Breaking with Gramsci: Gencarella on Good Sense and Critical Folklore Studies

The following is a comment on Stephen Olbrys Gencarella's essay "Gramsci, Good Sense, and Critical Folklore Studies," published in this issue

(Journal of Folklore Research 47/3, 2010).

Stephen Olbrys Gencarella's very learned essay adduces a wide range of reading both in Antonio Gramsci's work and in other, mostly relevant, works of critical theory in his attempt to make a case for the importance of Gramsci in the development of a "critical folklore studies." Gencarella also addresses social history. In my view, the author does not fully succeed in making an affirmative and enabling connection between Gramsci and such a project in large part because, for Gramsci, two of the key terms—critical and folklore—are in such fundamental contradiction. Gencarella fully acknowledges this problem, and yet he is determined to save Gramsci for folklore by turning to the Gramscian idea of "good sense." He will also press into service Gramsci's ideas on "common sense," language, and religion, all as constituents of a wider Gramscian concept: spontaneous philosophy. In support of this effort, Gencarella also turns to another important critical thinker, Hans-Georg Gadamer. Let us begin with the fundamental contradiction between folklore and critical thinking.

From the very beginning of his piece, and indeed throughout it, Gencarella clearly acknowledges this contradiction. It is quite true, as he says, that Gramsci thought folklore to be very interesting and important, that he "approached folklore as an influential aspect of social life replete with political ramifications" (this issue). This characterization is surely correct, but one has to grasp the full extent of its ramifications. For Gramsci, folklore fundamentally assists the development and maintenance of another Gramscian concept and reality: the hegemony, especially in the context of capitalist modernity. According to Gencarella—and I agree—Gramsci definitionally and traditionally enumerates folklore as "superstitions, magic, alchemy, witchcraft, beliefs in spirits, popular moralities, proverbs, fables, and certain motifs" (this issue), and one could undoubtedly add several other genres Gramsci would probably accept, such as ballads, jokes, tall tales, etc. However, for Gramsci these forms are politically important because they are all exercises in negation. Again Gencarella is wholly correct when he says that for Gramsci, these genres indexed a "people limited to traditional, parochial worldviews and their inherent inconsistencies," and who would thus "remain unable to organize politically" given that "folklore helped undergird the dominant regime of his time." Such a perspective, Gencarella argues, led Gramsci to be sharply critical of those who wished to preserve folklore, though not necessarily of those who studied it (this issue). The latter, however, must do so in order "to know what other conceptions of the world and of life are actually active in the intellectual and moral formation of young people, in order to uproot them and replace them with conceptions which are deemed to be superior" (Gencarella quoting Gramsci, this issue).

At this point, the story could be over in my estimation. How can we as folklorists possibly see our academic practice as one that should call for the eradication of our subject matter and, really, our subjects as creative people? Gencarella clearly sees the problem but will press on because he finds value in Gramsci's other ideas. However, we/ he might pause here to historicize Gramsci on this question. When Gramsci enumerates the various genres of folklore and links them to hegemonic forces, is he (a) thinking of a specific historical moment and/or (b) contemplating specific genres or performances that lent themselves to the Fascist hegemony of Mussolini? What were these moments and these genres? Can the period be revisited to show that his indictment is too broad and that there can be instances when folklore—or instances of it—function in a critical, counter-hegemonic manner, even in the Italian context of Gramsci's time? Gencarella seems to accept Gramsci's wholesale indictment of folklore genres, but nevertheless wishes to provide a more nuanced reformulation of Gramsci's negative thought on this issue—which now brings us to "good sense" and its conceptual correlates. As noted earlier...