Memory, Remembering, and Oblivion in Active Narrative Interviewing

Research interviewing is not just a practice of exchanging data through communication and collection. Rather, the qualitative interview is an active process in which participants and researchers take part in a situated co-construction of meanings and memories. In this article, I argue for viewing me...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Qualitative inquiry 2014-02, Vol.20 (2), p.127-135
Main Author: Gemignani, Marco
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Commodities
Communication
Epistemology
Interviews
Memory
Narratives
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Summary:Research interviewing is not just a practice of exchanging data through communication and collection. Rather, the qualitative interview is an active process in which participants and researchers take part in a situated co-construction of meanings and memories. In this article, I argue for viewing memories and the acts of storing, accessing, and telling the past as relational processes in which the researcher’s position shifts from collector to co-constructor. Moving away from seeing participants as “informational commodities” and data as merchandise, I problematize the assumption that participants’ memories may simply be accessed through narratives, which serve as sources of “data.” I suggest that a possible way to gain a complex view on memory and remembering is by focusing on both the told and the untold, the remembered and the forgotten. From this epistemological viewpoint, a narrative focus on the untold and forgotten contributes to the constructive potential of the inquiry process.
ISSN:1077-8004
1552-7565
DOI:10.1177/1077800413510271