Telling our stories: feminist debates and the use of oral history

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines some of the current methodological and theoretical debates encountered by feminist historians utilising oral history, with illustrations from oral history research on wage-earning women in a small Canadian manufacturing city. After reviewing some of the literature which has indicated how we might use oral history as a means of exploring the construction of historical memory, the article examines some of the ethical questions involved in using oral sources, and emphasises the need for historians to take full account of issues of long-standing concern to other social scientists. It then examines some of the current theoretical debates surrounding historians. use of interviews, particularly the difficult concept of experience and the current emphasis on deconstructing the oral text with the use of post structuralist theories. Using women's stories of a major textile strike in 1937 as an illustration, the article argues for a feminist oral history which is enlightened by post-stru...