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Introduction: Cultural Dispossession
- Indiana University Press
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i n t r o d u c t i o n Cultural Dispossession Each winter the seasonally quiescent countryside of Bulgaria is assailed by menacing masked figures. Sporting elaborate costumes that range from the animalistic to the fantastic, and bedecked with heavy bells that produce a deafening accompaniment, they invade the yards of villagers demanding food, drink, and money in exchange for invocations of fertility and abundance . Scholars date these rites to ancient, perhaps Thracian, origins (Fol 2004; Frazer 1920:335), and participants insist that they have been performed annually ever since, even during periods of state prohibition in the Ottoman and early communist eras. Such continuity may be impossible to confirm historically, but it is potently affirmed experientially, as to be present at these events is to feel an ancient communion. Many Bulgarians expected such archaic practices to disappear when Bulgaria joined the contemporary Western world following the collapse of communism in 1989. My field research in the late 1990s seemed to confirm this prediction in some villages, but in many others I witnessed an increasing popularity of the rituals, and research in 2002 elicited renewed belief in their supernatural efficacy. How can we account for this expanding practice and belief? How could villagers who had accepted a secular scientific worldview acquire faith in what they previously deemed pagan “superstition”? Why would others, many of whom were so financially devastated by the transition that they could not afford the basic necessities of life, continue to hand over precious resources for ineffectual performances? Why were these rituals even 2 Masquerade and Postsocialism available for expansion in 1989, that is, how did they survive the decades of socialist modernization that eviscerated most other folk practices? Indeed, why would villagers who were otherwise adverse to socialist resistance, and even acquiesced to the collectivization of their land around the same time, refuse the early communist state only on this front? This book addresses these questions, but the main objective is to use the questions themselves as a provocation for a different type of analysis. That these questions exist confirms the importance and value of these rituals for Bulgarian villagers, and thus I suggest that we can get more from them than just their symbolic meanings and historical permutations. Put another way, the best single answer to all the questions posed above is that these rituals are intimate and integrative elements of people’s lives, perhaps more so than other elements of life to which researchers have devoted more attention since 1989. So why not look to them for insight into the broader social, political, and economic forces impacting rural Bulgarians? Historians and literary critics have found the similar activities of carnival especially revelatory of an earlier European folk culture (Bakhtin 1984; Le Roy Ladurie 1979). Following their example, and the lead of Bulgarian participants, this book suggests that we can learn a lot about life in postsocialist Bulgaria by looking through the lens of this seemingly esoteric cultural practice. Commonly referred to in Bulgarian as kukeri, or survakari, these rituals are all- consuming events. The visual attraction of the masks, the hypnotic sound of the bells, the intoxicating taste of wine or brandy, the bracing smell of animal- skin costumes, and the sheer feeling of physical exhilaration combine to monopolize the senses. To be present is to be absent from all else— little wonder participants and observers evince a stronger engagement with kukeri than with any other folk practice. The kukeri often work on their costumes far in advance of the event, and some of the village households they visit invest equal energy in preparing to receive them. As kukeri travel en masse from house to house, they generate a palpable anticipation that pervades the whole village for the duration of their rounds, the constant sound of their bells providing a reminder of their presence even when they are out of sight in distant neighborhoods. For individual villagers this perpetual excitement is punctuated by climatic episodes when the kukeri arrive at one’s home to dance and jump around the yard, and when all villagers join the ku keri at the village square for a collective finale. Though I witnessed this engagement personally throughout Bulgaria, the most poignant example came from California, and I did not really “see” [54.147.102.111] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:13 GMT) introduction 3 it. I was observing survakari events in a small mountain village in the central western part of Bulgaria. Like most...