Voices and forms of cultural memory

The Team from Alexander Turnbull Library

Join us to hear Indira Chowdhury discuss Oral History and Postcolonial Archives in India, followed by a facilitated discussion

Date: Friday, 27 July, 2018
Time: 9:30pm to 12:15pm
Cost: $20 RSVP to resourcesnohanz@gmail.com
Location: Te Ahumairangi (ground floor), National Library, corner Molesworth and Aitken Streets, Thorndon
Contact Details: lynette.shum@dia.govt.nz

Oral history in India
This presentation draws on Indira’s attempts over the last decade and a half to create archives of different institutions and organisations. This work has in the context of oral history work undertaken in India.

Consequences of colonialism
Indira's discusses the consequences of colonialism. A colonialism that defined Indians as being steeped in backward traditions and lacking in history. She says that this needs to be kept in mind when trying to assemble an archive of a formerly colonised people.

Critical ways to interpret oral history archive within postcolonial context
Indira argues that the insights gained from interacting with 'unheard voices' enable us to understand elite oral histories from Indian institutions. In what ways do new forms of historical representation incorporate older forms of cultural memory and oral traditions?
This presentation will attempt to show how we might re-understand the idea of collecting an oral history archive and the critical ways in which we might interpret its contents within a postcolonial context.


About the speaker
Indira Chowdhury is Founder-Director of the Centre for Public History at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology, Bengaluru, and the founder of Archival Resources for Contemporary History, Bengaluru (ARCH@Srishti).
She is a founding member of the Oral History Association of India, their past-President and past-President of the International Oral History Association.

Image: Photograph supplied by Indira Chowdhury