Commentary: The Elaboration of What Has Been Lived

Abstract

This chapter comments on the previous three chapters of The Unexpected in Oral History: Case Studies of Surprising Interviews, authored by Luiza Porto, Steven High, and Ann Cvetkovich. It discusses how unexpected events create situations that direct the rememorating process into stories that had not yet been elaborated upon or, for some reason, were silenced. The chapter also highlights memory work as the thread that enables the formulation of experience into a narrative—thus, the framing of recollections that once were, but are not anymore, silenced.