Alessandro Portelli > Quotes

“An inter/view is an exchange of gazes, persons both seeing and listening to each other.”
― Alessandro Portelli

“The interview gives us access not to the experience but to a verbal rendition of the memory of that experience, generated by the presence of the interviewer.”
― Alessandro Portelli

“An interview, then, is a moment in a relationship between times: the time of the events, the time of the telling, and, when we factor in the archive, the time of listening.”
― Alessandro Portelli

“it is important that we enter the interview with a great degree of flexibility, ready not only to accept the narrator’s agenda but also to modify our own.”
― Alessandro Portelli

“The inter- view is about the past—like all other historical sources, it provides us with factual information that can be verified and critically scrutinized—but is of the present...These are living voices, voices that speak with us now”
― Alessandro Portelli

“…but the image of a “fatal” disappearance of the “vanishing American” allows Indian ancestry - as opposed to African American “blood” - to function as nostalgia and pride rather than shame. Somehow, by claiming the Indians as ancestors, whites can legitimate as lawful inheritance the taking of their land.”
― Alessandro Portelli, They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History

“The interview, then, is a historical and social event ... In the interview, we are the coauthors, the cocreators of a document that, to some extent, is about us as well as about the persons we interview.”
― Alessandro Portelli

“The interface between the natural and the supernatural is death. In Harlan, the culture is imbued with the awareness that “death could come at any time” … Because death is always at hand, the culture centers on the struggle to stay alive: survival, indeed, is not just a word. I have always admired the way in which people fight back under great odds and survive, especially in the United States, where one is not supposed to up against impossible odds. Harlan County does not display much pursuit of happiness. But you see there the persistence of life in the face of danger and death.”
― Alessandro Portelli, They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History

“oral history is ultimately ... a document that we do not find but rather cocreate inside the interview”
― Alessandro Portelli

“The handling of poisonous snakes in church is a test of faith and grace, just as catching them in one’s yard is a test of prowess and courage. The deathly presence of the snake parallels the daily danger in the mines, and the culture takes a sort of ironic pride in its ability to handle it. … The snake is both something radically other and a household presence.”
― Alessandro Portelli, They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History

“The interview is two things at once: a tool for research, and the opening of a narrative space.”
― Alessandro Portelli

“The root meaning of the word dialogue is “to speak across,” “to speak beyond.” This suggests that the crucial element is space, both social and geo- graphic: the distance, the difference, the otherness between the two partners involved”
― Alessandro Portelli

“The interview is not a question-and-answer session, but the offer of a narrative possibility”
― Alessandro Portelli