Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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Chapter 5 • Giuseppe De Sario, Laura Corradi, Patricia Ruiz, Enrica Capussotti<br />
people. Here, at the roots of misunderstanding, a completely different<br />
story is told:<br />
Elidon G.: Roma have done many bad things, they helped the Serbs,<br />
they helped to burn our houses, and they destroyed everything…<br />
Now we are doing the same but… they only helped<br />
the Serbs and not us… we gave them food, we helped them<br />
and they just nothing… No, I cannot understand Roma,<br />
when they were with the Albanians they were good, they<br />
used to say nice things about Albanians… when they were<br />
with Serbs… It is my opinion that they stay where the situation<br />
is better…<br />
Question: Have you ever personally known a Rom?<br />
Elidon: No, I haven’t ever met one…<br />
Question: And how do you know all these things?<br />
Elidon: We know them… Some cousins of mine are in a political<br />
party and they tell us how things happened… all the<br />
Albanians complain about Roma because Roma steal, sack,<br />
beg…<br />
Question: Did you pray together with Roma?<br />
Elidon: No… because Roma have no religion, when they stay with<br />
Albanians they become Muslim, if they stay with someone<br />
else… they have no religion, they have nothing…<br />
It is difficult at this point to draw any definite conclusions, as these pages<br />
represent but a brief reflection on the subject matter. In this paper, I have<br />
tried to map the complex universe shaped by memories and forgetfulness,<br />
from present stances to nostalgia for the past, of individuals and groups.<br />
Certain elements, I believe, are more problematic and need still further<br />
consideration, such as the position of the researcher in the process of<br />
selecting the group of interviewees, and the places and the languages in<br />
which the conversations take place.<br />
One could say that throughout the 1970s, oral history was written from<br />
within a movement which would have liked “to give words” to the subaltern<br />
(the working class, for instance) and women. In our times, however,<br />
oral history is capable of prefiguring the relationships between different<br />
subjectivities and cultures and of revealing the contradictions between the<br />
individual and the community. Oral history can therefore be used to criticize<br />
the mechanism of inclusion and exclusion, and the process of identity<br />
construction based on territories and nationalistic values. The tensions<br />
between the voice of the individual and the dominant discourses of the<br />
public sphere, which legitimize declaration and self position, emerge in<br />
every one of the testimonies, and might serve as a powerful “weapon” with<br />
which to enter the critical debate on public memory and the political use<br />
of the past.<br />
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