"Story is the only real thing you have in your hands". Interview with Bruno Bonomo and Sandro Portelli on oral history and generational belongings

The author’s interview to Sandro Portellli e Bruno Bonomo clears up how the subjectivity of the two scholars is reflected in their personal relation with oral history and oral sources. The dialogue is most of all centred on aspects that reveal the influx of generational belonging on their work of oral historians: the force of the militant approach of the origins in Portelli, a protagonist and pioneer of that political and cultural battle, as against the “lay” detachment of Bonomo, an exponent of the new generation of today’s scholars operating in a context of academic specialisation and legitimation of oral sources. Yet the interview indicates further differences not quite immediately referable to a generational subjectivity: differences concerning on the one hand the minute craftsmanship of oral history researchers, first of all the field relation with the interviewed, and on the other the methodical questions involved in the analysis of interviews.

Keywords: Oral history, oral sources, subjectivity, generational belonging, method of analysis of interviews

Francesca Socrate, "L’unica cosa concreta che hai in mano è il racconto" Intervista a Bruno Bonomo e Sandro Portelli su storia orale e generazioni in "ITALIA CONTEMPORANEA" 275/2014, pp 313-330, DOI: 10.3280/IC2014-275006