The Unexpected in Oral History

How is an oral historian to react when the unexpected emerges, whether in field research or interview analysis? Answers tend to be scattered throughout the scholarly literature or confined to backstage conversations. This book brings the unexpected to the center of the scene and promotes a collective reflection about ways of dealing with uneasy encounters, surprises, and interviews that seem to have gone off the rails. The contributors come from a dozen countries, especially Brazil, where a classic piece about a "great liar" paved the way for this discussion. Rather than eccentric descriptions of unusual situations, these chapters evoke a dense web of reflections about dialogue, the production of oral sources, and the complexities of personal narratives. Theoretically informed but written in an engaging language, the book presents readers with fascinating case studies of the eruptions of the unexpected that occur in oral history research.

1. Foreword. -

2. Introduction. -
Part I Scratching the Silence: The Unexpected as an Outbreak.
- 3. Introduction to Part I. - 4. My Grandfather s Unknown History. - 5. Florence Richard, Childhood Sexual Violence, and the Unsettling of Local History. - 6. An Unexpected Gift: Oral History and the Documentation of Michfest. - 7.
Commentary
: The Elaboration of What Has Been Lived. -
Part II Between Lies and Half-Truths: The Unexpected as Falsification
. - 8. Introduction to Part II. - 8. The Must-See Play that so Many People Staged: A Mosaic of (False) Memories. - 10. New Looks at Old Interviews: Racism and Privilege Around Black Folk Festivities. - 11. Sincere Lies Interest Me : The Power of Falsehood in Oral History. - 12. A Love Story That Never Happened. - 13.
Commentary
: Leftovers, Their Unexpected Forms, and the Act of Gleaning: Re-encounters with Interviews. -
Part III Deviating Routes: The Unexpected as a Mnemonic Device
. - 14. Introduction to Part III. - 15. Who rode in my car? Who do you think? Jesus! : Subversion and Displacement in the Rereading of an Interview. - 16. Metabolizing the Leftovers of Memory. - 17. The Unexpected in an Archive: Interferences in a Soccer Memory Collection. - 18.
Commentary
: Revisiting Oral Sources: The Unexpected and the Anticipated in Oral History Praxis. -
Part IV The Answer Is Another Subject: The Unexpected as a Generative Device
. - 19. Introduction to Part IV. - 20. Looking for Heroes, I Found Conventional Workers: A Labor Community in the Argentine Dictatorship. - 21. The Devious Paths of Memory: Reflections on the Experience of Interviews with Residents of the Caparaó Sierra. - 22. Everything Has Been Said : Surprising Encounters from Oral Histories in Ireland. - 23.
Commentary
: The Answer is Not Only Another Subject: It Is Also Another Set of Questions. -
Part V Nothing but Surprises: The Unexpected as a Given
. - 24. Introduction to Part V. - 25. The Case of the Baffling Bandit. - 26. Tragedy, Trauma, and the Transformations of Local Memory. - 27. Uncomfortable Stories and Tensions in the Official Memory of an Institution. - 28.
Commentary
: Oral History as a culture of Research. -
Part VI Avenues and Openings: The Unexpected as a Method
. - 29. Introduction to Part VI. - 30. Listening to Young Geeks in a Different City s Cosplay Scene. - 31. Ain t You Afraid to Be around a Drifter Like Me? : Beyond the Nothingness and the Fragments of the Life on the Streets. - 32. Struggling Through Speech in the Midst of Grief: A Non-interview and the Indigenous Xakriabá Cosmopolitics. - 33. Ethnic Classification and Trauma During the Rwandan Genocide. - 34.
Commentary
: How Do We Face the Unexpected? Constitutive Practices of Oral History. - 34. Afterword: Expecting the Unexpected.