Peter M. Rojcewicz. PhD

The discipline of folklore is a humanistic social science that interrogates 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. Folklorists must know themselves and bracket that understanding when engaging others in their cultural settings, so as not to miss the unfamiliar.

Folklore points to pressure points in dominant society. Today’s political climate threatens scholars and academic disciplines that study those pressure points – ethnicity, immigration, class, social disjunction, gender, colonialism, political refugees, NEA support, international student learning, and DEI. Grant money is cut off. Renowned faculty members are leaving U.S. universities for schools in other countries. Foreign science organizations plan to employ U.S. scientists fired from federal jobs or who had their research stopped due to the administration’s withholding of funding.

The crisis demands our performance of the noble role of folklorists as irritants to the body politic through scholarship supporting those who are impeded or ‘othered’. Folklore thus subverts hatred by adhering respectfully to the worldview of those we study. 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 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.