Written in the objects, beatin g on the spac es. Paulino roa story of life and memory, multiple task neighborg in pipaón (Alava, Spain)

Abstract

The article presents an experimental life story and offers theorethical-methodological reflections about its construction. When Paulino Roa talk about his life, assimilates the character of exceptionality and representativity that social researchers, journalists and neighbors of Pipaón town has granted to him, and following this process, ends up being a character of this story himself. However, his tale lacks of a linear narrative which is a characteristic of the conventional
life stories. Five are the existential spaces where Paulino’s life occurs (vegetable garden, kitchen, workshop-entrance, church and museum), the objects found there organize, thanks
to the memory, a story that condense two superposed temporalities: the immediate present and the daily life -Paulino’s life, his wife, his son, his granddaughter, the town today-; and an actualization of the historic memory of the community -the war, the rural jobs, the splendor of Pipaón and its traditions-. The problems presented during the elaboration of the story are the starting point to explore textual possibilities, innovative and creative, to develop the biographic method in the Anthropology.