A Life From The Threshold: Feminism, Emotion and Oral History. Teresa Hortensi i Bosch
Laia Fernández Bernalte University of Barcelona
Journal Issue: Oral History and Emotions (2018)
Abstract
History is a form of knowledge that seeks to understand a reality that can no longer be directly observed and analyzed. Unlike traditional historical practice, which was mainly interested in establishing the veracity of documents as “irrefutable truths” of what happened, new historians are concerned with finding the relationship that emotions have with reality, which they consider as trace evidence of human activity. But this is no simple task: how can emotions be studied? Although the answer is susceptible to controversy, in this article I will highlight the value of emotions in the study of history since, perhaps this way, we will be able to approach traditional historical themes from a new perspective.