[lbo-talk] Feminism and the False Memory Syndrome

[Miles Jackson]

Jesse Lemisch wrote:
> As I have explained, this is not McMartin pre-school, with children being
> instructed in their memories by hideous shrinks -- really James, can't you
> tell the difference? Why do you keep talking about manipulable little
> children, when what we're dealing with is not manipulable little children?
> This is a woman in her sixties. Try it yourself: try to recall an event 40
> years ago, and watch the layers of the onion peel off. especially it you
> tell the story to a third party. Anybody who does oral history knows this
> phenomenon. 

This is interesting to me: do oral historians simply accept personal 
recall of events from 40 years ago as accurate?  What is the basis for 
judging whether or not the onion has been accurately peeled?  A vivid 
narrative?  Plausible details that fit in with other known events? 
Sincerity?

I assumed that oral history was about recording people's perceptions of 
events, rather than building up a documentary record about the "way 
things were".  If oral history is actually an attempt to create an 
archive of what has happened in the past, we know from the psychological 
research on memory distortion that the task is hopeless.  People are not 

  recording machines that simply "play back" memory tapes of the past; 
rather, people constantly construct and reconstruct memories based on 
both past experiences and current events.

It's frustrating to me that people working in different disciplines are 
so unaware of what's going on elsewhere (myself included; I obviously 
don't quite understand the goals and methods of oral history).

Miles