Excluding archival silences: Oral history and historical absence |
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| Authors: | Ben Alexander |
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| Institution: | (1) UCLA Department of Information Studies GSE & IS Building, Center for Information as Evidence, Box 951520, 90095-1520 Los Angeles, CA, USA |
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| Abstract: | Despite our society's increasing reliance on electronic documentation, to-date archives remain, largely, material repositories
of cultural memory. It is an accepted historical problematic, however, that culture is often resistant to material preservation.
There exists an undeniable and profound tension between scholarly efforts to reconstruct history and interpret cultural traditions
and the fragmentary, and often limited, material record. That is to say, scholarship is shaped by a sinuous negotiation around
the historical silences that encompass all of material culture. Historical silences, however, can at times be marginalized
(or at best excluded) by a sensitive configuration of material evidence with oral history.Excluding Archival Silences: Oral History and Historical Absence uses a historically and geographically specific example of oral history to engage in a more generalist discussion of how
oral reflection, especially when shaped by material evidences, can be an especially effective tool for preserving the dynamics
of culture that often remain undocumented. |
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| Keywords: | cultural memory oral history Yaddo |
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