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The Challenges of Oral History Weekly
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The number 100 is sacred for some people and has a special meaning for many people of the world. But most people believe that the number implies plentitude and excess. That is why this number is used at the time of joyfulness among Iranians. The children also count number 100 many times and every time they want to create in others minds the plentitude of something, they will use it.
I wrote the above few sentences to show my intention of writing this article. I think probably the significance and the meaning which is hidden in the number 100, has made those who are involved in Oral history weekly to open a special account on the weeklys issue 100. This importance has made them to start from now when six or seven issues have been left. Of course, I also agree that it is admirable to plan, collect and select important and useful articles and subjects for a special issue. But at the same time, a point has been neglected about oral history that can be an introduction to dealing with it by deliberating in the few above lines.
At present, the area of oral history has been engaged in a situation in which the dispersion of view along with confusion in description allows everyone to look at, tell and write about it with every language and pen, and from wherever or every angle they like without having a coherent plan for it. However, there is no doubt that as long as every intellectual and free thinker cannot pay attention to a subject from various angles, his or her thinking will not be grown and the aspects and angles of that subject will not be revealed. The freedom of expression and thinking is also hidden in the single point that any language and pen should be free. But what is regrettable is that lack of a sympathized base and institution or at least an advocate of oral history in the position of an important method of historiography has caused this dispersion. The regret is doubled when you look at the previous issues of the Oral History weekly and after studying the recent issues you find out that as if they want to hold a birthday celebration for the 100th issue of the weekly.
Oral history has been treated unfairly. Some have made it an aggregation of their thoughts and beliefs without paying attention to its fundamental motivation and originality. Before presenting a comprehensive definition of its construction, they take positions and this has caused that the works in oral history area are considered as a story or novel or film script. The narrator attributes a text to compiler, and the compile excuses for his flexibility and being unmanageable in expressing the subjects. The role of the elements involved in producing an oral history work has remained missing. There is no coherent and centralized archive in the centers dealing with oral history. This has caused the oral history to be kept undetermined without relying on somewhere or attracting others trust. So, in a way it can be said that oral history has become abstract.
The Oral History weekly needs to think of notion of oral history rather than thinking about its issue 100. Numerous, different and sometimes conflicting writings and discourses can make the main subject coherent and explicate the principles of such extensive subject by presenting logical factors. A subject which has attracted many audiences in todays virtual world and the number of them is growing day by day.
This media must define the methods of oral history used by the activists of the area more clearly and coherently. It should benefit most from differences of opinions, and through them, make various interpretations of oral history area more valid and stronger. It should familiarize its audiences with the professional and intellectual lines of oral history along with the limits of other majors which have been involved in this area. The weekly should not turn into just a reservoir which keeps various news and information in its store. The dignity and value of Oral History weekly is higher than being turned into such reservoir. The media is expected to think of more cohesion and explanation of oral history principles through writers, institutions and other actual and virtual bases and head it toward its historic and main path by presenting valid methods.
Yahya Ariya Bakhshayesh
Translated by: Mohammad Baqar Khoshnevisan
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