Peter M. Rojcewicz. PhD
Lucca, Italy
The discipline of folklore is a humanistic social science whose goal is to interrogate existing conditions through its description and analysis of cultural accomplishments of people who might otherwise be forgotten or mistreated. Folklore asks us to consider whether we think we’re superior to people not holding incumbency status of what is considered ‘normal’ or ‘good’, and whether it is not possible to learn from societies whose values, practices, economies, arts, and norms do not reflect our own (Henry Glassie). As folklorists seek to knowledge of others, we simultaneously seek to better understand ourselves.
It is essential that folklorists know themselves and their knowledge systems and bracket those understandings when engaging others in their cultural settings, so as not to miss their uniqueness, or project what we ostensibly know on to what we don’t. What we know we cherish from a deeply personal level, and thus, it is subject to influence by our biases, perspectives, fears, and needs. Thus, the folklorist must anticipate that our uncertain self can destabilize our own claims to knowledge, even as we seek to study the local truths of cultural other peoples. In each case, epistemic humility is required to prevent supporting colonizing knowledge and losing possible alternatives to how to live a life, responsibly and sanely.
Folklore points to pressure points in dominant society. Today’s political climate threatens scholars and academic disciplines that study ethnicity, immigration, class, social disjunction, gender, colonialism, political refugees, NEA support, international student learning, and DEI. The academy has had grant money cut off. Renowned faculty members are leaving U.S. universities for schools in other countries. Foreign science organizations now employ U.S. scientists fired from federal jobs or who had their research stopped due to the withholding of funding. History books that give voice to racism, sexism, antisemitism, or ecological destruction are removed from the nation’s school, libraries, and museums. The agendas of those in authority takes precedence over those of the rank and file.
As it seeks to understand cross-cultural issues of power and powerlessness, folklore is itself often looked at with suspicion by some authorities. It is often denigrated as mere “wives’ tales,” meaning the inferior products of uneducated people or indigenous cultures. In reality, folklore wants to accurately remember those people and cultures subject to cultural and historical oblivion. It outlines the silhouette of the personal and community soul by studying acts of common people struggling to hold on. As an academic discipline and body of knowledge, folklore provides compensation to the one-sidedness of life and extremities of hegemony. Neoliberal society treats human relations as transactional matters of expediency. It celebrates the accomplishments of the rich and powerful who would live removed from the everyday challenges of most people.
The crises of the day demand performance of the noble folklorists’ role as irritants to the body politic through scholarship and community projects that support those who are impeded or ‘othered’. Folklore holds traditionally firm to its core value-relation of the wellbeing of self and other. It studies the ongoing dialectic of individual styles and cultural rules. Everyday acts of folklife and folk-art move toward satisfying personal needs, while serving the good that is shared by the group. When folklorists take up the work of ethnography to record and appreciate local social categories, they take on the existential role of “people studying people.” Through our praxis, folklorists seek to subvert hatred by adhering respectfully to the worldview of those we study, and thus we change ourselves. We respectfully enter the life of others through our projects to learn their standards for perceiving, predicting, judging, and acting in life (Ward Goodenough). We attempt to learn the rules of conduct observed, and norms held firm in the cultural game different from our own, so as to become ‘players’, or cultural insiders, in so far as that is possible. Respect can only come from understanding.
The people we folklorists choose through our field projects to engage in fact serve as our existential ‘teachers’ who help us discern and move beyond our own social conditions, giving shape to our essence, and clarifying our purpose. In folklore’s dialectical logic of engagement, “We are what we make of what others make of ourselves” (O’Donohoe). We assume the role of a willing ‘apprentice’, as we seek to comprehend our personal and social worlds in ways that counter colonialism, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia. Because there is no certainty of outcome in giving oneself to the other to affirm our human essence, folklore’s dialectical process of becoming self-consciously aware involves emotional, intellectual, and ontological risks and requires commitment, courage, authenticity, and good faith.
As an interaction-based ethic of self-comprehension (Sartre), the folkloristic method of social engagement counters and reverses the reductive notion do as I do and be as I am. By assuming to live out roles of socially disenfranchised or politically incompatible others, folklorists step back from bias and privilege and into much of what we previously devalued or dehumanized. In that moment, we question our life and worldview, pushing back limits of our stereotypical perceptions and expanding our awareness of the human condition. In the words of Milton J. Bennett, “Consciousness is resistance.” We must teach and write in ways that move people to be conscious of the fact that society is makable, reality flexible. We participate both in our ongoing transformation and the world coming-to-be. We must act meaningfully to overturn xenophobia and racism that dehumanize people. Through a via negativa, that is, an improvement by subtraction, folklorists contribute to positive causes through careful considerations of the lives of others. This moment calls for nothing less.
