ABSTRACT
The oral history interview is a conversation between a researcher and a narrator. Usually the narrator is responding to questions posed by the interviewer, and hence the story told is a product of communication between two individuals, both of whom bring something of themselves to the process. Oral history theory is now founded on this idea of there being two subjectivities at an interview, interacting to produce an effect called intersubjectivity which is apparent in the narrator’s words. This chapter explores the theories surrounding this idea. Subjectivity refers to the constituents of an individual’s sense of self, his or
her identity informed and shaped by experience, perception, language and culture – in other words an individual’s emotional baggage (as opposed to objectivity which implies a neutral or disinterested standpoint).1 In the oral history context we are especially interested in how the interviewee constructs an identity – or subject position – for him or herself by drawing upon available cultural constructions in public discourse. Intersubjectivity in the context of oral history refers to the relationship between the interviewee and the interviewer or, in other words, the interpersonal dynamics of the interview situation and the process by which the participants cooperate to create a shared narrative. The interviewer by word, deed and gesture in the interview solicits a narrative from the narrator; a different interviewer would solicit different words, perhaps even a very different story or version of it. So there are two elements here which are entwined in a three-way con-
versation (the interviewee with him/herself, with the interviewer and with culture) consisting of, first, the process by which the subject, the interviewee, constructs a version of the self drawing upon discursive formulations or recognisable public identities available to him or her, and second the subjectivities present in the oral history interview that facilitate the construction of a memory story. In Penny Summerfield’s words, ‘it is thus necessary to encompass within oral history analysis and interpretation, not only the voice that speaks for itself, but also the voices that speak to it’.2 The interviewer as well as the narrator is present in the creation of the oral history story; there can be no pretence at neutrality or objectivity.
