Abstract
Towards an Understanding of Family: Approaches and Analysis
As a member of the Center for Public History, Srishti Manipal Institute, Bengaluru, which organised the Spring School in Family History in 2021, we felt it was time to bring research on family history and its methodologies from different contexts on one platform. Towards this, academics that included oral historians, historians, sociologists, journalists and writers were invited to share their perspectives during the two weeks of the Spring School to bridge disciplinary boundaries and share insights. The editor of this book was one of the invited presenters during the school which was held in an online mode due to COVID restrictions.
In Family memory: Practices, transmissions and uses in a global perspective, edited by Radmila Švaříčková Slabáková, needed attention has been brought to memory as research method and mode of enquiry, making a strong case for expanding the scope of family memory within memory studies and family studies. Portelli fittingly notes in the foreword: ‘This important book offers multiple approaches to the meaning of family histories and stories; the way they are created and passed on; and their interaction with other, public narratives in a plurality of contexts’ (p. xxii). Family memory as much results from an individual as it is dependent on the collective of a family, notwithstanding the absence of a corporeal being in the latter case. The title of the book could be read to suggest both family memory as method and as data, passed onto generations in multiple ways and deeply entwined in individual and collective experiences.
In the introduction, Slabáková (pp. 2–3) reminds the readers of the importance of family memories from developing and shaping individual identities to their role in history-making, thus becoming a site of historiography through their entanglement with national memory. Building on established and seminal concepts on memory, the contributors further the discourse by using oral history, digital ethnography and material culture that can be incorporated as ways of enquiry into family history keeping with the changing structures and functions of modern-day families. Established concepts like the lens of collective memory (Halbwachs 1992), post-memory (Hirsch 2012), psychoanalysis and other conceptualisations form key anchors to analyse family memory, while others introduce newer lens from the Global South. Some chapters are biographical, while others enquire using narratives of others, providing us with a macro view of different ways of doing family history. Most chapters liberally use objects like photographs, postcards, notes, diary entries, memoirs and recipes to build narratives. These objects often act as repositories of memories and trigger recall in a multitude of ways. The book is divided into four sections, each offering an insight into the practices and transmissions of family memory. The first section, titled ‘Private and Public Practices of Building Family Memory’, focuses on the formulation of family identity, or identities, from family memories which are entangled in the social context and public history. The chapters in this section draw on the narratives from Italy, Brazil and South Africa beginning with Barbara Ronchetti, who brings out the female voice in connecting the past to the present generations. Through material culture and oral tales, she brings into ‘dialogue’ five generations of women in her family. Giselle Martins Venanzio’s chapter looks at how family memories of a ‘famous’ person are shaped through public documents and testimonials. The role of traditions in keeping family close-knit across generations is highlighted in Radikobo Ntsimane’s chapter. These bring out aspects of family history challenging our Western-centric understanding of what constitutes a family and the multiple ways in which family narrative is constructed.
The next section, ‘Intergenerational Transmission of Social and Political Values’, investigates the formation and stabilisation of these values over generations and their relation to the official narrative, sometimes aligning but at other times disrupting it. The chapters here draw from stories of communism in Eastern Europe and South America, to bring out dimensions of the intergenerational transfer of memories. Through stories of communist Czechoslovakia from present-day Czech Republic, Radmila brings out the meaning that is attached to family memories and is always part of the larger socio-cultural narrative. Her chapter offers points of intersection between family and state discourse. Ilia Iliev analyses biographical interviews from another research conducted in a village in Bulgaria to throw light on patterns of memories of the older generation, and how the intergenerational connections are made to one’s lineage and life trajectory. Pilar Domínguez Prats uses the concept of post-memory to consider the influence of parents’ accounts of events on the memories of second-generation women who arrived in Mexico after the Spanish Civil War and the consolidation of ‘political and social values’ transmitted intergenerationally. Their life stories suggest the importance of family photographs and the role of family as a collective memory unit brought out through oral history.
The section titled ‘Family Memory of Violent Events and Genocide’ throws light on how personal memories of violent events intertwine with the larger state narrative. Öndercan Muti’s chapter on the Armenian genocide in Turkey uses post-memory and collective memory to make sense of traumatic experiences of the past conveyed through family members, and the gendered role in this conveyance with women emerging as the ‘kinkeepers’. Philippe Denis focuses on the Tutsis’ persecution in Rwanda to examine the role of family in the development of political consciousness even before the conflict occurred. The chapter highlights memories of victims and perpetrators alike, linking them to a ‘chain of family memories’. Zbyněk Vydra’s chapter is interesting for its exploration of family memories of country homes of aristocratic families by examining the memoirs of those who went into exile, juxtaposing it with the memoirs of those still in Russia. The coming together of intergenerational labour in the creation of these memoirs is a methodological insight that considers these homes as ‘a site of memory’. The fourth and final section, ‘Family Memory, Family Identity and Digital Media’, brings attention to families that were displaced or migrated. Anna Green draws on oral stories and archival records to understand the genealogy and identity of settlers in New Zealand. The idea of ‘communicative memory’ is the underlying concept in what the elders of the family choose to remember and narrate and through it provide a direction to the next generation. Indira Chowdhury digs into her own family’s archive in the form of curated family albums and state documents like the passport, to understand an event, the partition of India in this case, along the dual lines of one’s memory and the state’s need to assign citizenship. Finally, Anne Heimo’s field is a social media site, Facebook, that brings to attention the ‘everyday practice’ of family memories in the digital age. Examining the online creation and sharing of family memories on Facebook, she likens it to oral communication, thereby bringing us full circle by connecting forms of orality in the digital age.
The heuristic theoretical frameworks that the chapters offer are insightful and further the discourse in memory studies, bringing to attention the role of family memory. The scholarly essays traverse contexts, disciplines and methodological boundaries to offer a truly global perspective on traditions of doing family history with a focus on memory. Their application in South Asia will open a plethora of possibilities from diverse contexts, further adding to the methodology. As can seldom be said of academic books, the chapters in this book are fascinating and thought-provoking to read either independently or collectively. This book will be beneficial to researchers, scholars and teachers in the humanities and social sciences. This book will also be of relevance to those interested in family history as it provides a different lens through which one can approach and understand family structures, what is remembered, what is omitted and the ways in which it is narrated. The significance of this book to memory studies cannot be stressed enough.