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DOI: 10.7330/9780874218992.c02 2 Critical Folklore Studies and the Revaluation of Tradition Stephen Olbrys Gencarella What characterizes the free spirit is not that his opinions are more correct but that he has liberated himself from tradition . . . —Friedrich Nietzsche (1996), Human, All Too Human If we accept the proposition, as Henry Glassie asked us to do nearly a generation ago, that tradition is “the creation of the future out of the past” (Glassie 1995, 395), we benefit in turn by questioning how strongly a commitment to that-which-came-before motivates contemporary folklore studies . Glassie offered this contribution in the well-known special issue of the Journal of American Folklore on keywords for the study of expressive culture. It is arguably the most important statement on the concept in the 1990s, a culminating and encouraging depiction of tradition (and traditionality and practices of traditionalizing) as still essential to the discipline. Glassie’s description itself was anything but essentializing. Responsive to and adaptive of earlier statements (such as Dan Ben-Amos’s 1984 article on the seven strands of tradition), Glassie explored tradition as a process of continuity and change and readily assured that its relationship to history marked a relationship to the “artful assemblies of materials from the past, designed for usefulness in the future” (Glassie 1995, 395). Nevertheless, lurking in this statement is a very precise positioning of the past to the present: the past comes first. We may understand this as chronological representation—the past occurs before the future. But we may also wonder if, for most folklorists, the past Critical Folklore Studies and the Revaluation of Tradition 50 matters more than the future. As I argue in this essay, neither presumption about the past would necessarily illuminate a critical folklore studies. In a series of articles to date, I have presented a case for the development of an overtly critical folklore studies (Gencarella 2009, 2010, 2011). Akin to other critical scholarship, a critical folklore studies differs from conventional folklore studies in advocating certain political perspectives, critiquing and challenging others, and advancing policies and values consistent with the promotion of social justice. It compels folklore studies to move from a more descriptive to a more intercessory mode of scholarship and in so doing forge alliances with critical cultural studies, critical ethnography and pedagogy, and critical rhetorical studies (or more precisely, the activist-scholarship of the critical rhetoric movement). Further, it reverses the polarity of folklore studies so that above all, the future comes first. In an attempt to foster a more equitable world, a critical folklore studies seeks to redress some of the most pernicious expressions of tradition still thriving today, including racism, sexism, classism, ageism, homophobia, and xenophobia. This does not mean that a critical folklore studies must abandon the concept of tradition as hopelessly tied to the past. Quite the contrary, a critical turn demands keen attention to tradition, understanding it—and specific traditions—as a rhetorical and political resource for promoting certain values and motives (as Robert Glenn Howard details in this volume), as a point of intersection between ideology and agency, and as a constituent of common sense and practical judgment. However, a critical turn requires a revaluation of tradition: a recognition of traditions often excluded from folklore scholarship, an understanding of tradition as always already haunted by betrayal and vice versa, an appreciation of counter-traditions useful as resources for revolutionary action, and a determination to challenge certain traditions of conventional folklore scholarship at the appropriate times. Somemightclaimthatacriticalturninfolklorestudieswouldoccupythat space which Glassie saw as the single true opposition to tradition: a change of such complete disruption that it bears no resemblance to its predecessor (Glassie 1995, 395). I think such a characterization would be egregious. Indeed, as I have noted elsewhere, any overtly critical folklore studies owes a debt to cultural activists, LGBT and feminist and Marxist folklore scholars, and many public folklorists, all of whom have long struggled for a more just world both inside and outside academia. Understood in this way, a critical folklore studies is not a rupture but rather another adaptation of the discipline, a complement and not a competitor to conventional folklore Critical Folklore Studies and the Revaluation of Tradition 51 studies, one that creates space for overtly political engagements in academic scholarship and the projects folklorists undertake. A critical folklore studies would likely forefront an observation that Glassie only notes in passing—namely, that tradition implicates the creation and destruction of values. Recognizing the role that intellectuals...

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