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Recording W A M M 's Oral History
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Shea Peeples, W A M M
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Oral history is history from the ground up, from the inside out. It is the recording of people’s memories, usually on audio or videotape. Reading and writing are an important part of life, but they tend to be solitary. We are social beings, and in telling our history to another, we are in closer communion.
Oral history is a particularly a good way for women to record their stories. Women’s internalized oppression tells us we are stupid, inarticulate, and the victims, not the agents, of history. Oral history subverts those messages; we know our own lives and we know how to communicate.
Oral history is the original way we human beings have passed on our individual and collective experiences. The tradition of written history is, in part, the story of technology distancing us from our inherent means of preserving knowledge, wisdom, and community. At its worst, written history can intellectualize, overemphasize individuality, or depersonalize, objectify, and essentialize, bolstering various modes of injustice.
All oral history contributors are authorities, and in creating and consuming oral histories, we are brought together. Oral history sharpens our minds and our democratic awareness and readily engages our hearts. The recording and consuming of oral histories is profoundly humanizing.
Oral history is a valuable means of preserving the history of an organization, particularly an organization that is nearing the quarter-century mark. What can we learn from the women who founded Women Against Military Madness (WAMM)? What are WAMM’s successes and pitfalls? What do WAMM’s members have to tell us about ourselves? What will we hear from the young people entering WAMM now? An organization like WAMM has an important role in society, and we need to preserve the institutional and personal wisdom of our constituency in order to maintain continuity in our purpose and figure out how we want to proceed.
As resistors of injustice and war, we who are alive now have experienced social movements based on ideology and on the false perception of homogeneity. Now our movement is stymied by the gift that we comprise narratives in the plural, which we must recognize, record, and justify so we can grow stronger in the movement towards actual peace and resistance to injustice. The WAMM oral history project will help us do this. In recording our oral histories, we will reach out to one another in WAMM in a new way. With a finished project, we can reach out to broader communities with our stories in very exciting, movement-strengthening ways.
There are four generations of WAMM constituents working together for justice and transformation—let’s do some recording. |
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W A M M Action
WAMM is raising funds for an oral history project. Your participation and feedback are encouraged!
Do you:
• Wish to be interviewed?
• Want to donate funds?
• Have fundraising ideas or know-how?
• Know a documentary filmmaker?
• Want to volunteer?
Contact the WAMM office at 612-827-5364 for more information, to volunteer, or to offer suggestions.
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© 2004 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete July/August 2004 Index - click here
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