The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Oral Public History

by Alessandro Portelli

Portelli offers a new and challenging approach to oral history, with an interdisciplinary and multicultural perspective. Examining cultural conflict and communication between social groups and classes in industrial societies, he identifies the way individuals strive to create memories in order to make sense of their lives, and evaluates the impact of the fieldwork experience on the consciousness of the researcher. By recovering the value of the story-telling experience, Portelli's work makes delightful reading for the specialist and non-specialist alike.

Genres: History, Oral History, Theory, Italy, European History, Nonfiction

358 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1990

About the author

Alessandro Portelli, nato a Roma nel 1942, è considerato tra i fondatori della storia orale. Professore di Letteratura angloamericana all’Università «La Sapienza» di Roma, ha fondato e presiede il circolo Gianni Bosio per la conoscenza critica e la presenza alternativa delle culture popolari. Collabora con la Casa della Memoria e della Storia di Roma e con «il manifesto», «Liberazione» e «l’Unità».

Reviews

[Riley Sutherland · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book on the theory of history. Period. By walking us through his oral histories, Portelli walks us through WHY people choose to deliberately change temporalities (horizontal and vertical) in their recollections of traumatic events. He also shares the political challenges of oral history: for instance, what does it mean to interview, say, fascists? Will that alienate you, as a liberal revolutionary, from your own networks? How can you balance political, professional, and personal relationships with ethnographic research? As I tackle an ethnographic/historical study of my hometime, I am going to keep thinking about this every day...

[Alison]

This is a collection of (academic) essays about oral history that combine analysis, examples, a brief history of Italian and US labor in specific settings, and at times even advice. The author, Alessandro Portelli, has had a fascinating academic life -- he has taught English (language) and American literature in Italy, where he was born. And he is one of the most famous and influential practitioners of oral history, including the oral history of his own hometown (Terni, in Italy). Judging from one of the essays in this volume, he's also a musicologist.

The book starts with three chapters on methodology -- these were the most interesting and important to me, since I've been trying to think through how to make sense of oral histories without any real training in the field. A second section then provides specific studies, using oral history, from Terni (Italy) and from Harlan (Kentucky, USA). The final section looks at oral history and law (trials) and oral history and literature (based on an experiment he conducted, teaching Absalom, Absalom! to English-language learners in Italy.

First let me just say: Wow, all respect to Portelli, What a fascinating man, what a creative and boundary-crossing thinker. Literature, history, folk songs, law -- he's some kind of intellectual "renaissance man."

He opens with the story of Luigi Trastulli, a young man who was killed by the police during a protest in 1949. His shift mates and he spilled out of the factory where they worked, ready to take to the streets to protest ... Italy joining NATO. But this was only one moment in a series of tensions experienced by the workers in Terni in the middle of the 20th century -- there were longer-running protests throughout the late 40s and early 50s that culminated in protests of mass layoffs in 1953. In many workers memories of that period, Trastulli's death became transferred from 1949, when documentary evidence proves it occurred, to 1953, when a more 'fitting' context for such a death was provided (mass layoffs).

Portelli isn't shy with The Point -- at least what became the most meaningful point to me (there are many others that someone else might care about more): He comes right out on page 2 and lays it all bare: he will show us how "'wrong' tales, like the many versions of Trastulli's death, are so very valuable. They allow us to recognize the interests of the tellers, and the dreams and desires beneath them." And then, further on the same page: "The oral sources used in this essay are not always fully reliable in point of fact. Rather than being a weakness, this is however, their strength: errors, inventions, and myths lead us through and beyond facts to their meanings."

There are many gems here -- different people will find different things. Essays on folk songs, on sport, on company towns. I'm not going to go through them all or try to relay the most important topics here, as one would in an academic review. I'm just noting down a few elements that were especially significant to me.

Equality and difference in field research.
"An inter/view is an exchange between two subjects: literally a mutual sighting. One party cannot really see the other unless the other can see him or her in turn. The two interacting subjects cannot act together unless some kind of mutuality is established. The field researcher, therefore, has an objective stake in equality. ... Equality, however, cannot be wished into being. It does not depend on the researcher's goodwill but on social conditions" (31). Here Portelli touches on a very painful subject with great delicacy but also forthrightness. Researchers (and people in general) are implicated in structures they didn't create and are not individually responsible for. It can be very frustrating to feel trapped in those structures when one's individual sentiments and values reject the worldviews that helped create them. But that doesn't make them disappear.

I loved this insight: "Only equality prepares us to accept difference in terms other than hierarchy and subordination; on the other hand, without difference there is no equality – only sameness, which is a much less worthwhile ideal. only equality makes the interview credible, but only difference makes it relevant" (43). This is the kind of observation (the difference between equality and sameness) that seems obvious once you've read it, but I couldn't have articulated it like this.

Finally, I loved the way Portelli invited us to put to use in interpreting and understanding oral history the very skills we all develop as readers of literature. "There are no 'false' oral sources. Once we have checked their factual credibility with all the established criteria of philological criticism and factual verification which are required by all types of sources anyway, the diversity of oral history consists in the fat that 'wrong' statements are still psychologically 'true,' and that this truth may be equally as important as factually reliable accounts" (51). I think it's important to point out here that Portelli is not advocating for a "my truth" vs. "your truth" world in which facts are insignificant and people can just assert things they want to believe and refuse to acknowledge evidence to the contrary. Rather, he is reminding us that the inaccuracy of memory can lead us to insights: "Memory is not a passive depository of facts, but an active process of creation of meanings. Thus, the specific utility of oral sources for the historian lies, not so much in their ability to preserve the past, as in the very changes wrought by memory. These changes reveal the narrators' effort to make sense of the past and to give a form to their lives" (52)

In sum: I learned a lot. This book was a gift from my husband who learned about it from a student who he claims said it was the best history book she ever read. I'm grateful for the recommendation!

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Angelo Ventura, ‘an arbitrary use of oral sources, without controls and scientific guarantees, allows them to be used instrumentally to serve political ends.’ These words were a warning against young, activist, ‘barefoot’ oral historians.

Cool - I am now motivated to start my oral history interviews - I want to use them for those ends and I guess I'm young - although I would add that I do wear shoes :)

Edit: well technically socks right now - but ykwim.

[Ariel Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a slow read, but very interesting perspective on oral history.

[Alexandra Smithie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually amazing book

[Alex Minovici · Rating 5 out of 5]

he is everything

[Tobi ﾄﾋﾞ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though it doesn't quite reach the heights of a perfect rating due to its unnerving HUGE amount of constant information after information after information, this book deserves credit for its effort in presenting complex concepts in a fathomable manner. It might have some shortcomings, and maybe the author could’ve taken some time to breathe, but its contribution to shedding light on something important and rarely spoken about.

[Gretel]

I did like being able to read this book and find all these sections that are repeatably referred to in everyone else's work. Though the first half of the book was more relevant than the later.