Masquerade and Postsocialism: Ritual and Cultural Dispossession in Bulgaria

Conclusion: Modernity in Drag

c o n c l u s i o n Modernit y in Drag The issues refracted through mumming in the preceding chapters share a connection: all are elements of a Euro-­ Ameri­ can vision of modernity. Sexual equality, democracy, civic engagement, and minority rights are commonly (mis)understood as uniquely modern, Western accomplishments. Such glorious achievements seemingly provide a self-­ validation of the modern project, whatever downside it might also entail. In short, these ideals are presented as the contemporary “ends” of modernization, justifying the tried and true (read Western) “means” of getting there. Because the means are the most important elements of democratic capitalism (that is, mechanisms such as elections and free markets), this is a rather effective formula in establishing Western-­ style political economies; the latter then survive any subsequent failure to deliver the goods, since disappointing results can be blamed on free will and the invisible hand. Alternative means to the same desirable goals challenge the assumed superiority and/or exclusivity of the Western models shored up by the teleology of their positive outcomes. That modernity has also produced or inspired some despicable outcomes, from Nazism to Stalinism, requires redemption in relation to indisputable or universal ideals and projects. As noted earlier, the possible alternative means to these goals evident in mumming went unnoticed by theorists of postsocialism partly because mumming itself seems so premodern. Indeed it is ancient, and its continued practice bespeaks an incomplete modernization that never fully supplanted preexisting ways of being and living—not a likely location for modern ideas. conclusion 203 The ancient association, however, makes mumming useful for the quintessential modern project of nationalism, which is always justified as primordial. Thus mumming’s modern role is to represent the premodern. The charac­ terization of mumming as premodern undercuts any consideration of cultural resources that might be compatible with other goals or components of modernity. Of course, appearances notwithstanding, Bul­ garian mumming is thoroughly modern in many ways. A reexamination of these modern components provides a final vindication of the lessons offered in the previous­ chapters. One could argue that modernity was both the subject and product of the earliest social theory, and it has remained, in some form, the focus of social analysis ever since. Over the last several years, appropriately coinciding with another fin de siècle, modernity has been taken up anew by anthropologists attempting to understand the cultural paradoxes of globalization, specifically the proliferation of cultural differences in the face of increasing interconnections . As James Ferguson (2002) notes, earlier models explained the practices of colonized peoples who adopted Western goods and ideas in distinctive ways as either a misunderstanding of Western culture (ignorance), a parody of Western culture (resistance), or the adaptation of Western materials to indigenous cultural objectives (continuity). Dissatisfied with these options in the face of an ever growing diversity of outcomes, anthropologists and others have tried to break away from the dichotomous opposition underlying earlier analyses by making modernity plural and qualifying it with a plethora of adjectives, including “alternative,” “vernacular,” “multiple,” “parallel ,” “critical,” and simply “other” to capture a more ambiguous relationship in which people engage with Western modernity, without being subsumed by it (see, e.g., Gaon­ kar 2001; Knauft 2002a). Through global interactions people are redefining what it means to be “modern,” even as they aspire to elements of a Western paragon. The idea of multiple modernities provides anthropologists with a means to plot the complexity of contemporary cultural politics without the limitations inherent in earlier notions of hybridity and creolization, which in­ advertently suggest pristine starting points, equitable interactions, or positive outcomes (Khan 2001, 2007). The concept of an alternative modernity, however , can still homogenize and efface the diversity of motives that animate local practice. In Bulgaria the experience with dynamics commonly associated with modernity has been quite different from one village to another. Even in a single locale different people may engage in the same activity with different 204 Masquerade and Postsocialism interpretations and divergent objectives. To be analytically useful, then, alternative modernities must always be recognized as fractured: an uneasy coa­ lescence of different motivations and interpretations, including antimodern ones—a paradox that Bruce Knauft (2002b) captures with the notion of the “oxymodern.” The variety of terms offered in the effort to qualify modernities is, in part, diagnostic of this underlying limitation—no single qualification can adequately convey all the caveats or requirements essential to its...