Frisch

To complete the reading of Frisch’s Shared Authority, we see his dissection of the use of oral history in various elements of public history. In this analysis, as in many of the readings this semester, we see the power struggles between academic and public history. Oral histories are at the base of this struggle because it is the public’s recorded memory and not the physical documents that historians are traditionally familiar with.

In this reading, oral history is presented as a “source for change” and a “source of resistance to change.” (2) Whenever there is information that invokes change, there will most likely be an opposing party. Most people are uncomfortable with change, ideas, and theories that take them out of their comfort zone. However, Frisch identifies that “the hegemony of scholarly authority…must be challenged and often qualified, but not by rejecting the insights of scholarship by definition.” (xxi) Since history is not stagnant, it is important to recognize and analyze the elements that can help us “learn about the process of change.” (192) In the Hard Times essay Frisch quotes Henry Resnick’s that oral histories ‘put us back in touch with our elemental humanity.’(6)

Humanity is an interesting term here and I think it brings us back to the heart of why oral histories are so important. That human touch; a personal story allows historians to go to a point in time and share an experience with another human being. Even though I can appreciate the feeling of researching historical documents and I do not refute their necessity, speaking with an individual about their personal experience as history brings about another experience all together and it makes history real.

Therefore, it becomes the historian’s obligation to provide context for oral histories so that they are not dismissed as useless documentation. Sorry to be so quote heavy, but I think this excerpt sums up this obligation perfectly so I end presenting it in its entirety.

“We must listen, and we must share the responsibility for historical explication and judgment. We must use our skills, our resources, and our privileges to insure that others hear what is being said by those who have always been articulate, but not usually attended to. Only in this way can the arrogance of the powerful be confronted by the truth of another reality, by those history-makers whose consciousness provides the record of that reality and the measure of its challenging power.” (71)