Telling Tales With Technology

MIKE HUGHES

University of the West of England, Bristol

On Oral History and the Construction of the Self

Without doubt this talk provoked the liveliest debate of the conference. From a relatively safe opening where the history of the beginnings of NEVAC was briefly explained, Mike Hughes suggested that there was no time for a theoretical base prior to recording, because of the urgent need to capture the oral history of designer/makers before time ran out. Using classical references and images, Saussure's linguistic theories of binary opposites, but avoiding the later theories of gendered hierarchical binary opposites as expounded by Hélène Cixous, he considered the way that oral history or video interviews encouraged the interviewee to construct an identity for themselves as they talked about their life and work practices. Using a model of social constructivism rather than psychological essentialism or textual essentialism, Hughes argued that we each have a multiplicity of selves and that they are in turn constructed through comparison to others so in an oral history the interviewee constructs his/her self from the discourse with the interviewer. Examples were given where interviewers would concentrate on different aspects of their selves with different interviewers.

Using the post-structuralists tool of deconstruction, Mike Hughes then went on to tease out the binary opposites in a brief extract of a transcribed interview by Anna Hale with William Newland. The aim was to reveal some of the values underpinning Newland's words and this is clearly evident in oppositions such as hardness and softness; ‘autobahns’ and mediterranean culture or ‘winding English roads'; Coper and Leach. However some groups in the audience were unhappy with Hughes linking words such as 'German', 'spotlight' and 'hardness', while others in the audience thought Hughes revealed more of his own self by references to frilly nighties and naked flesh than he did of Newland's self. William Newland entertainingly seemed almost to conspire against Hughes interpretations, taking issue with a variety of points.

Mike Hughes pointed out that each reader of a transcriptlon, or party in a conversation, constructs their own meanings and identities, but some in the audience clearly saw this particular reading as somehow authoritative which had the effect of making a few people nervous of having their own words interpreted. Phil Rogers spoke for many of the potters who felt that their pots were their 'utterances' to be evaluated and interpreted, not necessarily their words. Later discussion focused on the tape recording being the primary source and the printed transcript as secondary. By using the transcriptions as a cultural artefact to be interpreted, some makers and indeed archivists felt that there was a need to allow the interviewee to withhold the tapes for a period of, for example, thirty years. The ensuing discussion covered history as a construct not a truth, and Tanya Harrod emphasised the provisional nature of histories, and the ways in which one learned as much about the interviewee as the interviewer when listening to a recording.