Memory, Orality and the Archive:  Crafting history from below

John Chircop

In this monograph, John Chircop explores the intricate intersection between collective memory – conveyed through – orality, and the archive. Taking a radically critical view of the traditional archive as a social construct, having been deeply implanted in the prevalent power structures, shaping and legitimizing the elites’ version of the past, this work elaborates, both theoretically and methodologically, strategies which one seeking to reconstruct a more authentic and inclusive history from below needs to employ. Across all chapters, Orality – in its wealth of expressions, from storytelling to folk-singing – is presented as a vital instrument, preserving and conveying a depth of cultural and social collective memory. Oral traditions and oral histories are here valued as indispensable for a reconceptualization of our past – as well as for a profound rethinking of our present ‘human condition’ – which prioritizes shared memories of the labouring poor, women and other subaltern groups, whose histories have been marginalised, their lives made invisible and their voices repressed. Building on this thesis, a key chapter provides a critical analysis of the state and the ruling classes’ appropriation of local folk-singing, expediently misrepresenting it as a ‘classless national tradition’. Instead, this work offers a reinterpretation of ghana, grounded in its proper historical social terrain and the cultural realm of the subaltern – rendering it a profound repository of their collective memory, philosophy of life, and conception of the past. The remaining chapters in this volume discuss how to bring to the surface and explore the depth of this subjugated knowledge and related histories of the “common people”. It is argued that the use of oral history, on-site ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative research in multiple ‘ordinary records’, ephemera, and material objects – accompanied by a ‘contrapuntal reading’ of archival records – are essential not only to craft a ‘history from below’, but also to reclaim the collectively cherished notion of the ‘past’ as a common good.