35
Sharma also raises in her exploration of whether oral history constitutes a feminist research method, is the arguably uncomfortable notion that women’ s oral history often means privileging some voices over others; these others remain unheard. 19
The oral history component of my research, based on interviews with twelve women, does, in some sense, privilege these voices over many others. My analysis is not only restricted to these twelve women, but also privileges a very particular type of voice – that of the middle class, usually high caste, English speaking, left wing, urban intellectual or activist. Although all of the women I interviewed have made their voices heard over other issues, many have not spoken publicly about their Emergency experiences. Further, oral history is not only about articulating unheard voices. These narratives offer an array of rich details that do far more than simply add women’ s experiences to the existing historical record of Emergency events. They demand that we fundamentally reshape our understandings of this period and particularly, to shift our existing frameworks to position Emergency politics in relation to subjective experience and unexplored, private spaces. This paper now moves to consider these facets to demonstrate that the oral history methodology is central to this project.
Re-framing the Emergency: Personal Histories
Whilst this privileging of particular and individual narratives may appear problematic, many oral historians have embraced precisely this individualistic character in their assertions of its importance. It is here, in the method’ s commitment to‘ multiple truths’, that Portelli locates its merits. 20 Oral historians actively foreground individual subjectivities, the ways in which participants’ constructions of history within their narratives are inevitably shaped by their own experiences, and sometimes function as an exploration of not simply the historical events in question, but their subjective selves and identities. For Portelli,‘ the search for a connection between biography and history, between individual experiences and the transformations of society’ is one of the method’ s defining characteristics. 21 As poststructuralist theorising shook the discipline of history and brought concepts such as objectivity, empiricism and the historical‘ fact’ into question, oral history embraced this emphasis on personal, individualised experience.‘ Measurable or not’ Portelli astutely points out,‘ subjectivity is in itself a fact, an essential ingredient of our humanity.’ 22 This is a crucial aspect of oral history that attracts feminist historians. Foregrounding personal experience in this way questions public and
19 Kumud Sharma, Memory Frames: Oral Narratives from the Women’ s Studies Family( New Delhi: Centre for Women’ s Development Studies, 2005). 20 Portelli, The Battle of Valle Giuila, 65.
21 Ibid., 6. 22 Ibid., 81.