Sharing Life-History and Other Memory: The Mining Persons in South Africa, 1951–2011

Abstract

This paper discusses the ways of studying life-history. Its methodology, as indicated here, cannot claim to produce complete and unvarnished life-histories. The interview method employed here acknowledged the autonomy and sensitivity of narrators. The preparation of transcripts only refracted through our empathetic professional approach. A two-pronged comparative reading of oral accounts – against each other and against other literature – reveals how the meaning lying behind and within these life-histories is equally displayed through significant omission, silences, conflicting information and imaginative interpretations. The imaginative invention seen in the narrators' accounts owed, we suggest, not necessarily to free choices made by individuals for creative and imaginative reconciliation with the past and present experiences (contra Portelli 1991). Nor did the collective cultural processes determine it (contra Passerini 2011). The act of remembering by an individual engages with...