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ORAL HISTORY AS AN ENACTMENT OF CRITICAL COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY
Author(s) -
Seedat Mohamed
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.585
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1520-6629
pISSN - 0090-4392
DOI - 10.1002/jcop.21690
Subject(s) - praxis , oral history , sociology , critical consciousness , discipline , transformative learning , psychosocial , realm , identity (music) , psychology , consciousness , gender studies , power (physics) , social psychology , aesthetics , social science , political science , pedagogy , psychotherapist , anthropology , law , philosophy , neuroscience , physics , quantum mechanics
I describe an oral history project as an enactment of critical community psychology that was triggered by an academic and social impulse, stirred by a South African liberatory moment that legitimated recovery of marginalized voices and community knowledge as part of a process of affirming community self‐identity. Oral history was positioned as a performance, a collection of historical materials, a transformative force linking the past to the present to interpret social conditions, and a generative modality for establishing community, evidence of the implicit shaping influences of Black Consciousness on enactments of psychosocial praxis at a particular South African moment. The description briefly draws attention to ambiguities arising from oppressive psychosocial scripts and the repressive authority of disciplinary power on the enactments of oral history, so as to offer a critical voice to forthcoming dialogues about how to place project materials, collected two decades ago, within the public realm.