Good oral history involves a meticulously informed well-researched interviewer who will intervene with "what about..."" "Was so and so there?" Was this before or after x and y?" "What you say is contradicted by..." etc. If you want to dismiss this as manipulation a la McMartin, be my guest. The fact of the matter is that this can literally recover memories and subject them to critical scrutiny. It's absurd to put down this process by suggesting that "a vivid narrative" is the measure of truth. For much of recent history, oral accounts are invaluable. Of course they must be used with care and without romance. This is totally consistent with the contextual information we bring to bear in evaluating Bettina Aptheker's memoir.
Jesse Lemisch
----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages at gmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2006 6:35 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Feminism and the False Memory Syndrome
> On 10/22/06, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> > 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).
>
> To my knowledge, oral historians do not make an extravagant claim that
> oral histories are unfailingly accurate recollections of what actually
> happened. Far from it, the best oral historians, most notably
> Alessandro Portelli, have taken great pains to investigate how, when,
> and why people make errors in remembering events, for factual errors,
> especially recurring factual errors, often tell us more about people's
> subjectivities -- especially what they desire -- than accurate
> remembrances.
>
> <blockquote>When Alessandro Portelli was doing an oral history of a
> small working-class Italian city in the 1970's, he became puzzled when
> his subjects repeatedly made factual errors or even related events
> that had never happened. For instance, when talking about the death of
> a worker named Luigi Trastulli, who had been killed in a clash with
> the police in 1949, the people Mr. Portelli interviewed all insisted
> that the event had occurred during demonstrations in 1953.
>
> At first it seemed like the kind of mistake that aging memories are
> prone to and the reason that many historians are wary of oral history.
> But Mr. Portelli, perhaps because of his background teaching American
> literature at the University of Rome, began to see the errors of oral
> histories, like Freudian slips, as a central part of their meaning and
> their narrative strategy.
>
> Trastulli died during a demonstration over Italy's decision to join
> NATO a controversy that had lost much of its meaning by the time Mr.
> Portelli did his interviews and the 1953 demonstrations were prompted
> by mass firings from local factories, which had permanently changed
> life in the area.
>
> "I realized that memory was itself an event on which we needed to
> reflect," he said in a recent interview at the University of Rome.
> "Memory is not just a mirror of what has happened, it is one of the
> things that happens, which merits study." (Alexander Stille,
> "Prospecting for Truth Amid the Distortions of Oral History," New York
> Times, 10 March 2001,
> <http://www.racematters.org/distortionsoforalhistory.htm>)</blockquote>
>
> On 10/22/06, JBrown72073 at cs.com <JBrown72073 at cs.com> wrote:
> > But the hidden default here is that men don't do this, women must be
lying.
>
> No. The default that I'd recommend is that, whether accusers are male
> or female, whether the accused are male or female, we take "recovered
> memory" with a big grain of salt and do not assume that accusation
> equals guilt. As I have said time and again, the accused in
> "recovered memory" cases have included both men and women, so have
> accusers. That's the default I'd recommend, in the interest of not
> only civil liberties but also feminism, for it is not a good idea to
> closely associate feminism with an often discredited notion that
> ruined many people's lives like "recovered memory" and to make it look
> as if feminism depended on it, when it really doesn't.
>
> > In order to say that Bettina is having 'false memory syndrome'
> > you'd also have to claim that she's lying that as an adult
> > she spoke to her father about the abuse, and he apologized--
> > was sick with shame, actually, is the feeling you get from her
> > account.
>
> It must be noted that Bettina Aptheker offered her account of her
> father's confession in an op-ed only after her memoir became
> increasingly questioned by those who do not have faith in "recovered
> memory."
>
> The accuser's report of the accused's confession, in the absence of
> the accused or another witness who can testify that, yes, indeed the
> accused admitted guilt, does not strengthen the accuser's case, imho.
>
> Lastly, when a person makes a statement, how might others take it?
> The choice is not either she is telling the truth or she is
> consciously lying -- there is a third alternative: she sincerely
> believes that what didn't happen actually happened.
> --
> Yoshie
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk