<pagem@mtb.und.ac.za>


I share the concerns voiced by both Jane Carruthers and Gretchen Walsh about
distinguishing between heritage and history. Yet I am also somewhat troubled
by Grethen Walsh's distinction between "the raw material, the truly primary
sources" and "narratives," or "folk memory," as respositories of information
and
knowledge about the past.

Walsh describes the former as "contemporary letters and journals, and
government and business records that allow historians to sift through the
minutiae" to arrive at historical understandings. She then says, "if none of
the minutiae of life's records have survived, there is always the folk
memory." In making an implicit, yet still clear, evalution of the relative
worth of these sources, she further observes that "preservers of
heritage...have an easier
time. They know what they want to save, and...often the folk memory is
preferred to the records of the past."

It seems to me this approach unnecessarily privileges the literate ("letters
and journals, and government and business records") over the nonliterate
("folk memory") and cannot, in my experience as a historical researcher, be
sustained; I suspect my experience is not unique among historians, of Africa
at any rate. All too often the "the minutiae of life's records" are little
more than the worst sort of folk memory, inventions which have as their only
claim to
authenticity that they have been written down! It should take little
imagination to see that the writers of such documents often know precisely
"what they want to save" and set about making sure that they do so.

This process is sometimes deliberate but also sometimes less self-conscious.
In fact, such records often take on elements of fantasy which make the supposed
problems with "folk memory" pale in comparison! To take but one extreme
example, would we prefer as historical sources--on the terms outlined by
Walsh--the "letters and journals, and government and business records" of
the South African government and its agents after 1949, or the "folk memory"
of those who lived through the forced removals insisted on by that regime?

In this case would the "folk memory" only best serve the interests of
heritage, and not
of history?

In considering this issue, I am reminded of the quotation attributed to
Mamadou Kouyate in D.T. Niane's rendering of the _Sundiata_ epic, in which
the griot comments on the nature of the history he is about to retell.
"Other peoples," he says, "use writing to record the past, but this
invention has killed the faculty of memory among them." My own experience is
that memory in oral scieties is often quite true to "the minutiae of life's
records" and worthy of serious consideration as history and not merely
relegated to the preserve of heritage.

The principal point, I think, is that historians must always apply what
Walsh refers to as "critical powers of discernment" to many available
sources rather than to assume that some types of evidence have inherent
superiority as sources for historical, as opposed to heritage, studies.

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online

Copyright © 1995-2006 - Contact Us
RSS | Validate: XHTML | CSS