u200band principles of our social life compartilhada? Agora, a TV, a maioria dos meios de comunicação, o discurso político também – inclusive vindo de parte do que foi a esquerda – é um discurso que diz que não havia, na verdade, uma diferença entre os fascistas, que lutavam ao lado dos nazistas, e os partisanos, já que os partisanos eram comunistas e os comunistas são todos criminosos. Então era a mesma coisa, no melhor dos casos; ou eventualmente os fascistas eram até melhores porque eram patriotas, enquanto os partisanos estavam a serviço de Stálin, ou algo assim.
Nesse sentido, o trabalho sobre a memória da Resistência, sobre a memória do antifascismo, é uma tarefa ideal, ética and contemporary politics. The way the interviewees tell us who remember the war of resistance, the labor movement of the '50s and '60s, the student movement of 1968, all that memory undergoes a "displacement" - might now want to delete it. Critically analyze this memory and have it present in political discourse, public discourse in the historiographic discourse is not only a matter of doing a story professionally, academically correct. That's also because the historical revisionism is nothing scientific or academically respectable, it is therefore an academic task, a scientific task. But his first role, its most important function is a function of politics and ethics. I say political because it is fighting the ideologies that currently have the power and protect the Constitution. But it is also an ethical issue, because anti-fascism today is not just repeating the battles of sixty years ago: it is a matter of relations between people living now. The anti-fascism today is the daily practice of anti-racism, anti-sexism. Antifascism today means to oppose the racist laws that have just been approved by the Italian parliament, and a media culture, and power, who despises women and body women, treating them as a status symbol, as something to consume.
To conclude, it is a moral and political issue, because the concentration of power of speech, of communication power in too few hands - all the broadcasters in Italy are controlled by only one person, Silvio Berlusconi - because the concentration of media power , newspapers, television in a few hands, controlled by political power, gives us the political and ethical questions to find other spaces for word free, other areas of alternative communication.
And finally: if we seek words, it is because the right Corn is Fundamental or direito de falar de ser and escutado. Muito obrigado.
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