Goethe-Institut, Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 1-2 March, 2020
Oral History at the Intersection of Politics and Identity
The conference focuses on the intersections of identity and politics when seen from individual perspective through oral histories. It will explore how the place, language and gender shape the frameworks of identity and how politics of memory keeps reconstructing these frameworks. Ordinary voices that often get displaced in such political reconstructions, offer an alternate narrative showcasing the interplay between memory and identity and enabling us to understand how such oral memories can challenge the conformities imposed by the political reconstructions of memories and identities. Constructing multiple narratives through oral histories, thus, can be a catalyst in questioning such impositions and can also contribute effectively to collective struggle against discriminations and exclusions, and creating awareness about the diverse nature of memory and history. While doing so, the conference also will reflect on what it means to identify as oral historian.
Sub-themes:
- Migration and displacement
- Gender and conformity
- Space, place and identity
- Politics of memory
- Oral history and activism
- Who is the oral historian? – Reflections