Family photos, oral narratives, and identity formation: The Ukrainians of Berisso

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 84, Issue 1, 2004, Pages

  James, Daniel ^a,b   Lobato, Mirta Zaida ^c,d  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Center for the Study of History and Memory

^c UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES   (Argentina)

^d Interdisciplinary Program in Women's Studies

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949945949     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-84-1-5     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Carlo Ginzburg, Mitos, emblemas, indicios: Morfología e historia (Barcelona: Gedisa, 1994)
2. Interview with Juan Ciuper, Berisso, August 1987
3. Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Ruderford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990)
4. Fredrik Barth, "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries," in Theories of Ethnicity, ed. Werner Sollors (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1996)
5. For other uses of the concept of ethnic groups, see Fernando Devoto and Alejandro Fernández, "Mutualismo étnico y participación política: Algunas hipóteses de trabajo," in Mundo urbano y cultura popular, ed. Diego Armus (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1990)
6. See Chantal Mouffe, "Por una política de la identidad nómade," Debate Feminista 14 (Oct. 1996)
7. See Mirta Zaida Lobato, La vida en las fábricas: Trabajo, protesta y política en una comunidad obrera, Berisso (1904-1970) (Buenos Aires: Prométeo; Entrepasados, 2001)
8. and Daniel James, Doña Maria's Story: Life History, Memory, and Political Identity (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2000)
9. For an analysis of the complex relationship between narrator and interviewer, see Ronald J. Grele, "La historia y sus lenguajes en la entrevista de historia oral: Quién contesta a las preguntas de quién y por qué," Historia y Fuente Oral 5 (1991)
10. For a specific discussion of the subject related to oral history in Berisso, see James, Dona Maria's Story
11. Luis Priamo, "Fotografía y vida privada (1870-1930)," in Historia de la vida privada en la Argentina: La Argentina plural (1870-1930), ed. Fernando Devoto and Marta Madero (Buenos Aires: Troquel, 1999). The photos that we collected in Berisso - shots of working-class families at rest beside the river, in their houses, in ethnic fiestas, or on their way to work - complicate somewhat Priamo's stimulating argument, which is based above all on an examination of the private life of "the rich and very rich."
12. Roland Barthes, La camera lucida: Nota sobre la fotografía (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1989), 19ff
13. Catherine Merridale, "Muerte y memoria en la Rusia moderna," Entrepasados 12 (1997)
14. Merridale, "Muerte y memoria," 106
15. For an analysis of snapshots, see Lisette Model and Paul Strand, "The Snapshot," Aperture 19, no. 1 (1974)
16. For a suggestive analysis of postcards, see Orvo Bodganoff and Ismo Soderling, "I Feel Such a Longing," in Finnish-American Postcards Exhibition Catalogue (Turku, Finland: Institute of Migration, 1988)
17. Jens Adermann, "Entre la topografía y la iconografía: Mapas y nación, 1880," in La ciencia en la Argentina de entresiglos: Textos, contextos e instituciones, ed. Marcelo Monserrat (Buenos Aires: Manantial, 2000), 103
18. Luis Priamo, H. H. Olds: Fotografías 1900-1942 (Buenos Aires: Fundación Antorchas, 1998)
19. Stuart Hall, "Reconstruction Work: Images of Post-War Black Settlement," in Family Snaps: The Meanings of Domestic Photography, ed. Jo Spence and Patricia Holland (London: Virago, 1991), 153
20. For an engagement with these issues with particular reference to family photos, see Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1997)
21. John Berger, "Usos de la fotografi"a," in Mirar (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1998), 69
22. John Berger and Jean Mohr, Another Way of Telling (New York: Pantheon, 1982)
23. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations (New York: Schoken Books, 1969)
24. For an analysis of family albums and different types of family photographs, see Julia Hirsch, Family Photographs: Content, Meaning, and Effect (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981)
25. and Spence and Hall, eds., Family Snaps
26. Armando Silva, Album de familia: La imagen de nosotros mismos (Bogota: Grupo Editorial Norma, 1998), 30
27. Quoted in John McCole, Walter Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1993), 265
28. Walter Benjamin, "Pequena historia de la fotografía," in Discursos ininterrumpidos, vol. 1, Filosfía del arte y de la historia (Buenos Aires: Taurus, 1971)
29. Benjamin, "The Image of Proust," Illuminations
30. For a commentary on Benjamin's use of the figure of Penelope, see McCole, Walter Benjamin, chap. 5
31. Christian Metz, "Photography and Fetish," October 34 (fall 1985)
32. For an analysis of artifacts, see Alan Riddley, "Artifactos, memoria y sentido del pasado," in Memoria compartida: La naturaleza social del recuerdo y del olvido, ed. David Middleton and Derek Edwards (Madrid: Paidós, 1992)
33. See Silva, Album de familia, 81
34. The importance of certain symbols as elements of Ukrainian cultural identity is emphasized in various studies on Ukrainian emigration to Canada. See especially Visible Symbols: Cultural Expression, among Canada's Ukrainians, ed. Manoly R. Lupus (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Univ. of Alberta, 1984)
35. See Mirta Lobato, "Memorias del pasado, sombras de una nación" (paper presented at the IV Encuentro Nacional de Historia Oral, Buenos Aires, 1999)
36. See Lobato, La vida en la fábrica
37. See also Serge Cipko, "Our Tombs or Our Salvation? The History of Ukrainian Immigration into Argentina in the Interwar Period, 1920-1939" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Alberta, 1995)
38. See Oksana Irena Grabowicz, "Persistence and Change in Values, Attitudes, and Beliefs: A Study of the Ukrainian Community in the United States" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Massachusetts, 1988)
39. Cipko, "Our Tombs or Our Salvation?" 253
40. For the foundation and spread of Prosvita, see entry in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, ed. Volodymyr Kubijovyc (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1984-93)
41. Yuri Slezkine, "The USSR As a Communal Apartment, or How the Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism," in Becoming National, ed. Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), 204
42. On Vidrodzhenia, see Kubijovyc, Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol 5
43. See also John Alexander Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1963)
44. The minutes of Renacimiento in Berisso tell us that the Association of Ex-Combatants handed its records over to the new society. Present at this act were representatives from the headquarters in Buenos Aires, members of Renacimiento (Berisso), Prosvita (Berisso), and the Women's Red Cross. Actas de la Sociedad Renacimiento, 31 July 1938
45. On these synoptic symbols, see Lupus, ed., Visible Symbols
46. Robert Klymasz, "From Immigrant to Ethnic Folklore: A Canadian View of Process and Transition," Journal of the Folklore Institute 10, no. 3 (1973)
47. On the notion of prosthetic mnemonics, see Celia Lury, Prosthetic Culture: Photography, Memory, and Identity (London: Routledge, 1998)
48. and Hirsch, Family Frames
49. Cited in Hall, "Reconstruction Work."
50. Annette Kuhn, Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (London: Verso, 1995), 13
51. Hall, "Reconstruction Work," 155