'This, too, is history' : oral history, the 1947 India-Pakistan partition and the risks of archival re-ordering
Abstract
Drawing on interviews from my oral history project focusing on the 1947 India/Pakistan partition, in this article, I critically examine the process through which an individual oral history interview becomes part of an archive. I suggest that this process involves an extraneous stabilising, or re-ordering of meaning. The way we use oral histories that we collect, I argue, risks reinforcing some of the problematic political power-dynamics that oral history has hoped to combat. The process of incorporating an oral history interview into an archive is a process of ordering, ironing out ambiguities of meaning, voice, authorship and authority.
Citation
Raychaudhuri , A 2021 , ' 'This, too, is history' : oral history, the 1947 India-Pakistan partition and the risks of archival re-ordering ' , Oral History , vol. 49 , no. 2 , pp. 69-80 . < https://www.ohs.org.uk/scripts/journal-search.php?parameter=issue&searchkey=104 >
Publication
Oral History
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0143-0955Type
Journal article
Collections
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