Oral History and Hard Times: A Review Essay

Abstract

Michael Frisch reminds us of the very complicated and ambiguous nature of knowledge about the past and present, stemming from oral history. The author analyses the spectrum of possible meanings written during reading books, such as the 1970 work by Studs Terkel Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression and proposes the concept of “More history – No history.” Reprint from Oral History Review, 1979, v. 7, p. 70-79, courtesy of the Oral History Association. First published in Red Buffalo, 1972, vol. 1, no. 2/3. [Translation after: M. Frisch, “Oral History and Hard Times: A Review Essay”, [in:] The Oral History Reader, A. Thompson, R. Perks (eds.), London, 1998, p. 29–37. The permission to publish the translated version of the article has been granted by the author. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. (editor’s note)]

Keywords

• memory
• oral history
• culture