So-called “oral history” seems to have become the latest fashion among historians. My experience with this phenomenon is that when the person writing the history conducts an interview with the subject, they bring in one or two young people with them to take notes.
Unless the interviewees have the training required to objectively recall their memories, they are free to provide an imaginative retelling — they can say whatever they want, promote themselves or freely criticize others.
Oral histories are published based on a recorded interview and notes, without the verification or controls done at newspapers. Using this approach, publishing two or three books a year is not a problem.
Last year, Chang Wen-lung (張文隆) wrote an article in which he referenced The Sound of White Footsteps: An Oral history of Political Victims and Related Figures (白色跫音：政治受難者及相關人物口述歷史), a collection of political prisoner interviews published in December 2011 by the National Human Rights Museum Preparatory Office.
Chang said two interviewees — Taiwan Association for the Care of the Victims of Political Persecution During the Martial Law Period chairman Liu Chin-shih (劉金獅) and Lee Chi-tsun (李吉村) — had been in prison at the same time and were interviewed by Academia Historica President Chen Yi-shen (陳儀深), who was then an assistant researcher.
Lee, aged almost 90, freely related prison rumors and was suspected of slandering Liu.
Despite this, the book was published without the interviewer having discussed the rumors with Liu, who, not happy with having his reputation destroyed, filed a lawsuit that ended on May 15, 2013, with Lee issuing a statement with corrections in the Commons Daily (民眾日報).
This careless mistake by the museum preparatory office resulted in two political victims, who had spent part of their youth in prison, having to spend part of their old age in court.
Even more absurd was how the office left the published copies uncorrected, only revising the copies yet to be published.
In his article, Chang said: “However, as page 56 in the December 2011 first edition is wrong and slanderous to Mr Liu Chin-shih, how can you just take it out and reprint it?”
Do historians really believe that this kind of “oral history” counts as academic research? The interviewee can describe someone in a way that borders on being slanderous.
I have been described as a clueless freak, Chang Fu-mei (張富美) has been called “empty-headed,” and nothing good has been said about democracy movement pioneer Kuo Yu-hsin (郭雨新), former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良) or former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
The person that conducted the interviews for these oral histories is the same involved in the Liu Chin-shih incident described above. He does not seem to be in the habit of verifying facts. Are the dozen or so books written in this manner really national history?
Peng Ming-min is a former Presidential Office adviser.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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