Gibraltarian Oral Histories: Walking the Line Between Critical Distance and Subjectivity

ABSTRACT

This essay engages with the position of the researcher when carrying out field work on a subject close to home. If on the one hand familial relationships and intimate connections to the subject, in this case Gibraltar, are important determinants in understanding and analysing the oral histories that will be collected during the lifetime of the project, this proximity also raises questions regarding subjectivity and critical distance. This physical and emotional proximity to the subject also implies that as researcher I occupy more than one space – that of subject (as a Gibraltarian and member of the community I am studying), and that of investigator. Such a quandary has led to a reflexive process that goes well beyond questions of self-narrative and autoethnography to include theoretical thought over the wider context of Gibraltar as a British Overseas Territory and the impact of colonialism and a powerful geopolitical discourse on constructs of identity and a historical past. The oral history project we are currently embarked on offers a far more textured approach for the airing of a previously unheard perspective of history.

KEYWORDS:

• Gibraltar
• colonialism
• postcolonialism
• autoethnography
• self narrative
• oral histories

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Ballantine Perera is the Director of the Gibraltar Garrison Library and is affiliated to the University of Gibraltar as the Director of the Institute for Gibraltar and Mediterranean Studies. She was the Research Associate on the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project ‘Gibraltar Community and Identity’ (2003–2006). With Professor Andrew Canessa, University of Essex, she is the recipient of a major award from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for their project Bordering on Britishness: An Oral History of Gibraltar in the 20th Century, which started in September 2013. Jennifer’s main area of research is Gibraltar, with focus on social and colonial history; constitutional change and expressions of self-determination. Jennifer is the founder Director of Calpe Press, a publishing house dedicated to promoting Gibraltar writings and is the current editor of the Gibraltar Heritage Journal.

Andrew Canessa is an anthropologist at the University of Essex in the UK. Much of his career has been spent studying indigenous people in Latin America, particularly Aymara people of highland Bolivia. He is the author of numerous articles and four books, most recently, Intimate Indigeneities: Exploring Race, Sex and History in the Small Spaces of Live (Duke University Press) and Género, Complementariedades y Exclusiones en Mesoamerica y los Andes <http://www.iwgia.org/ publications/search-pubs?publication_id=572> (with Aida Hernandez—IWGIA and Abya Yala). He is currently working on an ESRC oral history project on Gibraltarian identity.

Notes

1. The contact zone ‘is intended in part to contrast with ideas of community that underlie much of the thinking about language, communication, and culture that gets done in the academy’ (Pratt 37).

2. I am compelled to make reference to Néstor García Canclini, Translators, Renato Rosaldo, Christoper L. Chiappari and Sylvia L. Lopez, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. The strategies outlined refer to a Latin America caught between tradition and modernity and the contradictions that arise by occupying the space between both.

3. See for example broadcaster Manolo Mascarenhas’ ‘Palabras al viento’ aired on Radio Gibraltar during the frontier closure of 1969.

4. See for example William Jackson and Francis Cantos, From Fortress to Democracy: The Political Biography of Sir Joshua Hassan, Grendon, Gibraltar: Gibraltar Books, 1995; Adolfo J. Canepa, Serving my Gibraltar, Gibraltar: Charles G. Trico Printers, 2014; Carmen Gomez, Memories Bound up with Life, Gibraltar: Europa Access Media, 2015.

5. See for example, 75 Years: Gibraltar Honouring a Generation, Gibraltar: HM Government of Gibraltar, 2015, published to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the evacuation. See also ‘AACR urge return of Gib. Evacuees’, Gibraltar Chronicle, December 7^th 1944, 3, and ‘A Hero is Born!’, Gibraltar Chronicle, January 15^th 1945, 2, an article in which we see a shift in nomenclature taking place with evacuees being referred to as exiles.

6. See for example William Jackson and Francis Cantos, From Fortress to Democracy: The Political Biography of Sir Joshua Hassan, and Stephen Constantine, Community and Identity: The Making of Modern Gibraltar since 1704, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009.

7. Documentos sobre Gibraltar Presentados en las Cortes Españolas por el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Madrid: Imprenta del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 1965; The Spanish Red Book on Gibraltar: Gibraltar in the Spanish Courts, Madrid, 1965. The Spanish government issued a Red Book on Gibraltar in reply to the points raised in the White Book on Gibraltar published by the UK Government in April 1965.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Economic and Science Research Council (ESRC) through a research grant awarded in 2012 for the project Bordering on Britishness: A 20^th Century Oral History of Gibraltar.