Orality and Oral Tradition

The text argues for the centrality of orality as a foundational and persistent mode of knowledge transmission, challenging its historical marginalization within academic and institutional frameworks dominated by writing. Oral tradition is presented as a vast repository of knowledge that includes events, experiences, values, and perspectives absent from written records, often constituting the last refuge of endangered information encoded in threatened languages or emerging from contexts of censorship and marginalization. It is described as the channel of "small histories," dissident voices, and subordinated identities, functioning as a space where excluded or silenced groups preserve and articulate their memory. At the same time, the text underscores the fragility of these oral systems, particularly when transmission chains are weakened by social pressures, discrimination, or generational rupture.

Within this framework, the analysis critically examines the limitations of traditional library models, which prioritize written and "authorized" sources and thereby reproduce partial and exclusionary representations of collective memory. Library collections tend to reflect the perspectives of those with the capacity to produce and legitimize written discourse, while other voices remain underrepresented or entirely absent. The incorporation of oral tradition is thus framed not as a supplementary task but as a necessary transformation toward a more plural and inclusive understanding of memory. However, the text emphasizes that documenting oral materials is insufficient if they are detached from their living contexts, as this reduces them to static records and disrupts their dynamic processes of transmission, reinterpretation, and use.

The final sections propose an active and socially committed role for libraries in the recovery, preservation, and revitalization of oral heritage, particularly in urban contexts where traditional transmission channels are under threat. Drawing on international frameworks concerning intangible cultural heritage, the text calls for concrete actions that include the integration of oral collections, the promotion of oral practices, and the support of community practitioners as "living books." It highlights the potential of interdisciplinary approaches and digital humanities to provide new tools and perspectives, while also stressing the need for ethical, inclusive, and context-sensitive strategies. Ultimately, the text positions libraries as key agents in safeguarding collective memory, capable of reinforcing social cohesion and ensuring that diverse voices — past and present — remain active within the shared cultural landscape.

The text develops a critique of the historical dominance of writing as the primary medium for preserving memory, showing how written systems have enabled the consolidation of power by selecting, stabilizing, and legitimizing the narratives of dominant groups. From early administrative and religious uses of writing to the institutionalization of archives and libraries, the written record is framed as a mechanism that ensures visibility for certain histories while relegating others to invisibility. Large sectors of humanity — particularly non-literate, marginalized, or subordinated populations — have remained excluded from official memory, their experiences surviving only through oral transmission. In this context, silence is not absence but the result of structural exclusion, where the inability to inscribe equates to historical erasure.

Oral tradition is presented as a dynamic and resilient system that sustains cultural memory, identities, and collective knowledge across generations, both in societies without writing and within literate contexts where alternative or dissenting voices lack access to written channels. It preserves everyday experiences, local knowledge, and plural perspectives, functioning as a counterbalance to homogenizing narratives imposed by dominant ideologies. The text emphasizes the inclusive, egalitarian nature of oral transmission, which does not require formal education and allows a broad spectrum of individuals to participate in the production and circulation of knowledge. Through these processes, orality maintains a vast and diverse corpus of human experience that remains largely absent from institutional collections.

The piece also address the role of libraries and archives in the recovery and management of oral materials, highlighting both recent advances and persistent limitations. While technological developments and international frameworks on intangible cultural heritage have encouraged the incorporation of oral collections, significant methodological gaps remain in areas such as classification, transcription, preservation, and ethical dissemination. The management of these materials requires culturally sensitive approaches, recognition of community rights over knowledge, and the development of appropriate descriptive tools beyond Eurocentric frameworks. The text calls for memory institutions to assume an active responsibility in integrating oral tradition into their collections, not merely as supplementary material but as a fundamental component of human memory, capable of restoring the voices historically silenced by written culture.

The text examines the critical situation of Indigenous languages and oral traditions in Latin America, situating them within a broader history of cultural domination, linguistic displacement, and epistemic marginalization. Indigenous knowledge systems — transmitted primarily through oral and artistic expressions — are described as the product of centuries of accumulated experience, deeply embedded in memory and community life. However, under the pressure of Euro-American cultural models, formal education systems, and dominant languages, these oral channels have been progressively eroded. The loss of languages is framed not only as a linguistic phenomenon but as the disappearance of entire systems of knowledge, perception, and identity, with each dying speaker representing the loss of an irreplaceable repository of cultural memory.

Within this framework, language is analyzed as a fundamental axis of identity and cognition, shaping how communities interpret and organize reality. The abandonment of mother tongues and oral transmission systems produces a displacement: the erosion of cultural identity and the loss of epistemological frameworks embedded in linguistic structures. Oral tradition, understood as a dynamic and collective process, preserves histories, cosmovisions, ethical systems, and practical knowledge through continuous adaptation across generations. It operates both in traditional and urban contexts, sustaining plural narratives, dissenting perspectives, and everyday experiences that remain excluded from written records. Its inclusive and egalitarian nature allows broad participation in knowledge production, reinforcing social cohesion and cultural continuity.

The text addresses the urgent need to integrate oral tradition into the practices of libraries and archives, emphasizing both its value and the challenges involved in its management. Despite technological advances in sound recording and growing international attention to intangible cultural heritage, oral materials remain underrepresented in institutional collections, particularly in relation to Indigenous communities. The text identifies significant methodological gaps in classification, indexing, preservation, and ethical dissemination, especially when dealing with non-Western epistemologies and collective rights over knowledge. It calls for the development of inclusive policies, community-centered approaches, and specialized tools capable of handling the complexity of oral documents, positioning memory institutions as responsible agents in the recovery, safeguarding, and transmission of endangered languages and the voices they carry.

The text develops a critical reconfiguration of the concept of knowledge supports within libraries, challenging the historical hegemony of the book and written language as dominant and legitimizing forms of memory. It argues that this privileging of the written word is not neutral but rooted in processes of cultural domination, exclusion, and epistemic control, which have systematically marginalized other modes of expression such as orality, material culture, visual forms, and embodied practices. In response, the work proposes an expanded understanding of knowledge infrastructures, where diverse forms of transmission — spoken, gestural, material, and visual — are recognized as equally valid and necessary components of collective memory.

Within this framework, the text examines multiple alternative supports of knowledge. Oral tradition is presented as a foundational and resistant form of memory, sustaining narratives, identities, and knowledge systems despite its historical devaluation. The body is conceptualized as a living archive, where gestures, movements, and performances encode cultural meanings and historical continuity. Material objects — such as textiles, ceramics, and instruments — are analyzed as repositories of knowledge embedded in their form, production, and use, while graphic expressions like graffiti and weaving are interpreted as insurgent narratives that articulate resistance, identity, and collective memory outside institutional frameworks. Together, these forms reveal a multidimensional ecology of knowledge that exceeds the limits of textual representation.

The text ultimately calls for a transformation of libraries into dynamic, inclusive, and decolonized spaces capable of integrating these diverse supports of memory. Rather than functioning as passive repositories of written documents, libraries are reimagined as active cultural nodes where knowledge is not only preserved but also lived, performed, and experienced. This shift entails a commitment to epistemic plurality, the dismantling of hierarchical distinctions between forms of knowledge, and the creation of environments where marginalized voices and practices are recognized and sustained. In this sense, the library becomes a site of resistance and reconfiguration, oriented toward a more equitable and representative preservation of human experience.

The text situates oral tradition within the broader framework of collective memory, defining it as a fundamental component of the intangible heritage through which individuals and groups construct identity, continuity, and meaning. Memory is understood as a shared, dynamic, and plural process, composed of accumulated experiences, narratives, and knowledge that circulate across generations. Within this system, oral transmission emerges as one of the most widespread and enduring channels for preserving and communicating knowledge, characterized by its immediacy, variability, and dependence on social interaction. Unlike written records, oral tradition is fluid and adaptive, constantly reshaped by the needs, contexts, and perspectives of the communities that sustain it.

The analysis extends this framework to urban contexts, challenging the common association of oral tradition with non-literate or "traditional" societies. In contemporary cities, oral memory plays a crucial role in preserving the experiences of groups and sectors that remain excluded from written representation, including marginalized communities, social movements, and informal networks. Through stories, testimonies, and everyday narratives, urban oral tradition captures micro-histories, local knowledge, and alternative perspectives that complement and contest official histories. It thus functions as a repository of plural and often dissident voices, maintaining cultural diversity and enabling the articulation of identities that would otherwise remain invisible within dominant discourses.

The final sections focus on the responsibilities of libraries and memory institutions in relation to oral heritage, emphasizing both the urgency and the ethical implications of its preservation. While libraries have traditionally privileged written and authorized sources, this approach results in partial and exclusionary representations of collective memory. The incorporation of oral collections is presented as a necessary step toward achieving a more inclusive and representative archive, capable of reflecting the full diversity of social experiences. However, the text stresses that documentation alone is insufficient: oral tradition must remain a living practice, supported through community engagement, participatory activities, and the recognition of its dynamic nature. In a context marked by technological change, generational rupture, and cultural homogenization, the recovery, visibility, and active use of oral memory become urgent tasks, positioning libraries as key agents in the safeguarding and revitalization of intangible cultural heritage.

The text examines oral tradition as a central and still dominant mode of knowledge transmission, emphasizing its role in shaping identities, sustaining cultural systems, and organizing social life across both traditional and contemporary societies. It defines "traditional knowledge" as a collectively curated corpus of values, practices, narratives, and experiences transmitted primarily through oral channels, forming the foundational structure through which individuals and communities understand their world. This knowledge is dynamic, adaptive, and deeply embedded in processes of socialization, reinforcing community bonds while guiding behavior, belief systems, and interaction with both social and natural environments. Oral tradition, characterized by its fluidity, immediacy, and variability, operates as a living repository of memory, capable of preserving both everyday knowledge and complex cultural frameworks.

The piece critically analyzes the historical role of academic research in the collection and management of oral sources, highlighting a persistent disconnection between scholars and the communities that produce and sustain oral knowledge. By extracting fragments of oral tradition and storing them in archives for restricted academic use, research practices have often transformed living, functional knowledge into static and decontextualized records. This process has not only diminished the practical value of oral tradition for its original communities but has also contributed to a broader rupture between knowledge production and social practice. The text argues that oral tradition cannot be reduced to documentation alone, as its meaning and function depend on its continuous circulation, reinterpretation, and use within its community of practice.

It proposes a redefinition of the role of libraries as mediating institutions capable of bridging the gap between academia and communities, and of transforming themselves into active "archives of the community’s voices." Libraries are positioned as spaces for access, exchange, and collaboration, where oral tradition can be collected, organized, and — crucially — kept alive through use and participation. The text emphasizes the need for new methodologies, interdisciplinary approaches, and the thoughtful integration of information and communication technologies, balancing digital tools with traditional practices. By incorporating oral knowledge into their collections and services, supporting practitioners, and fostering community engagement, libraries can contribute to the revitalization of endangered knowledge systems, the preservation of cultural diversity, and the construction of more inclusive and socially grounded memory infrastructures.

The text conceptualizes intangible cultural heritage as the non-material dimension of culture — comprising oral tradition, music, games, narratives, rituals, and other forms of expression transmitted through memory, sound, and collective practice — and situates it as the foundational substrate of identity, continuity, and cultural diversity. Unlike material heritage, these expressions are dynamic, adaptive, and deeply embedded in social life, evolving alongside communities and responding to changing circumstances. However, they are also fragile and increasingly threatened by dominant cultural models, mass media, and the global erosion of minority languages. The disappearance of these languages entails not only linguistic loss but the collapse of entire systems of knowledge and meaning, given the intrinsic link between oral transmission and linguistic structures.

Within this framework, oral tradition and cultural expressions are analyzed as primary mechanisms for the transmission of knowledge in both traditional and urban contexts. Based on memory, improvisation, and performative practices, they encode collective wisdom, social values, and experiential knowledge, often among groups excluded from written culture or lacking access to formal literacy. The text emphasizes the diversity of these transmission modes, including storytelling, music, chant, games, and other performative or material expressions such as textiles, masks, and rituals. These practices function not only as repositories of memory but also as active processes of socialization, education, and identity formation, reinforcing community bonds and enabling intergenerational continuity.

It also focuses on the role of libraries within multicultural and intercultural contexts, arguing for a redefinition of their functions beyond the management of written and digital information. Drawing on international frameworks such as UNESCO and IFLA, the text positions libraries as cultural agents responsible for preserving and promoting intangible heritage, fostering cultural diversity, and facilitating intercultural dialogue. It proposes the incorporation of oral tradition, music, and traditional games into library services, not as marginal or "alternative" resources but as central forms of knowledge. Through practical experiences in indigenous communities in South America, the work demonstrates how these elements can be used to revitalize endangered languages, strengthen identities, and transform libraries into participatory, inclusive spaces where diverse cultural expressions are actively produced, shared, and preserved.

This piece develops a comprehensive theoretical and methodological framework for understanding and recovering oral tradition, defining it as the body of knowledge that societies deliberately transmit through spoken means to ensure its continuity across generations. It situates orality as the primary, natural form of human language — prior to and independent from writing — and emphasizes its structural complexity, dynamism, performative richness, and deep embedding in social life. Despite its centrality in the formation of culture, oral expression has historically been devalued in comparison to writing, which has been associated with power, visibility, and legitimacy. As a result, vast sectors of human experience — particularly those of non-literate, marginalized, or subaltern groups — have remained excluded from dominant historical and documentary records.

Within this framework, oral tradition is analyzed as a dynamic, collective process that preserves identities, worldviews, ethical systems, and practical knowledge through continuous adaptation and transmission. It operates across both "oral societies" and literate contexts, where it sustains everyday memory, alternative narratives, and dissenting discourses that do not find space within written systems. The text highlights its multidimensional character, encompassing verbal expression as well as gestures, objects, and performative contexts, and underscores its role in maintaining cultural diversity and plural perspectives. Oral transmission functions both vertically (across generations) and horizontally (within communities), reinforcing social cohesion while simultaneously allowing for transformation and reinterpretation.

The second part of the work proposes detailed guidelines for the recovery of oral tradition from a library perspective, addressing the absence of established methodologies within Library and Information Science. It outlines the design and planning of oral collection projects, including the definition of research problems, community engagement, selection of informants, construction of interview protocols, and ethical considerations such as informed consent and intellectual ownership. Particular attention is given to the subjective and co-constructed nature of oral testimony, the role of memory and silence, and the need for culturally sensitive approaches. The text ultimately calls for libraries to assume an active role in the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of oral heritage, repositioning themselves as institutions capable of safeguarding intangible cultural memory and counterbalancing the historical biases of written archives.

This text examines the relationship between orality, sound documents, and the preservation of endangered languages, situating oral transmission as a central mechanism for maintaining cultural memory and linguistic diversity. While writing enabled the stabilization and management of knowledge, it also reinforced structures of control and exclusion, privileging dominant groups and marginalizing alternative voices. In this context, oral tradition emerges as a resilient and adaptive system that sustains identities, worldviews, and collective experiences, particularly among indigenous, rural, and minority communities. These groups rely on spoken language not only as a means of communication but as a repository of cultural heritage, especially under pressures from mass media, formal education, religion, and processes of discrimination and marginalization.

The work highlights the critical role of sound recordings and audiovisual technologies in documenting, preserving, and revitalizing endangered languages, many of which survive exclusively through oral channels and are at risk of disappearing within a few generations. These languages encode unique conceptual systems, narratives, and epistemologies that cannot be easily translated into dominant linguistic frameworks. However, existing efforts — primarily led by linguists, anthropologists, and historians — have often remained limited in scope and confined to academic contexts, failing to return meaningful benefits to the communities involved. The text proposes the development of community-centered collections of oral documents, where libraries function as active agents in the creation, preservation, and dissemination of recorded knowledge, ensuring both scholarly use and local accessibility.

From the perspective of Library and Information Science, the management of oral materials presents significant conceptual and operational challenges. There is a marked absence of specialized methodologies, tools, and standards for handling sound documents, including issues related to transcription, classification, indexing, preservation, and intellectual property. Conventional bibliographic systems, grounded in Eurocentric categories, prove inadequate for representing non-Western epistemologies and linguistic structures, necessitating the development of locally grounded thesauri and classification models. Drawing on practical experiences in indigenous communities in northeastern Argentina, the text underscores the need for interdisciplinary approaches and community participation in all stages of the process. Ultimately, it calls for a redefinition of the role of libraries as institutions responsible not only for safeguarding written heritage, but also for actively recovering and sustaining the plurality of human voices, languages, and sound-based knowledge systems.

The text develops a combined theoretical and practical framework for the management of oral tradition within library contexts, positioning orality as the primary, original form of human language and a fundamental mechanism for the transmission of culture, memory, and knowledge. It critically examines the historical privileging of writing as an instrument of power, which has rendered non-written knowledge systems invisible, and argues for the recognition of oral tradition as a complex, dynamic, and socially embedded epistemology. Oral transmission is presented as a collective process that preserves identities, worldviews, and experiential knowledge through adaptive, performative, and memory-based practices that operate across both traditional and urban societies.

Building on this theoretical foundation, the text outlines a detailed methodology for the recovery of oral knowledge, focusing on the design and execution of interview-based fieldwork. It addresses key stages such as project planning, community engagement, selection of informants, formulation of open-ended questions, and the ethical management of consent and participation. Particular emphasis is placed on the subjective, co-constructed nature of oral testimony, the interplay between memory, silence, and context, and the need for culturally sensitive approaches that respect the knowledge systems and social dynamics of the communities involved. The process of collection is framed not as neutral extraction but as an interaction shaped by relationships, expectations, and power asymmetries.

It also focuses on the management, processing, and dissemination of oral materials, including transcription, translation, classification, and preservation. The text highlights the technical and conceptual challenges involved in transforming oral expression into documentary formats, as well as the opportunities offered by digital technologies for storage and access. It advocates for the integration of oral collections into library systems and for the development of new competencies within Library and Information Science, positioning libraries as active agents in the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. Ultimately, the work calls for a redefinition of memory institutions, emphasizing their responsibility to recover, sustain, and give visibility to the diverse voices and knowledge systems historically excluded from written archives.

The text develops a critical argument against the historical dominance of the book as the primary and legitimizing support of knowledge, framing this hegemony as the result of colonial, elitist, and epistemic power structures that have marginalized other forms of memory and expression. It proposes an expanded understanding of knowledge infrastructures in which orality, visual and graphic expressions, material artifacts, and embodied practices are recognized as legitimate and necessary supports of memory. In this perspective, knowledge is not confined to written or printed formats but exists across a plurality of sensory, performative, and material dimensions that have been systematically excluded from institutional recognition.

The text then examines these alternative supports as interconnected systems of transmission. Oral tradition is presented as a foundational and resistant medium, sustaining narratives, identities, and knowledge beyond the limits of writing. The body is conceptualized as a living archive, where gestures, rituals, and collective actions encode and reproduce cultural memory. Material objects — such as textiles, ceramics, and instruments — are understood as repositories of knowledge embedded in their form, production, and use, while graphic expressions like graffiti and weaving are analyzed as insurgent narratives that articulate memory, identity, and resistance outside institutional frameworks. Together, these forms constitute a multidimensional ecology of knowledge that challenges textual centrality and reveals the depth of non-written epistemologies.

The entire piece calls for a transformation of libraries into dynamic, inclusive, and decolonized spaces capable of integrating these diverse supports of memory. Rather than functioning as static repositories of printed documents, libraries are reimagined as cultural and political nodes where knowledge is preserved, enacted, and experienced through multiple formats and practices. This shift entails dismantling hierarchical distinctions between forms of knowledge, adopting principles of epistemic justice, and fostering environments where marginalized voices and practices are actively recognized and sustained. In this reconfiguration, the library becomes a site of resistance and plurality, oriented toward a more equitable and representative construction of collective memory.

This essay explores oral knowledge as a living, narrative-based system through which communities encode, transmit, and reinterpret their relationship with territory, history, and experience. Through examples such as Asháninka storytelling, it shows how oral narratives function simultaneously as myth, memory, and political commentary, linking ancestral accounts with present-day conflicts and environmental threats. These stories are not static relics but active frameworks for understanding and responding to the world, embedding ecological knowledge, collective identity, and strategies of resistance within symbolic and performative language.

Expanding this perspective, the text examines other domains of oral knowledge, such as traditional gastronomy in Mesoamerica, where practices, ingredients, and techniques constitute a cumulative and evolving body of knowledge rooted in biodiversity and cultural continuity. These systems — transmitted across generations through practice, observation, and narration — encode complex understandings of ecosystems, agriculture, and social organization. Oral knowledge thus emerges as a multidimensional and adaptive epistemology, inseparable from language, territory, and everyday life, and essential for the preservation of cultural diversity and alternative ways of knowing.

This document compiles a selection of entries from a bilingual digital project dedicated to the dissemination of Latin American Indigenous languages, presenting lexical fragments drawn from diverse linguistic traditions. Each entry pairs a term with its meaning, offering concise glimpses into the semantic richness, cultural specificity, and conceptual worlds embedded in these languages, many of them endangered or underrepresented.

Rather than functioning as a conventional linguistic study, the work operates as a curated archive of words-as-worlds, highlighting the diversity of Indigenous vocabularies and the knowledge systems they encode. Through these fragments, it foregrounds the expressive capacity of oral languages and contributes to their visibility, preservation, and circulation beyond their original communities.

The text offers a critical and multifaceted reflection on the relationship between oral tradition, music, and intangible cultural heritage, situating them within broader processes of cultural transformation, commodification, and epistemic displacement. It challenges preservationist paradigms that reduce living traditions to archival objects, arguing instead that memory should be understood as a dynamic, lived process sustained by practitioners within their social contexts. Across its sections, the work examines how oral transmission, musical practice, and traditional knowledge systems are embedded in everyday life, shaped by collective experience, and deeply intertwined with identity, territory, and historical continuity. At the same time, it highlights the uneven visibility granted to different forms of heritage, noting the privileging of aesthetic or "folkloric" expressions — such as music and dance — over less visible but equally critical dimensions like language, oral history, and social memory.

A central line of argument addresses the distortions introduced by modernity, urbanization, and capitalist logics, particularly through processes of commodification, institutionalization, and symbolic appropriation. Traditional practices that were once transmitted organically through community-based oral networks are increasingly transformed into consumable products, formalized training systems, or branded expertise. This shift is exemplified in the emergence of self-proclaimed "masters," commercialized workshops, and the redefinition of traditional skills as specialized or exclusive knowledge, detached from their original contexts of transmission. Similarly, the text critiques the transformation of traditional music and instruments into standardized, "improved," or market-oriented objects, often accompanied by narratives of authenticity that obscure processes of cultural extraction, simplification, or reinvention. These dynamics contribute to the erosion of traditional knowledge systems, replacing them with sanitized, aestheticized, or "neo-traditional" versions that retain form but lose depth and meaning.

The work ultimately defends oral tradition and musical practice as living, collective processes that resist fixation, ownership, and commodification. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining the social mechanisms of transmission — intergenerational learning, community practice, and everyday use — over the mere preservation of forms or artifacts. In doing so, it calls for a critical rethinking of how heritage is approached, shifting from extractive and representational models toward practices that support practitioners, sustain cultural ecosystems, and respect the autonomy of knowledge systems. The text also foregrounds the role of language, terminology, and narrative framing in shaping perceptions of tradition, warning against conceptual distortions that redefine long-standing practices under new labels while obscuring their historical continuity. In this sense, it positions the defense of oral tradition not only as a cultural task but as an epistemological and political one, central to the preservation of diversity, memory, and meaningful human experience.

This document compiles a selection of entries from a bilingual digital project dedicated to the dissemination of Latin American Indigenous languages, presenting lexical fragments drawn from diverse linguistic traditions. Each entry pairs a term with its meaning, offering concise glimpses into the semantic richness, cultural specificity, and conceptual worlds embedded in these languages, many of them endangered or underrepresented.

Rather than functioning as a conventional linguistic study, the work operates as a curated archive of words-as-worlds, highlighting the diversity of Indigenous vocabularies and the knowledge systems they encode. Through these fragments, it foregrounds the expressive capacity of oral languages and contributes to their visibility, preservation, and circulation beyond their original communities.

The text reconstructs the history and practices of the trementinaires, itinerant peasant women from the Catalan pre-Pyrenees who, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, traveled across rural territories selling medicinal products derived from plants and resins. Their knowledge — rooted in centuries of empirical observation and transmitted through oral tradition — encompassed the collection, preparation, and application of herbal remedies for both humans and animals. Emerging from marginalized, subsistence-based communities, these women transformed local ecological knowledge into an economic strategy, navigating extensive routes and establishing networks of exchange, trust, and reciprocity with rural populations lacking access to formal medical care.

Beyond their economic role, the trementinaires embodied a form of social and gender transgression, challenging dominant norms that confined women to domestic spaces and excluded them from domains such as health and commerce. Their mobility, autonomy, and expertise positioned them at the margins of both institutional authority and social legitimacy, linking their practices to earlier traditions persecuted as witchcraft and later to processes of cultural resistance and self-organization. The text highlights how their knowledge systems, embedded in local languages and oral transmission, constituted alternative epistemologies that operated outside formal education and scientific validation.

The closing paragraphs examine the decline and subsequent patrimonialization of the trementinaires, driven by industrialization, urbanization, and the expansion of biomedical systems, which rendered their practices increasingly obsolete. Their figure has since been reconfigured within heritage frameworks, often detached from its original social context and incorporated into narratives of tradition and tourism. This transformation raises critical questions about memory, representation, and the commodification of vernacular knowledge, underscoring the tension between preservation and the loss of the living practices that once sustained these forms of oral, ecological, and gendered knowledge.

The text develops a critical examination of writing as a technology of memory that, while enabling the preservation and transmission of knowledge, has historically functioned as a mechanism of control. From its earliest manifestations, writing is linked to political, administrative, and religious power, restricting access to information through specialized codes managed by elite groups. As a result, archives and libraries emerge not as neutral repositories but as instruments that stabilize selective narratives, privileging the perspectives of dominant sectors while excluding vast portions of human experience. The written record thus reflects a partial and often biased construction of reality, where the management of memory becomes inseparable from the exercise of power.

In contrast, oral tradition is presented as a complex, adaptive, and socially embedded system for the transmission of knowledge. Rooted in collective practice, it preserves identities, ethical norms, historical consciousness, and cultural expressions through dynamic processes of communication that evolve across generations. Its variability, rather than a deficiency, constitutes a key strength, allowing it to respond to social change and cultural pressures. The analysis highlights the persistence of oral "niches" even within literate societies, where everyday knowledge, marginal histories, and alternative or dissenting narratives circulate outside written frameworks. These oral channels sustain plural and decentralized forms of memory, often carrying perspectives that remain absent from institutionalized records.

The discussion further addresses the emergence of oral history and the incorporation of sound recording technologies as means to recover and preserve voices historically excluded from written documentation. This process has led to the development of oral collections within academic and cultural institutions, though their conceptualization and management remain problematic. Established archival and bibliographic models prove insufficient for dealing with the specificities of oral materials, particularly in relation to transcription, classification, indexing, and ethical access. The text emphasizes the urgent need for new methodological and theoretical frameworks capable of addressing the richness and complexity of oral knowledge systems, especially those associated with non-Western epistemologies, and calls for a reorientation of memory institutions toward a more inclusive and critically structured preservation of human experience.