Oral History Association

A Shared Authority: An Impossible Goal?

Author(s): Lorraine Sitzia
Source: The Oral History Review, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter - Spring, 2003), pp. 87-101
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oral History Association
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A Shared
Authority:
An
Impossible
Goal?
by
Lorraine Sitzia
Abstract In this article I
present
a case
study
of the relation-
ship
between interviewer and narrator to
explore
the
process
of collaboration in the
production
of an
auto/biography.
This
article outlines how the
project originated
and how it devel-
oped
over the
past
six
years.
After
introducing
the
narrator,
Arthur
Thickett-soldier, communist,
pacifist,
and writer-I
explore
our collaboration and
identify
those facets of the rela-
tionship
that have been the most influential in
shaping
the
interview. Michael Frisch's
principle
of "shared
authority"
influenced the
working process,
and collaboration was an
important
element of the work. This
paper
discusses the
effect that
attempting
to share
authority
had on the
project,
and examines the issues raised
by
the collaborative
process,
such as who owns the material
produced,
who decides what
material is made
public,
and how these decisions affect the his-
tory
told.
There is an
increasing recognition
that an
understanding
of
the
relationship
between interviewer and narrator is
important
in
any analysis
of the oral
history
interview and of the stories
that are told or not told.'
Equally,
there is a
growing
debate
around issues of
authority-how
interviewers work with their nar-
rators,
and who directs the
process-with many people advocating
Lorraine Sitzia teaches oral
history
courses at the Centre for
Continuing Education,
University
of
Sussex,
England
and is a committee member for the Oral
History
Society.
Ronald J.
Grele, Envelopes of
Sound: The Art
of
Oral
History (Chicago:
Precedent
Publishing, 1985);
Sherna
Berger
Gluck and
Daphne
Patai
(eds.),
Women's Words:
The Feminist Practice
of
Oral
History (London: Routledge, 1991);
Alessandro
Portelli,
The Death
of Luigi
Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and
Meaning
in Oral
History
(Albany:
SUNY
Press, 1991).
The Oral
History Review,
Vol.
30,
No.
1, pages
87-101. ISSN:
0094-1223;
electronic ISSN: 1533-8592
? 2003
by
the Oral
History
Association. All
rights
reserved.
Send
requests
for
permission
to
reprint
to:
Rights
and Permissions,
University
of California
Press,
Journals
Division,
2000 Center
St.,
Ste.
303, Berkeley,
CA 94704-1223.
88 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW
a more collaborative
approach.2
This
paper
will look at the
development
of the
relationship
between me as
interviewer,
and Arthur Thickett as
narrator,
during
the course of our work
together
over the
past
six
years.
I will examine the
ways
in
which our
relationship
has affected the stories told and how it
has had an
impact
on the collaborative
process.
The conclusion
of this
project
has been the
publication
earlier this
year
of an
auto/biographical
book,
Seeking
the
Enemy,
with both Arthur
and me as authors.3 This
process
of collaboration has been fun-
damental to the
project
and has raised several
important
issues-such as who owns the material
produced,
who decides
what material is made
public,
and how these decisions affect
the
history
told-which I will
attempt
to
explore
in this
paper.
This
paper
is
arranged
into four sections: the first will
pro-
vide an outline of how the
project originated
with a brief back-
ground
to Arthur's
story.
The second section describes how the
project developed
over the
past
six
years
and how we worked
together.
The third section looks at our
relationship
and its
impact
on the stories told. As the second and third sections
have been
explored
in detail in a
previous
article,4
for the
pur-
poses
of this
paper
I will
provide
a brief
summary.
The final
section will examine the collaborative
process
and the issues
this raised.
Beginning
Arthur's
Project
I had known Arthur for
many years
before I
began
inter-
viewing
him
through
our involvement with
QueenSpark
Books
2Deborah Cameron et.
al., Researching Language:
Issues
of
Power and Method
(London: Routledge, 1992);
Michael
Frisch,
A Shared
Authority: Essays
on the
Craft
and
Meaning of
Oral and Public
History (Albany,
SUNY
Press, 1990);
Liz
Stanley
and Sue
Wise,
"Back into the Personal or Our
Attempt
to Construct Feminist
Research" in G. Bowles and R. Duelli Klein
(eds.),
Theories
of
Women's Studies
(London: Routledge
and
Kegan, 1983).
31 use the term
auto/biography
to mean an oral
history
narrative
presented
in an
autobiographical
form,
and which is
produced through
collaboration between the
interviewer as
biographer
and the narrator as the
autobiographer
of his/her
story.
Lorraine Sitzia and Arthur
Thickett, Seeking
the
Enemy (London: Working Press,
2002).
4Lorraine
Sitzia,
"Telling
Arthur's
Story:
Oral
History Relationships
and Shared
Authority,"
Oral
History,
27
(2):
58-67.
A Shared
Authority:
An
Impossible
Goal?
Arthur
Thickett,
1999.
(QS),
a
community writing
and
publishing group
in
Brighton,
England,
which since it
began
in the 1970s has worked to
pub-
lish hidden histories of local
people
and
encourage writing
in
the local
community.5
Arthur had been the volunteer treasurer
for
many years,
while I have been both a
paid
worker
(working
with Arthur on the
accounts)
and a volunteer. At the time the
project
started I was the
administrator,
and over the course of
the
project
I left to undertake
postgraduate study (although
I
remained a
volunteer)
and
began teaching
oral
history
courses
at the
University
of Sussex. Arthur continued as a
volunteer,
becoming
the Chair of
QS
and also the Chair of the Federation
of Worker Writers and
Community
Publishers,
an umbrella
organization
for like-minded
groups
similar to
QS.6
sSee Lorraine
Sitzia,
"QueenSpark Books-Publishing
Life Stories for the Local
Community,"
The Local
Historian, 27(4):
218-224.
6
See
http://www.thefwwcp.org.uk.
89
90 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW
Originally
I interviewed Arthur as an exercise for an oral
history
course I was
undertaking.
I knew that Arthur had
fought
in Korea with the Australian
Army
and had later become a com-
munist,
and I was interested to know more about this time in
his life and the
process
of conversion. Arthur was
happy
to be
interviewed but had no real investment in the
outcome,
and
therefore tried to be as
"helpful"
as
possible
in
answering my
questions. By
coincidence,
at that time a Communist Oral His-
tory Project (COHP)
was
looking
for ex-comrades to interview.
Arthur was
eager
to be
involved,
and as our focus
changed
to
collecting
material for the COHP
archive,
Arthur saw more of a
purpose
in our work since the collected material would reach
a wider audience. After
completing
the COHP interviews we
decided to continue
interviewing
with the intention of
making
Arthur's
story
into a book. Our involvement in
QS
and the fact
that I had worked on several
QS
books was what
prompted
us
to continue the
project.
From the start of
interviewing
I was interested in collabora-
tion,
as this was
part
of the
QS
ethos.
QS
is about
co-operation
and communication: for
example,
the
process
of
making
a
QS
book is
collaborative,
with authors and volunteer book-makers
working together
to turn the
manuscript
into a
published
book.
Consequently
our involvement and commitment to the ideals
of
community publishing underpinned
the
project
from the
beginning.
To a certain
degree
it was
unspoken
that we would
collaborate,
although
we never discussed the
degree
and details
of collaboration. With
hindsight
this was a
mistake; however,
to be
fair,
this
project
was from the
beginning
an
experiment,
and the
shifting
focus of the work made these discussions
difficult. This is a
point
I will return to in the final section of this
paper.
I was also interested in Michael Frisch's ideas on shared
authority
and
approaches
to
working
with
people
and their life
stories: "We need
projects
that will involve
people
in
exploring
what it means to
remember,
and what to do with memories to
make them active and alive as
opposed
to mere
objects
of
collection."7
Another
underlying
reason for
my
desire to work collabo-
ratively
with Arthur derived from a
previous project
I had been
7Frisch, p.
27.
A Shared
Authority:
An
Impossible
Goal? 91
involved with at
QS
documenting
the lives of the
Brighton
fishing community.8
This was a
fairly large
oral
history
book
project
for
QS
involving
over 30 narrators and
many project
workers.9 Once the interviews had been
completed,
the narra-
tors read the
transcripts
and
signed
consent
forms;
it was then
left to the members of the
editing
team to select and edit the
extracts for inclusion in the book. One or two of the
editing
team felt that as a
community project
we should involve the
narrators in the
process
of
editing,
but the
majority disagreed
and in
reality
this would have been
impossible:
several narra-
tors died before the book came
out,
and
many
others had no
interest in the
process
and were
happy just
to contribute their
stories. Added to this were tensions between some narrators
and
disputes
over certain stories. We therefore felt it was
logis-
tically impossible
to involve all the narrators in the
editing pro-
cess and to have selected a few would have
implied
that some
narrators were more valuable than others. This
experience
left
me
wondering
to what extent it was
possible
to collaborate and
share
authority
with our
narrators,
and the
project
with Arthur
provided
a
perfect opportunity
to
explore
this.
The
project
with Arthur has
always
been an
independent
project
with no constraints
placed by any university
or
orga-
nization. This has been
liberating
in some
ways:
there were
no time limits and we did not have to adhere to
any organiza-
tion's
policies.
However,
it has also been
constricting
in that
we have had to fit the
project
into our lives whenever there
has been
space;
we received no
funding
to
support
dedicated
time on the
project,
and
apart
from a small
grant
I have had
to cover all
expenses.
The loose nature of the
project
and the
changing
focus has meant that we drew
up
no clear
guide-
lines at the
beginning,
a
point
to which I will return. The
book has been
published by
a London-based
community
publisher, Working
Press,
which underwrote the cost of
print-
ing
and
marketing. Any money
made from book sales will
go
back to
Working
Press to
recoup
costs and fund future
projects.
8
See Lorraine
Sitzia,
"Making
a
Community
Oral
History Book,"
Oral
History,
26:1
(1998):
38-45.
9
QueenSpark Books, Catching
Stories
(Brighton: QueenSpark Books, 1996).
92 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW
Arthur's
Story
A
teenager
in Hull in the middle
years
of the Second World
War,
Arthur could not wait to
sign up
"to
get
at the
Germans,"
but first he saw active
duty
with the British
Army
in India dur-
ing
the
August
1946 Calcutta riots between Hindus and Mus-
lims. Arthur volunteered for
"special
duties": to clear mounds
of
dead,
bloated bodies from the streets of Calcutta. After
being
demobilized in
1948,
Arthur was
increasingly
troubled
by
memories of India. He
began drinking
and
eventually
suffered
his first nervous breakdown.
However,
Arthur was still
desperate
to
fight
for
Britain,
as
the men in his
family
had before
him,
and with the advent of
the Korean War he
again
tried to
sign up
for the British
Army.
Refused admission because of his mental health
status,
he saw
an advertisement for recruits
placed by
the Australian
Army
in
the Hull Gazette and decided to
apply.
After
telling
a few "white
lies" he was
pronounced
"Al
fully
fit" and left
England
in Novem-
ber 1950 for a
six-year
term of Australian
Army
service,
during
the course of which he saw active
duty
in the front-line of Korea.
On
returning
to Australia in the
mid-1950s,
Arthur "became
rather
wild,"
drinking very heavily
with a
gang
of veterans and
getting
into
fights,
and he suffered a series of breakdowns.
During
these
years
Arthur also
began
to
question
his world
view-conservative,
patriotic,
militarist,
imperialist-and
increas-
ingly
found answers in socialism. In 1959 Arthur
completed
his
"conversion" and
joined
the Communist
Party
of Australia.
Arthur returned to
England
in
1961,
where he became
active in the
Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament and the anti-
Vietnam movement. He earned an
undergraduate degree
as a
mature student in the 1970s and became a school teacher. How-
ever,
memories of war were never far
away,
and he continued
to
struggle
with
guilt
about his
military
service. A
predominant
theme in Arthur's life
during
these
years
was the need to find a
"just"
war and be on the
"right"
side,
a
quest
influenced
by
Arthur's romantic view of the
Spanish
Civil War and the Inter-
national
Brigade.
On several
occasions,
Arthur
actively pur-
sued this desire to take arms
against imperialism,
but his ambi-
tion to
fight
for
just
liberation
struggles
was never fulfilled.
After some
teaching
and other
jobs
Arthur retired and he now
A Shared
Authority:
An
Impossible
Goal?
Arthur in
Japan
in 1953
(third
from
right).
lives in
Brighton,
where he is
actively
involved in
QueenSpark
Books. He remains a
socialist,
and became committed to
paci-
fism in 1992.
Uncovering
Arthur's Stories
As
already
mentioned,
my
work with Arthur has
pro-
gressed
in three distinct
stages-first
as an
interviewing
exer-
cise,
then
part
of the
COHP,
and third the
completion
of the
book,
Seeking
the
Enemy.
This
progression
has had a noticeable
impact
on the stories Arthur chose to tell.
While
interviewing
for the
COHP,
Arthur and I worked
from a structured
questionnaire provided by
the
project
and we
stopped
the interviews when we had covered the
specified
areas. I felt that before we continued with more interviews for
our own
project,
I should assess what I had
already
collected
and look for themes and
patterns
that could form
working
chapters,
stories that could be
placed together
to form a coher-
ent narrative. Then I
roughly
edited this material-for
example,
eliminating repetition
and
removing my questions-into
a more
flowing
narrative,
which I then
presented
to Arthur for comment.
93
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:
. .$X =, t1u3;E g.,,.,; <;. ^, 1. .
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.
........ z e. -.o
94 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW
This
rough editing process
allowed us to
identify gaps,
con-
tradictions,
and inconsistencies in the
stories,
or areas that
needed further
exploration.
We drew
up
an
agenda
for further
interviews,
though
this
agenda constantly
shifted and diversified
as
subsequent
interviews raised new themes for
exploration.
These interviews were unstructured and
open-ended,
some-
times
addressing
one
key
theme,
such as Arthur's
personal
rela-
tionships
with women.
Consequently
the book
progressed
in
tandem with these interviews. After each
interview,
I edited the
material into
existing chapters
or new
chapters,
which Arthur
then read and offered comments. We then discussed the revised
draft and decided the next
stage.
Throughout
our work
together,
Michael Frisch's notion of a
"shared
authority,"
in which the interviewer and narrator share
responsibility
for and
authorship
of the final
narrative,
was a
guiding principle.10
As a
result,
Arthur was involved in all
stages
of the
project
and was an
equal participant
in all discussions
and
decision-making.
This
sharing authority
was a
learning pro-
cess for me and I found it
daunting
to share
my writing
and
interpretations, mainly,
in
retrospect,
for fear of
offending
or
upsetting
Arthur.
Yet,
this
dialogue
was
important
for both me
and
Arthur,
and increased the level of trust between
us,
as well
as
highlighting
areas of
misinterpretation
on
my part.
In addi-
tion,
Arthur's
knowledge
of
life-history
work
gained through
his involvement with
community publishing
meant that he
wanted to be involved and saw his involvement as a natural
part
of the
process.
This constant
dialogue
between me and Arthur enriched
the
process
of
working
on another's life
story.
I
quickly
moved
from
being
an interviewer to a facilitator in
helping
Arthur
uncover his
past.
The
development
of the
dialogue
within the
process
was
only possible through
our
relationship.
The
Relationship
and
Remembering
In the oral
history interview,
the
process
of
remembering
does not exist in a
vacuum;
it
develops
in the course of the
o
Frisch, 1990.
A Shared
Authority:
An
Impossible
Goal? 95
dialogue
between the interviewer and narrator in the context of
their
relationship.1 Through
this
dialogue
stories come to be
told in new
ways,
so the
dialogue
can
help bring
out new mean-
ings.
It is
possible
that the
questions guide
the interviewee into
thinking
about an
experience
in a different
way.12
When the
project began,
as I have
mentioned,
I had known
Arthur for
many years
and this "insider" status allowed me
access to Arthur. However I was an "outsider" in
many ways:
I
had not
experienced
war,
I had not suffered mental
trauma,
I
am not a
man,
and I am
thirty-eight years younger
than Arthur.
The fact that we
already
knew each other
may
have had an
impact
on what Arthur chose to tell me in the
beginning.
It is difficult
to
judge
now after
interviewing
over such a
long period
of
time,
because as the interviews
progressed
our
friendship developed
and each of us
opened up
to the other.
However,
a
good
friend-
ship
is not
enough
to
generate productive
and useful interviews.
Over the
years
distinct factors have
emerged
that contributed
to this
process
and made Arthur feel comfortable in
telling
me
his
story.
Of
these,
the
following
are
particularly significant:
shared
interests,
family background,
and
specific
life events.
Our shared interests were
very important.
We had a work-
ing relationship
at
QS.
I had interest in
Communism,
and we
shared a
general political viewpoint.
Arthur has a
political
story-his
conversion-that he wanted to tell and he had a
cap-
tive audience in me.
The similarities in our
family backgrounds
formed the most
important
connection. Both our families are
working-class
and
from the north of
England,
and indeed Arthur's
family
is from
the same area of Hull as
my
mother's
family.
Both our families
worked in the North Sea
fishing industry.
Class is a connection
Arthur mentioned
frequently
in
conversation;
it allowed him to
discuss his
background
more
easily.
Other
significant
factors
were
my
own
semi-military upbringing
and
my having
lived
overseas in countries
important
to Arthur's
story.
The
danger
in
"lPortelli, 1991; Marjorie Shostak,
"What the Wind Won't Take
Away"
in Personal
Narratives
Group, Interpreting
Women's Lives: Feminist
Theory
and Personal Narrative
(Bloomington:
Indiana
University
Press,
1989);
Valerie
Yow,
"Ethics and
Interpersonal
Relationships
in Oral
History
Research," Oral
History Review,
22:1
(1995):
51-66.
'2Alessandro
Portelli,
"Oral
History
as Genre" in
Mary
Chamberlain and Paul
Thomspon (eds.),
Narrative and Genre
(London: Routledge, 1998).
96 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW
this shared
experience
is that sometimes I did not
challenge
Arthur,
or I
accepted
certain
explanations
because
they
fit into
my
own
understandings
or beliefs. On the other
hand,
our friend-
ship provided
me with access to
parts
of Arthur that others
would not have had. As Valerie Yow has
emphasized,
oral histo-
rians need to be self-reflective and
self-critical,
and to think
carefully
about how our own
background
affects which
ques-
tions are not
being
asked and
why they
are not
being
asked.l3
If
Arthur had
political
as well as
personal
motivations for
telling
his
story,
there were also
complex
forces
motivating my
involve-
ment in the
project
that affected
my relationship
with Arthur
and his
story.
As interviewers we become involved in the cre-
ation of a life
story
and can ourselves become affected
by
that
interaction.l4 Like Alistair Thomson I found I had an emotional
investment in
my
work with Arthur: a need for a
grandfather
I
never had.'5
As interviewers we must consider our own motivations and
needs,
as well as those of the
narrator,
when
undertaking
an
oral
history project,
and
especially
if it is a
biographical project.
While there is a
danger
that we will
over-analyze
our own
involvement,
even to the extent of
including
our own life
story,
it is clear that this
relationship
has an effect on what is remem-
bered and the
way
in which the stories are told. It is
impossible
to
say
whether a different interviewer would have
produced
a
"better" or "worse" narrative with
Arthur;
each
relationship
is
unique
and the narrative therefore is a
unique
result of a com-
plex
set of interactions which are further
complicated by
the
intended focus of the
narrative,
and indeed in this case
by
the
process
of collaboration.
The Collaborative Process
For much of the
project
Arthur and I worked well
together;
the interviews
progressed
well and the initial
process
of
putting
13
Valerie
Yow,
"Ethics and
Interpersonal Relationships
in Oral
History Research,"
Oral
History Review,
22:1
(1995):
51-66.
'4
Mary Stuart,
"And How Was It for You
Mary?
Self
Identity
and
Meaning
for Oral
Historians,"
Oral
History,
21:2
(1993):
80-83.
15 Alistair
Thomson,
"Memory
as a Battlefield: Personal and Political Investments in
the National
Military Past,"
Oral
History
Review 22:2
(1995):
55-57.
A Shared
Authority:
An
Impossible
Goal? 97
together
a
manuscript
was also successful. I directed the
pro-
cess,
Arthur
actively participated,
and
disagreements
were
minor and resolved
by
discussion,
with neither
being
dominant.
But as D.E.
Polkinghorne
stated: "We are in the middle of our
stories and cannot be sure how
they
will
end;
we are
constantly
having
to revise the
plot
as new events are added to our lives."16
These words have come to have a
particular significance
for me
in relation to
my
work with Arthur. When our work
began,
and
in fact for about the first three to four
years,
I felt
very pleased
with the
way
the
project
was
progressing.
However as the inter-
views became
complete
and we drew closer to the
publication
of a
book,
Arthur
began behaving aggressively: putting
sub-
stantial
pressure upon
me to work more
quickly, threatening
to
complete
the work with another
editor,
and most
impor-
tantly, raising
issues over
ownership:
"our" book became
only
"Arthur's" book. This situation was made worse
by
the fact that
Arthur was
going through
a severe emotional and mental
health
crisis,
which also meant that he became
very dependent
on
me,
calling
in
varying
states of distress at all times of the
day
and
night.
I felt-and still do feel-a
huge responsibility
for
Arthur and felt I should
help
him resolve this
crisis,
but did not
feel
equipped
to do this.
On
reflection,
these
complications partly
arose because of
the
experimental
nature of the
project:
neither I nor Arthur had
worked in such a collaborative
way
before.
My approach
to the
project
was as an informal
learning experience,
not as a formal
research
study,
and so we had not established
guidelines
or
ground
rules. However in the final
stages
of the
project,
I
became aware of the difficulties
brought by
such a close
per-
sonal
relationship
with the narrator. I now believe that it is cru-
cial to define clear boundaries and
guidelines
when
embarking
on a
project
of this nature. At the
beginning
of this collabora-
tion I directed the work to a
large
extent and
certainly
had a
"voice;"
one
consequence
of this lack of
clarity
is that as the
project progressed
I felt that I
gradually
lost
authority,
that
Arthur became more and more dominant-and in fact
bullying-
and
my
own voice seemed to be lost. I am aware that this is a
16
D.E.
Polkinghorne,
Narrative
Knowing
and the Human Sciences
(Albany: SUNY,
1988).
98 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW
reflection of how I feel
now,
after the
problems
arose;
in retro-
spect,
I believe I was naive in not
anticipating
the
impact
that
publication
of an individual's life
story
can have on that
person,
perhaps especially
someone as
emotionally fragile
as Arthur.
Having
said
that,
other
significant
adverse events occurred in
Arthur's life around this
time,
and it is
impossible
to disentan-
gle
the influence of these from that of the
project upon
Arthur's
condition.
My feelings
of
being powerless
to
help
Arthur were com-
pounded by
the fact that we were friends before we
began
this
project
and there was a mutual
expectation
that the relation-
ship
would continue
long
after the
project
ended;
I saw Arthur
as a friend first and
foremost,
and as a narrator in
my
work sec-
ond. But
changes
in
my
own circumstances
(becoming
a
mother)
meant I no
longer
had the time or mental
energy
to
give
to
Arthur in these latter
stages
of the
project. Equally,
the
length
of time the
project
took to reach
conclusion,
in
particular
a
printing delay
of over a
year, placed
added
pressure
on us both.
It is difficult to know if we would still have encountered this
conflict over
"ownership"
without the trauma Arthur suffered. I
think it was inevitable that there would be some conflict
along
the
way.
For
Arthur,
having
his
story
made
public
was
very
important
to his sense of self and to
presenting
his
identity
as a
political person. Although
I was the facilitator
enabling
this to
happen,
it was not
my story
that would be made
public
and
would come under
scrutiny,
or indeed that would interest
people.
So,
inevitably
the focus was on
Arthur,
and
being
a nat-
ural
performer
he became
completely
absorbed in the interest
people
showed in our
work,
in
"publicity,"
in the
anticipation
of
his circle of
acquaintances. Through
this combination of factors
I became sidelined.
In addition to
working together
on the
book,
in the summer
of 1998 Arthur and I
presented
a
joint
seminar at the
University
of Sussex on the theme of shared
authority. Throughout
the
project
Arthur read
any
articles or conference
presentations
that I
prepared relating
to the
project
and
typically
I included
his comments in the final versions. This
policy
was a conscious
attempt
on
my part
to work
together
as
fully
as
possible
and for
me not to assume
authority
over
Arthur,
to
interpret
"shared
ownership"
in the strictest sense.
However, throughout
the
project
A Shared
Authority:
An
Impossible
Goal? 99
I was aware that I often felt inhibited and anxious in these
pro-
cesses;
I now see that I had a fear of
upsetting
Arthur,
of
per-
haps causing
offense,
and I sometimes shied
away
from chal-
lenging
Arthur,
for
example concerning
his visits to Northern
Ireland that I felt he
glorified.
I did
question
some of his actions
regarding
his
relationships
with
women,
and in fact we did
establish a
dialogue
around
these;
it
may
be
therefore,
that
some of
my
fears were unfounded and a reflection more of
my
own anxieties than of Arthur's.
The
experience
of
presenting
a
paper
at the International
Oral
History
Association conference in 200017
(and
this subse-
quent article)
on
my
own,
without Arthur first
reading
the
text,
has been
liberating
for
me,
enabling
me to address difficulties
and
highlight problems
without undue concern for Arthur's
reaction. The difficulties described above made me reassess the
project
and be more critical and more honest with
myself
con-
cerning
the
process
of collaborative work.
Now,
having
some
distance from the
work,
I can see that I became "lost" in this
idea of
sharing authority
and
making
it a
reality.
I started to see
it as an "all or
nothing"
scenario,
that
everything
had to be
shared,
and this became
very
restrictive,
making
me
question
everything
we were
doing
and
wondering
if there was
any point
to the work. I
began
to
question my
role as a historian: if
Arthur was involved in the
process
of
producing
a book about
his
life,
who would decide what
testimony
would be made
pub-
lic and what would be
kept private,
and what were the
implica-
tions of this on the
history-making process?
This troubled me
throughout
the
project,
but
my
sense is that all
history-making
is selective to some
degree,
and as oral historians we need to be
reflective about what we are
doing
and
open
about the
pro-
cesses in which we
engage. Crucially
we need to
keep
our
project
goals uppermost
in our minds: in this case the aim was to
pro-
duce a collaborative life
history
book between narrator and inter-
viewer to be
published by
a
"political" community publisher.
Inevitably
not all the stories told in the interviews could
go
into the final narrative of the
book,
mainly
because of
17
Lorraine
Sitzia,
"Crossroads of
History: Experience, Memory, Orality," presenta-
tion at the International Oral
History
Association
conference, Istanbul,
Turkey,
June
15-19,2000.
100 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW
sheer volume but also because Arthur did not want some
stories made
public.
However,
I believe that this does not
detract from the
story finally
told. I believe the final narra-
tive has much to
contribute,
not
just
in terms of understand-
ing
the
impact
of war on a so-called
"ordinary"
man,
but also
enabling
us to think about the
complex relationship
between
self,
identity,
and the stories we choose to tell.
Indeed,
there
is an
increasing acknowledgement
that an
understanding
of
the dialectical
relationship
between
memory
and
identity
and the
ways
in which
people
tell their life stories is
impor-
tant in
any
life
history
research.18
By exploring
the
ways
in
which individuals
present
their life stories we can
gain
a
deeper understanding
of the
complex relationship
between
past
and
present
identities,
and the
ways
in which individuals
attempt
to make sense of their lives.19
Equally, by
under-
standing
the connections and interaction between individual
and collective
memory
we can
begin
to see how memories of
events
change
over time for both the individual and
society.20
Employing
Clifford Geertz's idea of "thick
description"
we
can use one
person's
life
story
as the means
by
which not
only
to understand and
investigate
his/her construction of
his/her
stories,
but also as a mode for
understanding
wider
social issues and how these are
played
out in individuals'
lives.21
My experience
in this
project
has not diminished in
my
mind the
importance
of collaborative
projects
but I would not
undertake such a
project again
without
being very
clear
myself
about boundaries. In
particular,
I would want to be clear about
my
role within that
person's
life,
especially
if I
already
had a
relationship
with him or her. I would not allow a
project
to
go
on for as
long
a time as this
one,
and I would allow
myself
the
8
Alistair
Thomson, Anzac Memories:
Living
with the
Legend (Melbourne: O.U.P,
1994);
R. Josselson and A. Lieblich
(eds.),
The Narrative
Study of
Lives: Volume
1,
(Newbury
Park,
California:
Sage, 1993).
19 J.A. Hatch and R. Wisniewski
(eds.), Life History
and Narrative
(London:
Falmer
Press, 1995).
20See R. Perks and A.
Thomson,
The Oral
History
Reader
(London: Routledge,
1998).
21 Clifford
Geertz,
The
Interpretation of
Cultures
(New
York: Basics
Books, 1998);
Ken
Plummer,
Documents
of Life
2
(London: Sage, 2001).
A Shared
Authority:
An
Impossible
Goal? 101
opportunity
to write about the
process
outside of the collabora-
tion,
or be critical of the narrator or
analyze
his or her stories in
ways
he or she
may
not like. I am not sure that it is
possible
to
have a shared critical
perspective
with our
narrators,
or that it
would be desirable to do
so;
it is the narrator's
story,
it is
per-
sonal to him or
her,
and as interviewers our
interpretations
are
affected
by age, gender,
and
subsequent understandings
of the
past.
But I believe now that it is
important
to realize that
many
products
are
possible
from one
project,
and
perhaps embracing
this
concept
frees us from the inevitable restrictions that come
with shared
authority.
I now see the book as
only
one
product
of our work
together,
and I feel free to
explore aspects
of our
work in which I am interested
independent
of
Arthur,
in the
same
way
that Arthur is free to use our work for
performances
and
readings independent
of me. At least to some extent we
have arrived at a
point
where we can both own the
project
in
our own
ways. Despite
all the
problems
encountered I do feel
our
principle
of shared
authority
led to a
exciting, stimulating,
and successful
collaboration,
and in this
spirit
I will conclude
with a comment made
by
Arthur to the draft of a
previous
paper:
"'shared
authority'
is in this case dead
right,
I think as well:
we both had to use different accents and meet in the middle."