Volume 7: Memory

Introduction, the editors.

Ihab Saloul. “Performative Narrativity”: Palestinian Identity and the Performance of Catastrophe. Response by Anikó Imre Timothy R. Tangherlini. “Where was I?”: Personal Experience Narrative, Crystallization and Some Thoughts on Tradition Memory. Responses by David C. Rubin and Bergsveinn Birgisson Sara Reith. Through the “Eye of the Skull”: Memory and Tradition in a Travelling Landscape. Response by Alice Binchy

Discussion by Guy Beiner. Event Reviews by Katherine Loague, Natalie M. Underberg. Book Reviews by Ruth Goldstein, Ryan Sayre, Anna B. Creagh, Taylor Joy Mitchell, Amanda Maria Morrison, and Trevor J. Blank.

Cultural Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Folklore and Popular Culture Volume 7: Memory Anthony Bak Buccitelli & Tok Thompson, editors. Introduction...... 1 Articles and Responses Ihab Saloul. “Performative Narrativity”: Palestinian Identity and the Performance of Catastrophe. Response by Anikó Imre...... 5

Timothy R. Tangherlini. “Where was I?”: Personal Experience Narrative, Crystallization and Some Thoughts on Tradition Memory. Responses by David C. Rubin and Bergsveinn Birgisson...... 41

Sara Reith. Through the “Eye of the Skull”: Memory and Tradition in a Travelling Landscape. Response by Alice Binchy...... 77 Discussion Guy Beiner. In Anticipation of a Post-Memory Boom Syndrome...... 107 Event Reviews Katherine Loague. #510: If the Shoe Fits…...... R1 Natalie M. Underberg. Playing Folklorists Online: Teaching about Folk Art through Interactivity...... R7 Book Reviews Ruth Goldstein.Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa Trance Music in the Global Marketplace ( Kapchan)...... R13 Ryan Sayre. Risk and Technological Culture: Towards a Sociology of Virulence (Van Loon)...... R15 Anna B. Creagh. National Dreams: The Remaking of Fairy Tales in Nineteenth-Century England. (Schacker) ...... R20 Taylor Joy Mitchell . Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in America. (Nericcio)...... R22 Amanda Maria Morrison. Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere. (Pough)...... R24 Trevor J. Blank. American Science Fiction TV: Star Trek, Stargate, and Beyond. (Johnson-Smith)...... R28

i Editorial Board Fekade Azeze, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia Ezekiel Alembi, Kenyatta University, Kenya Pertti J. Anttonen, University of Helsinki, Finland Hande Birkalan, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey Regina Bendix, Universität Göttingen, Germany Charles Briggs, University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A. Véronique Campion-Vincent, Maison Des Sciences De L’Homme, France Linda Dégh, Indiana University, U.S.A. Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, University of Iceland, Reykjavik Jawaharlal Handoo, Central Institute of Indian Languages, India Galit Hasan-Rokem, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem Jason Baird Jackson, Indiana University, U.S.A. Kimberly Lau, University of California, Santa Cruz, U.S.A. John Lindow, University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A. Sabina Magliocco, California State University, Northridge, U.S.A. Jay Mechling, University of California, Davis, U.S.A. Fabio Mugnaini, University of Siena, Italy Sadhana Naithani, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India Peter Shand, University of Auckland, New Zealand Francisco Vaz da Silva, University of Lisbon, Portugal Maiken Umbach, University of Manchester, England, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain Ülo Valk, University of Tartu, Estonia Fionnuala Carson Williams, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, Åbo Academy, Finland

Staff Editors: Anthony Bak Buccitelli, Karen Miller, Tok Thompson Review Editors: Jean Bascom, Ted Biggs, Joy Tang Copy Editors: Jennifer Gipson, Bianca Hagan, Maggi Michel, Michelle Robinson Website Developer: Brooke Dykman

ii Memory: Introduction

Introduction to Cultural become diffuse. Across cultures there are Analysis Volume 7, Special broad similarities in the practice and expression of memory, yet myriad cultural Issue: Memory. differences between groups and even between individuals intimately link ven beginning to speak of memory memory practices to cultural contexts. Eis difficult, because what is memo- Similarly, different modes of memory ry? If it exists, which it must, then where activities become popular or unpopular is it located? A list of possible answers (film, heritage sites, contemporary- bal includes books, petroglyphs, neurons, lad festivals), yet just as assuredly the traditions, narratives, architecture, film, changes are not completely random. and oak trees. Different disciplines ad- Scholars of folklore have long been dress the question of memory different- at the forefront of research on the con- ly, from computer science to ethnic stud- nections between memory and culture. ies. While the functioning of memory is However antiquated some of their theo- assuredly rooted in biological phenom- ries might seem today, the early works ena, there is a general agreement across of the antiquarian folklorists, at least as many disciplines that the experience of far back as the Grimms’ Deustche Sagen memory involves something more com- (1816-18), reflected many concerns with plex than even the intricate network of the collective remembrance of the past brain impulses that sustains it. In this that would not be unfamiliar to con- sense, memory is a multi-tiered process, temporary scholars of cultural memory. something that involves the coming to- With the increased emphasis on individ- gether of biological, psychological, lin- uals as the originators and dissemina- guistic, social and cultural elements. tors of folklore in the twentieth century, There is a general agreement that folklorists increasingly sought to inter- memory involves recalling the past, rogate the part played by individual whether of one’s own individual expe- memory in the maintenance and repro- rience, or of a learned (social) memory. duction of traditional culture. (Wesselski In cognitive science, Tulving’s work on 1925; 1931; 1934; Anderson 1923; 1935; memory (e.g., 1972, 1983) has proved Lord 1960) In recent years, more nu- seminal at modeling different types of anced investigations of the interplay of individual memory, such as the proce- social and cultural elements in the lives dural, and episodic. Both types we share of traditional performers (Dégh 1969; with much of the animal kingdom (see, Pentikäinen 1978; Glassie 1982; Holbek e.g., Clayton et al 1988, 2007). Human- 1987) have led some scholars to call for ity’s use of complex language, narra- a reinvigoration of the concept of “col- tives, and (more recently) inscriptions lective creation” of traditional materi- has pushed our social, learned memory als, including historical remembrances, to a particular complexity and rhetorical rejected outright by many folklorists in power. Yet when one attempts to trace the early twentieth century. (Hafstein the sources of this power, they quickly 2004)

The multifarious nature of memory David Rubin and ��Bergsveinn Birgis- often demands an interdisciplinary son bring forward a variety of critiques approach, a demand that often yields of Tangherlini’s approach in their respec- conflicts and confusion in equal propor- tive responses to his article. Aside from tion to it rewards. All interdisciplin- the specific points Rubin and Birgisson ary work is fraught with the potential address in Tangherlini’s article, their for miscommunication and misunder- critical discussion serves to highlight standings, dogged by the difficulties of several places of substantial theoretical mastering multiple knowledge sets. Yet, disjunction between the approaches of at the same time, this halting, stuttering folklorists and those more familiar with conversation is desperately needed, in the approaches of cognitive scientists. order for scholars to agree upon basic While contemporary folklorists have foundational ideas and expose points tended to conceptualize tradition and of conceptual disjunction between disci- traditional memory as a set of tensions plinary methodologies. between the individual and the social, In this volume, scholars from a wide the works of psychologists and cogni- variety of disciplines, from psychology tive scientists, as well as scholars who to cultural studies, have contributed follow their approaches, have tended to their perspectives on the interplay of so- see tradition and memory more as the ciety, culture and memory through the activity of individuals. Under the latter vehicle of narrative. As such, the work model, cognitive functioning is located assembled here proposes to investigate so firmly in individualized biological the relationship between memory and bases of memory that other extrasomatic narrative on levels ranging from the instances of memory are often difficult to minutely biological to the broadly cul- locate. Nonetheless, the overlap of inter- tural. est in memory between these disciplines In his article, “‘Where was I?’: Per- should serve to formulate new theoreti- sonal Experience Narrative, Crystal- cal models bridging the individualized lization and Some Thoughts on Tradi- biological bases and the shared, learned tion Memory”, folklorist Timothy R. memories, including those embedded in Tangherlini brings the findings of his narratives, stone, and paper. extensive scholarship and fieldwork on Sara Reith follows this path through legend and personal experience narra- landscape and ballad by investigating tion (Tangherlini 1990; 1994; 1998; 2003) social memory among the now-settled to bear on some of the basic models Travellers of Scotland, and in particular of memory processes put forward by its loci in such places as “Auld Cruvie”, psychologists and cognitive scientists. the giant, ancient Oak tree, and in bal- Tangherlini argues for the creation of a lads, photos, and other physical memen- new model of traditional memory that toes. Expanding upward from the level can more accurately account for the var- of individual memory, Reith’s work sug- iegated findings of folklorists with re- gests some of the possibilities for ethno- spect to the skill level of traditional nar- graphic work to develop a fuller under- rators. standing of the deeply social aspects of

2 Memory: Introduction

individual memories. But, perhaps more that is implicit all work on memory is importantly, her work demonstrates the rarely given the scholarly attention that strong role that these memories of a dis- it deserves, a point also made in his 2007 appeared lifestyle play in the continued book on Irish folk historiography, Re- maintenance of group identity. In Re- membering the Year of the French. (Beiner ith’s work, one can see the significance 2007) for these disadvantaged communities Memory studies continues to have to continue to remember walking roads a need for meaningful and substantial that they, as individuals, perhaps have cross-disciplinary dialogue, as work never visited. from a variety of disciplines continues Similarly, the landscape as inscribed to expose the very different aspects of memory features strongly in Ihab Sa- memory. More importantly, perhaps, loul’s work on Palestinian filmic memo- the flexibility of approaches that - char ry, as does the experience of cultural loss. acterizes all three pieces in this volume Loss, in this context, takes two forms. gives us hope that such dialogue, how- First, Saloul discusses the erasure of ever difficult, will produce meaningful the geographical touchstones for social interdisciplinary models in the future, memory, a procedure that potentially in- in order that all scholars might agree hibits the functioning of social memory. as to what we mean when we speak of In its second context, however, Saloul memory. points not to the loss of memory, but the collective memory of loss embedded in Cultural Analysis is pleased to contribute a film as a route for present and future to this project in our special issue vol- generations to share remembrances of ume 7: Memory. the past. As Saloul suggests, this type Anthony Bak Buccitelli, of filmic memory toys with the tradi- Tok Thompson, tional and the official, with the real and the fictional. In doing so, Saloul reveals Editors, Cultural Analysis the critical importance of understanding the role of extrasomatic prosthetics, Works Cited such as modern media, in the develop- Anderson, Walter. 1951. Ein Volk- ment of social memory across a widely skundliches Experiment, Folkl- dispersed population. lore Fellows Communications The three articles in Volume 7 address 141. Helsinki: Suomalainen very different, yet highly significant, as- Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scien- pects of memory across a wide range of tiarum Fennica. disciplinary concerns. The challenges to _____. 1956. Eine Neue Arbeit Zur Experi- assembling meaningful interdisciplinary mentellen Volkskunde, Folklore dialogues and models on such a large Fellows Communications 168. topic are substantial, and daunting. As Helsinki: Suomalainen Tie- Beiner (this volume) rightly observes, deakatemia, Academia Scientia- for instance, the process of forgetting rum Fennica.

3 Anthony Bak Buccitelli & Tok Thompson Memory: Introduction

_____. 1923. Kaiser Und Abt: Die Ge- Pentikäinen, Juha. 1978. Oral Repertoire schichte Eines Schwanks, Folklore and World View : An Anthropo- Fellows Communications 42. logical Study of Marina Takalo’s Helsinki: Suomalainen Tie- Life History, Folklore Fellows deakatemia, Academia Scientia- Communications 219. Helsinki: rum Fennica. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Beiner, Guy. 2007. Remembering the Year Academia Scientiarum Fennica. of the French: Irish Folk History Tangherlini, Timothy. 2003. ‘”And All and Social Memory. Madison: Anyone Heard...”: Crystalliza- University of Wisconsin Press. tion in Paramedic Storytelling.’ Clayton, N. S., and A. Dickinson. 1998. In Dynamics of Tradition: Per- Episodic-like memory during spectives on Oral Poetry and Folk cache recovery by scrub jays. Belief, edited by Lotte Tarkka, Nature 395:272–78. 343-58. Helsinki, Finland: Finn- Clayton, Nicola S, and Lucie H. Salwic- ish Literature Society. zek and Anthony Dickinson. _____. 1990. ‘”It Happened Not Too Far 2007. Episodic memory Current from Here...”: A Survey of Leg- Biology 17: R189-R191 end Theory and Characteriza- Dégh, Linda. 1969. Folktales and Society; tion.’ Western Folklore 49: 371-90. Story-Telling in a Hungarian Peas- _____. 1994. Interpreting Legend: Danish ant Community. Bloomington,: Storytellers and Their Repertoires. Indiana University Press. New York: Garland Publishers. Glassie, Henry H. 1982. Passing the Time _____. Talking Trauma: Paramedics and in Ballymenone : Culture and Their Stories. University Press of History of an Ulster Community. Mississippi, 1998. Philadelphia: University of Wesselski, Albert. 1934. “Die Formen Pennsylvania Press. Des Volkstümlichen Erzähl- Grimm, J., and W. Grimm. 1816-18. guts.” In Die Deutsche Volk- Deutsche Sagn. Berlin: Nicolais- skunde, Edited byAdolf Spamer. che Buchhandlung. (216-48) Leipzig: Bibliographis- Hafstein, Valdimar Tr. 2004. The Politics ches Institut. of Origins: Collective Creation _____. 1925. Märchen Des Mittelalters. Revisited. Journal of American Berlin: Herbert Stubenrauch. Folklore 117: 300-15. _____. 1931. Versuch Einer Theorie Des Holbek, Bengt. 1987. The Interpretation Märchens. Prager Deutsche Stu- of Fairy Tales, Folklore Fellows dien 45: Reichenberg. Communications 239. Helsinki: Tulving, E. 1972. Episodic and seman- Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, tic memory. In Organization of Academia Scientiarum Fennica. Memory Edited by E. Tulving & Lord, Albert. 1960. The Singer of Tales. W. Donaldson. (382-402). New Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- York, NY: Academic Press, Inc. versity Press. _____. 1983. Elements of episodic memory. New York: Oxford University Press.

4 Performative Narrativity

“Performative Narrativity”: have begun with this Palestinian Palestinian Identity and the melody because it resonates I beyond boundaries that are set Performance of Catastrophe by history and geography. Sung at weddings and other festive occasions, this melody, with its emphatic sighing for the lost homeland, “oh […]”, serves Ihab Saloul as a testimony of a remembering that Universiteit Van Amsterdam, reclaims the experience of another The Netherlands time and another place. The loss of the homeland torments the soul and splits the body “into two halves […]”, Abstract existing between a loved but dead past The day Israel annually celebrates as its “Day and a living but agonized present. At of Independence” Palestinians commemorate the same time, these words point out as their day of catastrophe (al-nakba). To most that the past and the present cannot be Palestinians, the catastrophic loss of Palestine simply separated from one another. in 1948 represents the climactic formative Firmly anchored in the present, event of their lives. In the aftermath of this loss, these words suggest that remembering the Palestinian society was transformed from events and experiences from the a thriving society into a “nation of refugees” scattered over multiple geopolitical borders. In Palestinian past remains an effective this article, I analyze audiovisual storytelling means of releasing their stories of forced of al-nakba. I will perform this analysis on an uprooting and struggle for freedom and audiovisual artifact that commemorates the independence from “official Zionist Palestinians’ loss of their homeland in the past, history”, especially its dominant and articulates the “deep narratives” of their colonial meta-narrative of “a land denial of home in ongoing exile: Mohammed without a people for a people without Bakri’s documentary 1948. My reading of Bakri’s a land”.2 The temporal and spatial film considers aesthetic modes of narrativity distance, between the remembered through which those deep narratives of al-nakba object (Palestine) and the Palestinian can be accessed through acts of remembrance. subject doing the remembering, I have advised you my heart, and functions as a conceptual metaphor for why did not you take my advice? the more unsettling distance between this subject and him or herself in exile. We became an intoxicated people This metaphor, as I will argue below, is who go to sleep and wake up in the most visible in the remembrance of al- love of their homeland. Oh […] you, nakba. my body that is torn into two halves, In this article, I probe the audiovisual a living one and another that lived, storytelling of al-nakba through and the living half is left for pain and suffering. -Shafiq Kabha, Mawaal, analyzing denied exilic narratives, (1989).1 particularly those of Palestinians living inside Israel, often referred to in

willfully vague terms such as “Israeli- satirical novel, al-Mutasha’il: al-waq’i Arabs”.3 I will perform this analysis on al-ghariba fi ikhtifaa’ Said abi al-nahs al- Mohammed Bakri’s documentary 1948, Mutasha’il, serves as the starting point which commemorates the Palestinians’ of Bakri’s film. Originally published loss of their homeland in 1948 and in Arabic in 1974, al-Mutasha’il was articulates the “deep narratives” of their translated into English in 1982 by Salma denial of home in ongoing exile. I use the Khadra Jayyusi and Trevor Le Gassick term “deep narratives” to refer to those under the title: The Secret Life of Saeed: narratives that are inherently grounded The Ill-Fated Pessoptimist. The term al- in the past nakba, yet continuously (re) Mutasha’il (The Pessoptimist) in the title surface in reconstructions and retellings of the novel is unique in its linguistic of the story of that catastrophe in construction as it is made up of two present exile. Arabic adjectives: al-mutasha’im (the Made in 1998 within the context of pessimist) and al-mutafa’il (optimist). Palestinian commemorations of the Since its first appearance, serialized in fiftieth anniversary of al-nakba, though three parts in the daily Al-Jadid in Haifa never “officially” labeled as such, the between 1972 and 1974, Habibi’s novel thrust of Bakri’s 1948 is to express has evoked countless scholarly studies the carping ambiance of present- and literary criticism. For example, in day Palestinians in exile, in which his comment on al-Mutasha’il, Edward an interminable sense of catastrophe Said points out that the novel embodies persists. Surprisingly in view of this the Kafkaesque elements, especially grave subject, the set, so to speak, is the alternation between being and the theater. 1948 begins as a theatrical not being in place, by which its performance, the story of which was narrative sketches a complete picture told before by other storytellers. of Palestinian identity. As Said puts Theater and storytelling: these are the it, al-Mutasha’il is an “epistolary novel two cultural modes in which the film […], unique in Arabic tradition in that is cast. Both modes are anchored in it is consistently ironic, exploring a fiction, and both are literally displayed marvelously controlled energetic style in performance. to depict the peculiarly ‘outstanding’ Behind the narrative of Bakri’s film and ‘invisible’ condition of Palestinians 4 hides another storyteller, the late Emile inside Israel” (1992: 83). Habibi (1921-1996), to whom the film is In 1948, Bakri uses footage from his dedicated. 1948 opens with “In memory own stage performance of Habibi’s of Emile Habibi”. Habibi was one of al-Mutasha’il. This self-reflective the most accomplished Palestinian device allows me to discuss the film’s intellectuals: he was both a writer and a narrative as an act of remembrance politician who served as a member in the of al-nakba, which not only articulates Israeli Parliament (Knesset) for nineteen the past catastrophe but also enacts years as the head of Rakah Party (The the “catastrophic” in the present of the Israeli Communist Party). Habibi’s exilic subject—here, Bakri himself as a

6 Performative Narrativity

theater director. This situation where In her book, Tavelling Concepts in the a theater performance is recycled as a Humanities: A Rough Guide, Mieke Bal cinematic performance, and I will argue, probes performativity in performance. through this double performance, as She does so by both articulating an act of storytelling, offers a good the unstable distinction between starting point for my analysis. This performance and performativity and double use of performance helps me arguing instead for a “conceptual reflect on what I will call in this article a messiness” between these concepts. At “performative narrativity”. This notion the heart of this “conceptual messiness” refers to dialectic between enactment is Bal’s contention that while the two and showing images from another concepts are seemingly distinguishable time. from each other—performance as being Central to this discussion is the determined in a pre-existing script question how the identity of the and performativity as an event in the Palestinian subject is performatively present—both are in fact interconnected constructed and narrativized at the through memory, but “without same time—staged and remembered. merging” (2002: 176). This, I contend, is The connection between performance what Bakri’s opening sequence does; as I and memory, by means of storytelling, will try to show below. Bakri’s recycling is foregrounded in Bakri’s film 1948. of a stage performance suggests a Composed of a mix of theatrical creative theorizing of this relationship, performance, archival footage the emphatic re-use of theater—the and personal interviews of both art of performance par excellence—in Palestinians and Israelis, Bakri’s film, a film that pursues performativity as Haim Bresheeth succinctly puts it in effects—to change our ways of seeing— his article “Telling the Stories of Heim offers a great insight into the cultural and Heimat, Home and Exile”, tells the production of performativity. narratives of Palestinians inside Israel, According to Bal, such a their subsequent marginalization, connection between performance and oppression and mistreatment, and their performativity—primarily informed aspirations for freedom, equality and by Derrida’s theorization of the development; all dashed by the harsh citationality of speech acts—facilitates realities of their exile while living in the analysis of: a Zionist entity that utterly negates their equality and their right to their [T]he always potentially performative lands (2003: 27-28). In its presentation utterances into aspects. This move of these narratives, 1948 appeals to from categorization to analysis of each term is representative of the the concepts of “performance” and move from a scientific to an analytical “performativity”. These concepts have approach to culture. (2002: 178) constituted a paradigm shift in the humanities.5 This shift in approach brings Bakri’s film, as an audiovisual artifact, within

7 Ihab Saloul Performative Narrativity

the orbit of cultural analysis. What brought to the fore, as focalized, that is, animates the interconnection between perceived and interpreted, rather than “performance” and “performativity”, happening on the spur of the moment. then, is the understanding of I will show how 1948 is engaged in re- performance as an act of theatrical focalizing the everyday experiences of enactment that has at the same time Palestinian exile. The filmic narrative the performative power to trigger not only shows but also enacts those new signifiers and meanings beyond experiences. Thus, to delineate my the present act itself and through itinerary, I make an analytical move form these, a change of identity. To this the “aestheticism” of performance— effect, following Bal’s argument of as theater—to the performativity of the performative (2002: 176-78) and aesthetics—as political activism—in in an attempt to extend its analytical relation to audiovisual storytelling of domain, in my analysis of 1948 I Palestinian exile—as the remembrance bring the concepts of performance needed for the activism. Such a and performativity in their dialectic move is able to connect the aesthetic interaction to bear on the film’s representation of al-nakba with the audiovisual storytelling of Palestinian ways this event continues to be lived nakba and exile. In so doing, I assume in the present and makes an impact that both the modes and strategies on the lives, identity and agency of through which acts of remembrance Palestinians. This helps us understand are (audiovisually) narrativized in what performance, in its connection a particular cultural setting reflect to performativity may add to the specific conceptions of political history storytelling of Palestinian memory of and cultural memory of the past and the past nakba in relation to its mankoub turn these reflections into agents of in the present. This term “mankoub” performativity in the present. Hence, refers to the “catastrophed” subject. they set up the necessary grounds In what follows, I will discuss how within which a different future can be 1948’s audiovisual storytelling of al- envisioned.6 nakba and exile articulates Palestinian But 1948 is a film with a story to tell. identity and cultural memory in terms of In order to account for the narrative performance and performativity. In the sequence within and through which first section, I will analyze the opening performativity takes effect, I will sequence of the film (the theatrical employ the concept of “performance” to performance), and also reflect on what articulate what happens in a theatrical I mean by “performative narrativity”. setting with a narratological device of, As I will attempt to show, the what Bal calls in her book Narratology: combinational construct of this specific Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, mode of narrativity, between theatrical “focalization” (1997: 142-60). Through performance and the archival footage, focalization, stories of the everyday of produces narratological fragments Palestinian exile can be enacted, and both in images and voices that facilitate

8 Performative Narrativity

the construction of a present-oriented of the main character of Habibi’s novel, story of Palestinian loss of homeland. Saeed Abi al-Nahs (al-Mutasha’il, The In this story, the historical enterprise of Pessoptimist), the unfortunate fool who the catastrophic event (al-nakba) rejects after al-nakba becomes a citizen of Israel. a dissociation of cause and effect. I will Saeed’s story evokes the victimization then move to the next parts of Bakri’s and ensuing struggle of the Palestinians film where Palestinian and Israeli voices in Israel by means of a mix of fact and join the storytelling. In my analysis of fantasy, tragedy and comedy. His is these parts, I argue that Bakri’s film a story composed of fragments of advances the idea that Palestinian loss loss and fortitude, aggression and of homeland and exile is inherently resistance and affinity. In a series of about what people, the Israelis, do tragic-comic episodes that reiterate to other people, the Palestinians. At the enactment of who he is, Saeed’s stake here is the notion that al-nakba stupidity, sincerity and fear transform is a thoroughly political event that him gradually from an unfortunate and has responsible agents behind it, not naïve informer into a simple Palestinian uncontrollable forces of nature, nor the man, who is victimized but determined effects of our uncontrollable aggressive to survive. Through the performative and territorial genes. transformation of Saeed’s identity, the film manages to make a trivial comedy Performative Narrativity: Exposing stand in for catastrophic events. the Betrayal of Time At least for this viewer, the That we make ourselves intelligible employment of comical performance to others through performative acts in a documentary dedicated to is hardly a novel argument. What catastrophic events solicited perplexity needs to be underscored, however, and attraction; both affects are in need is how our acts can narrate and of analysis. To make sense of Bakri’s account for catastrophic events and adaptation of comical performance traumatic experiences such as that in documentary cinema it is worth of the Palestinians’ loss of homeland considering 1948 as an instance of and exile. In this respect, what is audiovisual storytelling within a recent remarkable about Bakri’s 1948 is that it Palestinian cinematic tradition. This is primarily linked to al-nakba through tradition reiterates, transfigures, and theatrical performance. Unexpectedly, vindicates the multiple narratives of the film begins its storytelling of this the past nakba and the predicament of catastrophe as comedy play. Yet, 1948 is present exile. These cinematic instances a documentary film. often resort to various forms of narrative representation, including “open- The opening part of the film shows a endedness” as a technique of narrative theatrical play that was performed many closure that mimics “ongoingness” (or times in Arabic and Hebrew to packed the non-ending) of Palestinian loss of audiences over a number of years. In homeland. Examples of this Palestinian this performance, Bakri plays the role

9 Ihab Saloul Performative Narrativity

cinema include other films such as and pessimism: an episode of human Bakri’s documentary film Jenin, Jenin suffering, survival and hope, which (2002), Tawfiq Saleh’s Al-Makhdu’un cannot avoid contradiction. Such a (The Dupes, 1972), Rashid Masharawi’s contradiction is bound to identity as Curfew (1994), Elia Suleiman’s Chronicle early as in the Arabic meaning of the of Disappearance (1996), Nizar Hassan’s character’s name, which jams happiness Ostura (1998), and Hani Abu Assad’s “Saeed” and misfortune “Nahs”. The Ford Transit (2002).7 combination of contradictory elements In distinction from these films is precisely what makes him al- that are classically narrative, in 1948 Mutasha’il (The Pessoptimist). narrative representation takes the Besides his name, Saeed identifies form of a stage performance. This is himself by an identity card number particularly preeminent in the opening “ID card No. 2222222”, given to him by scene of the film, in which the story the State of Israel. In order to explain of Saeed is presented as a folk tale. In how he was given this number after the opening shot of the film, while we al-nakba, Saeed recounts the past in see four images of Palestinian families terms of its “official” history, consisting during al-nakba gradually filling up of documented historical facts. The the screen, Saeed, on stage, begins moment Saeed begins recounting “the recounting the story: days of the British”, we see archival footage of the British forces during Every folk tale begins: “once upon a their mandate in Palestine. At the time, long time ago […]” Shall I tell point that the voice reaches “Yaakove the story, or go to sleep? I am Saeed Safsarchik”—based on the Hebrew (happy) Abi al-Nahs (the father word Safsar, for “illegal peddler” or of misfortune), al-Mutasha’il [The Pessoptimist], ID card No. 2222222. “black marketer”—we see archival I was born during the days of the footage of Ben Gurion and his wife on British. In other words, my father and the occasion of the transfer of power Churchill were very close friends. But from the British mandatory forces to [when] Papa knew that Churchill did the Zionist movement in Palestine. not intend to stay here [in Palestine] This scene ends with the British flag very long, Papa befriended Yaakove lowered, and the Israeli flag being Safsarchik. Before he died, Papa told hoisted on the same pole. This is me: “if life is bad, Saeed, Safsarchik precisely how the Zionist “Yaakove will fix things”. So he fixed me. Safsarchik” betrayed Saeed in the past, and “fixed” him with an insignificant Like a folk tale, Saeed’s story is told number. The insignificance of this many times over. It is as if Bakri number, “2222222”, can be interpreted sought to insist on the iterative nature in its senseless repetition of the number of identity as well as on the narrative “2”, suggesting second-class citizenry.8 nature of performance. It is a story At one level, the film’s composed of a combination of optimism straightforward approach to history

10 Performative Narrativity

through its use of archival material has of Palestinians from a different angle the benefit of allowing the viewer to than in the archival film footage in understand the story of the speaking two ways. First, what is most notable subject, Saeed, as the fable of the in Saeed’s performance of al-nakba is betrayed Palestinian whose father his description of this event not as al- trusted the false promises of the British nakba of 1948, but as “the incidents and the Zionists. This approach, […] of 1947”. For Saeed, al-nakba is not however, does not suffice when it so much a singular event, but rather comes to explaining the complexity of a series of fragmented incidents that the betrayal that Palestinians endure occupy different temporal moments. beyond the historical event of al-nakba. Saeed’s catastrophe is grounded in that The archival footage of al-nakba does not incident he experienced while traveling provide information about the effects of with his father in 1947. For Saeed, there that event on the Palestinians in terms are many nakbas, temporal variations of of their subjectivity. This is why there is “the” event. As such, the concept of al- a need to supplement the shift that the nakba does not appear as limited neatly film takes from performance (present) to the year 1948. This may seem like a to history (past) with another shift back minor point, but it is relevant for the to performance. issue of the singularity of (catastrophic) That shift can be seen in the events in relation to subjective following scene, in which the viewer is experiences and cultural enactments drawn back to the stage performance. of these events—when do you exactly The moment the flag of Israel is hoisted mark al-nakba? On the one hand, there on the pole, Saeed’s voice re-enters the seems to be a vaguely collective date stage to continue the recounting of the (May 15th, 1948), which demarcates story: the establishment of Israel, but that fixed date is utterly dependent on the My life in Israel began with a miracle. Israeli/Zionist timeline and narrative. During the incidents […] of 1947, I According to Saeed’s performance, travelled to Acre with my father, actual commemorations of al-nakba by donkey. That is our national also happen at different moments Mercedes. When we reached the and dates. This conceptualization not railroad tracks, boom! We heard only repudiates the singularity of the shots. Papa was hit and killed. I got off the donkey and hid behind catastrophic event, but also reflects and it. The donkey was shot dead and I delineates different collectives or sub- was saved. I owe my life in Israel to collectives of its memory. For example, a donkey. a particular village commemorates “its” nakba on the day on which the The shift to stage performance is inhabitants experienced the fall of their primarily audiovisual, but also own village. conceptual and temporal in that it The second way in which the enables the viewer to see the catastrophe temporal shift is conceptual touches on

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performance in the strict sense. Whereas of the stage performance in the film the archival footage only represents al- laughing at Saeed’s description of the nakba on the political level—the transfer donkey as “our national Mercedes”. of power in Palestine to a single ethnic Yet, the laughter equally expected at minority while depriving the ethnic Saeed’s description of the donkey as a majority—on stage, Saeed performs savior is not heard and remains absent. the catastrophe as a violent event that Presumably, the idea follows on the entails death and victimization. Hence, heels of the story of his father’s death logically, he should be dead. Therefore in a chronology that is not comical at Saeed describes his existence in Israel all. Humor in 1948 not only serves as after al-nakba as a “miracle”. Saeed’s a trigger of laughter, but also of the use of “miracle” here is important impossibility of laughter. Through its in relation to his survival. While contradictory effects, humor is, then, “miracle” signifies an event that is put at the service of the present reality inexplicable by the laws of nature and of exile: it adheres to the everyday held to be the result of a supernatural life of the exiled subject, yet also puts act that therefore generates wonder, in forward a vision of an alternative Saeed’s case the miracle of surviving reality. In order for that alternative al-nakba is attributed to a donkey. By vision to materialize, however, the attributing his survival to a donkey, viewer is required to pay attention to Saeed not only fuses his survival of the the fragmented narrativity drifting catastrophe with the intervention of an between role-playing (performance) insignificant power, but also reduces and archival footage (official history). the value of his life in Israel after al- This is what I will be referring to in this nakba as similarly insignificant, just article as “performative narrativity”. like his savior the donkey. This is an In a previous article, in my analysis instance of performative narrativity. of Tawfiq Saleh’s film Al-Makhdu’un In the storytelling of his miraculous (The Dupes, 1972), I called that film’s survival, Saeed performs his second- storytelling “exilic narrativity”. Exilic class identity. narrativity, as I argued there, presents As a performance with a a fragmented narrative sequence performativity effect, Saeed’s in terms of place, memory, self and description of his survival and life in other through a plurality of voices. Israel after al-nakba engenders a feeling, Moreover, this narrativity articulates not of wonder, but of amusement. This Palestinian exilic space and time as an sense of humor, however, is problematic experiential “truth” by means of a mode because of its connection to a tragic of audiovisual storytelling that drifts memory, the death of his father. The between fictional and documentary result of such a tragicomic composition images and voices. The affective results is that humor in the film does finally of this drifting storytelling destabilize arrive, but always a little too late. the binary opposition between “fiction” For example, we hear the audiences and “documentary” with regard to

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“truthful” representation. Accordingly, explicit role-playing engenders this type of storytelling facilitates the Palestinian narratives of al-nakba as travelling of the narrative between the acts of “re-reading”.10 These acts are present of the (re)telling of the (fictional) triggered by the performance of the stories of al-nakba and the (documented) storytelling on stage. Since this telling past happening of the event itself. 9 takes the form of a folk tale, it harks Here, I focus on the relationship back to unspecified ancient times. such exilic narrativity establishes with Narrating a subjective nakba event, it performance in order to promote the also brings in the historical past. On performativity that allows change the stage, the audience is interpellated to occur. Exilic narrativity not only with a humor that cuts off the laughter signifies the storytelling of catastrophe it triggers. In the movie theatre, finally, that conforms with the mental workings the viewers, who are, likely to have of memory and its temporality against seen or heard of the successful stage linear time, but, if it manages to be performance, are confronted with these performative, also enacts and triggers three temporalities and the strong the cultural shift, which the narrative tragic-comic confusion in the present. itself seeks to achieve: from “official By focusing on the temporality history” to a theorization of catastrophe of storytelling between theatrical and exile that we can “live” and performance and archival footage in understand at the same time. The exilic 1948, I am practicing a re-reading of narrativity of al-nakba consists of the the film in this sense. Through this telling of a story wherein the historical re-reading, I seek to demonstrate an past (archives) collides with its present important specificity in relation to (fictional) re-telling in exile up to the exilic narrativity. There, the temporal point where it can affect the identity of referentiality of the fictional story is “we”. determined by the documented past of Bakri’s film is emblematic for its event. In performative narrativity, this potential because it presents a due to the drifting between performance mode of audiovisual storytelling, and archive, the referential scope of which drifts between performance narrative broadens beyond the film’s and archival footage. “Performative temporal limits. As a result, it re-enacts narrativity”, as particularly powerful the mankoub that characterizes the mode of exilic narrativity, deploys a catastrophed subject in ongoing exile. fragmentary narrative composed from This re-enactment involves the viewer a plurality of voices. However, the affectively. specificity of performative narrativity, This affect does not emerge from as a form of exilic narrativity, I theatrical performance as a vehicle contend, is determined by specific, of representation as such. Rather, it complex sense of temporality. The emerges from that performance’s employment of bodily engagement in ability to influence our sensory and 1948’s audiovisual storytelling through perceptional concept of the systems

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“archive”. Through performativity, (1956: 185).11 As such, beyond its affect the archival footage in the narrative of relaxation and amusement, laughter, becomes iterable: repeated and changed for Bergson, carries with it a need to in a different frame. This performativity correct a situation of missing the mark. sharpens our notions of memory. The impossible laughter in 1948, Thus, the ontological status of cultural I wish to argue is “corrective”. The events in terms of their past happening laughter is no longer the known laughter, and of the way they are experienced the sign of humor, when detached and memorized in the present is at from its bodily manifestation. This stake in performative narrativity. disembodiment of laughter, through its Hence, the performativity of theatrical absence in the film, generates a sense performance in 1948 not only lies in its of alienation by which the viewer’s mode of being, as Bal succinctly puts question shifts. From how images of it, as “something that hovers between the film tell a predetermined folk tale, thing and event”, but in the fact that it the viewer now wonders what story the performs an act that produces a new filmic representation produces. Thus, event (2002: 176). the viewer’s attention moves a way from In our case, the act of 1948 produces the internal audiovisual structures of the a narrative event in which the known story of al-nakba to its narrative proliferation of the audiovisual invades pragmatics; hence, opening up the the perceptual field of the viewer. Like temporal and contextual realms of the the figure of Saeed, the viewer is caught story and the event it recounts. Seen in by contradictions. When confronted this light, the impossibility of laughter with impossible laughter, the viewer in the film triggers a thought: a primary is just perplexed: unable to deal with a step made by the viewer towards the laughter that is contextualized—it is felt awareness and preparedness to deal and has all the required elements for it to with a different and more serious exilic come about—yet remains disembodied; reality. At the heart of this thought, that is, laughter does not manifest itself impossible laughter emerges as an bodily. On one level, in its presentation adequate marker of the problematic of a contextualized yet disembodied relationship between official history humor, the film seems to conform with and the ways in which this is performed Henri Bergson’s conceptualization and experienced in the present by the of laughter based on the principle of people whose identity is at stake in the “exploitation and utilization” (1956: act of viewing. 180). In accordance with this principle, Audiovisually, the film corresponds and distinct from Freud, for example, to this performative narrativity when, who believes that laughter and jokes at the moment Saeed utters the words are “fundamentally cathartic: a release, “I owe my life […] to a donkey”, once not stimulant”, Bergson decisively more the viewer observes archival argues that “laughter is, above all, a material of the war of 1948. While corrective, and a means of correction” the title of the film, 1948, pops up on

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the screen in the shape of a burning to break loose but is unable to do so at flame, images of the fighting in 1948 the moment and as a consequence of are presented in the background. This enactment. In this sense, performative return to archival historicism connects narrativity, drifting between Saeed’s performance in the film, through performance and archives, becomes the impossibility of its laughter, with bound up with a temporal movement the alternative to humor—historical that displaces the narrative of al-nakba evidence. This connection turns Saeed’s from its historical past of 1948 in order performance into a method of decoding to reframe it in the present experience the historicity of the event (the betrayal of Palestinian exile: fifty years later in that al-nakba was), while at the same 1998; more, at the moment of cinematic time encoding its (tragic) memory in viewing later, in this case sixty years later and through the present betrayal of that in 2008. This narrative and reframing, past. In Saeed’s performance, the viewer wherein the past and the present of is constantly teased into laughter, only the event are conjoined in the same to realize that this laughter is a shield ontological domain, causes the viewer behind which tragedy lurks. to be caught in a feeling of “ontological The shift from history to performance vertigo” by which his or her temporal and back that the film undertakes distinction between the “real” and enables us to see how performance the imaginative become disordered.12 keeps alive the memory of the past As a result, narrative events do occur; nakba, but also how this memory dwells they are constantly evoked by the in the present of the exiled subject. This fragments of performance and archival effect emerges from the fact that what images and voices through which the is enacted in Saeed’s performance is verisimilitude of the narrative itself not the event of al-nakba itself; rather, it becomes inextricably connected with is the subject’s experience of this event. the language of the past and its memory In this sense, the film’s approach to al- as externally enacted by the body in the nakba becomes emphatically subjective. present. Hence, a performative mode of Through this approach we are lured audiovisual storytelling occurs, wherein into the history of al-nakba, but we showing and enactment interlock and are also positioned as the subjects of thus produce the referentiality of the that exile itself. Confronted with the narrative of Palestinian catastrophe. impossibility of our laughter, together This referentiality is determined, not by with Saeed, we come to live the past the historical past, but by the political— nakba in our reality. cultural actuality of its exilic subjects. What characterizes 1948, then, is In the film, this happens by a mode of audiovisual storytelling in marking off time, then setting up which the past happening of al-nakba relations through the impossibility of and the present experience of its exiled laughter between archival footage and subjects, through memory, become Saeed’s act. Thereby the film uncovers locked together. The viewer may desire meaningful designs of temporal series

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through which the past event and the Palestinian subjectivity as an actuality experience of the Palestinian subject can constructed in the past of a subjectively be connected in the present of exile, but lived al-nakba, yet ultimately without merging. This is how the film’s performed and lived in the present of performative narrativity becomes a re- exile. Performative narrativity, then, enactment wherein the movements of conjugates al-nakba to the experience of mind and body affiliate. As a result, the the mankoub subject. viewer of the film becomes conscious In the opening scenes of 1948, the not only of what was and is no more, combinational construct of performative but also of what is, and is living on. narrativity between performance and In this sense, to re-enact what is living archival footage appears to authorize through performance (role-playing) in the historical enterprise of al-nakba 1948 becomes a narratological strategy itself in all its forms; as meaningful that does not aim at unveiling the representations of a fragmented past, but rather at performing and Palestinian subjectivity in the present. transmitting the present. In other Precisely through this historical words, performance both keeps alive authorization, the catastrophic the memory of the past nakba, but also event—regardless of the form of its turns this event itself into an index that representation in the narrative (here, stands in a causal relationship with the performance and archives)—rejects a presence of Palestinian exile. dissociation of cause and effect. In 1948 Through such indexicality, both al- the telling of al-nakba as a folk tale “every nakba and its present exiled subject are folk tale begins […]” offers a perfect utilized in the film as drifting between example of this conceptualization. On mediums—between the stage and the one hand, the folk tale suggests the the archive. This drifting, as a result, inevitability of narrativization: more produces narratological fragments that than half a century later, al-nakba has compose a present-oriented story—not already become a story. On the other, only of where we were, but also where the tale ironically warns against the risk we are now. The beginning of this story that the Palestinians’ loss of homeland in 1948, however, does not attend to and exile becomes temporally distant; a shadow world: it is not alluding to just another fable among many. comical tragedies in the vein of dark At work here is not a trivialization of humor. Instead, the employment of folk tales per se, but instead a narrative tragic-comic episodes represents a movement from legend set in a historical beginning that is deliberately insensitive. setting to folk tale as a story not told In relation to al-nakba, the performative as “true”, but told as “pedagogy”. aspects of re-reading this narratological While the miracle and the donkey are insensitivity establish a relation part of the genre of folk tale, precise between the conceptualization of the dating, “1947”, and the “national catastrophe (as an event both in time Mercedes” are not. Through Saeed’s and space) and the conceptualization of theatrical performance, especially in its

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progression through several repetitive of Palestine by Jewish paramilitary acts, this story of al-nakba, then, is a forces, Irgun and Stern groups, between recent, in fact contemporary, ongoing April 9th and 11th, 1948.13 story. It is a story that works through The following sequence of stories the problem of becoming a Palestinian is a typical example of the alternation subject; a desire gone wrong in the of interviews, archival images and past that needs to be corrected in the the performance on the stage. As the present. This story of al-nakba, however, archival images of the fighting of 1948 is not a unified whole. Instead, like the fade away, the camera moves from memory of its catastrophed subjects, it the flag of Israel to an elderly woman is a fragmented narrative consisting of crying, identified on the screen as Um multiple personal stories. This can be Saleh from Deir Yassin. Together with seen later on in the scenes following the her grandson, she is standing on a hill opening of 1948 wherein audiovisual over-looking a house on which the flag storytelling drifts yet again once more: of Israel hangs. Looking at the house, this time between personal (oral) Um Saleh begins to lament what used narratives and theatrical performance. to be her house by chanting:

Exile of Body and Mind I kept calling […] O Papa, until my head spun. There was no sound, Unlike the opening of 1948, most no response. They were deaf and of the scenes later on in the film are couldn’t hear me. One of the floor’s personal interviews conducted in 1998: tiles answered me: “Go, light of my story after story is told, interrupted life. Destiny is thy bridegroom and by Bakri (the performer) on stage, absence will be long”. who interprets and comments on the tales. The interviewees represent the Both the traditional form of lamentation first and second generations of post- and the presence of the grandson give nakba Palestinians. Their stories are Um Saleh’s chanting a theatrical feel. arranged in a temporal sequence that She seems to put up a performance: an takes the viewer on a journey covering act of singing. This is reinforced by the the period between 1948 and 1998. The grandson’s position as audience. Yet, dominant characteristic of these stories Um Saleh’s act is specifically “theatrical” is the emphasis on the violent nature of as well. She also “plays”, putting an act al-nakba and on the exile that followed of loss and belonging. This act becomes 1948 and continues to exist in the manifest immediately after the singing present. Massacres, forced expulsion as Um Saleh recounts the story of how and loss of home are the main issues of she lost thirty members of her family these stories, particularly the massacre of during the massacre of Deir Yassin. With Deir Yassin. This massacre refers to the the flag of Israel hanging on her lost killing of scores of Palestinian peasants house as the backdrop, the decor on the in the village of Deir Yassin, near stage, serving as a historical remainder, Jerusalem, during the British Mandate Um Saleh describes how her grandson

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feels sorry of her whenever she cries: this historical claim from past fact to enduring state. Um Saleh’s conception [This] child starts pampering me of al-nakba, similarly to Saeed’s in the when he sees me crying […] Thirty theatrical performance in the opening of my relatives fell in Deir Yassin. of 1948, is localized: her catastrophe is Thirty people! My grandfather the loss of her home and family during […] was the Mukhtar [head of the village]. When he saw them killing the Deir Yassin massacre. Um Saleh’s his children, he slapped a Jew who loss is tempered with a longing for said: “We are not slaughtering you. solidarity that does not come, “kept The British are”. We Arabs, masters calling […] They were deaf […]” and of our fate, became subservient to “Had ten people to our aid […]”. It is the Jews. After the injustice of Deir also performed as subjective, since the Yassin, 400 villages were erased. song enacts a tormented experience Had ten people came to our aid; Deir of exile wherein a long absence is Yassin would have been saved. constantly re-produced, “destiny is thy bridegroom and absence will be long”. Since the boy is both the audience of The personification of absence as the the performance and the object of the offspring of a personal relationship story, the temporal merging of past and (marriage) between the subject and her present is enacted in the merging of play destiny, “bridegroom”, gives shape to and story. Moreover, Um Saleh’s story, this subjective slant of her focalization. and numerous ones like it, set up the It weaves a symbolic net that not historical and political framework of only allows for the interpretation of al-nakba. The old women thus performs the absence of, and from, home as a the intergenerational transmission dispossession aimed at both body and of its narrative to the child, hence the mind, but it also connects the expulsion present. This transmission inflects of Um Saleh in the past to her living the position of the grandson as an experience in the present. Only on that audience into that of a new generation condition of that mixed temporality who “inherits” the grief and the loss can she affect the grandson with that 14 of place. On a historical level, Um subjectivity. The theatricality stands for Saleh’s story emphatically lays the this temporality. political responsibility for the loss Hence, the presence of the grandson of Palestine with the British, whose in the scene performs this connection intention of doing justice to the world’s between the past and the present. As Jewry in the aftermath of the Holocaust a listener to the story, his presence not brought injustice and victimization on only signifies the iterability of the act the Palestinians, so that the Palestinians and the cultural dynamics of memory became “victims” of the “victims”: they transmission through oral narratives, “became subservient to the Jews”. but also the generational distance For my purposes, it is more important between Um Saleh’s actual experience to understand how Um Saleh works of the event and her act of telling. As

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a result, the temporal structure of Um relevance to the notion of “returning”, Saleh’s story blends its re-enactment in but also forces a questioning of what the present of the film. The grandmother it means to “return”. What or who and the child are both involved in the returns? To where, and when? act that produces the illocutionary Immediately after the film force of telling. The acceptance of their audiovisually returns to the personal mutual roles facilitates the felicity narratives. The next story is that of of the act: the grandmother tells and Taha Ali Mohammed. Taha speaks of cries, and the grandson pampers her in what the loss of his village (Saffouria) agreement. The question of narrative and “return” to it means to him: duration in 1948 as such becomes moot at this point. Instead, the blend allows Saffouria is a mysterious symbol. for a narrative focalization of the way al- My longing for it is not a yearning nakba is lived in the body and mind of its for stone and paths alone, but for subjects. Through this focalization, the a mysterious blend of feelings, expulsion and separation of, and from relatives, peoples, animals, birds, brooks, stories, and deeds […] When home, become geographical, historical, I visit Saffouria I become excited and and personal all at once. And all this, burst into crying, but when I think presumably, for the film’s viewer, who about Saffouria the picture that forms is offered the position of the child for in my mind is virtually imaginary, partial identification. mysterious, hard to explain […]. This can be observed at the end of Um Saleh’s account when the scope of Taha’s words present a classical case of the narrative widens to the outside of nostalgic yearning for the remainder of a the subjective realm, only to return to destroyed place. In the situation of exile it again. As Um Saleh’s crying voice nostalgia does not necessarily appear slowly fades away, images of popular as sentimental or escapist. Instead, if demonstrations held in commemoration approached as an analytical concept, of al-nakba enter the screen. The it can have a productive function as a demonstrators’ voices overtake hers cultural response to the loss of homeland as they shout repeatedly: “Calamity in exile and, thus, facilitates detailing day: through our resolve, the right of notions of Palestinian cultural memory return will not die […]”. The “right of and identification with Palestine as return” that the demonstrators call for their homeland. represents the main political demand of In Taha’s narrative, this productive the Palestinian people for the resolution impulse of nostalgia can be seen in of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This the fact that his longing for the past narrative movement to the exterior and for what has been lost does not of Um Saleh’s personal narrative represent a return to an idealized past: transforms the private event of her loss “my longing is not a yearning for stone of home into a public one. This move [...]”. For Taha, what were lost are not from private to public gives political just houses, stones, and paths, but a

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whole life: the country, the people, Palestinians’ collective conceptions of and their entire existence. The return the “right of return” as a return to a to the lost home is constituted in the whole life, not just to a place. difference between “visiting” the place In this part of 1948, the movement and “thinking” it. While his visit to the of storytelling from the interior psyche material site (the ruins of his village) (Um Saleh’s story) to the public exterior evokes an emotional flux and tears, (demonstrations) and back again Taha’s thinking of Saffouria engenders (Taha’s story) performs the process of a “mysterious” picture in his mind. becoming—in other words, of a dynamic Thus, Taha’s cultural identification identity—in terms of cultural memory. and belonging appear grounded in the This wavering narrativity not only puts difference between “seeing” the place forward a political statement about the and interiorizing it, through which Palestinian loss of homeland and their the material image of the lost home is “right of return” as the self demanding transformed into a mental one. a return to itself, but also, I contend, This mental image is inexplicable: exemplifies the idea of cultural memory, “hard to explain […]”. On the one hand, to borrow Bal’s conceptualization of Taha’s failure to articulate this mental the term, as an act of citationality that image is the performative moment “establishes memorial links beyond in the narrative at which his tragedy personal contiguity” (1999a: 218).15 of loss of home is qualified as larger Through the resulting intertemporality than the individual, hence collective of memory, becoming can be viewed as and for that reason, not “fitting” in his a process based on interaction between individual mind. On the other, through the individual subject and collective, the inexplicability of the mental image, cultural and politic milieu, including Taha’s belonging to the lost place does that milieu’s history. not appear as a material belonging—not This process enables the discovery as a matter of “having and having not”. of a unique and irreplaceable position, Rather, Taha’s belonging to his lost home a topographical one, with respect to appears as an enigma: a very personal exile. This movement inside and outside sense that gives off an awareness of personal narratives not only frames Um a specific knowledge of the self that Saleh’s and Taha’s narratives within cannot be expressed discursively, contemporary political context of the like an exotic and unnamable scent. Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but also The subjectivity of the enduring loss exposes Palestinian cultural memory (of place) is again foregrounded. For and identity as contextually embedded Taha, this is how the return to the within a past loss of homeland that lost home becomes a return that must invariably interferes in the present of equal what was lost in the first place: exile. As such, the storytelling of 1948 a whole life. Hence, such a loss cannot not only deals with the temporality be simply compensated with a visit to of the past within the present, also the lost place. Taha’s narrative confirms with the spatial and the generational

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distance between the lost home and the Audiovisually, Dov’s story is exilic subject in the sense of the “there” connected to the stories of Um Saleh in, and for, the “here”. At the heart of and Taha. The setting of Dov with this figuration of Palestinian identity in his grandson inside his house is 1948 is, then, a topographical position symbolically charged. It echoes the that maintains the notion that “there is scene of Um Saleh and her grandson no travel without a return” by which the standing outside her house, in exile. past narrative of al-nakba is cognitively This not only reminds the viewer of and spatially grounded in the present the generational distance and the oral of the exilic subject. This figuration is dynamic of narrative transmission, performed in the storytelling acts of but it also sharply contrasts their Um Saleh and Taha. In 1948, however, respective positions: Um Saleh in non- this topographical positioning does place (not-home or exile), Dov in place constitute a point of arrival for Bakri’s (in Um Saleh’s home). Narratively and film, but also a point of departure for historically, through his confession of another kind of journey: a return trip to conquering Saffouria—“I did [it]”— the subjective realm of narrative not of Dov becomes the perpetrator of Taha’s the self but of its “other”. catastrophe. As the perpetrator, Dov’s presence in the film concretizes Taha’s Performing “We” in the “Aftermath” loss as well as his allegorical “return” to the lost home. Through Dov’s As I already indicated, Bakri’s confession, Taha’s loss of place and the theatrical play was performed many “right of return” are given a specific times in Arabic and Hebrew to packed historical context: the establishment of audiences of Palestinians and Israelis the State of Israel in 1948 as the origin over a number of years. In keeping up of Palestinian exile in the film’s present. with this mixing, 1948 brings in Israeli Most importantly, on a political level, narratives of this event. In the next Dov’s narrative relates to the issue of scene, as the camera slowly moves negation of al-nakba. His confession away from Taha standing near the ruins emphatically deviates from official of his destroyed village, a voice over Zionist history that denies that al-nakba comes in saying: “Saffouria endangered took place.16 the Israeli army, the IDF […]”. Slowly, the face of an elderly man, identified as Through the employment of Dov Yirmiya, sitting with his grandson multiple personal narratives of both in the courtyard of his house, enters self and other, the movement of on the screen. Speaking Arabic with audiovisual storytelling in 1948 brings an Israeli accent, Dov tells the story of together different visions and voices how he was responsible for conquering playing off against each other without Taha’s village (Saffouria) as IDF officer: the need to reconcile them, but to hold “One battalion went to Illout and I led them together—the “Palestinian self” my platoon to Saffouria. I was ordered as victimized and the “Israeli other” as to conquer it and I did […]”. a perpetrator. They need each other as

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in a Hegelian dialectic.17 Additionally, was killed during the massacre of Deir the film practices a narrativity that runs Yassin, leaving behind two baby girls. through the singular form according to Zahariya takes care of the babies. After the convention that several voices must fleeing her village during the massacre, at different moments claim the position carrying with her the two baby girls, of the main character in the narrative she ends up in an empty and strange of al-nakba. This feature facilitates a place, without knowing how to support polyvocal storytelling of the catastrophe the girls. Following directly on Dov’s that expresses feelings and aspirations confession, the significance of this story of several people, in order to suggest lies primarily in its focalization of the that the voices of the Palestinian self and catastrophic moment not in Dov’s act the Israeli other are each answerable itself (his conquering as a contribution to the other. This answerability of the establishment of the State of can be seen to be performed in the Israel), but in the aftermath of this act: audiovisual shift the film makes from being stranded in a non-place (exile). the realm of personal memories to the What makes Zahariya cry is not that theatrical and the public stage where she must care for two babies with no self and other are brought, not into means of survival, but, as she says, that opposition, but into dialogue. In 1948, she is “never allowed to return to her this dialogic relationship is grounded home”. in specific conflicted, yet inherently The aftermath—it is this retroactive uneven, discourses of memory, in which recall of the past that causes tears. This Palestinian and Israeli voices speak “preposterous temporality” of the of and in “the aftermath” of al-nakba. catastrophic moment, the aftermath of I shall return to the “unevenness” of al-nakba, serves as the starting point Palestinian and Israeli discourses of for a renewed (theatrical) dialogue memory in the next section of this between the voices of self and other.18 article. After Zahariya’s story, the screen, in After Dov’s story, the viewer the form of a book page, opens the encounters one more personal theatrical stage. On stage, Saeed Abi al- narrative. Her eyes looking straight Nahs, as if entering from afar, appears into the camera, as if talking not to once more to complete his story, left off the interviewer but to the viewer, an in the opening scenes: elderly woman, identified as Zahariya Assad from Deir Yassin, begins her I swear that when this great story with the words: “One thing made misfortune befell us in 1948, my me cry the day we left out village, never family was scattered throughout Arab countries, bordering Israel that allowed to return […]”. The emphasis in Israel had not yet conquered. But Zahariya’s story is on exile occurring in the day will come. When my father a non-place. Her story can summarized and the donkey were shot dead […], as follows. When Zahariya was fifteen I set sail for Acre, by sea. The great years, the wife of her old brother sea, whose foamy waves are like

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mountains. Its shores are bullets and victimized and the other as perpetrator. treachery, with refugee boats to the Yet, Saeed’s description of the “great end of the horizon. The sea is great and treacherous” sea prevents this and treacherous and our cousins categorization. In the sea both the exilic too, including infants, are drowning, (victimized) self and its (perpetrator) drowning. other perish equally: “the sea is great and our cousins too, including infants, Saeed describes al-nakba as the “great are drowning, drowning”. In this misfortune” of 1948. In contrast to the sentence, the phrase “our cousins” is opening scenes wherein the catastrophic key. This is the phrase that Palestinians moment is specified as “the incidents of commonly use in reference to the Jews, 1947”, Saeed’s expression here follows thus, signifying the biblical relationship the public dating of the event. In so between both peoples as descendants doing, al-nakba becomes no longer the from Isaac and Ishmael (the two half private catastrophe of the individual brothers), the sons of Abraham.21 For subject, but the larger collective one. Saeed, “our cousins” are drowning with Many small incidents in 1947 together us in the sea of conflict. His description, add up to the collective catastrophe of through referring to the Israel/Jewish 1948. Al-nakba, thus, appears as both other as “cousins”, moves away from utterly individual—it happened to each oppositional politics and constitutes village or Palestinian—and collective— both self and other as a relationship it targeted the Palestinians as a people between relatives. This is a performative and a nation—at the same time. politics of “we”. With respect to the notions of “self” On the level of narrative language, and “other”, Saeed’s swearing gives his this conceptualization of self and other performative act a sense of sincerity.19 But makes place for personal memories since the act takes place in public as well that confound official history and at as expands to others, it transforms his the same time return to that history performance into an act of testimony.20 what often escapes it—the catastrophic Saeed’s performance reiterates a story in the present. Thus, the narrativity of of loss and dispersal that is similar al-nakba between personal memories to the ones we already saw. Hence, and historical performance in 1948 Saeed takes responsibility for the film’s establishes an equitable and dialogic subjects through his re-telling of their relationship between the Palestinian losses. Like in a courtroom, Saeed’s self and its Israeli/Jewish other that act on stage embodies the aesthetic is based on the unraveling of official capacity both to reiterate the personal Zionist history. This corrective stipulates narratives and to “take their stand”. that official history is bad, not in its The similarity among the experiences essence—which would be a tautology— of loss, expressed at the beginning of but rather in its application. In her book his statement “I swear […]”, threatens A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, Gayatri the binary division of the self as Spivak argues that the re-examination of

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colonial discourse does not necessitate stories of both self and other, but from discarding previous versions of history a more recent point of view. Thus, the or truth but challenges the notion that performative narrativity of the film is anyone is privileged to have access a mode of telling that, as I will attempt to the truth (1999: 21-25). In light of to show in the remainder of this article, Spivak’s critique, I wish to argue that explores the causes and effects of the in 1948 the distrust in official history’s narrative, but also attempts to bring capacity to express the memories of al- this narrative closer to resolution. nakba leads to a re-telling of the past that challenges the notion that anyone The Everyday: Self, Others, and Exile has privileged access to historical truth. The final sequence of Bakri’s 1948 As I pointed in my analysis of 1948 performs the conflicted, yet co- thus far, this challenge most clearly dependent “we” most directly. It manifests itself in Dov’s confession of opens with a close-up of Bakri outside conquering Saffouria, which sharply the theatrical stage: we see him contradicts official Zionist historicity of interviewing, listening to stories, and al-nakba. wondering between the ruins and the The performative narrativity of the cactus trees. In one of these scenes, film, then, constructs an alternative Bakri interviews a man, identified as knowledge of the loss of Palestine. This Abu Adel from Dawaima. Abu Adel alternative knowledge both activates describes how the people from his the referentiality of the narrative village fled their homes during the of al-nakba as present-oriented, and Israeli army’s invasion in 1948 in which politicizes its aesthetic experience. “400-500 men, women, and children Thus, the film’s narrative becomes were killed then”. The moment Abu a political performance that appeals Adel utters these words, a voice over to the audience to acknowledge and comes saying in Hebrew: “It was a experience the actuality of Palestinians’ slaughter planned by IDF”. In the next loss of homeland and exile as ongoing. shot, the speaker—a man setting in his The appeal also extends the audience garden—is identified as Amos Keinan. to include victims and perpetrators Amos continues the story and says: as co-dependent—as “cousins”. What animates this appeal is not just a It was not the Irgun, Stern Group disagreement about what happened in or the Hagana. It was the army. You the past, but also the issue of whether the won’t find this in the official [Israeli] catastrophe is really over, or continues history books. But those who have in the present, albeit in different form. to, know it. I, for one, have to know. In the closing part of the film, the I knew it back in 1948 […]. movement of audiovisual storytelling bears this out. Immediately after Saeed’s Amos’s narrative exposes the violent performance of the metaphor of the sea, nature of the expulsion of the the viewer encounters more personal Palestinians in 1948. His narrative

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also harks back to Dov’s narrative in son from Moshav Zecharia—interferes that it lays the responsibility for al- in the discussion, so that a dialogue nakba on the Israeli army (IDF). Most between them starts: importantly, his narrative emphatically shows the gaps of official Zionist I was born here and this is my place. history of al-nakba: “you won’t find it in I don’t look at whoever was here official history books”. This congruity before me. Nothing. This land was given to the Jews thousands of years between Amos’s and Dov’s narratives ago, and it’s ours. further coalesces the idea of a co- dependent self and other. Through this At this moment, David comes in consistency of their narratives, both completing his son’s words and Amos and Dov are focalized as Israeli/ comparing his own immigration from Jewish voices who confirm the stories Iraq to the loss of home that Palestinians of Palestinians and at the same time experienced: accept responsibility for al-nakba. However, the conceptualization Whether we’re comfortable with it of a “responsible other” appears or not. We were also hurt when they problematic as soon as Amos finishes threw us out of our homes. They did his narrative. In the following scene not use force to throw us out and we see Abu Adel leading Bakri to the they did not say: “Get out of here!” place where his lost village (Dawaima) I know that the Sate of Israel made a once stood. While both men wander deal with the Iraqis and got us out of there. We came here. among the ruins, they come across a Jewish house where they meet a man and his son who is carrying a gun on The narrative of David and his his waist. When Bakri asks the father— son is crucial in this scene. The identified as David, a resident of intergenerational transmission we saw Moshav Zecharia—“You live in an Arab earlier yields to a willful denial in the village. Today, it’s a Jewish locality. younger generation. On the one hand, Are you comfortable living in a house both men reiterate the official Zionist that was not yours?” David, taken by narrative that is utterly grounded in the question and after some hesitation, terms of the intricate mythology of answers with a question: “What can I Israel’s religious origins as Jewish say, yes or no?” continuity from biblical times: “This land was given to the Jews […]”. On While David remains silent, still the other hand, both of them take unable to come up with an answer, Bakri the position of an Israeli/Jewish says: “That means you understand other, who neither acknowledges the the pain of a person who […]”. Before Palestinians’ rights to their land, nor completing the sentence, David rushes takes responsibility for what happened in and replies: “I understand it very to them in 1948: “whether we’re well”. The moment David finishes his comfortable with it or not”. sentence, his son—identified as David’s

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Thus, compared to Dov and Amos, Changing his position again into both David and his son stand as that of the soldier, Saeed then recounts extreme opposites of the former pair. the story in a monologue in which the With regard to “self” and “other”, soldier interrogates the father of the the juxtaposition of the narratives child: of David and his son to those of Dov and Amos allows us to understand [Soldier:] Where are you from? the Israeli/Jewish other as a construct [Father:] from Birwa, Sir. [Soldier:] that includes different “others”. These Are you returning to Birwa? [Father:] Yes, Sir. Please, Sir […] [Soldier:] “others” are divided between an Didn’t I order you not to return? other who reforms Zionism and takes Animals! You respect no law? Go on. responsibility (Dov and Amos), and Get out of here. another irresponsible Zionist other constituted in the difference between In Saeed’s performance, Palestinian 22 David and his son. self and Israeli other are intertwined This presentation of the Israeli/ in a violent relationship, that is, of a Jewish other as internally divided colonizer and colonized. The use of the others poses a theoretical challenge to “animals” enables a reading in which the Palestinian victimized self: namely, the Israeli soldier’s description becomes where the Palestinian self is located fused with racist, imperialist images and how it is configured in relation to of Palestinians as less than human. its “others” so that they can become Moreover, the dialogue between self the “we” of the play and the film’s and other which was established in mixed audience. In order to answer this Saeed’s performance of the metaphor question, the film resorts to theatrical of the sea is now terminated by the performance. For the final time and sheer force of the soldier’s statement: immediately after the scene with David “Get out of here!” What the Iraqis did and his son, the camera shifts from not say to David (“Get out of here”), the the outside to the theatrical stage. On Israeli soldier says to the Palestinians. stage, with a metal plate on his head More importantly, this scene makes like a soldier’s hat, hiding behind the concrete the internal division of broomstick as a defensive barrier, and Israeli/Jewish “others” (between Dov with his hand in the shape of a pointed and Amos, and David and his son) in gun, Saeed audiovisually performs both terms of power: not Dov and Amos, as self and other. Speaking Arabic with an responsible others, who have power in Israeli accent, Saeed says: “Where did Israeli society, but David and his son. you come from? Tell me or I’ll shoot The gun on the waist of David’s son you?” Changing both his accent and becomes a symbol of control and power. position, coming out from behind the This symbol exposes the conflictual broomstick, Saeed starts talking to the grounds of Palestinian and Israeli audiences describing how an Israeli discourse of memory and identity, but soldier held a gun to his child’s head it also embodies the unevenness of these and how he stood there helpless.

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discourses. Since 1948, Israel always of Israel. But after the state was had the advantages of a state apparatus established, from the moment there and military authority, which not only was something we could do about it fashions images of historical Palestine […] To heal, rectify, show good will, exclusively as the so-called “Jewish help out, bring back refugees. That’s when it started to eat me inside. land” internally and abroad but Since then I’ve been consistent in my also suppresses and de- legitimieses views. Palestinian narratives of identity. At the end of Saeed’s performance, Dov’s consistent views of Palestinians the focalization of the Palestinian self not only show the inconsistency of and the Israeli other as colonized/ David and his son’s views, but also colonizer seems to bring the film’s particularize the difference between narrative to a halt. Only then, the views of Israeli/Jewish “others” as audiovisual storytelling shifts from based on different ideological trends the theatrical stage to the outside. within Zionism.23 In this scene, we see Dov playing his In our film, Dov is an Israeli/Jewish accordion music to a group of children, subject who believes in a Zionist and singing in Arabic: “We bring you ideology. Dov’s version of Zionism, peace”. After the singing, Bakri ask Dov however, is different from “today’s about the reason for his sympathy with Zionism and also not like the kind the Palestinians, and says: “I sense that we had back then [in 1948]”. Unlike you’re playing music not only because the Zionist trend of David and his you love music. You sympathize [with son, in Dov’s ideology establishing a Palestinians] not just because you like “homeland for the Jews” should neither Arabs, but also for another reason: harm the Palestinians nor deny their You’re assuming responsibility for [a] existence: “When people come a place national feeling of guilt. Am I right?” where another people live”. Precisely Dov then immediately answers: through this articulation of a specific trend of Zionism Dov becomes a You are right about one thing. For many years, I believed in my Zionism, subject with a historical consciousness, but not like today’s Zionists and also but also dominant trends of Zionism not like the kind we had back then. I become atrocious—just like official believed that we were not harming history—not in their nature, but in the Arabs here […] I admit that even their application. The current ideology before the war, I perceived a trend in of Zionism (or the trend of David Zionism […] when people come to and his son) is precisely dubious in a place where another people lives, its lack of historical consciousness: especially if there’s resistance, and through the denial of the Palestinians’ this resistance is justified, we later rights and the refusal of responsibility discovered […] I certainly don’t feel comfortable with the idea, even for their catastrophe. Further, unlike before the establishment of the State David who lives with his ideology “whether [he is] comfortable with it or

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not”, Dov’s historical consciousness is of a bird, a seagull, at the shore of the characterized by a moment of unease: sea enters the screen. As the bird is “I certainly don’t feel comfortable […]”. about to fly away, the camera captures After the establishment of the State of its image, and Bakri’s voice over comes Israel, this moment of unease, for Dov, in chanting: became a moment of recognition of the fact that there was something that O bird, you have reminded me of could be done about what happened to my [loved ones] with your plaintive the Palestinians: “to heal, rectify, help song. Don’t compound my sorrows. O bird, when you see a man placing out”. Thus Dov’s feeling of guilt, “that’s his hand on his cheek, it means he when it started to eat me inside”, is not parted from his loved ones. Don’t grounded in what happened in the approach him. O bird, everyone had past, but in the failure to correct it in his own troubles. Don’t compound the present, to do something about the my sorrow. Palestinians’ suffering today. Dov’s distinction of his own brand The bird emerges as a metaphor for of Zionism unravels it as an ideology the tormented continuous journey in that has multiple strands and trends, Palestinian exile. It not only reminds but that hides them in an artificial unity. the exiled of his or her “loved ones” in Rather than resolving the issue, Dov’s the past, but also torments the self in the narrative suggests that the possibility present, compounding “the sorrow”. of resolution is in the hands, not of the Thus, both the loss of the homeland Palestinians, but of their Israeli “others”. and the helplessness to overcome it, The resolution of the Palestinian “when you see a man placing his hand narrative of al-nakba can only work […]”, are displaced from the historical at the level of the others’ ideologies, catastrophe to the contemporary reality substituting racist Zionist ideological of exile.24 trends with historically conscious ones. In 1948, the narrativity through However, until that moment comes, which al-nakba is performed, then, the Palestinians’ remain colonized and suggests a dynamic reciprocity dispossessed: their everyday of exile between the past and the present by surges on without any sign of ending which the agonized present of exile or reducing suffering. becomes the main motivation behind The closing scene of 1948 illustrates the subject’s telling of the past. This this contradictory situation. We see mode can be derived as performative Bakri walking among the ruins and the narrativity: drifting between theatrical cactus trees, intimating the Palestinian performance, historical archives, and present as tainted with loss of place personal memories it comprises the and nostalgia. In a close-up, we see performance of a fundamental aspect him standing on one of the graves and for the actual state of the Palestinian brushing the dust off the name on the narrative. The image of Bakri brushing gravestone. At this moment the image the dust off the name of the gravestone

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becomes the ultimate enactment of this enacts their conflicted discourses actuality. Through its confrontation of memory through which they can with official Zionist history, the film’s converse together in a shared space performative narrativity shows us where narratives and identities are the dusty gravestones of Palestinians, always already implicated in each while performance exposes their names other. Neither separation nor merging in the present. is ever absolute, but dependent on the In 1948, official history and specific contexts in which re-telling and performance emerge as the dialectic of re-reading are staged and performed. politics and aesthetics. This dialectic, however, appears as self-perpetuating: Notes it feeds on itself, especially through 1. This mawaal (melody) is my translation and the film’s moving inside and outside it is taken from Palestinian folkloric music that personal memories and the theatrical stage. Fittingly, the performative is commonly sung during festive occasions such approach of audiovisual storytelling as wedding ceremonies and births. The audio- accepts intellectual responsibility for cassette tape where I found this melody is from maintaining rather than resolving the a composition of songs by Shafiq Kabha. See tension between the aesthetic and the Kabha (1989). political, using the former to criticize, 2. I am referring here to the well-known Zionist re-examine and transfigure the latter narrative which makes claims for Jewish histori- through performative acts of telling. The film constructs temporal bridges cal presence in Palestine based on a timeless bib- between the past of al-nakba and the lical attachment to the land by absolutely reject- present of exile that allows us to see ing, with brutal military force, any Palestinian both from different angles at once in a historical or temporal counterclaims. For excel- durational continuity that they share. lent explications of such a narrative, see Said The salient aspect of this analysis of (1992), Masalha (1992), and Pappe (2006). 1948 is not to recognize the temporality 3. The term “Israeli-Arabs” is often used to re- of the past event of al-nakba within the fer to the 17 percent of the Palestinians who represent of exile, but to see the aesthetic mained in the area of Palestine on which Israel experience (in this case a theatrical performance) of that catastrophe as was established in 1948. Currently, there are not merely a representation of the past more than one million Palestinians living inside but as a living form of the catastrophic Israel as a “second-class citizens” minority. The present, where the battle for justice, vagueness of the term “Israeli-Arabs” is due emancipation and the diminishment of to the contradictory approaches through which human suffering continues. Re-reading these Palestinian subjects are theorized in domi- the film’s performative narrativity can nant political ideologies and academic discours- become a cultural intervention that does not aim to merge Palestinian es, especially anthropological and ethnic stud- “self” and Israel/Jewish “other”, but ies. On the one hand, as Arabs, these subjects are

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dismissed and degraded as uncivilized subjects. “new humanities”. Through his intervention, On the other, as Israelis, they are conceived of the performative is brought to bear on a wide as an object for civilizing. For further critique of range of cultural practices and events; not only this term as well as the various acts of social dis- language. Derrida assigns the analytical author- enfranchisement and political oppression which ity of the humanities within the university to this segment of Palestinians had endured since knowledge (its constative language), to the pro- 1948, see Frisch (1997: 257-69), and Suleiman fession (its model of performative language), (2001: 31-46). and to the mise en oeuvre of putting to practice 4. In recognition of his life work, Habibi was of the “performative”, which Derrida, alluding awarded the Palestinian prize for literature to metaphorical fiction, calls the “as if” (2001: (Al-Quds Prize) by the PLO in 1990. In 1992, 235). On Derrida’s conceptualization of mise en Habibi also accepted the “Israel prize for Arabic oeuvre in the sense of “as if”, see Derrida (2001: Literature”, and as a result, had to face some 233-247), and Singer (1993: 539-68). For fur- fierce literary and political attacks by Arab and ther studies on Derrida’s thought and theory, see Palestinian intellectuals that lasted until his Derrida (1976, 1977: 172-97, 1981, and 1989: death. Habibi was born and buried in Haifa and, 959-71), and Culler (1981, 1982, 2000: 503-19, in an adamant response to the attacks against and 2006). The term “new humanities” is cited him, his will was to have inscribed on his grave: in Peters (2002: 47-48). In his article, Peters dis- “Emile Habibi remains in Haifa forever”. For cusses what Derrida outlines as seven program- a comprehensive study on these controversial matic theses in the humanities or what Derrida aspects of Habibi’s life and literary project, calls “seven professions of faith for the new hu- see Jaraar (2002: 17-28). In his article, Jarrar manities” (48). Butler’s theorization of perfor- also discusses many of the critical studies that mativity follows this Derridian view of iteration dealt with Habibi’s novel, al-Mutasha’il. Also, as the key to performance in that it accounts for see Dalia Karpel’s documentary about Emile the performative’s relationship to cultural prac- Habibi’s life, Emile Habibi – Niszarty B’Haifa tices such as gender. Butler argues that gender (Emile Habibi – I Stayed in Haifa), (1997). is discursively constituted by performative acts, 5. To be sure, the theory of performative, ini- which in their iteration come to form a specific tially formulated by John Austin, in How to Do and “coherent” gender identity. Gender, then, Things With Words (1962), changed linguistics becomes a “performative reiteration”, that is, as drastically. This theory has been modified and the subject’s habit to embody hegemonic norms. extended from philosophy to cultural analysis As such, for Butler, there is no gender identity and back again in other theorizations particu- behind expressions of gender: identity is consti- larly these by Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler. tuted by and through the very expressions that Derrida embraces the theory of the performa- are said to be its results. See Butler (1990 and tive as the basis for a new conceptual meth- 1993). odology of analysis in what he refers to as the

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6. My assumption here benefits from Richard Boer argues that “re-reading” is a temporal pro- Bauman’s cross-cultural perspective of inter- cess of discovery which is itself “part and parcel textuality, especially his folklore standpoint of the act of reflecting on the relation that oper- of looking at communications across time and ate between a reader and a text or a viewer and the relationship of texts and performance to the an image. This process runs parallel to strate- past. See Bauman’s (1984 and 2004). For rel- gies of interpreting context” (2004: 19). In other evant studies on this perspective in terms of words, re-reading is an interactive process that is performance, memory and storytelling, see Dell explicit about both the practice of interpretation Hymes’ works on the methodology and theory and its political pertinence in the context of the of ethnopoetics in Native American context. See present. Hymes (2003 and 2004). 11. This statement from Freud is quoted by 7. It is worth mentioning here that Bakri’s Jenin, Merchant (1972: 9), and Taha (2002: 56). For Jenin (2002) is dedicated to the Jenin massa- Bergson’s notion of laughter, see Bergson (1956: cre. This massacre (also known as The Battle of 170-89). Jenin) took place between 3rd and 11th of April, 12. My use of the term “ontological vertigo” 2002 in Jenin Refugee camp in the West Bank is similar to Inge Boer’s use of the term as an as part of Israeli Army’s Operation Defensive effect that emerges from literary works’ use of Shield during the second Intifada. Bakri’s film common devices to claim truthfulness of their includes testimonies from the residents of Jenin account while at the same time making use of describing how Israeli forces destroyed most of the imaginary. See Boer (2004: 91). the camp. Jenin, Jenin begins with a deaf and 13. For a comprehensive historical record, details dumb man who leads the viewers (and Bakri and figure of this massacre as well as its psycho- himself) to the scenes of destruction after which logical and political impact on the Palestinians, straight up interviews with the inhabitants of See Kanaana and Zitawi (1987), and Morris Jenin are introduced. Bakri also includes an (2005: 79-107). interview with himself. For more informa- 14. For relevant discussions on generational tion on this film, see http://www.arabfilm.com/ transmission of personal narratives and experi- item/242/. For detailed insights on the Jenin ences, see for example, Stahl (1977: 9-30) and massacre, see Baroud (2003). Baroud’s book Robinson (1981: 58-85). is an excellent compilation of eye-witness ac- 15. This conceptualization is further developed counts of the residents of Jenin. in Bal (1999b: vii-3). 8. Similarly, Simone De Beauvoir’s famous term 16. In “official” Israeli political and academic “The Second Sex” indicates the second-class discourse, the event of al-nakba is presented as status of women. See Beauvoir (1949 [1989]). an event that did not happen. On Israeli nega- 9. See Saloul (2007: 111-28). tion of al-nakba, see, for example, Kadish and 10. I use the term “re-reading” as discussed by Avrahor (2005: 42-57), Morris (1987 and 1990), Inge Boer. In her book, Disorienting vision, and Masalha (1988: 158-71 and 1996).

31 Ihab Saloul Performative Narrativity

17. For a useful study on this dialectic, see Buck- sympathy. In her analysis, shohat also points Morss (2000: 821-65). out how the exclusive Jewish rythem of life 18. My use of the term “preposterous temporal- which Zionist cinema promotes serves to cam- ity” here benefits from Bal’s notion of “prepos- ouflage the deep socio-cultural discrepancies terous history” as she theorizes it in her book between the European (Ashkenazi), the Oriental Quoting Caravaggio. The object of investiga- (Sephardim), the Orthodox and the secular Jews tion in Bal’s book is not the well-known seven- in Israeli society today. teenth century painter, but rather the temporality 23. For relevant studies on the different ideo- of art. In her book, Bal retheorizes linear notions logical trends within Zionism, see Hertzberg of influence in cultural production. She does so ([1976] 1997) and Rose (2004). Also, for a use- by showing the particular ways in which the act ful philosophical discussion of political ideolo- of quoting is central to the new art but also to the gies and the ways they affect formation of sub- source from which it is derived. Through such jectivity and sense of self, see Althusser (2001: dialogic relationship between past and present, 107-25). Bal argues for a notion of “preposterous his- 24. For a relevant interpretation of the use of tory”, where works that appear chronologically birds in Palestinian folktales, see Muhawi and first operate as “after effect” caused by the im- Kanaana (1989). ages of subsequent artists (1999a: 1-27). A similar temporality, I contend, is at stake in Bakri’s Works Cited film,1948 . Alphen, Ernst van. In press, 2008. The 19. Sincerity is itself subject to rhetorical analy- Rhetoric of Sincerity. Ernst van Alphen, Mieke Bal and Carel sis. See Van Alphen (2008, in press). Smith (Eds). Stanford: Stanford

20. For relevant works on testimony in relation University Press. to conflicted discourse of memory, see Lévinas Althusser, Louis. 2001. “Ideology (1996: 97-107), Derrida (2000: 15-51 and 2002: and the Ideological State 82-99), Hartman (2002: 67-84), Felman (1991: Apparatuses: Notes Towards 39-81), and Sontag (2003: 104-26). an Investigation”. In Lenin and 21. The Islamic reference of this relationship as Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review “cousins” can be found in Surah Ibrahim (14: Press. 107-25. 39). See Yusuf Ali (2000: 200-206). Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things

22. For a useful study on the mishaps of the With Words. Oxford: Oxford representation of Palestinian history in Zionist University Press. narrative in Israeli cinema, see Shohat (1989). Bal, Mieke. 1997. Narratology: Shohat’s driving thesis is that Palestinians are Introduction to the Theory of often not mentioned in Israeli films, and if they Narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. are, then their history and their case for a homeland are not treated with understanding and

32 Performative Narrativity

_____.1999a. Quoting Caravaggio: Journal of Contemporary Film 1 Contemporary Art, Preposterous (1): 24-39. History. Chicago and London: Buck-Morss, Susan. 2000. “Hegel and University of Chicago Press. Haiti”. Critical Inquiry 26 (4): _____.1999b. “Introduction”. In Acts 821-65. of Memory: Cultural Recall Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: in the Present. Mieke Bal, Feminism and the Subversion of Jonathan Crew, and Leo Spitzer Identity. New York: Routledge. (Eds). Hanover and London: _____.1993. Bodies That Matter: On the University Press of New discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New England.vii-3. York: Routledge. _____.2002. Tavelling Concepts in the Culler, Jonathan. 1981. The Pursuit Humanities: A Rough Guide. of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Toronto: University of Toronto Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell Press. University Press. Baroud, Ramzy (Ed). 2003. Searching _____.1982. On Deconstruction: Theory Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of and Criticism after Structuralism. Israeli Invasion. Seattle: Cune Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Press. Bauman, Richard. 1984. Verbal Art _____.2000. “Philosophy and as Performance. Long Grove, Literature: The Fortunes of the Illinois: Wave Land Press, Inc. Performative”. Poetics Today 21 _____.2004. A World of Others’ Words: (3): 503-519. Cross-Cultural Perspective of _____.2006. The Literary in Theory. Intertextuality. Malden, MA: Stanford: Stanford University Wiley-Blackwell Publishing. Press. Beauvoir, Simone de. 1949 (1989). The Dabashi, Hamid (Ed). 2006. Dreams of Second Sex. H. M. Parshley a Nation. On Palestinian Cinema. (Trans). London: Vintage. London: Verso. Bergson, Henri. 1956. Laughter. New Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of York: Doubleday Anchor Grammatology. Gayatri Books. Chakravorty Spivak (Trans). Boer, Inge. 2004. Disorienting Vision: Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Rereading Stereotypes in French University Press. Orientalist Texts and Images. Bal, _____.1977. “Signature, Event, Mieke (Ed). Amsterdam and Context”. Glyph 1: 172-97. New York: Rodopi. _____.1981. Dissemination. Barbara Bresheeth, Haim. 2003. “Telling the Johnson (Trans). Chicago: Stories of Heim and Heimat, University of Chicago Press. Home and Exile: Recent _____.1989. “Structure, Sign and Play Palestinian Films and the in the Discourse of the Human Iconic Parable of the Invisible Sciences”. In The Critical Palestine”. New Cinemas.

33 Ihab Saloul Performative Narrativity

Tradition: Classic Texts and Hartman, Geoffry. 2002. “Tele- Contemporary Trends . David Suffering and Testimony”. H. Richter (Ed). New York: St. Scares of the Spirit: The Struggle Martin’s Press: 959-71. against Inauthenticity. New _____.2000. “Demeure: Fiction and York: Palgrave Macmillan. 67- Testimony”. In The Instant of 84. My Death. Elizabeth Rottenberg Hertzberg, Arthur (Ed). ([1976] 1997). (Ed). Stanford: Stanford The Zionist Idea: A Historical University Press. 15-51. Analysis and Reader. New York: _____.2001. “The Future of the Jewish Publication Society of Profession or the Unconditional America. University (Thanks to the Hymes, Dell. 2003. Now I Know Only ‘humanities’, What Could So Far: Essays in Ethnopoetics. Take Place Tomorrow)”. In Nebraska: University of Derrida Down-Under. Laurence Nebraska Press. Simmons and Heather Worth _____.2004. “In Vain I Tried to Tell (Eds). Palmerston North: You”: Essays in Native American Dunmore Press. 233-247. Ethnopoetics. Nebraska: _____. and Bernard Stiegler. 2002. University of Nebraska Press. “The Archive Market: Truth, Jarrar, Maher. 2002. “A Narration of Testimony, Evidence”. ‘Deterritorialization’: Emile Echographies of Television: Filmed Habibi’s The Pessoptimist”. Interviews. Cambridge: Polity Middle Eastern Studies 5 (1): 17- Press. 82-99. 28. Felman, Shoshana. 1991. “In an Era of Kabha, Shafiq. 1989. “Song Testimony: Claude Lanzmann’s Compellation”. Gaza: Sawt Shoah”. Yale French Studies 79: Karwan Al Sharq Lil-Intage 39-81. Al Fani (Voice of the singing Firsch, Hillel. 1997. “Ethnicity, bird of the East for Artistic Territorial integrity, and Productions). Regional Order: Palestinian Kadish, Alon and Sela Averhor. 2005. Identity in Jordan and Israel”. “Myths and Historiography Journal of Peace Research 34 (3): of the 1948 Palestine Wars 257-69. Revisited”. Middle East Journal Habibi, Emile. 1974. al-Mutasha’il: 59 (4): 42-57. al-waq’i al-ghariba fi ikhtifaa’ Kanaana, Sharif and Nihad Zitawi. Said abi al-nahs al-Mutasha’il. 1987. “Deir Yassin”, Monograph Haifa: Maktaba’a al-Itihad al- 4, Destroyed Palestinian Ta’awuniyya. Documentation Project. Birzeit: _____.1982. The Secret Life of Saeed: The Documentation Center of Ill-Fated Pessoptimist. Salma Birzeit University. Khadra Jayyusi and Trevor Le Gassick (Trans). London: Zed.

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Lévinas, Emmanuel. 1996. “Truth of Peters, Michael. 2002. “Derrida and the Discourse and the Truth of Tasks for the New Humanities: Testimony”. Emmanuel Lévinas: Postmodern Nursing and Basic Philosophical Writings. the Culture Wars”. Nursing Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak, Philosophy 3 (1): 47-57. Simon Critchley, and Robert Robinson, John A. 1981. “Personal Bernasconi (Eds). Bloomington: Narratives Reconsidered”. Indiana University Press. 97- Journal of American Folklore 94 107. (371): 58-85. Masalha, Nur. 1988. “On Recent Rose, John. 2004. The Myths of Zionism. Hebrew and Israeli Sources for London: Pluto Press. the Palestinian Exodus, 1947- Said, Edward. 1992. The Question of 49”. Journal of Palestine Studies Palestine. New York: Vintage 18 (1): 158-71. Books. _____.1992. Expulsion of the Palestinians: Saloul, Ihab. 2007. “‘Exilic Narrativity’: The Concept of “Transfer” The Invisibility of Home in in Zionist Political Thought Palestinian Exile”. In Essays in 1882-1948. Washington, D.C.: Migratory Aesthetics: Cultural Institute for Palestine Studies. Practices Between Migration _____.1996. “Israeli Plans to Resettle and Art-making. Sam Durrant, the Palestinian Refugees, 1948- and Catherine M. Lord (eds). 1972”. Monograph Series No. 2. Amsterdam and New York: Ramallah: SHAML. Redopi. 111-28. Merchant, Moelwyn W. 1972. Comedy. Singer, Brian. 1993. “The ‘Heidegger London: Methuen. Affair’: Philosophy, Politics Morris, Benny. 1987. The Birth and the ‘Political’”. Theory and of the Palestinian Refugee Society 22 (4): 539-68. Problem, 1947-49. Cambridge: Shohat, Ella. 1989. East/West and the Cambridge University Press. Politics of Representation. Austin: _____.1990. 1948 and After: Israel Texas University Press. and the Palestinians. Oxford: Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain Clarendon Press. of Others. New York: Farrar _____.2005. “The Historiography of Straus and Giroux. Deir Yassin”. Journal of Israeli Spivak, Gyatri Chakravorty. 1999. History 24 (1): 79-107. A Critique of Postcolonial Muhawi, Ibrahim and Sharif Kanaana. Reason: Toward a History of the 1989. Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Vanishing Present. Cambridge, Palestinian Arab Folktales. Massachusetts: Harvard California: University of University Press. California Press. Stahl, Sandra K. D. 1977. “The Pappe, Ilan. 2006. The Ethnic Cleansing Personal Narratives as of Palestine. Oxford: OneWorld Folklore”. Journal of Folklore Publications. Institute 14: 9-30.

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Suleiman, Ramzi. 2001. “Minotrity Self-Categorization: The Case of the Palestinians in Israel”. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 8 (1): 31-46. Taha, Ibrahim. 2002. The Palestinian Novel: A Communication Study. London: Routledge Curzon. Yusuf Ali, Abdullah (Trans). (2000). The Holy Quran. Birmingham: Wordsworth Editions Limited. 200-6.

Films Cited 1948. 1998. Dir. Mohammed Bakri. Palestine. Al-Makhdu’un (The Dupes). 1972. Dir. Tawfiq Saleh. Syria Chronicle of Disappearance. 1998. Dir. Elia Suleiman. Palestine. Curfew. 1994. Dir. Rashid Masharawi. Palestine. Emile Habibi—Niszarty B’Haifa. 1997. Dir. Dalia Karpel. VHS. Transfax Film Production. Ford Transit. 2002. Dir. Hani Abu Assad. Palestine. Jenin, Jenin. 2002. Dir. Mohammed Bakri. Palestine. Ostura. 1998. Dri. Nizar Hassan. Palestine.

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Response

Anikó Imre memory available. History, which used University of Southern California to be the exclusive property of nation- USA states, is quickly multiplying into historical narratives and non-national memories. These are all becoming simultane- he remembrance of Palestinian ously accessible within giant electronic al-nakba, or the catastrophe of memory databases. The globalization T1948, which is celebrated in Israel of consumer culture tends to generate as the Day of Independence, is clearly waves of nostalgia and renders past pe- an issue of grave global geopolitical riods matters of style to perform in the weight. Therefore, the many audiovisu- present. The encroachment of such a al texts that perform this remembering vast, depthless present on a chronologi- carry a particular political charge. Ihab cally organized past is also fostered by Saloul’s essay analyzes one such text, the convergence of media technologies Mohammed Bakri’s documentary film and content, whose economic lifeline 1948. I have not seen this film, but the is manufactured technological obsoles- essay has convinced me that it is an im- cence. As the recent global revival of portant text: it has a multi-layered nar- Holocaust memories has shown, in our rative, a self-reflexive approach, and a era, historical and popular memory not rich aesthetic fabric, all of which makes only coexist but often become indistin- the film able to perform the trauma of guishable. and for the Palestinian people. While I Saloul seems quite aware that the cannot judge the validity of the author’s Palestinian national memory of the ca- evidently sensitive and knowledgeable tastrophe has a more universal dimen- interpretation, it makes me yearn to sion, that it is not safe from the contem- go beyond textual analysis. I feel like I porary global crisis of remembering. His would like to be addressed by the essay very emphasis on narrative performa- not just as an academic who enjoys eru- tivity reveals a keen sense that national dite textual analysis, but also as a global memory is subject to repetitive reen- citizen who should understand the im- actment. Rather than adopting a truth- plications of 1948 better and care more seeking mission, the essay approaches about the injustice committed against memories of the catastrophe from the the Palestinian people. theoretical platform of performative re- While the al-nakba at the heart of 1948 is membering. This approach is familiar to unique to a particular historical trauma, those who have seriously pondered the the compulsion to process historical workings of collective memory and its trauma and memory is not. In fact, the relation to official national history. The- field of study that has grown up around ory is the lingua franca that allows us the contemporary global obsession with to see analogical pain in remembering memory and history testifies to what and analogical difficulties to remember Andreas Huyssen calls a global crisis among different events and sites. In my 1 of memory. The crisis is due to the si- own view of Eastern Europe, another multaneous shortage and abundance of

37 Ihab Saloul Performative Narrativity

trauma-ridden region, the double need of the many documentaries on the sub- to tell collective trauma on the one hand ject, video essayist Ursula Biemann’s and to allow for contesting, competing latest film, X-Mission (2008). In one memories to surface on the other has particularly memorable scene of this permeated virtually every question film, a Palestinian woman who lives in raised about the post-Soviet transitions. a refugee camp lists her relatives along Theory, particularly poststructuralist with the places where they live. As she and postcolonial accounts of nation- speaks, this information also appears alism, have helped me make sense of written out on the screen, surrounding this paradoxical double need. Homi her lonely figure as she labors away at Bhabha’s essay “DissemiNation,” for the kitchen sink with her back to us. We instance, tackles precisely the theoreti- gradually realize that her family is scat- cal and political implications of the na- tered across at least ten countries. This tion’s narrative dimension, which con- scene is just one of the many evoca- tinually and repeatedly splits between tive illustrations of the claim Biemann two functions: the pedagogical and the makes throughout the film, also spelled performative.2 This duality is implied out on her website: “Given the vital in Saloul’s emphasis on performativity connections among the separated Pales- as well. Performativity allows for the tinian populations, the video attempts play of contestation to prevent history to place the Palestinian refugee in the from rigidifying into a singular national context of a global diaspora and consid- narrative with a mythical beginning, an ers post-national models of belonging authoritative past, and a glorious future which have emerged through the net- set aside for the chosen people. Howev- worked matrix of this widely dispersed er, to me the essay’s exclusive choice of community.” (http://www.geobodies. textual analysis and singular focus on a org/01_art_and_videos/2008_x-mis- high cultural text veers towards a peda- sion/). gogical closure and undercuts the work Biemann’s representation of Pal- of performativity itself that Saloul attri- estinians as geographically dispersed, butes to 1948. diasporic, multi-generational groups The analysis is grounded in the as- problematizes the “Palestinian subject” sumption that this particular film tells that emerges from Saloul’s interpreta- the story of and thus represents a dis- tion of 1948. The national subject of the persed and largely diasporic collective. essay is mirrored in the assumption of a But there is a discrepancy between the rather monolithic viewing subject, “the collective political significance of the viewer,” who is expected to engage with Palestinian historical trauma, which has the text in a highly predictable way ev- lasting and global consequences in the ery time and place. present, and the author’s literary and But there is another, somewhat textual focus on a single text. When overshadowed possibility implied in he refers to the “Palestinian subject” or Saloul’s interpretation of the film: Re- “the viewer,” I think about another one membering is not only performative but

38 Performative Narrativity

also relational. Jews and Palestinians are “cousins,” who are both drowning in a sea of conflict. This, to me, is one of the most productive claims of the film as well as of the analysis itself – a claim that could and should undermine the author’s very assumptions about national representation and viewership. It also raises the question what kind of position the author himself occupies in this web of relationality. What is his own viewing and analyzing position in relation to al-nakba and subsequent histories? The essay demonstrates well that theory is a useful tool of intercultural translation. However, theory can also fold upon itself and become a shield. To evoke Bhabha again, I see the essay’s commitment to theory, but I long for a more committed theory.3

Notes 1. Huyssen, Andreas. 2000. “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia.” Public Culture 12: 21-38.

2. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation.” In The Location of Culture, by Bhabha, pp. 139-170. New York: Rout- ledge.

3. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. “The Commitment to Theory.” In The Location of Culture, by Bhabha, pp. 19-39. New York: Routledge.

39 “Where Was I?”

“Where was I?”: use.” But my “colleague” persisted, and Personal Experience Narrative, explained that she needed me more for my Danish language skills than any al- Crystallization and Some leged ability to decode literary texts or Thoughts on Tradition analyze traditional expressions. Hav- Memory ing only encountered one other situation where I was sought out for my ability to speak Danish (that involving Timothy R. Tangherlini Kelsey Grammar, a Snickers bar, and a University of California, Los Angeles large multinational telecommunications USA firm), I acquiesced. This opportunity also allowed me to enter something on my shared university calendar that, if encountered by nosy legislators, might everal years ago, I was rather sur- finally justify my employment. prised when one of my daugh- ter’s friend’s parents asked me if The surgery was relatively straight- S forward from my perspective. The cra- I could help her with brain surgery in a few weeks’ time. She assured me that nium had already been removed by she was, in fact, a medical doctor and a the time I arrived in the operating the- practicing surgeon and that the request ater, and no one asked me to close at was sincere. We would not be perform- the end. My task was simple: I was to ing amateur neurosurgery on an unsus- speak Danish with the very conscious pecting passer-by as part of a bizarre patient, making sure that she recog- Southern Californian cult ritual. Rather, nized pictures on flash cards, could she would be trying to help a young maintain as coherent a conversation as woman regain her health by excising a possible while someone rooted about in remarkably aggressive tumor lodged her brain, and that she did not begin to deep in her brain. I indicated that two speak nonsense or make strange noises. weeks might not be enough time for me The patient was a young woman whose to learn how to perform surgery, particu- first language was Danish but who had larly something as delicate as neurosur- learned English at such an early age that gery, as opposed to something coarser, she was considered to be a “true” bilin- say an appendectomy or a simple am- gual. The goal, as my colleague put it, putation. I also reminded her that my was to avoid “cutting out” her Danish; doctor title was strictly related to phi- they had “mapped” her language cen- losophy: “Unless your patient is suffer- ters but, because she was bilingual, the ing from the effects of repeated attempts fear was that her Danish language did at deconstructing literary texts,” I said, not map to the same area as her Eng- “or an inexplicable desire to perform lish. The neurologist explained that lan- Finnish epic songs while strumming guage for this patient could have more a kantele, I doubt that I can be of much than the one center that is common in most monolingual patients. By applying

electric currents to various parts of the cial gathering, I met my colleague and brain while the patient spoke, my col- her husband—also a neurosurgeon— league could check the preexisting map and I began to ask questions about the and avoid paths toward the lesion that implications of the physiological struc- would disrupt possibly fragile language ture of the brain and the neurobiological networks. The surgery was a success, the processes linked to language, learning, lesion was removed, and, the next day, I and memory that might help us under- had a wrap up conversation with the se- stand traditional expression in ways dated but grateful patient. Her Danish other than those prevalent in the acad- was fine. My colleague had said she was emy. Since I was so flabbergasted by the worried about the odd sounds coming idea that language exists discretely in a from the woman during surgery, but I section of the brain so readily identifi- assured her that it was standard Dan- able, I wondered if tradition too might ish. be linked to special mechanisms—or While the patient’s linguistic ca- even specific sites—in the brain that dif- pacities remained intact, the experience ferentiate tradition from other forms of brought home to me the very physicality memory. of language and, by extension, memory. In short, the surgery sparked my in- Often, in the humanities, we conceive of terest in the neurophysiologic processes human expression—language and the of tradition and touched off a series of expressions that are built around lan- questions that I will attempt to address, guage—in ways that are quite divorced however inadequately, in this short es- from this physicality. But my experiences say. Is there such a thing as “tradition during this surgery made it quite clear— memory”? Do traditions present in neu- as clear as it could possibly be—that lan- rological terms differently than other guage and memory (and, by extension, types of memory? Does the process of learning) are, among other things, con- expressing traditions verbally present in nected to physiologic structures and the a neurologically different manner than result of neurobiological processes. The what cognitive psychologists label “nor- pre-surgical preparations and the sur- mal speech”? Is there a neurobiological gery itself also made absolutely explicit process behind Hymes’s (1975) break- that no two brains are alike (Schumann through into performance? Can an ap- 2004). Not only does each individual preciation of neurobiological processes have a brain that has been shaped by also help explain the long apprentice- their genetic inheritance, but that brain ship and subsequent mastery of epic tra- has been further shaped by (and is condition among the singers encountered stantly being shaped by) environmental by Milman Parry and Albert Lord (Lord factors—either inputs through the sens- 1964)? Does one learn and process tradi- es or very real physical changes caused tion as language and, if so, is it more akin by disease, injury or, in this case, delib- to native language acquisition or second erate intervention (Schumann, Crowell, language acquisition? Or does one learn et al. 2004). Several weeks later, at a so- and process tradition as lived experi-

42 “Where Was I?”

ence? How does one transform lived ex- work transmission of “The Fifty Dol- perience into traditional expression? To lar Porsche” both by a group of UCLA what degree is tradition production— undergraduates), it seems prudent to acquisition, storage, and, most impor- provide an overview of current models tantly, retrieval—automated compared of memory in the brain and to describe, to natural native language or other ha- however briefly, some of the main- ap bitual skills? Or is it not an automatic proaches to memory and tradition. I will process at all? Is it an automatic process conclude with a short overview of Mul- for some people and not an automatic tiple Trace Theory (MTT), a theory that process for others? In other words, to has some significant advantages over what degree is tradition conditioned by the Standard Theory of memory consol- declarative memory and to what extent idation in the context of understanding is it subsumed by procedural memory? variation and stability in tradition, and Similarly, why are some people so at- can perhaps provide some more insight tracted to aspects of a tradition (active into those small experimental data sets. participants) that they master it and oth- The two small data sets have significant ers do not (von Sydow 1948)? What ac- constraints as suitable test data, and it counts for the varying levels of skill and may well be possible to design more rig- attraction that one finds in any commu- orous experiments to test these hypoth- nity in regards to all of the community’s eses in the future. traditions? Speaking more basically, to Questions of variation and stability what extent is tradition conditioned by in tradition have been quite vexing ones neurobiology and genetic inheritance, for folklorists, at the same time as those and to what extent is it conditioned by two features have also helped define the environment? This essay is intended bounds of the field itself. Early folklor- to begin asking these questions about ists often neglected to pay attention to tradition in a most preliminary fashion the actual individual tradition partici- while appealing to theories of memory, pants, positing a superorganic view of learning, and forgetting. The tentative tradition that was very far from a view suggestions put forward here—and I of tradition that could incorporate con- stress tentative—might help us widen siderations of individual brain structure our ability to understand how the dia- and function (Krohn 1926). Even Wal- lectic tension between individual and ter Anderson’s (1923) classic theory of tradition that is the fundamental basis “self correction”—a notion that a story for folklore functions not only in soci- would be brought back into line with its ety but, quite physically, in individuals traditional form by other tradition par- who make up those societies (Chesnutt ticipants because of repeated telling of 1999). the story and repeated hearings of the Before I speculate briefly on these story through time—suggests that sto- questions in the context of a small set ries have a life of their own. In its best of folkloric data (a chain transmission articulation the “law of self correction” of the legend “The Hook” and a net- is related to questions of memory and

43 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

reinforcement—a person who has heard Second, learning such poetic languages and remembered a story multiple times is similar in many ways to learning first and from multiple sources is likely to languages” and offered five points to reject external idiosyncrasies in favor of support this hypothesis, including the his or her own memories. More recent important—yet potentially false—ob- studies of individual repertoires and servation that “the process of learning world view, such as those of Pentikaïnen and what is learned are not available to (1978), Siikala (1990), Kaivola-Bregenhøj introspection” (136). In this context, “in- (1996), Dégh (1989; 1995), and Palkó and trospection” means that an individual is Dégh (1995), as well as my own study of not only aware that he or she is learn- nineteenth-century Danish storytellers ing but is also aware of what, and how, (Tangherlini 1994a), place far more em- he or she is learning. Rubin opined that, phasis on the individual and the com- while “Memory is often considered as a plex societies in which he or she lives storehouse…for oral traditions a better and participates in traditional practices. metaphor is that of a well-practiced skill Yet, in all of these studies, there is no real dependent on extensive experience” discussion of why individuals might (Rubin 1995, 146). This latter observation have different repertoires. Generally, proposes that tradition is largely related these studies simply offer the observa- to automatic processes of nondeclara- tion that these differences exist and re- tive, procedural memory, a position that flect an aspect of an individual’s world is somewhat extreme (Rubin 1995, 136). view (Pentikäinen 1978). Not all traditional performance is auto- A decade or so ago, David Rubin matic, and a great deal of oral tradition (1995), in his Memory in Oral Tradition, is available to introspection, particularly attempted to bring the perspectives of a for the most competent and active par- cognitive psychologist to bear on a nar- ticipants in that tradition. row range of oral traditional genres. In The underlying theoretical orien- his study, he concentrated on rhymed or tation of Rubin’s (1995) approach to sung (or rhymed and sung) traditions, aspects of stability and variation is de- and attempted to align findings from scribed as “cue-item discriminability.” folklore theory—particularly Parry and This position holds that recall [of oral Lord’s Oral-Formulaic Theory—with traditions] starts with the first word of the then current theories about remem- the song and proceeds in a linear fash- bering and forgetting. He proposed early ion. Words sung are cues for words yet on in his study that learning traditional to be sung. If words are to be recalled, expression—particularly genres such they must be discriminated from other as counting out rhymes, ballad sing- words in memory. The general con- ing, and epic singing—is equivalent to straints of the genre and piece, espe- learning one’s native language, stating, cially rhythm, act as cues from the start, “genres of oral traditions can be consid- with the singing filling in other cues as ered as poetic languages, or overlay sys- it progresses…This process, after the tems, or rule bound registers of speech. initial, often conscious decision to sing a

44 “Where Was I?”

song has been made, can go on without access to any part of the expression is conscious intervention, using what has far less dependent on cueing. Studies of been called implicit (nondeclarative) or singers of epic, such as those by Lord, indirect memory. The serial-recall meth- confirm the ability of expert singers to od, however, means that knowledge in begin and end singing in multiple points oral traditions is not routinely accessed in the epic, and to modify their singing without the cues provided by a running quite dramatically to respond to the exi- start and often cannot be accessed with- gencies of the immediate performance out them. (192) context (Lord, Mitchell, et al. 2000). Of Thus, the performance of a tradition- course, on the opposite extreme, the al expression, once begun, proceeds au- least active tradition participants may tomatically, with little recourse to intro- not be able to produce a recognizable spection. Rubin, of course, has overstat- variant of a traditional expression irre- ed the case for sung tradition in his em- spective of the number of cues they are phasis on the “running start.” Although given. many tradition participants often need a Rubin’s theory also does little to ex- “running start” to access certain expres- plain features of non-sung, non-rhyth- sions, others—those that Bengt Holbek mic tradition, since many of the cues to (1987) characterizes as the “craftsmen” which he refers are dependent on formal of tradition—do not. features of rhyme or meter. Rubin pres- The example that Rubin offers of ents memory essentially as a mysterious, the folk singer who needs to wait for black-box phenomenon and does not the chorus to come around again be- explore the actual processes by which fore he can sing it is so recognizably memories are consolidated, stored, incorrect for “craftsmen” of a tradition and activated. A more contemporary that the folk singer Arlo Guthrie (1967) model of memory might help explain includes a humorous gloss on it in his the “running start” that he situates as a well-known live rendition of “Alice’s fundamental component of traditional Restaurant.” In that song he addresses recall and, at the same time, explain in his audience, saying, “So we’ll wait for a more nuanced manner how it is that it to come around on the guitar here and the “craftsmen” of tradition—the most sing it when it does. Here it comes…” In expert of active tradition participants— response, the audience laughs, acknowl- might be able to eliminate the need for edging the unlikely premise that Guth- the “running start.” Such a model might rie needs this type of cue to sing the re- also explain how processes that for frain even though they might well need some are “automatic,” and not available that type of cue. While it is probably for introspection or other types of modi- true that, for most tradition participants, fication, are much more easily accessible this type of cue-item discriminability is to other, more active, tradition partici- necessary for successful recall of a tra- pants, both for introspection, innova- ditional expression, for the most active tion, improvisation, and reformulation. and competent tradition participants, For most tradition participants, tra-

45 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

ditional expressions—their memory, example above—the song (in this case) their recall and to a certain extent, their is not only readily available for intro- performance—are not purely automat- spection but also for deliberate modifi- ic processes as Rubin implies. Years of cation (which is different from acciden- ethnographic and folkloric research has tal modification that one would find at revealed that individuals’ participation the other end of the spectrum). That is in tradition is best defined on a scale in not to say that cue-item discriminability relation to the least active to the most does not play some role in their recall; active participants in a tradition (fig. 1). rather, these “craftsmen” have many It is likely that the automatic processes more pathways to begin or restart an Rubin describes are a fitting character- expression and many more pathways ization of the manner in which tradi- to connect or move between traditional tion participants who cluster toward the expressions. In contrast, those just learn- middle of that spectrum remember and ing a tradition have not consolidated perform tradition. For other tradition the formal features or content to make participants, cue-item discriminability the type of automatic recall described is no longer as necessary—for example by Rubin possible. Given the range of in the case of tradition participants who variation one encounters in traditional have mastered the particular expressive expressive performances, from the perform—or not functional—for example formances of the highly competent to in the case of individuals who have yet the borderline incompetent, there must to learn or participate in the tradition also be varying degrees of physical con- enough to be able to remember and re- nections in the minds of these people for produce expressions (fig. 1). any given expression to explicit or de- Fig. clarative1 memory.

In this illustration, the cue-item dis- If we are to advance our understand- criminability Rubin describes is only ing of how tradition functions on the functional for those tradition partici- individual level, we must move beyond pants who are active in the tradition, the “black box” approach to learning yet not masters of it. For masters of a and memory that is implicit in most tradition—such as Arlo Guthrie in the studies of tradition, and incorporate in

46 “Where Was I?”

our studies—at least on some level—a teracts with the environment is through consideration of both the physiology the evocation of responses from the en- and the neurobiology of memory and vironment. Evocative effects are those learning. Schumann points out that that an individual elicits from others. “Psychological theory almost univer- (Schumann, Crowell, et al. 2004, 16) sally assumes that across individuals As a result, “interindividual varia- brain structure is homogeneous. Thus, tions are not seen as exceptions or noise, most psychological research on learning as in traditional psychology, but rather proceeds on the notion that all brains they are considered as a universal basis are the same…from the perspective of on which theories of human cognition neurobiology, brains are as different as must be built” (Schumann, Crowell, et faces” (Schumann, Crowell, et al. 2004, al. 2004, 18). These considerations move 2). This awareness, that different people us significantly away from an approach learn and remember not only different that considers folklore simply as behav- things but also do so differently may not ior (Georges and Jones 1995). Instead, tell us too much about why traditions it allows us to explore folklore as part persist, but it may help us to understand of a complex interaction between the how traditions persist. individual and his or her physical and The question of why traditions per- cultural environment as well as the insist might be subsumed under the neu- dividuated processes and effects related robiology of motivation and aversion— to learning and memory. rewards and value structures can be Memory is generally broken into two conditioned by the group and result in main categories: short-term or working measurable changes in neurobiology. memory, and long-term memory. Schu- These changes result in people seeking mann notes, “Working memory has tra- out or rejecting environments that, in ditionally been defined as memory that turn, lead both to learning and to under- is held for short periods of time (less lying changes in the individual’s brain than 20 seconds) in order to achieve suc- structure. In a continuous feedback cess at a task…Long term memories are loop, these changes again strengthen the those lasting for extended periods of motivation and aversion circuits. What time, from days, to weeks or for as long Schumann points out for the context of as months or years” (Schumann, Crow- learning can be extended to learning tra- ell, et al. 2004, 4-5). As implied earlier, ditions: long-term memory is, in turn, broken The first interaction involves - pas into two main categories: declarative sive effects, in which the parents, whose or explicit memory and nondeclara- genes the child inherits, provide the ma- tive or implicit memory. Again, from jor environmental input to the child. In Schumann’s summary of a memory the second kind of interaction, the indi- taxonomy, one learns that “declarative vidual chooses and/or creates environ- memories are memories for facts and ments that are compatible with his or events, and nondeclarative memories her talents. The third way genotype in- are memories for habits, motor and

47 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

perceptual skills, and emotional learn- maintain traces in the hippocampus ing” (Schumann, Crowell, et al. 2004, 5). for an indefinite period,” a significant Each of these two main sets of long-term departure from “the traditional model, memory is further broken down into articulated by Squire (Squire, Knowl- subsets. The subsets of declarative mem- ton, & Musen 1993), [that] suggests that ory are semantic memory and episodic consolidated memories are eventually memory. The subsets of nondeclarative stored in cortical circuits that are inde- memory are conditioning, priming, and pendent of the hippocampus” (Schu- procedural memory. It is the last subcat- mann, Crowell, et al. 2004, 95). This egories of each main category of long- dynamic view of declarative memory is term memory—episodic memory and an important shift in understanding the procedural memory—that are of great- physiology of memory and recall and est interest to students of tradition. The has significant implications for an- un interaction between these two types of derstanding of stability and variation. memory—and indeed a particular type Similarly, the interaction between proce- of interaction between these two—may dural memory and declarative memory well be the locus of what could be called as part of the neurobiology of memory “tradition memory.” consolidation should inform this under- Declarative memory—including the standing. important subset of episodic memory There are two main theories about that is implicated in storytelling and tra- the consolidation of long-term memo- ditional expression in general—is cen- ries and the manner in which those tered in the hippocampus. What is in- memories are recalled. Both of these teresting is that, once stored, declarative models rely on the relationship between memories are not static. Rather, “memo- declarative memory and nondeclarative ries that have been previously stored memory. The first, known simply as the have already modified the brain in such Standard Theory of memory consolida- a way as to affect the relative ease with tion, was first proposed by Müller and which new memories can be formed. In Pilzecker (1900). This theory suggests other words, learning not only results in that memory consolidation is time de- memory but is itself the result of mem- pendent—the memories are first formed ory… at the cellular level, encoding, in the hippocampus and transferred storage and retrieval are represented as over time to the neocortex. The traces modifications in the strength of synap- between the hippocampus and the pre- tic connections that are constantly being cortical regions eventually weaken and altered as the result of new interactions disappear, while the connections within with our environment” (Schumann, the neocortex strengthen through re- Crowell, et al. 2004, 76). Adding to this peated recall, consequently, the memory “dynamic nature” of long-term, declara- becomes both stable and less susceptible tive memory that once was considered to disruption or damage in its stable state to be remarkably stable, is the recent in the precortical regions. The retrieval discovery that “episodic memories may of these memories relies on a single—

48 “Where Was I?”

or a small number of—indexical links. ally, as more associations are made, new This type of indexing explains the “run- cortical regions could be added to the ning start,” or cue-item discriminabil- total set of traces for the given memory. ity, emphasized by Rubin, as well as his (Schumann, Crowell, et al. 2004, 117) emphasis on the seeming stability—and Linking of this type allows for the automaticization—of traditional expres- possibility of stories growing and sion. shrinking depending both on perfor- This Standard Theory has been sup- mance context and the narrator’s own planted in recent years by Multiple development as a person. At the same Trace Theory (MTT). Based on evidence time as it helps explain elasticity, it also that older consolidated memories can, helps explain aspects of stability over in fact, be subject to disruption of a time—the “underlying” memory per- kind nearly precluded by the Standard sists, it just has multiple indices in the Theory, MTT proposes that the connec- hippocampus that form, are reinforced, tion between the hippocampus and the or disappear over time. neocortex do not dissipate, but rather A key feature of MTT that differenti- are continuously reinforced, and new ates it from Standard Theory is the in- connections from the hippocampus to troduction of the possibility of disrup- the neocortex indexing the same mem- tion of older, consolidated memories. In ory—and other related memories—are MTT it is, “not only temporal duration constantly being formed. This dynamic but also the state of the memory (i.e., model for long-term memory consolida- whether it has been activated or not) tion aligns better with observations in that can affect the stability of the mem- both stability and variation in tradition ory” (Schumann, Crowell, et al. 2004, (Tangherlini 2003) and also provides a 120). This observation helps explain, for mechanism that contests the notion of example, the wide range of variation serial recall—a hypothesis that is easily one finds between variants of a story falsified by both fieldwork and archival told by an active participant—whose data. memories might be frequently activat- One of the key findings of Nadel and ed, and thus show both a high degree Moscovitch who first proposed MTT in of stability, and a significant amount of 1997 is summarized by Nancy Jones as indexicality between the hippocampus follows: and the neocortex, thereby allowing for As memories are retrieved and re- multiple “ins” to the storytelling—and hearsed, multiple traces are made in the a passive tradition participant whose hippocampus…These traces are indexed memory of that same story may have to locations in the neocortex. Each time been disrupted either by other environ- a new set of hippocampal traces is made mental inputs, or by the lack of frequent they are also indexed to the cortex. Thus, activation, or both. At best, this passive each time a memory is rehearsed, previ- tradition participant would need the ously linked cortical regions would be “running start” to activate the initial in- linked to another set of traces. Addition- dex to the disrupted and weakly linked

49 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

memory in the neocortex. Indeed, he or exclusively on aspects of performance. she may need multiple running starts Clearly, there is a degree of nondeclar- or additional prompting to access these ative—primarily procedural—memory memories—a phenomenon attested to that informs the performance of tradi- by many fieldworkers. tion which, in turn, is based largely on The fragility of long-term memo- the consolidation and recall of declara- ries—including long-term, episodic tive, episodic memories. Jones notes memories—is addressed well by MTT. that “Ullman et al (1997) presents a dual In various studies such as those by Lof- model for language in which they posit tus, Miller, and Burns (1978) episodic that the lexicon is processed by the de- memories for events were shown to be clarative memory system and grammar alterable by post-event information—a is processed by the procedural memo- situation that mimics well the impact ry system” (Schumann, Crowell, et al. that tradition can have on individuals 2004, 124). By analogy, one might sug- in the creation of personal experience gest that the episodic memory of events narratives. I would argue that the para- or learned events (e.g., narratives) are medics with whom I worked often had processed by declarative memory and their episodic memories for events “in- the performance of those memories—interrupted” by post-event information, cluding aspects of genre—are processed often provided during the initial telling by the procedural memory system. Lee of the newly forming personal experi- notes that “one acquires…[procedural] ence narrative (Tangherlini 1998). These memory…through the repeated execu- “interruptions” were, of course, part tion of a task…[it] is used for example of the tradition itself, and helped the when one learns how to play a musical medic consolidate the experiences of the instrument, how to dance, how to play a events into a narrative episodic memory sport, or how to speak native language,” that conformed to the expectations of and to this list one could add how to tell the group yet maintained the unique as- a story, sing an epic, perform a jump rope pects of the discrete event (Tangherlini rhyme and so on (Schumann, Crowell, 1998; 2000). et al. 2004, 44). The repeated execution The connection between episodic of the task may take the form of both memory and procedural memory is listening and performing; this learning equally important in understanding the process consequently engages both de- neurobiology of tradition. Rubin (1995) clarative and nondeclarative memory. rightfully points out that certain aspects In recall, the more stable nondeclarative of traditional performance seem almost memories structure the performance, automatic. This observation has been while the more easily disrupted—yet more formally expressed by Hymes potentially quite stable—declarative, (1975) in his consideration of “break- episodic memories provide the content through into performance,” an observa- for the performance. Ultimately this ap- tion that has also conditioned an entire proach allows for a holistic understand- generation of folklorists to focus almost ing of the neurobiology of tradition, al-

50 “Where Was I?”

lowing for both variation and stability their discussion. Very hot and heavy not only in the memory of individuals in this discussion. He was very excit- but also in traditional performances ed, they were going to get to a part of across individuals within a tradition the homework, that he really thought group. was going to be great, but just then on the radio, a voice broke in and A chain transmission of a single story said that an inmate had escaped from stands as an apt illustration of the po- Worcester State hospital which was tential for instability in tradition, partic- the insane asylum in Worcester. And ularly when members of the chain may the way that you could recognize that be either inactive tradition participants, this was the escaped inmate was that or completely unaware of the tradition instead of a right hand, he had a hook, (Anderson 1951). Unlike a regular tradi- and so if you saw this man wander- tion group, a chain transmission does ing about you should be very careful because what he liked to do, he liked not allow for the repeated execution of to slash people with this hook that he the task—neither telling nor listening. had, and so the girl started getting As a result, the memories created dur- very agitated, and said we have to go ing the chain are likely to be more frag- home, we have to go home, and he ile and less likely to reflect the stability said, “No, no, no, we were just get- that is a hallmark of tradition. In a brief ting to the best part.” And she said, experiment, I asked twelve students in a “No, no, no, I can’t stay out here, its folklore class to tell, in chain fashion, a too deserted out here, by the lake and version of “The Hook.” I told the story I insist, you have to go home.” So fi- to the first person in the chain as fol- nally after some back and forth, the boyfriend got very angry at her, and lows: started up the car, and peeled out of the parking lot. Just you know burned C : I’m going to tell you a story called 0 a whole lot of rubber and headed off “The Hook.” Now this happened home to Worcester. And they didn’t when I was a kid and I grew up in talk the whole way home. But finally central Massachusetts in Worcester they go to her house and sort of as a and just outside of Worcester. But I gesture of chivalry, he decided to get remember in high school, this hap- out of the car, sort of as, you know, pened to a couple of, of friends of an ironic gesture, to show how much mine. They had gone to a party and of a gentleman he was, he pulls up to after the party they drove out to a the front of her house, and he gets out lake that everybody would go to after of the car, and walks around the car parties, particularly couples, its called to open her door, and there, on the car Lake Chagoggagogchagogg-agogch- handle is the bloody hook. So that’s abunagungamog. And it was outside the story. of Worcester, and it was called Lake Webster. They had parked by the lake and they were sitting there discuss- Even though students who self-identi- ing homework. They had the radio fied as eager storytellers were deliber- on, a little Meatloaf song was play- ately chosen to be the early links in the ing and they were really getting into chain, after two links, the story had al-

51 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

ready begun to change significantly. De- Despite the loss of various important tails fell away, and, more importantly, features, the bounded phrases that de- the motivation of the two young lovers fine the underlying narrative structure to visit the lake all but disappeared: are still in order, and the general notion of threat and its resolution have been

C3: Basically, there’s this guy and he’s maintained (see fig. 3 below). The last in college and in Worcester, Boston, two links in the chain were, in contrast, oh no, near Boston, Worcester? And reluctant storytellers at best, and the he really likes this girl, and him and story quickly lost any coherence once it this girl they and park somewhere, in front of Lake Webster, which also has reached these students: this really long complicated Indian C : This was in Massachusetts some- name, but it’s hard to pronounce, like 11 Chamackamunga or something like where. And um so there were these that. And so, I don’t remember it, and college kids and I guess they wanted uh, anyway, so they’re like sitting in to just go away for the weekend, so the car and having this crazy conver- they were going to this lake kind of sation like talking about something far away, they’d been driving all day that happened in class the other day and so while they were driving they, and he’s like really into it and every- uh, someone on the radio came on, thing like that, and I think there’s some and they were like warning everyone, song from a band on the radio who because this like insane murderer had they both like, or whatever, I don’t re- escaped from like the mental hospital member the band name. I don’t know and it was just in that area where they who the band name is. Um, and all of were, so they uh, they decided that a sudden, there’s this interruption on uh they should probably like turn the radio of this like this emergency around and go home. And when they announcement that there’s crazed, came home there was a hook on the deranged escaped mental patient in door of the car. And that’s it. the area, right in the area they were C : OK. Well there’s some college in, and you know anyone in this area 12 should leave immediately, and the students who are from Massachu- only way you can identify this guy setts and they decided to go to a lake, is he has a hook for his right hand I and then they went to the lake. And believe. And anyway the girl’s like they left their car I guess to go onto freaking out, like let’s get outta here, the lake for some reason. When they let’s get outta here, and so finally he’s came back there was a hook on the like OK we’ll leave and they got to car and they were very scared. wherever they were going and cause Some simple metrics can help reveal he was a gentleman he got out of the the rapid changes in length and word car and he like walked around the car choice. Below is a table tabulating the to go open the door for her to let her most frequent verbs and nouns in the out and when he went to her door to story, as well as a tabulation of total go let her out, all he saw on the door word tokens and word types for each handle was a bloody hook. And that’s narrative (fig. 2): all I remember. That’s it.

52 “Where Was I?”

Fig 2.

Story/ Noun C0 C3 C11 C12 Worcester 6 (2) (0) (0) car 5 3 1 2 home 5 (1) 2 (0) lake 5 (1) 1 3 hook 4 (2) 1 1 area (0) 3 1 (0) band (0) 3 (0) (0) door (1) 3 1 (0) girl (1) 3 (0) (0) Story/Verb C0 C3 C11 C12 was 10 2 3 1 had / has 6 2 1 (0) go 5 2 2 2 said 4 (0) (0) (0) were 4 2 5 1 called 3 (0) (0) (0) remember (1) 3 (0) (0) get (2) 2 (0) (0) know (2) 2 (0) (0) came (0) (0) 2 (0) drive (0) (0) 2 (0)

Total word types 174 132 67 38 Total word tokens 428 306 119 57

Perhaps most striking is the rapid de- ing phenomena. Most obvious is the crease in both word tokens and overall rapid disappearance of place-name ref- vocabulary. While the verb list shows erents—the story was deliberately set in little of interest, except confirming the a landscape that few of the students had past tense nature of the narration, the experience with and, consequently, the noun list does highlight some interest- very specific and unusual place -refer

53 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

ents disappeared almost immediately, Another fairly straight forward com- to be replaced initially by more general- parison method between these stories is ized place referents, and later to drop the isolation of what Labov and Waletz- out altogether. Place referents in the net- ky (1967) term “bounded phrases.” work story were far more persistent (see Below is a small table that attempts to below), both because they were well- align the bounded phrases from each of known to the students, and because the the four variants in the order in which students heard and performed the story they appear in the stories. The last vari- numerous times, helping to fix the story- ant is particularly challenging, as the place link in their memories. narrative bears little resemblance to the original narrative (fig. 3): Fig. 3 C0 C3 C11 C12 friends of mine… had gone to a party after the party [this college guy] these college some college stu- they drove out to and this girl… kids… wanted to dents… decided a lake park… in front of just go away for to go to a lake Lake Webster the weekend they were sitting they're… sitting in they were going then they went to there discussing the car and having to this lake the lake homework this… conversation on the radio, a there's this inter- someone on the voice broke in ruption on the radio came on… radio… this emer- warning everyone gency announcement an inmate had there's [a] crazed, [an] insane mur- escaped from deranged escaped derer had escaped Worcester State mental patient in from… the mental hospital the area hospital the girl started the girl's… freak- getting very agi- ing out tated after some back so finally he's like they decided and forth, the boy- OK we'll leave that… they should friend got very probably… turn angry at her around

54 “Where Was I?”

[he] started up the car, and peeled out of the parking lot they left their car… to go onto the lake finally they go to they got to wher- when they came they came back her house ever they were home going

Although the underlying structure—and Students were asked to retell the story the order of bounded phrases—remains each time as best as they could remem- constant across the variants, the degree ber it. Transcripts of the first telling and of detail between each telling drops con- the last (fourth) telling of the story by a siderably. Of particular note is the com- single individual provide an interesting plete disappearance of the complicating comparison: action of the story (the escape of the insane man, identifiable by his hook) in (A1) So this guy moves out to Los An- geles to UCLA from the East Coast C12 (Labov and Waletzky 1967). Clearly, for the chain story, the lack of any rein- and he’s never been out here before forcement mechanisms, coupled with and he doesn’t have a car and he real- the lack of cultural relevance for the stu- izes that he’ll need a car to get around because it’s Los Angeles and public dents, doomed the story to significant transportation just really stinks here. instability and, ultimately, a degree of So he’s looking through the paper incoherence that would clearly prevent and sees this listing that says brand further telling of this story. new Porsche used for sale, for sale Anderson (1951), in his classic sto- for 50 bucks and he knows that this rytelling experiments, recognized the is a typo but (…) “Ah, what the hell, importance of network transmission—a I’ll call up anyways.” So he calls the situation that more closely resembles number and “Oh, you’re calling about the car, fantastic, um, come on out for an active tradition community in which a test drive,” and he says, “Oh, sure.” stories are told and retold by numer- So, you know, this is a once in a life ous storytellers. As an extension of my time opportunity to drive a Porsche class’s chain experiment, we decided so he goes out to the address, this big to develop a “seeded network” experi- estate in Beverly Hills, right 90210, ment in the following quarter, where I right in the driveway is this glowing, provided a story to two members of the brand new, red Porsche. And he can’t network and then enforced a network believe how beautiful the car is and transmission over the course of nine wishes he could have it, but he knows weeks with eight participants (fig. 4). it’s out of his price range. He figures, you know, I’d love to drive it anyway

55 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

Fig. 4 so he knocks on the door. “Oh great, you’re here about the car, let me show Week Storyteller Audience it to you, let me show it to you.” He 1 A C and E walks around, she shows him all B D and F the features, the interior design, the beautiful leather interior. “Well, do 2 C E and G you want to take it for a spin?” So D F and H they hop in, he’s driving around, driving for hours up and down the 3 E G and C Coast Highway, and he just loves it. F H and D He knows the car is getting low on A H and D gas so he returns. He says, “Well, B G and C look, you know, it looks like I’ve used up all your gas, so I’ll reimburse you 4 G F and D for the gas but I, I really can’t afford H B and C the car.” And she says, “Can’t afford C F and H it? But it’s only 50 bucks! What do you mean you can’t afford it?” “Well, D E and G gosh, I, I can afford that! Why are you 5 E A and D selling it for so cheap?” And she said, F B and C “Oh, well, my husband left me for his G E and H secretary and I just got a wire from Barbados saying, ‘Please sell the car H F and A and send me the money’.” 6 A B and F (A ) This friend of a friend of mine C D 4 moved out from the East Coast to G C and A discover that here in LA it’s impos- F A sible to get around without a car. But 7 B A and E he’s kind of a starving student so he doesn’t have a lot of money to afford D B to buy a car. So he’s looking through E F and H the paper and he sees this listing for H D and G this brand new Porsche for 50 bucks and he’s like, “Ah crap, it’s definitely 8 E B a typo but, you know, I gotta go, I got- F E and G ta go test it out, you know, I gotta go.” C A and B So he hops on the bus, heads out to D A and C the address and it turns out to be this big mansion in Beverly Hills. So, so 9 A G he knocks on the door, he notices that B H there’s this beautiful, red Porsche out G B front, he says, “Oh, god, I would love to have that car, but at least I’ll get to H E sit in it, I’ll get to see it.” A woman comes to the door, “Oh, hey, great,

56 “Where Was I?”

so you’re here about the car, fantas- to kill. So he call this 310 area code tic! Let me show it to you.” So they and a woman answers and says to walk out, looks at it, opens the door, come and test drive. The address is in smells the leather and gets in. “Hey, Beverly Hills 90210 zip code and, uh, you want to take it for a spin?” Says, he takes the bus to Wilshire and Rex- “Oh yeah, sure, that’d be great.” So, ford and walks to this big, old house. you know, they drive around Beverly It’s a huge mansion--it has a circular Hills for a while and they take it on drive way and there’s a Porsche Car- PCH, driving around for hours and rera, cherry, it’s bright cherry red and he notices he’s kinda getting low on (…) and he takes the car. Test drives gas so he, “Ah, well, you know, it’s it with the woman. Goes on Mulhol- been a long time and we’re low on land, she doesn’t seem to mind his gas,” and he starts to bring the car driving very fast and he drives for… back. So they pull in and he’s like, he drives to PCH… has gone for an “You know, I, I’m sorry, I’ll give you, hour and then they’re gone for two I’ll pay you back for the gas, but you hours and then when it gets to the know I just can’t afford this car.” And point where he’s low on gas, then he she’s, “You can’t afford it? What do goes back to Beverly Hills. He says at you mean? It’s only 50 bucks!” And this point, “I wish I could afford this he’s like, “Holy crap! Oh, ok, here I car,” and the woman is astonished got 50 bucks.” And so she hands him and says, “What do you mean, you the pink slip, and he’s thinking, “OK, can’t afford 50 bucks?” and so, not to I gotta know now that I can ask her.” scotch the deal, without saying any- “So why are you selling the car for 50 thing anymore he gives her 50 bucks bucks?” She says, “Oh well, you, my and she gives him the pink slip. But husband ran off with his secretary for he can’t resist asking why she is sell- Barbados and he sent me an email the ing the car for 50 bucks. And she says other day saying sell the car and send her husband ran away to the Caribbe- him the proceeds.” an with his secretary and told her to These two story variants reflect many of sell the car and send him the money. the aspects of crystallization that I iden- (G ) So this is the story of a student tified in an earlier study of paramedic 4 who was from the East Coast and he narrative (Tangherlini 2003). comes to the West Coast and he’s been Similarly, the first telling in the net- told that, well, things are not like in work and the last telling in the network New York, you cannot just hop into by different storytellers reveal equally a bus or a metro here, unfortunately, interesting aspects of stability and varia- you need a car. So he was looking in tion: the newspaper for cars and he saw this ad for a Porsche for 50 bucks—he thought it was kind of odd, a Porsche (B1) So the story is, ok, a guy moves to LA and sees an ad for a Porsche at that price, but he said, “What the Carrera and it’s for 50 bucks. But he heck, why not give it a try?” and he thinks that the K got left off of the ad called the person and see what’s up. and he figures what the heck I’m test So he takes his bus, sorry, he takes driving cars anyway and I have time his bike up to the Beverly Hills and

57 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

the address that corresponds to it is this Porsche is so low in price.” So an absolutely gorgeous house. Very, the woman says, “Well my husband very nice house, and in front of it left last week with his secretary for there’s this beautiful, red Porsche, the Bermuda or those islands and he just one that everybody dreams of. And sent a message, email or phone, say- then he goes up and there’s this very ing, ‘Sell the Porsche and send me the nice lady who welcomes him and she money’.” offers him to take a spin. So of course Not surprisingly, the network, with its they go and they go for a ride and it’s multiple performances and multiple op- the smoothest ride he guess he can portunities to hear the story—and thus have, it’s just marvelous, he loves that and they drive for half an hour reinforce the memory of the story— up to PCH and he’s just in heaven, it’s leads to a far greater degree of stabil- beautiful inside and then the gas is a ity in the story. Again, the same short little low, so he goes back towards the analytical illustrations as used in the lady’s address. And, um, at the time chain story reveal a remarkable degree he has to take a decision to buy the car of stability across the network, a stabil- he says, “Well, I’m very sorry. I don’t ity that aligns well with my study of think I’ll be able to pay for this car, I crystallization in paramedic personal can’t afford it.” But the woman looks experience narrative (Tangherlini 2003). at him surprised, saying, “Are you The word frequency table reveals not mad? I mean, this is only 50 bucks! If you can’t pay 50 bucks for a car…” only a consistency within narrative rep- and he doesn’t ask more, just hands ertoire (here narrator A), but across the over a $50 bill. She gives him the pink network as well, both for word choice, slip and later on, a few seconds later, total vocabulary, and length of narrative he says, “Thank you very much for (measured in word tokens) (fig. 5): this but I’m curious to know why, uh,

Fig. 5

Story / Noun A1 A4 B1 G4 Car 8 8 4 4 Gas 3 3 (1) 1 Porsche 3 2 2 5 Los Angeles 2 0 (0) 0 coast (PCH) 2 1 1 3 Interior 2 0 0 0 Bucks 2 4 4 2 Beverly Hills (1) 2 2 1 Friend 0 2 0 woman/ lady 0 1 3 4

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Ad 0 0 2 1

Story / Verb A1 A4 B1 G4 know(s) 6 7 0 1 drive(s)/ driving 5 2 7 1 Afford 4 3 2 1 Says 4 3 4 3 Show 2 (1) 0 0 Notices (0) 2 0 0 get(s)/ getting 2 4 1 0 go / goes 1 3 2 4 give(s) 0 1 2 2 take(s) 1 2 2 4

Total word types 163 170 136 178 Total word tokens 382 406 271 389

The stability within repertoire according ment of phrases is much easier in this to these criteria is particularly striking case than in the chain transmission. This and obtains for all of the storytellers in stability can most likely be attributed to the study. the reinforcement mechanisms of the A second comparison of bounded network transmission of the story (fig. phrases is equally revealing. The align- 6): Fig. 6

A1 A4 B1 G4 this guy moves out friend of a friend a guy moves to student… comes to Los Angeles of mine moved LA to the West Coast out from the East Coast he realizes that discover[s] that he’s been told he’ll need a car to … it’s impossible that… you need get to get around a car around without a car

59 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

he’s he’s looking sees an ad for a he saw this ad for looking through through the paper Porsche Carrera a Porsche the paper and sees and this listing that he sees this listing says… Porsche… for this brand new for sale Porsche he calls the So he calls this 310 he called the number area code person a woman… says to come and test drive So he hops on the he takes the bus So he takes his bus to Wilshire and bus, sorry, he Rexford takes his bike he goes out to the heads out to the and walks to this and the address address address big old house. in the driveway it has a circular in front of it there’s is this glowing drive way and this beautiful red brand new red there’s a Porsche Porsche Porsche Carrera he knocks on the so he knocks on he goes up and door the door there’s this very nice lady who welcomes him he notices that there’s this beautiful red Porsche out front she shows him all So they walk out, the features [he] looks at [the car] they hop in, he’s they drive Test drives it with they go for a ride driving around… around… for the woman. for hours hours the car is getting he’s kinda getting he’s low on gas then the gas is a low on gas low on gas little low so he returns he starts to bring he goes back to he goes back the car back Beverly Hills towards the lady’s address

60 “Where Was I?”

He says, “… I he’s like, “… I just He says… “I wish he says, really can’t afford can’t afford this I could afford this “… I can’t afford the car.” car.” car” it.” She says, “Can’t she’s, “You can’t the woman says, the woman [says] afford it? ... it’s afford it?... It’s “What do “Are you mad? I only 50 bucks? only 50 bucks!” you mean, you mean this is only can’t afford 50 50 bucks!” bucks?” [He says] “I can he’s like, “… Oh, he gives her 50 he… hands over a afford that! ok, bucks $50 bill. here I got 50 bucks.” she hands him the she gives him the She gives him the pink slip pink slip pink slip Why are you So why are you But he can’t resist he says, “… selling it for so selling the car for asking why she is I’m curious to cheap?” 50 bucks? selling the car for know why… this 50 bucks Porsche is so low in price.” she said, “…my She says, she says her the woman says, husband left me “Oh well, you, my husband ran away “… my husband for his secretary husband ran off to the Caribbean left last week with with his secretary with his secretary his secretary for Bermuda and I just got he sent me an told her to sell the he… sent a a wire from email… saying car and send him message… saying Barbados saying sell the car and the money sell the Porsche please sell the car send him the and send me the and send me the proceeds.” money. money.”

Although the word choice does vary (as in formulation both within and across noted in fig. 5 above), the overall struc- repertoire suggest that the story is read- ture of the story varies very little. Given ily available to introspection during its this stability, with more retellings, it is retelling. Repeated exposure to the story likely that these storytellers would be of course leads to subtle changes in each able to pick up their stories at various telling, undermining the idea from the points in the telling, without the need Standard Theory that, once consolidat- for a “running start.” The slight changes ed, a memory is unlikely to be changed;

61 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

rather, here the environment of repeated down what I hope will be a fruitful telling and shifting information chang- path in understanding both the physi- es the underlying memory itself at the ology and the neurobiology of tradi- same time as it solidifies the pathways tion. Advances in neurobiology—and to that memory. a move away from viewing the brain A clear limitation of these experi- as a “black box”—now allow folklorists mental observations is that they do not to consider the physiological structures allow for an assessment of the ability of and the biological processes that make storytellers in the network to begin their traditional expression not only possible story from points other than the begin- but guarantee that they will continue to ning. Rather, the experiment simply be performed. Tradition, it turns out, is confirms the widely-held notion that conditioned by processes of learning, networks are better for maintaining sta- memory consolidation, and memory bility of memory than chains. Although recall. The recognition that every brain this begins to address the question of is different—both because of genetics how people learn, store, remember and because of the dynamic impact of and perform traditional expression, the physical and social environment on the premises of the Standard Theory could brain—fits well into a view of folklore as possibly account for these observations. emerging from the dialectic tension be- Yet MTT provides a much better model tween the individual and tradition. Un- for understanding the shifts within rep- derstanding the neurobiology of learn- ertoire and across a network as hinted at ing and memory further clarifies the in the above experimental data. It also basis for stability and variation in tradi- does a much better job of accounting tion. MTT provides for a dynamism in for change over time. The next step is to long-term, declarative memory miss- devise a network that allows for inter- ing from the earlier Standard Theory of ruptions, yet requires the storytellers to memory consolidation. Similarly, an un- continue their story with, or without, a derstanding of the relationship between running start. In such an experiment, declarative and procedural memory one would probably need to split the explains the relationship between per- storytellers into two groups. Group A formance and text; to borrow from Alan would be allowed a running start and Dundes (1964), there clearly is a neu- Group B would be asked to tell from robiological basis for texture, text and where they believed they left off. If the context. While it may be too early—or discussion above concerning MTT and perhaps misleading or even wrong—to the “craftsmen of tradition” is correct, posit the notion of “tradition memory,” the experimental group would have to it seems quite clear that recent advances include several such “craftsmen”; as in understanding long-term declarative such, it might be difficult to find an -ad and nondeclarative memory also can equate tradition group. help clarify intriguing phenomena with My brief experience as a neurosur- regard to the performance of traditional geon’s consultant obviously led me expressions that appear both during fieldwork and in the archive.

62 “Where Was I?”

Notes Works Cited 1. I would like to thank the participants in my fall Anderson, Walter. 1923. Kaiser und Abt; 2005 seminar on folklore theory and methods at die Geschichte eines Schwanks. the University of California, Berkeley for their Helsinki: Suomalainen Tie- deakatemia Academia Scientia- comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I would rum Fennica. also like to thank my colleague John Schumann _____. 1951. Ein volkskundliches Ex- for his guidance and patience as I began learn- periment. Helsinki: Suomalainen ing about models of memory. Also, I would like Tiedeakatemia. to thank attendees at the Western States Folklore Bartlett, F. C. 1920. “Some Experiments Society Annual Meeting at UC Berkeley in spring on the Reproduction of Folk- 2005 and the members of the Wildcat Canyon Stories.” Folklore 31(1): 30-47. Chesnutt, Michael. 1999. “The Many Advanced Seminars in Folklore for their com- Abodes of Olrik’s Epic Laws.” ments on earlier versions of this paper. Finally, Copenhagen Folklore Notes 4: 7-11. I would like to thank Anthony Buccitelli for his Dégh, Linda. 1989. Folktales and Society: incredible patience as I completed this essay. Story-Telling in a Hungarian Peas- 2. In earlier work I have proposed a refinement ant Community. Bloomington: of von Sydow’s concept of “active” and “pas- Indiana University Press. sive” tradition bearers that incorporates an ap- _____. 1995. Narratives in Society: A Performer-Centered Study of Nar- preciation of the participatory nature of tradition, ration. Helsinki: Suomalainen labeling the two nodes of this axis of participa- Tiedeakatemia Academia Scien- tion “active” and “passive” tradition participants tiarum Fennica. (Tangherlini 1994b). Dundes, Alan. 1964. Texture, Text, and 3. Building on the work of Siikela (1990) I ex- Context. Southern Folklore Quar- plore an example of this type of “crystallization” terly 28: 251-65. elsewhere (Tangherlini 2003). See also Anderson Georges, Robert A. and Michael Owen (1951) and Hiiemäe and Krikmann (1992). Jones. 1995. Folkloristics: An Introduction. Bloomington: Indi- 4. For an example of one such occurrence of dis- ana University Press. rupted storytelling see the opening sequence of Guthrie, Arlo. 1967. “Alice’s Restau- “Talking Trauma” (Tangherlini 1994). rant.” Burbank: Warner Reprise 5. For a discussion of a similar experiment see Records. Wehse (2005). Some of the earliest experiments Hiiemäe, Mall and Arvo Krikmann. in the reproduction of folk narrative were con- 1992. On Stability and Varia- ducted by F.C. Bartlett at Cambridge in the early tion on Type and Genre Level. Folklore Processed. Reimund part of the twentieth century (Bartlett 1920). Kvideland et al. eds. Helsinki: 6. I suspect that the paramedics with whom I Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden worked might be an excellent group for this type Seura: 127-40. of study (Tangherlini 1994b; 1998; 2000; 2003).

63 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

Holbek, Bengt. 1987. Interpretation of Memory].” Zeitschrift für Psy- Fairy Tales: Danish Folklore in a chologie Ergänzungsband 1: 1-300. European Perspective. Helsinki: Palkó, Zsuzsanna and Linda Dégh Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. (1995). Hungarian Folktales: The Hymes, Dell. 1975. Breakthrough into Art of Zsuzsanna Palkó. New Performance. Folklore: Per- York: Garland. formance and Communication. Pentikäinen, Juha (1978). Oral Repertoire Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth and World View: An Anthropologi- S. Goldstein eds. The Hague: cal Study of Marina Takalo’s Life Mouton: 11-74. History. Helsinki: Suomalainen Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Annikki. 1996. Nar- Tiedeakatemia. rative and Narrating: Variation Rubin, David C. 1995. Memory in Oral in Juho Oksanen’s Storytelling. Traditions: The Cognitive Psychol- Helsinki: Suomalainen Tie- ogy of Epic, Ballads, and Counting- deakatemia Academia Scientia- Out Rhymes. New York: Oxford rum Fennica. University Press. Krohn, Kaarle. 1926. Die folkloristische Schumann, John H. 2004. Introduction. arbeitsmethode. Oslo: H. Asche- The Neurobiology of Learning: Per- houg & Co. spectives from Second Language Labov, William and Joshua Waletzky. Acquisition. John H. Schumann, 1967. Narrative Analysis, Oral Sheila E. Crowell, et al. eds. Versions of Personal Experience. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erl- Essays on the Verbal and Visual baum Associates: 1-6. Arts. J. Helm. Seattle: University Schumann, John H., Sheila E. Crowell, of Washington Press: 12-44. et al. 2004. The Neurobiology of Lord, Albert B. (1964). The Singer of Learning: Perspectives from Second Tales. Cambridge, Mass.: Har- Language Acquisition. Mahwah, vard University Press. N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associ- Lord, Albert B., Stephen Mitchell, et al. ates. 2000. The Singer of Tales. Cam- Siikala, Anna-Leena. 1990. Interpreting bridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer- Oral Narrative. Helsinki: Suom- sity Press. alainen Tiedeakatemia. Loftus, Elizabeth F., Miller, David G. & Squire, L. R., B. Knowlton, and G. Mus- Burns, Helen J. 1978 “Semantic en. 1993. “The Structure and Or- Integration of Verbal Informa- ganization of Memory.” Annual tion into a Visual Memory.” Review of Psychology 44, 453-495. Human Learning and Memory 4: Tangherlini, Timothy R. 1994a. Interpret- 19-31. ing Legend: Danish Storytellers Müller, G. E. and A. Pilzecker. 1900 “Ex- and their Repertoires. New York: perimentelle Beiträge zur Lehre Garland. vom Gedächtniss [Experimental _____. 1994b. Talking Trauma. Storytell- Contributions on the Theory of ing among Paramedics. USA, Traumatic Productions: 55 min.

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_____. 1998. Talking Trauma: Paramedics and Their Stories. Jackson: Uni- versity Press of Mississippi. _____. 2000. “Heroes and Lies: Story- telling Tactics among Paramed- ics.” Folklore 111: 43-66. _____. 2003. “And All Anyone Heard”: Crystallization in Paramedic Storytelling. Dynamics of Tradi- tion: Perspectives on Oral Poetry and Folk Belief. L. Tarkka. Hel- sinki: Finnish Literature Society: 343-58. von Sydow, C. W. 1948. On the Spread of Tradition. Selected Papers on Folklore. Copenhagen, Rosen- kilde and Bagger: 11-43. Wehse, Rainer. 2005. The Effects of Legends, Rumors and Related Genres on Audiences. Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend. Gary. A. Fine, Vé- ronique Campion-Vincent and Chip Heath. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers: 159-65.

65 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

Responses Mix levels of analysis with how memory shaped the oral tradi- care; genres not at all. tions if the traditions were not kept in memory. It turned out that in the three traditions I studied, as in many other David C. Rubin oral traditions, there was little formal Duke University training. The expert singer sang and the USA novice singer listened. The novice then practiced without an audience, and then perhaps with one or sang the song back rom my reading, Tangherlini’s to the expert, who might say something chapter gets most things right. like, “That is not the way I have heard However, the chapter has two fun- F it.” The expert did not know the rules of damental problems. When I was writing the genre in a form that could be sum- my book (Rubin 1995), I was lucky to be marized and presented to a novice; the able to gain the ear of Albert Lord. One rules were simply followed. Lord (1960) of the first things he said to me, once we makes this point repeatedly for his sing- got past the idea that memory was not ers. I made it in my book and elsewhere all rote memorization, was, “Don’t mix (Rubin 1988). your genres.” I repeated that mantra throughout my studies and it helped me Psychologists contrast contingency prevent many potential blunders; I even learning with rule-bound learning (for used it as a quote to start a chapter. The a discussion of differences in expertise first problem is mixing non-rhythmic, see Rubin, Wallace, and Houston 1993). more literate genres with the rhythmic, When rules are taught explicitly, learn- more oral genres that I selected. As the ing is much more efficient and subject to chapter notes, expertise makes a differ- conscious reflection of the kind that the ence; but expertise is different in differ- chapter claims Arlo Guthrie uses. If one ent genres. knows what a page of music looks like, and can have a discussion about poetic The chapter notes correctly that I devices and music theory that benefits describe and try to explain from the from a millennium of human intellec- viewpoint of a cognitive psychologist tual activity, then one approaches music only three genres, all of them rhythmic. differently and one’s expertise includes I focused on these genres because the much that is not included in the exper- role of writing or other recording de- tise of someone who learns by observa- vices was minimal and usually viewed tion and trial and error. The two kinds as a problem when it was used by the of learning lead people to produce dif- people I studied and by my most reli- ferent kinds of songs in different ways. able sources. I wanted to look at the In a study of the very early beginnings role of memory in the transmission of of expertise, we had extremely literate oral traditions and needed to minimize undergraduates learn five similar oral external memory aids, such as writing, tradition ballads by simply listening to that could act as prostheses to hide the them without any formal teaching of the limitations of memory. I could not see

66 “Where Was I?”

ballad form (Rubin, Wallace, and Hous- up such a long monologue without ton 1993). They learned each successive prior practice.. Arlo Guthrie wanted to ballad better over the course of the five involve a large audience at Newport, ballads, following more of the regulari- including me, and so he did have to ties of the form and content. At the end, keep playing until it came around or he they composed a new ballad that was would have violated genre and perfor- supposed to be indistinguishable from mance expectations in a way he could the five ballads they had learned and not, even if he had the ability to skip then to try to state the explicit rules that ahead. Imagine the jarring effect on the the ballads followed. They stated, but audience if he had jumped from where did not follow, some rules including, he was playing to the note he needed “the protagonist dies.” They followed, to start singing instead of continuing to but did not state, rules such as “ballads play until it came around. Even a clas- have no explicit settings,” “ballads are sical musician “craftsman” soloist, who composed of mostly one and two syl- could start reading the score at any note, lable words,” “nouns in ballads are con- returns to the beginning of a movement crete and easy to visualize, rather than if a string breaks. The next time Arlo abstract.” Their literate college training Guthrie wants the audience to join in, he led them to notice explicitly one kind of adds the accurate, humorous, and copy- regularity; their observational learning righted “We’re just waitin’ for it to come led them to produce another. around is what we’re doing.” Such are How did Arlo Guthrie get to the the talking blues. I will let pass why the point where he sang Alice’s Restaurant? audience laughed, but there are more It is doubtful from the information in possible reasons than the one given in “The Official Oughtabiography of Arlo the chapter. Guthrie” (http://www.arlo. net/bio. Arlo Guthrie was, and is, a master of shtml) that it was from pure observa- the genres in which he works and these tion without any more active teaching. depend, in part, on text that is docu- The line from Alice’s Restaurant quoted mented and revised by use of external in Tangherlini’s chapter, “So we’ll wait memory aids, such as audio recordings, for it to come around on the guitar, here and written notation. Musical notation, and sing it when it does” is probably not recording, and writing can play a major a spontaneous creation of an oral tradi- role in some genres. Perhaps Tangher- tion singer of tales. Guthrie registered lini’s figure of levels of expertise may his ownership of the entire talking blues be correct for these genres: I remind monologue, including that line, in addi- the reader of Lord’s cautionary “Please tion to the sung portion of Alice’s Restau- don’t mix genres.” I have every reason rant., (http://www.arlo.net/resources/ to assume that the British singer with lyrics/alices.shtml). whom I spoke, who was brought to Moreover, the performance from Duke University for a British-American which the recording of the monologue festival, was an expert and a “craftsman” came would hardly be the time to make and that what he said was the actual

67 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

truth. Yet he maintained that it was nec- (the “what system”) are considered as essary for him to wait until the chorus separate based on behavior studies, on came around in order to sing the words. neuropsychological damage studies, When Bruce Kapferer asked one of his and on neuroimaging studies (Rubin expert performers to inform him about a 1995, 2006). Similarly, there is good evi- demon and the singer had to sing to the dence to consider narrative as a mode of part where the demon was mentioned, thought (Bruner 1986) that need not de- we had no reason to doubt him (Rubin pend on language, that can be used with- 1995, 190). In these oral traditions, ex- out language, as in mime and cartoons, perts need a running start. As such, the and that has a different neural location figure in the chapter will need a differ- that can be damaged separately (Rubin ent size box for “cue-item discriminabil- 2006; Rubin and Greenberg 2003). ity very important” for different genres. In the book, I downplayed the neural The second problem in Tangherlini’s basis of behavior and concentrated on chapter is more serious. When I started the behavioral level that I felt then and studying oral traditions, I was a young still feel now is the most relevant for stu- cognitive psychologist with a good dents of oral tradition. It is not because working knowledge of the brain as well researchers viewed the brain as a black as of behavior. This knowledge made its box, as the chapter laments; it is a ques- way into the organization of my book. tion of determining the most appropri- The topics of narrative (or theme), lan- ate level of analysis. What I wanted to guage in the form of poetics, and visual explain was stability and change in oral imagery are in separate chapters, and traditions. I wanted the clearest theory object and spatial imagery are separated that could do that. Although I was in- within the visual imagery chapter. Each formed by what was known about the of the behavioral systems has its own brain, it did not make the theory more neural system that had been mapped out precise to try to reduce it to underlying in terms of anatomy and that we have neural mechanisms. To use a concrete long known could be damaged sepa- example, I knew from anatomy, neu- rately. As I reviewed in my book, stu- ropsychological damage studies, and dents of oral traditions had made most neuroimaging studies that two behav- of these distinctions without help from ioral systems important to oral tradi- psychologists or neurologists. Howev- tion, visual imagery and language, were er, I found that the distinction between located in different neural systems. We spatial and visual imagery and the idea have known they were separate systems that narrative could exist without most with different properties at the behav- of what we call language, were novel ioral level since the time of the ancient ideas to many scholars in the humani- Greeks. However, labeling the brain lo- ties. Although most humanists study- cations involved in each system, or the ing oral traditions view visual imagery use of any of my other knowledge at the as a single system, spatial location (the neural level, did not tell me anything “where system”) and object recognition important enough to put into the book

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about how oral tradition is transmitted. parts of the brain that form a memory. Later, I went into more detail about the How would that be different from what brain-behavior analysis of the basic sys- we would learn if the areas interacted tems of episodic memory on which oral among themselves without involving traditions draw (Rubin 2006)— but this the hippocampus, which would be the still did not add anything that would neural alternative? That is, would this tell me about stability and change in oral information affect what we know about traditions. As is often the case, what is theories of performance, or in any way known about the brain has no implica- restrict the range of possible behaviors tions for the kind of theoretical distinc- in intact human beings? I can think of tions the author wants to make about none, given our current level of knowl- behavior. edge. Even when we wrote papers on the As a counterpoint to Tangherlini’s catastrophic effects on memory of brain claims, I wish to examine some of the damage that removed visual memory more detailed critiques of my work that abilities, there was no need to enter this his chapter brought forth and in particu- debate (Greenberg, Eacott, Brechin, and lar show the difficulties of moving from Rubin 2005; Greenberg and Rubin 2003; neural to behavioral theories. The chap- Rubin and Greenberg 1998). Contrary to ter contrasts the Standard Theory with what the chapter implies, the key role of the Multiple Trace Theory. The Standard multiple cuing and cue-item distinctive- Theory is not so standard as it is present- ness as developed in my book would ed to be in the chapter and the Multiple rely on information in multiple areas of Trace Theory is not so different from it. the brain if the brain were involved in There is general agreement in the field an explanatory role. That is one reason that the hippocampus binds informa- why there were separate sections on tion in many other parts of the brain at narrative, language, visual imagery, and the moment of encoding. There is some spatial imagery. However, for the book, disagreement as to whether later de- naming multiple systems of the mind clarative recall requires the hippocam- sufficed without specifying in detail the pus. However, this is not a major issue neural basis of each of these systems in for most behavioral studies of memory the brain. The discussion of Hintzman’s and has absolutely no implications, as instance model (1986) in my book is of far as I can tell, for behavioral theories a computer model of behavior that is as at the level I presented them in my book close to the neural level Multiple Trace or that are used in the chapter. The key Theory as one could get, and I consid- question here is what we could learn ered it as one possible way to implement about oral traditions if we knew from my theory on a computer. The model the Multiple Trace Theory that cues ar- hypothesizes multiple traces, just as the riving from sensory, language, and neural model does, and makes predic- emotion areas of the brain had to pass tions about behavior based on the mul- through the hippocampus before acti- tiple trace – it simply remains silent on vating networks or associations in other where in the nervous system the traces can be found.

69 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

Thus, even when Tangherlini’s chap- course of recalling an autobiographical ter is right about the neural basis of memory, the hippocampus is involved behavior, what it brings from the brain early in the search process but becomes makes no difference in considering how less active as the memory is retrieved one would describe and explain behav- and visual areas become more active ior. What we know about the brain can (Daselaar, Rice, Greenberg, Cabeza, La- inform our theories of behavior, but Bar, and Rubin 2008). Neural imaging making this connection is not always work is expensive and those who pro- easy. To put this most simply, one should vide the funding are generally more in- always try to make use of all levels of terested in practical problems of health analysis, including the cultural, psy- than in oral literature, so the experi- chological, and neural levels. However, ments available for review do not inves- in the case of oral traditions, or of Arlo tigate oral traditions. Thus, it is hard to Guthrie’s singing, using the Multiple recommend any summaries integrating Trace Theory at the neural level adds no the neural findings directly with work useful information. in oral traditions, though I have made What do we know about the relation some attempts (Rubin 2006). of brain and behavior that would be applicable to oral traditions and how has it changed in the decade since my book Works Cited was published? I think it is safe to say Bruner, J. 1986. Two modes of thought. nothing basic has been contradicted, but In Actual minds, possible worlds. that the rise of structural and functional Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- neuroimaging has offered a great deal of versity Press, 11-43. new information. From structural neu- Cabeza, R., S.E. Prince, S.M. Daselaar, roimaging, we now know that the brain D.L.Greenberg, M. Budde, F. changes in relation to expertise; fur- Dolcos, K.S. LaBar, and D.C. Ru- ther, we can now measure that change bin. 2004. Brain activity during in some detail. From functional imag- episodic retrieval of autobio- ing, we know which areas of the brain graphical and laboratory events: are most active in various tasks. For in- An fMRI study using a novel stance, from my own work on autobio- photo paradigm. Journal of Cog- graphical memory we know that when nitive Neuroscience 16:1583-1594. people have to judge whether a picture Daselaar, S. M., H.J. Rice, D.L. Green- is one they took themselves rather than berg, R. Cabeza, K.S LaBar, one they saw in the laboratory, they and D.C. Rubin. 2008. The spa- utilize more areas involved in spatial tiotemporal dynamics of auto- processing, in self-referential process- biographical memory: Neural ing, and in recollection, including the correlates of recall, emotional hippocampus (Cabeza, Prince, Daselaar, intensity, and reliving. Cerebral Greenberg, Budde, Dolcos, LaBar, and Cortex 18: 217-229. Rubin 2004). We also know that in the

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Greenberg, D. L., M.J. Eacott, D. Rubin, D. C. and D.L. Greenberg. 1998. Brechin, and D.C. Rubin. 2005. Visual memory-deficit amnesia: Visual memory loss and auto- A distinct amnesic presentation biographical amnesia: A case and etiology. Proceedings of the study. Neuropsychologia, 43:1493- National Academy of Sciences 95: 1502. 5413-5416. Greenberg, D. L and D.C. Rubin. 2003. _____2003. The role of narrative in rec- The neuropsychology of auto- ollection: A view from cognitive biographical memory. Cortex 39: and neuropsychology. In Narra- 687-728. tive and consciousness: Literature, Hintzman, D. L. 1986. “Schema abstrac- psychology, and the brain. Edited tion” in a multiple-trace mem- by G. Fireman, T. McVay and ory model. Psychological Review O. Flanagan. New York: Oxford 93: 411-428. University Press, 53-85. Lord, A. B. 1960. The singer of tales. Rubin, D. C., W.T. Wallace, and B.C. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- Houston. 1993. The beginnings versity Press. of expertise for ballads. Cogni- Rubin, D. C. 1988. Learning poetic tive Science 17: 435-462. language. In The development of language and language researchers: Essays in honor of Roger Brown. Edited by F. Kessel. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 339-351. _____. 1995. Memory in oral traditions: The cognitive psychology of epic, ballads, and counting-out rhymes. New York: Oxford University Press. _____. 2006. The Basic-Systems Model of Episodic Memory. Perspec- tives on Psychological Science 1: 277-311. _____, in press. Oral traditions as collective memories: Implications for a general theory of individual and collective memory. In Memory in mind and culture. Ed- ited by P. Boyer and J. Wertsch. New York: Cambridge Univer- sity Press.

71 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

Response hand and socio-cultural circumstances in regard to the term “tradition” on the other hand. It is thus out of necessity that Bergsveinn Birgisson the author states that he wishes to “spec- University of Bergen, ulate briefly on these questions” (43). In- Norway evitably speculations abound while answers or “tentative suggestions” (as the he article “‘Where was I?’: Per- author calls them) are fewer. sonal Experience, Crystallization It could be said that the question is and Some Thoughts on Tradition perhaps a better friend of science than T the answer or the firmly-grounded sug- Memory” addresses a number of fields of research, including neurobiology, gestion. Surely everything hinges on the neurophysiology, and memory. By plac- value or relevance of the question. Is it ing research from these fields in the con- a good and timely question or a confus- text of field research in folklore studies ing and vague one which potentially the author’s work also potentially has can even lead astray? I would like to ad- implications for many other disciplines, dress the nature of the questions boldly including cognitive psychology, anthro- put forward by Timothy R. Tangherlini pology, folkloristics and literary stud- and refer briefly to his article’s theoreti- ies. cal framework. Although the questions By alluding to this theoretical back- raised are potentially in line with Neiss- ground the author adopts an interdis- er’s call (1978) to researchers to focus ciplinary stance and focuses on “tradi- on the relation between the theoretical tion” from a folkloristic-neurobiological and the practical questions in cognitive perspective. He sets out to pinpoint the explorations of memory, the theoretical “neurophysiologic processes of tradi- uncertainties on which these questions tion” (42), or, as I understand it, he seeks are based are vast and deserving of at- to discover where tradition is stored in tention. the brain and what characterizes the The first obvious problem is the term neurobiological processes of tradition in “tradition” as it emerges from the ques- contrast to other kinds of memory per- tions asked by the author. For a start, formances. one wonders about the author’s un- Although the questions mentioned derstanding of the term. He mentions above are enough to fill many books Parry and Lord’s “singers” and the folk with their responses they are but a singer Arlo Guthrie, so a kind of folk- few of the issues raised in the opening song or a folktale tradition is seemingly pages of this thought-provoking article implied, while the author’s empirical (42–43). While some of the questions study focuses on “folkloric data” (i.e., have vast implications and others are tales transmitted by students). The au- more focused and idiosyncratic they all thor investigates the “possible” specific share the same motivation: to delineate nature of “tradition memory” compared between the role of biology on the one with other kinds of memory, language

72 “Where Was I?”

learning, or the acquisition of other tion of meaning is seen as a simultane- “habitual skills.” This leads the author ous gathering of many processes in the to the central question, namely, “…if so-called blending space (Fauconnier tradition too might be linked to special and Turner 2002). mechanisms—or even specific sites—in Today, there exists to my knowledge the brain” (42). no overarching theory that can draw to- As I see it, one is obliged to begin re- gether the experimental results of neu- search by defining the object of investi- robiology or neuropsychology on the gation or even arguing that an object ex- human brain with studies of cognitive ists in itself. Certainly this is a prerequi- psychology on memory. This problem site for attempting to “place” it or to de- would have been a solid and appropri- scribe it in relation to other objects. Thus ate starting point for the questions put there is, to my knowledge, no empirical forth in the article. Indeed, the vastness or scientific study in any of the academ- of the memory discipline make great de- ic fields mentioned above that claims mands on those who represent interdis- that human memory can be classified ciplinary research on the issue, as Tang- or categorized when it comes to the ac- herlini does in his article. tual cognitive processes of memory. The Thus, while the author asks “to what memory of, let us say, a traditional folk- extent is tradition conditioned by neu- song cannot be seen as using a different robiology and genetic inheritance and site or a different set of neurobiological to what extent is it conditioned by envi- or cognitive processes in the brain than, ronment?” (43), cognitive psychologists for example, the memory of a Britney would consider it impossible to distin- Spears pop single. Therefore, it is indeed guish between these aspects of personal difficult to claim that semantic catego- memory. In fact, they would claim that ries (“tradition,” “pop culture,” “mathe- it is a relatively misleading metaphor to matics,” etc.) can be distinguished from say that a brain thinks or a brain remem- one another when it comes to the com- bers. It would be more accurate to say plicated and simultaneous cognitive that a person thinks and a person remem- and biological processes involved in the bers by using the brain as one of the process of memorization or recollection. tools involved in the process. This is be- Cognitive psychologists humbly admit cause other aspects of memory—among that, rather than being a single cognitive them cultural, social, spatial, and sensu- process or system, memory is a collec- al surroundings—cannot be neglected tive term for a family of neuro-cognitive without creating a false picture. When it systems that store information in dif- comes to describing the process of mem- ferent formats (Schacter, Wagner, and orization in cognitive psychology the Buckner 2000; Tulving 2002). Interest- distinction between brain biology and ingly, our understanding of metaphors socio-cultural circumstances of memory is leaning in this direction with the aid is non-existent. Any distinction of this of conceptual integration theory, often kind made in speaking of cognition is referred to as “blending.” The construc- merely a practical one, one that allows

73 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

scholars and doctors to pinpoint certain tient’s Danish (41), or when he goes on aspects of brain functions. The tools that to wonder if “tradition too might be cognitive psychologists employ in their linked to special mechanisms—or even attempts to understand memory are specific sites—in the brain” (42). mainly metaphors and analogies, and The author goes on to suggest a char- the nature of metaphor—highlighting acterization of the “craftsmen of tradi- certain aspects of things while hiding tion” as those who are not dependent on others—should not be forgotten. One “cues.” Cues for memory can be rhythm, could mention, for example, the theatre or a song, or even imagery, as also men- metaphor, the multiple store metaphor, tioned by Rubin (1995). In other words, and memory as archaeology as some of he suggests that “masters of tradition” the most popular metaphors for memo- have a different method of memorizing ry (Magnussen et. al. 2007). Underlying than others in as much as they do not the use of metaphors in place of other use cues for this purpose (pp. 45 and “more scientific tools” is the fact that 46). If, for a moment, I might be excused memory is not directly observable. Thus, for bringing into this discussion some when the author criticizes David Rubin personal empirical experience, I would for introducing memory as a “black-box like to mention that for about twenty phenomenon” while failing to explore years I have participated in an assembly “the actual processes by which memo- of the folksong tradition (rímur) in Ice- ries are consolidated” (45), I can not say land as an active chanter. There is noth- I agree, since memory still is a kind of ing in my experience that could support “black-box phenomenon” because of its the above-mentioned idea; the rule is theoretical implications and complexity, the same for the experienced as for the or, to use another metaphor: too vast and inexperienced chanters: the melody, complicated a theme for the episteme of once mastered, prompts the recollec- putting things into boxes or categories. tion of the words of the stanza. I have Of course, it is true that if certain lo- argued that in the pre-Christian North cations in the brain are damaged, for in- singers used bizarre imagery to aid in stance, by trauma or by a tumour (as in the recall of abstract words. This notion the case presented in this article), the pa- suggests that, in pre-Christian times in tient can be left incapable of performing Scandinavia, there existed an advanced certain cognitive tasks, such as smell- mnemonic system that faded away with ing, speaking, or recollecting childhood the establishment of writing (Birgisson memories. Cognitive scholars have 2008). In this light, the mastery of tradi- stressed, however, that this does not jus- tion could be described as cultivating tify locating the complicated process of the skill of using cues, as seems to be the memory (or other cognitive tasks) in cer- case among people with advanced memory tain isolated parts of the human brain. skills (Luria 1975). This would suggest Yet, this is what the author appears to that “masters of tradition” use the same do when he refers to the surgeon who memorization method as the rest of us. wanted to avoid “cutting out” the pa-

74 “Where Was I?”

The author’s reference to a neuro- has, different statuses in different socie- biological study that claims that “brains ties. The status of these aspects among are as different as faces” (47), leads him modern western people is apparently to the assumption that different people neither representative of the rest of the learn and remember differently, which world nor of earlier times. It is therefore in turn leads him to suggest that this dif- hardly representative of the brains of ference in human cognition “may help the “craftsmen of tradition.” us understand how tradition persists” (47). Could it not also be said that tradi- Works Cited tion exists namely because the opposite Birgisson, Bergsveinn. 2008. What Have is true (i.e., that people have something in We Lost by Writing?: Cognitive common both in the way they think and in Archaisms in Skaldic Poetry. the way they construct meaning from every- In: Oral Art Forms and their Pas- day life)? The author´s approach seems sage into Writing. Edited by Else to associate tradition with a kind of bio- Mundal and Jonas Wellendorf logical elitism (i.e., those active in tradition (red.). Copenhagen: Museum have special kinds of brains), while it unfor- Tusculanum Press: 163–185. tunately excludes the social and cultural Fauconnier, Gilles and Mark Turner. aspects of tradition. 2002. The Way We Think. Con- In the light of this hypothesis it was ceptual Blending and the Mind’s rather odd to read the presentation of Hidden Complexities. New York: the empirical study involved: “A chain Basic Books. transmission of a single story stands as Luria, Aleksandr R. 1975. The Mind of a an apt illustration of the potential for in- Mnemonist: A Little Book about a stability in tradition, particularly when Vast Memory. Harmondsworth: members of the chain may be either Penguin. inactive tradition participants, or com- Magnussen, Svein, Tore Helstrup, Tor pletely unaware of the tradition” (15). Endestad and Asher Koriat. When it comes to a tradition, the trans- 2007. What Do People Believe mission of poems, songs or folktales, for about Memory and How Do example, this seems to be an inappropri- They Talk about Memory? In ate model since tradition only requires Everyday Memory. Edited by a handful of active participants for its Svein Magnussen and Tore Hel- survival for an extended time. Temporal strup. New York: Psychology and locative aspects are also theoretical- Press: 5-25. ly significant in this context. What type Neisser, U. 1978. Memory: What are the of people and what kind of tradition are Important Questions? In Practi- involved? In addition when and where cal aspects of memory. Edited by did the tradition in question exist? M.M. Gruneberg, P.E. Morris These questions have to be answered and R.N. Sykes. London: Aca- since the art of remembering and telling demic Press. stories has formerly had, and indeed still

75 Timothy R. Tangherlini “Where Was I?”

Rubin, David C. 1995. Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychol- ogy of Epic, Ballads, and Counting- Out Rhymes. New York: Oxford University Press. Schacter, D.L., A.D. Wagner and R.L. Buckner. 2000. Memory Systems of 1999. In The Oxford Handbook of Memory. Edited by E. Tulving and F.I.M Craik. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 627-643. Tulving, E. 2002. Episodic Memory: From Mind to Brain. Annual Re- view of Psychology 53: 1-25.

76 Through the “Eye of the Skull”

Through the “Eye of the Skull”: preserved and nurtured within Travel- Memory and Tradition in a ler culture. Henderson was immediately captivated by the depth, longev- Travelling Landscape ity, dramatic sincerity and stylistic embellishment of the Traveller repertoire Sara Reith and his fieldwork yielded a quantity The University of Aberdeen, of ballads, songs and traditional stories which placed Travellers unmistakably Scotland at the forefront of traditional performance. Within Scottish society, Travellers Abstract gained a new venerated status as ubiq- The vast oral culture of Scotland’s Gypsy- uitous “tradition-bearers” (von Sydow Travellers was “discovered” by Hamish 1948, 12-13) that remains uncontested Henderson in the 1950s. Since that fieldwork today although the nomadic way of life period Traveller culture has undergone ma- that sustained this function is now be- jor social transformation. From an exoteric lieved to have virtually disappeared. angle it is widely assumed that Scotland’s Hamish Henderson appeared to “indigenous nomads” exist only in memory. have stumbled upon Scotland’s “most Using the landscape of a traditional family substantially ancient” culture, “lying camping ground to elucidate and revisit his totally unregarded and essentially un- culture, Scottish Traveller Stanley Robert- known,” (Neat 1996, 65-6) held together son’s “in-situ” knowledge suggests that, by blood ties, inheritable knowledge from within, memory is a vital force for the and ancestral memory. Looking ear- continuity and renewal of Traveller identity. nestly for remnants of the past in his My interviews with Stanley reveal parallels fieldwork he found them in vast quanti- between memory, place-lore, cyclical jour- ties in the Travellers’ age-old traditional ney and the progressive structure of learn- repertoire, family structure, ancient clan ing. His beliefs suggest how, in interaction names, and hereditary craftsmanship. with oral traditions, memories function on In addition, Henderson’s knowledge of many experiential levels to build creativity. Scottish history led him to view Travel- lers as an “underground clan system of t has been a privilege to research the their own,” (Henderson 1981, 378) the Icultural traditions and creativity of tribal remnants of the Gaelic society bro- the Scottish Travelling People,1 an indig- ken by the destruction of the clan system enous and traditionally nomadic group following the Battle of Culloden in 1746. credited with the guardianship of one of (Kenrick and Clark 1999, 6) Explaining the richest oral cultures in Europe. (Neat to Henderson the difference between a 1996, vii) The pioneering collection work Traveller and a singular migrant, one of Scottish folklorist Hamish Henderson young Traveller told him, “that sort of in the early 1950s first brought the at- lad just lives from day to day, but we tention of non-Traveller society to the live entirely in the past.” (Henderson “magnificent folk riches” (Neat 1996, 66) 1981, 377-78)

The Idealisation of the Past number are causing great distress to These idealisations of the past now con- local communities by setting up il- stitute problems of perspective and rep- legal camps on green belt sites and building homes without the required resentation on a number of levels. An permission. (Editorial, Scottish Daily unintended consequence of this early Mail, March 22, 2005) collection period has been the development of a “devolutionary” (Oring 1975, These recent comments are new expres- 41) perspective through which “an in- sions of an ongoing discourse in which tact culture is projected onto the past”. Traveller identity is continually contest- (Okely 1983, 32) “Gleaned” and exten- ed and misunderstood. As Betsy Whyte sively collected in the 1950s (Nicolaisen remembers from her 1930s childhood, 1995, 73), the creativity of Travellers ap- “We Travelling people were judged parently came to a standstill when the without knowledge. Every crime, sin, folklorists went home. Indexed, shelved foulness, acts of violence, cruelty, stu- and saved for posterity, the archives in pidity, and brutish behaviour under the the School of Scottish Studies are now sun was, to their [non-Travellers’] way where the interested minority can con- of thinking, the heritage of all Travelling sult a recorded testimony of a now lost

2 people”. (Whyte 1990, 88) Even when culture. This golden-age image con-con- expressed in nostalgic and cautiously veys the impression that traveler culture positive terms such as “The Summer in its present form has degenerated into Walkers” (Neat 1996, vii) and “the mist the forgotten memories, faceless voices people”, (Whyte 1979, 24) these views and culturally dislocated sounds of re- reveal little more than the elusiveness of corded reels on dusty shelves. Travellers to settled society. In contrast No longer visible by their distinct to the distinct ethnic identity by which material culture—their wares and Travellers see themselves Traveller cul- 3 craftsmanship considered obsolete — ture, since the time of its so-named “dis- the Travellers, it would seem, have discovery,” has been largely defined by a appeared completely replaced, if at all, materially rustic form of nomadism, by a “different” sort of Traveller. Con- and regarded as a way of life already temporary media representations often threatened with extinction. (Porter and accentuate this idea. Reports often dis- Gower 1995, 3-5) tance settled Travellers from the their collective past while those Travellers, Memory as a Conduit for Knowledge, forced by the reality of closed camping Continuity and Creativity grounds, to camp on increasingly mar- ginalised and public spaces are branded I would suggest that neither Traveller “rogue” Travellers.4 nor sedentary culture can be relegated to inactivity and that both have under- Of course many Travellers have gone similar processes of transforma- time honoured traditions and lead tion. Older settled Travellers feel an law abiding lives. But an increasing understandable nostalgia for their lives

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“on the road”, using words like “free- Relocating Memory in Place and Cul- dom”, or phrases like “the old days”, ture and “a trip down memory lane”,5 to de- From a distant angle, memory is a decep- scribe this sense of loss. The belief that tively dormant force, disconnected save their culture is dying out is common for bursts of nostalgia from the places among the older generation who say and contexts of the present. Likewise, “soon there will be no more Travellers”.6 collections of memory, from recordings Others lament the loss of annual gath- to heritage sites, can be deadened by im- erings, such as berry picking, for their posed historicity and accompanied by combined value as social, working and perceptions of loss and social disconti- family occasions, and for the encultura- nuity. (Nora 1989, 19) tion and practical responsibility they of- Zooming in on the experiential, 7 fered to younger family members. a reversal of “the Gleaner’s Vision”, However, as Perthshire Traveller (Nicolaisen 1995, 71-76) Travellers seek Fiona Townsley remarked, “Travellers to know the past as an access point which have always adapted”.8 In the absence might inform the present.(Nicolaisen of the real experiences once guaranteed 2002, 9) One of many natural analogies by established cultural frameworks, for the past/memory which resonates Travellers have developed other routes within Traveller culture is that of “the to maintain the vitality of their culture carrying stream”. (Macauly 2002) Mem- and the strength of their social memory. ory is understood as a place in continual In public and private performance—the motion, a personal and collective ar- key to real integration between peo- chive of occasional11 knowledge which, ple and lore—shared memories, retold like repertoire, is subject to periods of with pride and experience, become en- increased relevance, creativity or inac- ergetic forces that revitalise the culture tivity in contextual relationship to the and strengthen family cohesion from life cycle. (Goldstein 1972, 82) Cultural within. (Bauman 1971, 33) The work continuity is ensured by strong, well-in- of public representatives has sparked formed individuals who perpetuate tra- what some Travellers perceive as “a ditions. (Niles 1999, 15) In Traveller cul- revival”9 through the sharing of songs, ture the idea of memory as an ongoing stories, and language, or in the teaching stream of conscience makes the content of crafts such as basket and flower mak- of oral traditions contemporary, instruc- ing to Travelling children. By becom- tive and meaningful. Memories transmit ing authors, performers and educators, not only texts but also a coherent learn- Travellers continue to revisit, verbalise ing processes, the worldviews that pro- and teach the importance of their tra- vide the foundations for confident crea- ditional identity in self-created ways.10 tivity and individualism. When viewed Their work is an exemplary model for as creativity, memory becomes an evolv- how memory and creativity combine to ing store of knowledge, a source of inform the impetus that drives traditions formed “imitation” and individualistic forward. (Niles 1999, 15) originality. (Kristeller 1983, 110-1)

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Looking in on Places of Knowledge have gained an extra edge of perceptive- These core “academic”12 themes place ness in often unpredictable surround- narrative and symbolic representation ings. “Looking in” on the landscape is within the didactic structure of Traveller also a core aspect of how Travellers have culture. Moving beyond the linear into constructed their traditional world and the idea of places as vessels or contain- learned to “read” their environment. ers of tradition and symbols of memory (Ben-Amos 1999, 298), I will show that Roads and the Lifecycle it is both the cultural structure of recip- This methodology finds illustration in rocal and cyclical interaction between the multiple narratives of Jack, the epic place and people (Robertson “Interac- hero of Traveller tradition. On his quests tion between Man and Nature”, 2002- Jack is reminded, “You are not without 2005), and the hostility commonly expe- knowledge”. (Robertson 1983, 18) He is rienced when within sedentary culture aided by “ancestral wisdom, the power that have given Traveller repertoires of nature and magic, and the realisation their breadth, creativity and resourceful of his own potential”, and ultimate suc- quality. (Robertson “Poor Circumstanc- cess lies in his ability to apply the re- es Rich Culture”, 2002-2005) sources of his memory and keen wits. Perhaps the most striking way in (Douglas 2007, 52) Using a geographic which Traveller traditions are used in model to construct journeys as life paths Traveller contexts is for their implicit these narratives conceptualize educa- symbolic and metaphoric undercur- tion as progressively attained knowl- rents. High importance is placed upon edge.15 (Daniels and Nash 2004, 449) sensory experience, evaluation and ef- The commentary of Apache storyteller fective communication. Their emphasis Dudley Patterson aligns well with the on the ability to understand and em- Traveller worldview built on “looking body the characters, dramatic propor- in” and “drawing out”. Patterson ties tions and locations of traditional texts these reciprocal themes together, ending stresses the importance of an expansive with the resounding implication that the understanding derived from use of all responsibility and impetus to remember the senses. lie with the individual. North-East Scottish Traveller Stanley Robertson describes this intuitive meth- How will you walk along this trail of odology as “multi-dimensionality”.13 wisdom? Well, you will go to many Relating texts to places and places to places. You must look at them closely. You must remember all of them. Your people, in “being”, “doing” and “relat- relatives will talk to you about them. ing” knowledge, Stanley illustrates how You must remember everything they to “look in” and “draw out” vital infor- tell you. You must think about it, and mation about the essence of his tradi- keep on thinking about it, and keep tions. “Looking in”14 on settled society, on thinking about it. You must do the people “much maligned and perse- this because no one can help you but cuted for centuries” (Robertson 2001) yourself... Wisdom sits in places. It’s

80 Through the “Eye of the Skull”

like water…you also need to drink come wisdom”.16 Passed down in oral from places. You must remember tradition, traditional texts contain “su- everything about them. You must pra-narrative” associations, principles learn their names. You must remem- that enable their interpretation through ber what happened at them long ago. multiple levels of perception. (McCarthy You must think about it and keep on thinking about it. And your mind 1990, 11-12) Places “become” through will become smoother and smoother. memory, and memory teaches through (Basso 1996, 70) place.

Traveller tradition abounds with nar��- The Old Road of Lumphanan ratives that tie together geography and The discussion that follows seeks to fur- metaphor to recover ancestral memory. ther unfold the triadic interaction be- Founded upon the perpetuation of this tween the Traveller themes of journey, memory, Traveller traditions caution memory and place. In the concealed that “only knowledge applied can be- Traveller topography of North-East

Stanley Robertson on the Old Road of Lumphanan in Autumn 2007 Photo by Steve Webb

81 Sara Reith Through the “Eye of the Skull”

Scotland, Aberdeen Traveller and in- A Landscape of Memory ternationally respected tradition-bearer Lumphanan lies twenty-four miles west Stanley Robertson has found an illustra- of Aberdeen between the rivers Don tive way to tell the story of his people’s and Dee in rural Aberdeenshire. In the unique knowledge and cultural contri- summer months this village was on part bution. Key to his creative approach is of a network of cyclical journeys taken the use and subsequent development by Stanley’s family as they followed of ancient teaching methods, which seasonal work opportunities. Today Stanley learned from his people on the deserted save for local walkers the Old road as a Travelling child. Speaking of Road of Lumphanan conceals a treasury his extended family, Stanley offers this of human engagement known only to tribute: the initiated eye. Retelling its past (as per Nicolaisen 1984, 271), Stanley recre- Never in ma life at any time, did I ever ates the road as he states is has always want to be anything else, than a Trav- functioned in his mind, as “a training eller. I just wanted to be amongst the people where I was born and loved… ground.” Stanley’s vast repertoire comes Nurtured and cocooned in love and of nights spent at the fireside hearing ac- happiness. And these people had a complished singers, storytellers, pipers form of literacy that I never ever seen and musicians. From instructing Stanley in the University. These folk could tell in the practical skills of building a camp, you the most wonderful things. They finding clean water, pearl fishing and educated ye [you], and they took me hawking to imparting a detailed knowl- 17 on cultured excursions all ma life. edge of the natural environment, its music and history, his family instilled in Stanley has clearly inherited this ability him a knowledge that always matched to educate through tradition. His “in- his stage of learning. However, the most situ”18 narratives combine big ballads, striking aspect of his inheritance is his songs and stories with family memories holistic view of the landscape. Stanley’s and place-lore,19 using the framework expansive worldview encompasses the of journey to take the uninformed on material, ancestral, ethereal and eternal “cultured excursions” into the social, as ever present resources. Lumphanan’s material and elemental “rubric”20 of his spiritual geography is made manifest culture. It is through his vision of a re- through his ability to interpret its nat- vered Aberdeenshire landscape, “the ural “signs and portents,” as he calls Old Road of Lumphanan,” a traditional them, skilfully.21 camping ground for many generations of his family, that I now attempt to de- “Through the Eye of the Skull” scribe his many-levelled journey into memory in its most vital, reverent and It was in early childhood at Lumphanan creative form. that one of Stanley’s key mentors, his Great Auntie Maggie Stewart, taught him how to access these expansive di-

82 Through the “Eye of the Skull”

mensions. After listening as he described the rubric o the thing, than ye will to her a decayed animal skull lying by by lookin’ at a front dimension ... ye the side of the road, Maggie asked him will learn mair in ten seconds inside a thing than ye wid looking and ob- what he could see from inside the skull. 27 Stanley, then aged five or six, remem- serving frae the outside. bers: The Symbolic Landscape I immediately wint inside the yak o On the Old Road where he first -ab the dead animal and I came to a place sorbed this principle Stanley urges visi- faur there were canyons, caverns, wa- tors, often researchers or students of tra- terfalls mountains, animals o aa kinds ditional song, to replicate this spirit of and colours and smells, and the rick 22 discernment and “cast off their mantles mi tick o the inside unfolded tae of academia”28 to gain an unclouded in- me. And awa in the distance I heard the auld woman caa me tae come sight into Traveller traditions. back tae me again. And I described The gateway to the Old Road provides tae her aa the things I experienced wi a similar point of transition. Passing this vivid colours and every sense inside metaphoric boundary and “leaving the honed up.23 world of drudgery”,29 Stanley remarks that we are now in a place of timeless- Going “through the eye of the skull” ness and ancestral connection. Emblem- denotes a methodology for the meta- atic of freedom and self-renewal the Old physical relocation of self, one that uses Road of Lumphanan never fails to offer a material access point to elicit a depar- new learning experiences and confirm ture into “narrative time”. (Nicolaisen his people’s ability to create a rich culture 1991, 3) From this central point of vision in poor circumstances. (Robertson “Poor anything may be intuitively understood Circumstances Rich Culture”, 2002-2005) 24 by looking “through spiritual eyes”. Though camping has not been permit- Gifted with the prophetic “mantle of ted here since the mid-1950s, this three- 25 the storyteller”, Stanley has developed mile stretch of woodland track remains a a transferable principle, “the spirit of focal point for his family tradition, which 26 discernment”, which uses insight to fuses natural landmarks with history, teach tradition from all perceptible an- such as the murder of Macbeth, inherited gles. Building upon his vivid memories knowledge and memories of ancestors.30 and sense of loyalty to his ancestors to- (McCombie 1845, 1083) However, the day he has taken their creative poten- core narratives that bring the Old Road’s tial further than any of his predecessors meaning to life are experiential memo- may have thought possible. Returning rates and traditional repertoire passed from this transformational experience, down through family. The Old Road of his Auntie Maggie reminded him: Lumphanan was once part of the ancient network of droving roads that formed a Weel today I hae taught ye a valu- central crossing point for cattlemen be- able lesson and that is ye will find oot tween highland and lowland Scotland. and discover mair frae gaun inside

83 Sara Reith Through the “Eye of the Skull”

While this aspect of the road reaffirms ballad commonplaces in his everyday Stanley’s sense of belonging there, tradi- speech. See this also in Buchan 1997, tion tells him “this road has known Trav- 145) is similarly protected, purified by ellers since time immemorial”.31 the presence of a rowan and oak tree on Leaving the gate behind, Stanley either side.33 As these themes unfold, treats the landscape as an evolving Stanley’s narratives bring a growing record of the past, one that unfolds in realisation of why, in much simplified his step-by-step building of a walking outsider terms, the Traveller way of life material and symbolic alignment, a sen- has been associated with an imagined sibility reflected in his knowledge of the “closeness to nature”. (Nord 2006, 46) road’s rich narratives. In contrast to the The traditional camping grounds of “official” map, Stanley’s family describe Scottish Travellers have formed private the rivers Dee and the Don as supernat- community spaces where their skills, ural beings (Robertson 1988, 128-29): values, and rich culture could flourish. Journey, which for many settled Travel- Ma mither used to say that this par- lers is today more an ideal than a reality, ticular land [here] between the river still signifies a release from cruel treat- Dee and the river Don – and they ment and the social constraints of set- used to say lang ago that the Don wis tlement or enforced schooling. Journeys the warlock and the river Dee wis the witch. And this land between it wis to the Old Road, which Stanley and his for her bairns. This land wis oors aa relatives have described as their “spir- richt because there’s only twa hoos- itual home”, continue to renew feelings es. But this road has been known for of purpose and vitality that are echoed many, many supernatural happen- in many Traveller narratives. In sharp ings … there’s a lot o happiness on contrast to city life Stanley remembers this auld road. And every time I ging Lumphanan as a place of plenitude and up it I could aye sort o feel the spirits visual splendour: o the past …32 Because this wis the place where ye en- These inside representations of the land- joyed the best pairt o yer life! Ye used scape imply a worldview of reciprocal tae wait until ye could feel the first nurture and give an impression of the smell of broom on the air. And how stewardship, idealism and symmetry happy ye wid be fin ma father wid that is part of the road’s muse. Land- get his horse and his cairt, and we’d marks become “actualisations of the tak aa the things that ye needed, and just left the hoose in Aiberdeen, and knowledge that informs them” (Basso ye wid come oot intae the Old Road o 1996, 57), reflecting the security offered Lumphanan. As I come up this hill, I to the community by the land. (Robert- was so happy. And I lookit round this son 2005) Symbolising black and white beautiful, glorious clear sky in a sum- magic in balance, the spring well which mer afternoon. And in ma vista before marks the life–giving, social “heart’s me, I could see the Mither Tap o Ben- blood of the road” (Stanley often uses nachie. I could see Benahighlie with its very distinct little cairn. I could

84 Through the “Eye of the Skull”

look over by Tarland and see Morven. Ye had a whole world at your com- I could look further round I could see mand and that’s where pure creativ- Lochnagar. And then I could see the ity is. And that’s where real story tell- distinct shape o Clachnaben – which ing and writing and aa these things looks like a lady lying down. And come from...it’s looking wi yer spir- ye know ma spirits were very, very itual eyes…ye’ve got this inner eye… elevated … But I remember coming And when that eye opens…Noth- down to ma folk. What a welcome there ing’s a barrier to you. You can go to was. And on the edge of the glimmer, any place...36 the fire, there was a big biling kettle always filled tae the gunnel. And this This exploratory approach creates his woman gave us tea and ‘duke sharras’ experience-centred dialogue with the Old this is ducks eggs. And ye ken this, I Road. Held within its geography, tran- just thought to maself ... The Kingdom of Heaven couldna be any better than sient like the passage of time and season what this was.34 until narrated into story-time, Stanley’s ability to bring out stories in this way of- Though the landmarks of the Old Road ten has the effect of connecting others to the place of their own muse or source of are the natural vernacular features of the 37 Scottish landscape, the traditionalisa- confidence. One visitor, now a storyteller, related how Stanley’s tale of “Tammy tion of this space is built on analogies. In 38 its inner enclosure and outward expan- Toddle” caused her to revisit her father’s siveness Lumphanan conveys a sense of stories. She returned from this metaphys- natural safety and orientation, with cu- ical journey with a renewed faith in con- riosity for what lies beyond. Stories de- tinuing with her inheritance. pict the Old Road with its surrounding 35 Tammy Toddle (excerpt) hills as a “land betwixt and between”, a Tammy Toddle he’s a canty chiel liminal space where, it is implied, a per- good humoured, person son’s greatest potential can be realised Sae cousie and sae canty kindly (this is Stanley’s description though it And the fairies liked him unca weel matches many conclusions drawn by very, well folklorists. See Abrahams 2003, 213). And they built him a wee hoosie a little house (Higgins 2006, CD 1, Track 6) Place as Memory and Memory in Place The principle of “going through the In Stanley’s narratives the supernatural eye of the skull” is an endorsement of world is separated only by thin veils. individual experience and exploration. His story of Jinty, who lives in the fairy Stanley, who has since invented a multi- kingdom under the Old Road and is tude of similarly-illustrative techniques, able to come to the surface to play with teaches visitors how to access and expe- a Traveller child because she believes re- rience this “place” within themselves. iterates an appeal to the importance of Now, as an adult and exceptional story- memory (Robertson 2002-2005): teller, these abilities have become finely tuned. He remembers:

85 Sara Reith Through the “Eye of the Skull”

Whin fairies are nae remembered by The Summer Seat folks then they jist vanish intae obliv- One story that illustrates these themes ion. Fit this really means is that they is “The Summer Seat”, which describes gang intae hiding and winnae come a place tinged with the tragic memory oot for hunners o years. Sometimes the conditions between men and fair- of a Traveller woman named MacPhee ies become strained and the fairies jist found murdered there shortly after close themsels hinnie awa frae man- the First World War. Although she was kind.39 denied the justice and concern usually given to any member of the settled 42 Underlying this tale is a reiteration of the population, Stanley always stops here, importance that remembering has to the singing a song in her memory. A non- continuity of traditional knowledge. Traveller visitor, poet and psychic medi- 43 The “rick mi tick”40 of Lumphanan un- um, Steven Webb, was asked to “tune folds, paradoxically, through a form of in” to this event. He recounts what fol- forgetting. Using the framework of pro- lowed, “What I was guided by spirit to gressive journey Stanley’s narratives do…was to actually taste, to lick a bit lull visitors and audiences into “the o the bench [laughs]…To get a taste of land where stories grow”41 through the the metal, you see? Where the paint had distracting activities of walking and lis- rusted away a bit. And then…the next tening. Stories invoke the footsteps and thing, it was very strange, was to kiss voices of ancestors, the sounds of ancient the stone wall, a wee bit of mossy stone 44 music carried by the wind or supernatu- wall”. Webb explains the logic behind ral visions of ghostly beings and other- these actions: “[I had] to ask the stones worldly tribes. Stanley’s beliefs add a and the bench and the trees to tell me conditional element to such deeply-in- the story that they witnessed. Because formed experiences: the necessity of at- the stone saw it…the bench saw it…I 45 tentiveness, “through a vigorous confla- mean…it’s a bit like they were there”! tion of attentive subject and geographi- This experience aligns well with the cal object, places come to generate their ideal of the road as a representation of own fields of meaning…Animated by the all-seeing, restorative power of na- the thoughts and feelings of the persons ture. A poem connected with place un- that attend to them, places…yield to folded as the spirits of Traveller witness- consciousness only what consciousness es recounted the event, “I was feelin aa has given them to absorb”. (Basso 1996, the emotions coming through me”.46 In 56) With “every sense inside honed up”, addition to exposing the acts of local de- “the world itself begins to breath”, (In- ception surrounding Lilian MacPhee’s gold 1993, 16) as though the road itself is death the poem, which gives voice to memory, and nature a co-existent actor the thoughts of Lilian MacPhee, poign- that can impose the past upon the here antly acknowledges her sadness that her and now. life is remembered today only because it was so violently cut short. Her story provides a striking example of memory

86 Through the “Eye of the Skull”

materially self-represented in the land- son, Anthony, understands these differ- scape. ent levels as “frequencies”.49 “It’s like having antenna, if you can’t tune into Poem For Lilian MacPhee (excerpt)47 the frequency then you won’t know it’s there”.50 You could look to find the guilty A cold case for yer fame Memory, therefore, is both the key Or ye could get to know me and strongest safeguard to the esoteric Who I am behind my name type of knowledge held within Travel- ler tradition. As Donald Braid points I went straight to Christ wi the an- out the degree to which the “journey of gels following” narrated events is incorpo- I’ve always rested in peace rated as a personal resource depends It’s only ever the guilty upon the listeners’ particular experien- Who hide from love’s release tial contexts. (Braid 1996, 9, 16, 26) The case discussed requires a “suspension of It’s only he who sits here On the Simmer Seat wi me disbelief” that many sceptics could only Summer make whilst conceiving of themselves 51 And only he who cowers in the pit as being in a narrative space. (Edwards Below yer feet ye see… 2001, 82; Hufford 1995, 22) On returning they will leave the Old Road behind, safe in the world of “make believe”. Marking the spot where the murder happened almost one hundred years ago lies her “body,” a fallen tree, while her Stepping Stones to Knowledge earthbound, nameless killer is locked On another level, the road is celebrated forever in the remains of an adjacent for its ability to elucidate the progress of dead tree stump. Within this event is a human life through activity and journey. “story of love and faith”,48 a reassurance Like the verbal emphasis of the Cant that a higher balancing force is in opera- language,52 the interface of the road tion and that the unalterable past may teaches through response—by walking, be transformed and resolved through listening, making, doing and discern- commemoration. ing. Its metaphoric representations are The story that gives material form to designed “to make the mind move,”53an this memory suggests the depth of hu- allegory for the therapeutic value of a man entrainment and elemental agency new way of seeing, or as an opportu- invested in this landscape. (Clayton nity, as Stanley puts it, to “rest and be 2001) In the narrative creation of the past thankful”54 on the “stepping stones”55 of how the “keepers of these landscapes, life’s path. tell stories that explain [their] exist- As a child Stanley remembers pass- ence”, is an implication that all levels of ing milestones on the road. At these the material and unseen are in continual places his father would review a learn- reciprocity. (Glassie 1994, 962) Stanley’s ing principle, asking questions to make

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sure that he had been understood. when ye went tae yer bed at night, Stanley’s approach to teaching, writing aifter ye heard their music and the and performance is structured in much songs and the stories, just being the same way. When singing a ballad for amongst them. And ye lay in yer bed illustration he often stops between vers- at night, ye could listen tae the rain. Fin ye hear the rain faa’in on the camp, es to elucidate symbolic, archaic lan- this precipitates doon these torrential guage, historic connections, or events in notes…And ye could hear aa these the plot. Stanley’s new vision of the Old bonnie wee pipe tunes getting played Road recreates the cyclical structure of by nature. And ye listen! And ye got Traveller life, a journey of challenge and all yer timings of yer tunes off o just learning broken up by refreshing stops listening to nature. And ye could look where one re-gathers personal energies at the rain makin these beautiful in- or allows time for self analysis before tricate patterns upon the canvas. And moving on. Knowledge is accumulated ye got telt stories by an unseen voice, in rhythmic progressions between jour- and yet these stories were all in the pattern. Ma Mither used to say, ney and rest, learning and contempla- tion. Stanley explains that: ‘If ye listen to mither nature, she’s a living being. What does she say to ye? ‘At each stepping steen they wid sing What does she tell ye?’ ye a song, play ye a tune, instruct ye. The Travelling folk were very el- So you could sit doon, ye could look emental…very much in tune with behind, at faur ye come fae. Ye could the elements [and] what was gan see maybe the auld Mill o Aiberdeen. on. And that’s where we learnt wir And then, at the next stepping stone, songs, stories, music…59 ye could sit doon, analyse yerself and see how far ye’ve come, and how far ye’re gaun. So yer stepping steenies The sound of Traveller singers can have was the sort o resting places whaur a dramatically expressive and emotion- you were taught something. And it ally raw edge, whilst timings within represents the progress of the Travel- single phrases can vary greatly. Individ- ling people’.56 uality is a source of family pride and, as in the case of traversing the Old Road, a An “Elemental” People57 greater emphasis is placed upon evalua- Explaining the capacity of his people to tion, understanding and an internalisa- stop, listen and learn from their environ- tion of symbolic structures and imagery mental resources, Stanley emphasises than upon stylistic uniformity. Stanley that to “catch the vision”58 of this road equates this distinct style with the ab- involves receptiveness to its subtle fre- sorption of “elemental” timings. Trav- quencies. The vital spark of his stories, eller tradition has chosen to perpetuate songs, and, later, his books, have been many natural ballads of poetic and de- 60 fed and inspired by a detailed aware- scriptive beauty, including those con- ness of the elements: taining the common theme of seasonal movement. Stanley relates the following

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family song to another landmark, “The ballads and tales, Stanley’s formidable Tree of Life”, symbolic of socialisation memory has grown from a lively atmos- and growth, 61 which metaphorically phere of listening and family participa- references the transition between child- tion from his earliest years. hood and maturity. For Traveller children the Old Road became the focal point of their education. The Seasons (excerpt) Though continually bullied and sent to the lowest class at school Stanley recalls The hills are clad in purple how the strength of his family tradition The autumn winds they are sighing 64 For a beauty growing old “made you feel so very special” and The grey grouse and the heather counterbalanced the social isolation he And the evenings where we played experienced there. The mechanisms of I’m thinking of my childhood traditional education created unshake- In a very special way.62 able bonds between family members that have almost no parallel within the Auld Lumphanan’s Fame63 school system. Stanley told me, “It wis The ultimate cohesiveness that contin- a complete learning centre better than ues to bind Traveller culture is kinship ony school or college I ever went to”. and through memories of extended rel- (Robertson, in press) atives the Old Road becomes a “hall of Stories could be repeated, stretched fame”. Nowhere does Stanley feel closer over several nights or, by association to his “folk” than at Lumphanan, an af- and competitive spirit, lead to more finity kindled from memories of times embellished, larger-than-life versions. spent among a remarkable line of fam- Stanley’s favourites were the supernatu- ily singers, musicians and storytellers ral stories that “wid terrify ye to death”,65 going back many generations. Though or the Jack tales, several of which are ge- perhaps the most well-known relative ographically localised on the Old Road. was his aunt, Jeannie Robertson, he also Stanley explains their function: credits his mother Elizabeth MacDon- The Jack Tales are tales of encour- ald, his father William Stewart, his Un- agement: These are tales to lift all the cle Albert Stewart, his great grandfather Travelling folk, (most especially the chil- Bill Macgregor, and Maggie Stewart for dren) from the despair that is felt within their wealth of folklore. the city and the prejudices of many of its At the heart of the road is the social people. For Jack is a marvellous and ex- environment of the camping place where emplary character—who always man- his family camped, cooked their habben ages to get over all the evils of life, by [food in North-East Traveller Cant] over finding worth within himself, and from fires made with broom, exchanged expe- this gaining faith with his fellow being— riences, and celebrated their community because Jack is not alone along the paths with songs, tunes and tales late into the of truth—he is guided and assisted by night. Encompassing everything from helpers, who are very important to him. country hits or children’s songs to big (Robertson 1988, 119)

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greed and disrespect for nature will result in humanity’s ultimate demise. He believes this story has been reactivated in tradition because the world needs a reminder of the eternal bond between humans and nature.

Memory, Performance, and the Senses In the “intensely human habitat” of narratives in place Traveller culture has no shortage of mnemonic devices. (Nicolaisen 2002, 9) The sound and vocabulary of Traveller traditions in performance relates to a “folk-cultural reg- ister”, in which continual exposure to the commonplace phrases of traditional ballads and stories has added adeptness for extended descriptive embellishment to the individualised nuances of everyday speech. (Nicolaisen 1990, 44) Stanley says proudly, “Travellers were masters of hyperbolae”!67 In the use of sound, Auld Cruvie. Photo by author imagery, alliteration and metaphor to convey emotional and situational con- Jack on the Old Road tent, he remembers how “everything was magnified”68 to communicate full The “King of the Road” is Auld Cruvie,66 dramatic effect. the ancient “all–seeing” oak tree. Re- Stanley’s supply of descriptive phras- spected for his age and stature (it is re- es, comparative devices and capacity for garded as gendered), “Cruvie” is the fo- immediate retort, such as, “Fake avree cal point of one of Stanley’s key “Jack” frae me ye auld cravat cos I widna gee narratives. Every fifty years, during the ye as much as a lick o mi beard”, finds solstice, all the trees of the road come the humour and visual impact in every out to dance, revealing long-hidden situation. Expressions like “drooshie jewels. Jack is successful because he and dry” to describe thirst and “blue has the wisdom not to take more than sparks and fiery ends” to describe- an he needs, whereas the greedy Laird of ger are just two examples of how he the Black Airt is still filling his pockets has fused his character to this inventive with treasure when the roots of the re- vocabulary with the goal of adding an turning tree crush him. Stanley uses this extra descriptive edge to his speech and tale today to illustrate the topical envi- performances. (Robertson, in press) ronmental message that overpowering

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Barbara McDermitt has noted how world where knowledge, creativity and Stanley learned and remembered sto- “occasionality” meet ancestral memory ries, sometimes after long periods of and the wisdom of the eternal. inactivity, by incorporating a spectrum Through the use of visual aids to of senses, by repetition, through use of recreate memorial places in the mind numbers and symbols, or by drawing ballads, songs and stories designed to out the memory through progressive re- “mak a lang road short”70 also became visualisations of place: the “instruments of oral knowledge”. (Robertson, “The Old Road,” 2002-2005) First of all I try to remember the actual Stanley remembers, “It was lovely to be place where I heard the story, maybe at Drum, and then hear the ballad ‘The Lumphanan or someplace camping. I try to remember the setting, every- Lady o Drum’ or to be at Udny and hear thing, even the smells, everything to ‘Bonnie Udny’ or Fyvie and hear ‘Tifty’s do with the senses. I try to picture the Annie’, at Tarland and hear ‘Corachree’ storyteller, the voice, gestures, maybe or Monymusk and hear ‘Johnnie o the rhymes or riddles. As I picture the Brine’. As a child I thought that every- actual event the missing parts of the body knew these songs and I did not re- story come back to me. It’s a fusion alise until a later age just how precious of fragments…Once I hear a story, it’s these gems were”. (McDermitt 1986, 9) never really lost. (McDermitt 1986, His brief summary of nearby song lo- 361-62) cations conveys a fleeting sense of the wider orientation points of the Traveller Above Stanley describes a methodol- landscape of Scotland. Beside the glim- ogy similar to “going through the eye of mer [fire] at Lumphanan Stanley remem- the skull”, using a three-way ritualised bers ballads were delivered with delib- process of relocation, from the revisit- eration and immediacy “as though they ing of the situational core to a rebuild- happened yesterday”,71 their texts, plots ing and articulation of its content. The and circumstances becoming regular journey from memory to renewal repre- subjects of discussion and social debate. sents the creation of an individualised, Whether visiting historic ballad loca- experientially-grounded and timeless tions or teaching in a classroom Stanley performance space. draws listeners through a connection As Maggie Stewart later empha- with ancient places towards a confident sised, “You hae [have] understood that and well-rounded understanding of the there are two times on this earth, the human situation within the ballad. 69 here and now, and story-time”. Like Local ballad “Busk Busk Bonnie Las- breathing in and out memory becomes sie” is associated with the spectacular a referential blueprint, the rubric of a mountain pass of Glenshee in Highland text in progress. Using the material and Perthshire. (Robertson 1984, Track 3) traditional as points of departure the Known in Traveller tradition as an an- land where stories grow creates a new cient “bridal path”, 72 the soldier’s invi- “place” in narrative time, a coexistence tation to his sweetheart to walk with him

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over Glenshee becomes a proposal for by “orally transmitted traditions passed marriage. The soldier’s potentially fate- down through families and communi- ful departure implicit in the language re- ties” (Davies 2007, 41), this co-exists with veals the song’s “anti war sentiments”73 literary or contemporary knowledge, Visiting this location, Stanley reminded personal experience, and an awareness me, “Now, when you sing this song you of how other groups have interpreted hae a vision o this place in your mind the songs. The experiential amounts to and you can bring it into the song”.74 a knowledge base of all that is remembered (Nora 1989, 13) and, beyond so- Busk Busk Bonnie Lassie (excerpt) cio-cultural boundaries, the universally applicable content of ballads can evoke Fain I wid gang wi ye infinite collective contexts for memory, willingly, would, go with you strengthening their potential to teach. For yer aye on my mind always The Travelling way of life has made this It was never my intention reverent approach to traditions in per- For to leave ye behind you formance a cultural strategy. Busk, busk bonnie lassie Aye, and come awa wi me away The Multidimensional Ballad And I’ll tak ye tae Glen Isla take Near Bonnie Glenshee The idea of “fusion” appears well-suited Fain I wid gang wi ye to these multiple layers of engagement. But wi ye I daurna go dare not To the performance of ballads through Fain I wid gang wi ye place Traveller tradition adds an ethere- For I love ye so al element that moves beyond their his- Busk busk … tories, encoded texts or creation in sen- An dae ye see yon high hills do sory dimensions. Songs entwined with Aa covered wi snaw all; snow the memories of much-loved relatives They hae pairted mony’s a true love (Williamson 1985, 4) become relived ge- parted many a nealogies inhabited by ancestral voices, An they’ll surely pairt us twa two Busk, busk … and Stanley brings the memory and An dae ye see yon shepherds do presence of many people to the stage. As they mairch alang march, along Performing with sincerity, respect and Wi their plaidies pu’d aboot them involvement Stanley teaches that “when pulled, about you sing a tribe comes with you”.75 At And their sheep follae on follow times Stanley is moved to tears by the Busk, busk … ballads he calls “his dearest friends”.76 Their emotional content is magnified as The many local variants of this song much by the timeless bonds they create suggest a cultural mapping of memory with closely-felt family, as by his inter- similar to that discussed by Judith Oke- action with their events. When perform- ly. In Traveller tradition visual and spa- ing family songs their presence, partici- tial associations with the text are richly pation, and direction are often sensed developed and, whilst founded by de- strongly. fault upon a sense of the past, informed

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His Auntie Jeannie, in particular, is the full implications of her words have an ever-present mentor, “And the tears been greatly misinterpreted by scholars. just used to stream doon ma eyes, just Stanley says, “Jeannie meant, ‘just sing powerful, and she still dis it yet, she’s it as best as you can’”;83 His emphasis been dead for aa these years and she still upon connecting with ballad location comes through me. It’s really frighten- and content reflects his sense that a ing. But I ken she’s teaching me…She heartfelt performance is preferable to a wants me to get all her phraseology”.77 “beautiful voice”84 Stanley says, “A real balladeer fuses wi his ballad and the whole spirit o the High up in the air ye’ll get the words ballad is there. Yer there in spirit and o the ballad and down below further ye’re there in body”.78 Using the same ye’ll get the melody. But in between that space between the melody and principle of internalisation and exter- the actual ballad itself, the words, nalisation, drawing in the ballad, and lies all the magic of the ballad. And relocating himself to the heart of the that’s far The Mysie is. And it’s once song, Stanley’s intention is to become a yer able to go in and take that out “multi-dimensional singer”,79 a channel and discover it…And then that’s the through which the song is able to come thing that gees ye the shivers doon forward. Like a suspension of self,80 each yer spine. And that’s fin ye get emo- performance becomes a reverent renew- tionally involved in the ballad.85 al of an unbroken living link between singer and song. Catching The Mysie Stanley’s ballads are intensely visual, Like Jeannie’s, Stanley’s mentoring has “lived in”, and emotionally delivered had a transformational effect. Sam Lee, commentaries: a traditional singer much influenced by Stanley, describes this “inside” ap- I see them like films or plays in front proach, “I felt as though I was standing o me. Yer the producer, the director, aside looking at myself performing. I the actors, the narrator…You’re every was outside myself…just overawed by character in it. And you see it. And this power. Somebody else seemed to be you’ve got to convey it! I see it like singing through me. Then I realised, that a big screen. I see it in a cinemascope 86 Hollywood production. Every col- was the brilliance of the ballad”. Reach- our’s there, and everything’s there. ing this tuned-in “place” Stanley’s phi- And I want folk … to see this vi- losophy begins to make integral sense. sion.81 To be a good storyteller, he says, “you must be willing to give up something of 87 Stanley has been much influenced by his yourself”, an approach described by Auntie Jeannie who explained to him as a local storyteller as being open to the 88 a child that, “ballads live in the air all “childlike innocence” that is part of around you. Breath them in, let them even the most disturbing stories. fill aa your senses, and then, tak them Stanley’s ultimate performance goal oot bonnie”.82 According to Stanley, is The Mysie,89 a term he uses to de��-

93 Sara Reith Through the “Eye of the Skull”

scribe music’s moving, transforming your spine”, 91 and, reflecting his own effect when sourced in visual connec- deep religious faith, as an appearance tion, attentiveness to language, imagery that signifies the presence of God. Its and event, and emotional involvement. ancient power is such that Stanley says, Felt as commonly by listeners as sing- “When ye’ve got that nobody can take ers themselves, in Stanley’s mind The it away frae ye”,92 and through trans- Mysie, which can “mak yer hair stand ferable techniques like “the eye of the on end”,90 is a tangible force, a gift, skull”, a tradition bearer becomes part rather like the mantle of the storyteller, of a dialogue with eternity. which bestows itself upon the sincere performer, at times adopting the human The Land where Stories Grow and elemental qualities of a deity-like Stanley’s commentary on The Mysie being. sums up what is perhaps the most com- An experience of The Mysie spells a pelling aspect of memory to Traveller heightening of individual and collective tradition—its role as a human treasury thought, in performance, the creation of immeasurable wealth. Describing his of a conjoining “atmosphere”. Stanley inheritance as a silver chalice to be nur- describes this as “feeling shivers down tured and passed on (Robertson, 2005),

The Travellers’ Midden, Autumn 2007 Photo by Steve Webb

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Stanley attempts to share his culture in flect a worldview instilled by the prac- the face of change, an act that embodies tical, descriptive, and symbolic rich- the belief that nothing is gone unless it ness of Traveller education in which the is forgotten. By choosing to remember guidance of family, tradition and nature Travellers, so often outwardly disen- is always accessible when sought. franchised, have prioritised the “com- From the childhood game of making munal bonds” (Yoors 2004, 7) of family Brackos, Stanley learned to construct ties and human exchange in order to cel- pictures and tell stories from gathered ebrate their heritage as a source of pride, natural objects. Not only do these un- ownership and creativity. folding narratives hone descriptive Without Stanley’s active belief in abilities, they also provide methods for its continuing vitality, the Old Road of reflecting on life and for self-analysis. Lumphanan would be nothing more Today this skill allows him to perceive than a dirt track. Combining memory, and arrange constellations of symbols, tradition, and creativity, he has recreat- to create stories of expansive and ened its understated landscape as a living lightening narrative meaning from ap- and monumental archive of Traveller parently unremarkable objects.95 life. Stanley’s life as a Traveller and his Today the only physical trace of the family memories of the Old Road have road’s alternative history is carefully taught him to cultivate the spirit of buried in the Travellers’ midden,93 the discernment and the ability to read his place where Stanley says they disposed environment from the inside. Tradition of rubbish or buried things for posteri- manifests itself in the connections of ty. 94 Concealed in layers, the midden di- knowledge drawn between the visible vulges artefacts which relay a history of and the unseen and, in Traveller be- human dwelling. From the fragmented lief, material objects and oral traditions and unknown to the objects of living alike carry energetic properties, tangible memory, the pieces of broken china, shadows of the lives and experiences horse brasses and tackle, or cracked they connote. Handed down in his fam- pots, cups and basins confirm the ances- ily is a belief that “the eyes are the mir- tral and emanate belonging. Nearer the ror of the soul”. “Looking in” on the surface objects become more complete in landscape, Stanley’s environment has their direct relationship to remembered become a teacher, and a reflection of all people. Stanley’s discovery of his fa- human situations. ther’s old-fashioned brass razor led him Stanley’s work today honours the to recount tales, songs and anecdotes of memory of his ancestors and carries their his memory. knowledge forward in a unique and in- Such material becomes a conduit dividual way. By passing on the mantle for new narratives that use a sense of of tradition with an informed knowl- the past to objectify the present. Within edge of its symbolic importance and an Traveller culture, the pervasive themes awareness of his sources, he, in turn, be- of cyclical renewal or life as a journey re- comes a teacher and ensures its continu-

95 Sara Reith Through the “Eye of the Skull”

ity. Memory, experienced through tradi- and immediacy converge, resulting in tion, provides an ancestrally sanctioned moments of epiphany or timelessness, route for the development of solutions to the Mysie, in the realm of experience. current challenges. Catching a glimpse Journeying through traditionalisation of the Old Road, visitors return through in the landscape, the evolving present the eye of the skull richer in knowledge meets with the vertical strata of com- and transformed by the experience of a monly held, cross-generational truths, world perceived anew. converging with layers of sensory expe- In the dedicated work of sharing the rience in the here and now. In its spirit of experiential within their culture, Travel- renewal, “Auld Lumphanan’s fame” ex- ler performers such as Stanley commu- ists because each feature of its landscape nicate a worldview that can cross the contains multiple layers of association, boundaries of outside memory, using the many levels of experience between tradition as a force to instigate positive the exoteric and esoteric which inhabit changes in popular belief. Moving past the memories of every human being. the “tip of the iceberg”, between folklore To storytellers Auld Cruvie exists as study and the experiential language of a symbol of environmental truths. To tradition, terms such as “multi-dimen- those who have never “met” Cruvie, sionality” can suggest ways of looking it is an image of their own association anew at the complicated dynamics of and, to visitors, a reminder of nature’s memory in traditional contexts. “Look- balance, or a place of luck and light- ing in” on the sensory dimensions of the hearted ritual. To Stanley’s family Auld experience of tradition elucidates how Cruvie on the Old Road of Lumphanan places exist in memory. It suggests that is a place of many deep and personally these places of memory serve as a moti- associated memories, an icon of their vational and creative force in tradition history and belonging and, ultimately, because of their human connections. a representation of life, longevity, hope To sum up, the Old Road of Lum- and faith. In an archetypal sense, Auld phanan is a landscape humanised by Cruvie emblemises the growth and reju- tradition. Its land is rich with the an- venation of the treasures of the earth, an cestral memory of learned knowledge ancient knowledge of great worth and and narrated in the distilled essence of substance, sourced from the deep well of experiences represented by archetypal tradition. The Old Road of Lumphanan figures like Jack. Just below the surface, viewed through the eye of the skull is from the stories and songs told of peo- the sum total of all these parts: memory, ple that lived once or never, to the in- tradition and creativity in a continual tensely individualised associations of state of interaction. living memory, the vertical meets the The transition from the material to horizontal, the continual and immedi- the experiential is made possible by ate. Going through the eye of the skull journeys of the mind “through the eye creates a place, “the land where stories of the skull”. Travelling through the eye grow”, where these levels of knowledge of the skull, or breathing in his chosen

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surroundings, Stanley understands that exchange compliment an increasing stock of people and places are an ever-present memorabilia in the form of CD’s, books and part of the self and may be revisited DVD’s. by the mind and through the intensity 4�� Many Scottish newspapers describe Travel- of memory from any physical location. lers this way. See for example ‘Anger as coun- Memory fuelled by tradition is a place cil offers £25,000 salary for gipsy co-ordinator’ Scottish Daily Mail , June 14, 2006 or ‘Rogue in the mind; it comes from the past yet Camp almost caused multi-million pound lives in the moment of recollection. Eve- pull-out’ Evening Express, July 12, 2006. ryone continually relives and recreates 5 EI 2008.098 from their past, but it is the attentiveness 6 Conversation with Fiona Townsley, Perth, of the going within that brings the crea- 16.8.08. tive spark of The Mysie to the moment 7 ��Conversation with Traveller resident at Dou- and ensures the vitality of tradition. To bledykes Site, Perthshire, 15.8.08. look at memory as a multi-layered proc- 8 Conversation with Fiona Townsley, Perth, ess of tradition, dwelling and humani- 16.8.08. sation is ultimately to ask “Where does 9 Conversation with Fiona Townsley, Perth, memory live?” In Traveller tradition this 16.8.08. is not “entirely in the past”, but in the 10 Some examples of Traveller publications consciousness of its eternal presence. include:Stanley Robertson. Exodus to Alford. Nairn: Balnain Books, 1988.Stanley Robertson. Notes Nyakum”s Windows. Nairn: Balnain Books, 1 Scottish Travellers are also referred to in 1989. Jess Smith. Jessie’s Journey: Autobiography public and legal contexts as “Gypsy/Travel- of a Traveller Girl. Edinburgh: Mercat, 2002. Jess lers”. Smith. Tales from the Tent: Jessie’s Journey Contin- ues. Edinburgh: Mercat, 2003.Jess Smith. Tears 2 ��Fearing the prejudice of the settled popula- for a Tinker. Edinburgh: Mercat, 2005.Sheila tion, some Travellers choose to conceal their Stewart. Queen Amang the Heather: The Life of identity to the extent that they will not associ- Belle Stewart. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2006.Duncan ate themselves with their past even in family Williamson. The Horsieman: Memories of a Trav- situations. eller 1928-58. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2002. 3 Traveller objects of memory in a settled 11 ��I have taken this thematic idea from recur- world have become increasingly important. ring literary descriptions of Travellers and Photographs are increasingly treasured and Gypsies as the ever-resourceful providers of become proudly displayed visual props to a “occasional labour”. This idea seems to reso- substantial genealogical knowledge. When I nate well with how traditional lore functions visited Fife Traveller Duncan Williamson he within Traveller culture as a store of skills and lived in one room of his welcoming home, knowledge to be recalled and applied to life and was surrounded by brass; harnesses, contexts as and when required. horseshoes and beautifully polished objects associated with his life and accumulated skill 12 Now often sought as a tutor or lecturer in as a horseman and trader. The same show of academic contexts, Stanley Robertson often garish pride is apparent at gatherings of Trav- pits the strength, reliability and detail of his eller culture such as Appleby Fair in which “natural” knowledge against the oft-times displays of skilled horsemanship (often from sterile and misinformed approach of scholars. very young children), competitiveness and 13 ��Stanley Robertson’s performing and teach-

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ing methods focus heavily upon drawing lis- understand the essence of any situation. It is teners into an individual, culturally informed instigated through a methodology and proc- and humanistic experience of the song or story ess of connection that is intensely personal he is communicating, taking them on a jour- and involves an individual ability to relate to ney of their own creation. Using a variety of surroundings from the inside, using all senses techniques, he asks participants in his work- to experience and express the event. shops to relate to songs and stories from as 23 EI 2002.037Wint (North-East Doric), went. many angles as they are able to suggest, with Yak (North-East Traveller Cant), eye.Faur the goal of becoming “multi-dimensional”. (North-East Traveller Cant), where.Aa (North- 14 Sam Lee of Cecil Sharpe House in London, East Doric), all.Awa (North-East Doric), away. a singer heavily influenced by Stanley Robert- Auld (Scots), old.Caa (Scots), call.Tae (Scots), son’s approach, is the source of the following to.Wi (North-East Doric), with. analogy which I think sums up very well how 24 EI 2002.037 The spiritual dimensions ac-ac- Travellers construct their identity. Another recorded to this way of looking are important. lated aspect, which is not discussed here, is the Stanley Robertson has multiple teaching association of Travellers with fortune telling mechanisms with the same goal in mind. Each and divination. leads to a view of “pure intelligence”, and sug- 15 Stanley�� Robertson often compares the jour- gests that the eye of the skull is a metaphor for neys of Travellers to “The Pilgrim’s Progress”. progressive enlightenment. See Sharrock 1976. 25 EI 2002.037 16 EI 2006.069 (my italics) 26 EI 2006.127 17 EI 2005.061 Stanley Robertson frequently 27 EI 2002.037Weel (North-East Doric), well. uses the local Scots vernacular, in this case, the Hae (North-East Doric), have.Ye (Scots), you. North- East and Aberdeen dialect known as Oot (North-East Doric), out.Mair frae gaun Doric. Traditional performance continues to (North-East Doric), more from going.Wid make expressive use of multiple and widely (North-East Doric), would. spoken Scottish dialects. Many Travellers use 28�� Conversation with Stanley Robertson, Ab- their own combinations of Scots, Cant (Scot- erdeen, 2007. tish Travellers” cover language”), Romani and 29 EI 2007.116 Gaelic language in performance, song and storytelling. 30 The latter category includes historic tales such as the legendary visits of the Gabelunzie 18 EI 2005.061 Stanley Robertson emphasises King to Lumphanan. that Travellers educated him through an inventive use of natural surroundings. Visual 31 EI 2007.128 connections to ballad locations were used in 32 Video footage from the personal collection particular to give a reference point on which of Stanley Robertson.Mither (North-East Dor- to hinge and develop the context of songs and ic), mother.Long (North-East Doric), lang.Wis stories. (North-East Doric), was.Bairns (North-East 19 EI 2002.037 Doric), children.Oors aa richt (North-East Dor- ic), ours all right.Twa hooses (North-East Dor- 20 EI 2002.037 ic), two houses.Ging (North-East Doric), go.Aye 21 Bauman (1971, 41) refers to the use of kine- (North-East Doric), always. ‘Aye’ also means ‘Yes’ sic markers as points of connection in folklore in Scots usage.O (Scots), of. performance. 33 Stanley has used a “ballad commonplace” 22 In�� Stanley’s mind, this idea conveys a per- phrase to describe this part of the road, one of ceptive and intuitive ability to see, feel, and many which is incorporated into his spoken

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language. 40 See note 63. 34 Video footage from the personal collection 41 Stanley has used this expression as a of Stanley Robertson. Pairt (North-East Doric), themed title for some of his many educational part.Fin (North-East Doric), when.Wid (North-East workshops. Doric), would.Cairt (North-East Doric), cart.Tak 42 Stanley’s family tradition states how the (Scots), take.Hoose (North-East Doric), house. authorities of the time were reluctant to inves- Aiberdeen (North-East Doric), Aberdeen.Intae tigate the murder or provide an official burial (North-East Doric), intae.Lookit (North-East for the dead woman. Doric), looked.Glimmer (North-East Traveller 43 Steven Webb has been a regular attend-attend- Cant), fire.Biling (North-East Doric), boiling. ant at Stanley’s workshops on creativity and Gunnel (North-East Doric), the very top.Duke storytelling. His visits to the old road with (North-East Doric), duck.Sharras (North-East Stanley have inspired him to write several Traveller Cant), eggs.Couldna (North-East poems related to the Traveller history of Lum- Doric), couldn’t. phanan using Stanley’s methodology of going 35 These are Stanley’s words of description, “through the eye of the skull”. though they align well with the theories of 44 EI 2007.104 Victor Turner on transformative spaces. See 45 EI 2007.104 Turner 2002. 46 EI 2007.104 36 Wi yer (North-East Doric) with your 47 EI 2007.104 37 One effect of listening within these created spaces of narrative performance is a height- 48 EI 2004.037 ened experience that is “in concert” with the 49 EI 2006.127 understandings of the performer. See Kap- 50 EI 2006.127 chan 2003, 134. 51 Hufford”s discussion of “official” and 38 Stanley tells the following story about “unofficial” belief suggests how, in the Tammy Toddle. “The story”s aboot this wee absence of experience, willingness to believe mannie [man], he wis a wee hunchback. An is informed by context. ugly wee cratur [person]. And aabody in the 52 In performance, Stanley tells an anecdote toon [town], ye ken [you know], shunned him which he attributes to Traveller Duncan Wil- because o his appearance. He wis like a wee liamson. The many dialects of Scottish Trav- mountebank. But he went oot [out] to bide eller Cant which feature words derived from [live] in the country, and the wee fairy folk o Scots, Gaelic and Romani have one common the place looked at him and never seen him feature which relates to Cant’s status as a pri- as ugly. They just seen him as one o them. marily functional “cover language” designed And they accepted him. So, they kint [knew] to conceal the content of conversations from the treatment he wis getting in the toon. So outsiders. Describing this function, Duncan they built him a wee hoosie [house]. It wis the would say, “If ye can”t buy it, sell it, eat it, fairy folk that built him his wee hoosie”. EI drink it or make love to it, there”s no word 2007.009 for it in Cant”. Stanley Robertson in perform- 39 (Robertson 2005)Whin (Scots), when.Nae ance at “The Gyspy Arts Festival”, Edinburgh, (North-East Doric), not.Jist (North-East Doric), 2008. just.Intae (North-East Doric), into.Fit (North- 53�� Conversation with Stanley Robertson, Ab- East Doric), what.Gang (North-East Doric), erdeen, 2007. go.Winnae (Scots), won’t.Oot (North-East Dor- 54 EI 2005.130 “Rest and be Thankful” is also a ic), out.Hunners (North-East Doric), hundreds. Scottish place-name for the summit of a steep Hinnie (Scots), then.

99 Sara Reith Through the “Eye of the Skull”

mountain road in the Highlands of Scotland. erdeen, 2007. 55 EI 2005.130 This physical and visual ap-ap- 66 “Cruvie” is a Scots derivative of the Gaelic proach to learning in progressive steps, which word “craobh” meaning “tree.” Auld Cruvie is Stanley Robertson describes as an ancient the most prominent tree on the heart of the old teaching method, is used by many Travellers road. “His” traditionalised association with in various educational settings and is noted wisdom is connected to “his” longevity, and for its effectiveness and contrast to conven- “he” stands as a symbol of timelessness and tional teaching. Comment: run on renewal. The transformational experiences, 56 EI 2005.130Steen (North-East Doric), stone. rather like “rites of passage”, through which Doon (North-East Doric), down.Faur (North- the structures of Jack tales are developed is East Doric), where.Fae (North-East Doric), an important theme. Stanley notes that there from.The ‘ie’ ending represents the diminutive are leagues of growth within the Jack tales, in North-East Doric. Steenies are small stones. making them suitable for application to every Whaur (Scots), where. stage of life. As a young shepherd boy, who 57 A description of Travellers given by Stanley spent most of his life under Auld Cruvie, Jack Robertson in performance at “The Travellers’ grew up immersed in nature and so learns to Day”, Aberdeen, 2006. interact with and understand the language of the elements. 58 Stanley Robertson often picks this theme for focus in his teaching work. 67�� Conversation with Stanley Robertson, Ab- erdeen, 2007. 59 Stanley Robertson in performance at “The Travellers’ Day”, Aberdeen, 2006. 68�� Conversation with Stanley Robertson, Ab- erdeen, 2007. 60�� Stanley Robertson’s vast repertoire of natu- rally descriptive ballads includes “Up a Wild 69�� Unindexed interview with Stanley Robert- and Lonely Glen”, a song which reminds him son, 19.10.08. of his father”s singing at Lumphanan.”Up a 70 EI 2002.085 wild and lonely glenShaded by mony [many] 71 Conversation with Marc Ellington, Aber-Aber- a purple mountainTwas far from the busy deen, 2006. haunts o menThe first time that I gaed [went] 72 A bridal path in Traveller tradition is a road oot a hunting”This beautiful ballad, which which when walked by a courting couple re- Stanley visually associates with the singing of sults in them being married on reaching the his father William Robertson at Lumphanan, end of the road. Again, this idea aligns well is a version of the song “Queen Among the with the progressive idea of journey as a rite Heather”, sung in different distinct versions of passage. by many Travelling families. 73�� In verse four Stanley Robertson draws at- 61 The Tree of Life stands near the heart of the tention to the uncharacteristic “marching” of Old Road and became a gauge of personal the shepherds as an omen for ensuing war and progress. Stanley remembers how, as children, its effects of breaking up established families, they would measure their height year by year courtships and social and domestic structures. standing against this tree. Stanley Robertson in performance, Aberdeen, 62 EI2007.097 2007. 63 This phrase is used by Stanley Robertson in 74 Conversation with Stanley Robertson and his poem “Exodus o Travellers”. his son Anthony Robertson whilst crossing 64�� Conversation with Stanley Robertson, Ab- Glenshee on a drive around some Scottish bal- erdeen, 2006. lad locations, 2008. 65�� Conversation with Stanley Robertson, Ab- 75 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview

100 Through the “Eye of the Skull”

on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March 91 Stanley Robertson’s description conjoins 2008. with his traditional and spiritual belief that 76 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview when the presence of God is felt, it travels on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March down the spine and when it comes from the 2008. devil “shivers” are felt up the spine. 77 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview 92 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March 2008. 2008. 78 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview 93 Midden (North-East Doric), rubbish dump. on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March 94 Stanley Robertson often takes visitors to 2008. this spot below the main camping ground and 79�� Stanley Robertson in a workshop for “Scot- encourages them to dig. He delights in its pos- tish Culture and Traditions”, Aberdeen, 2007. sibility to continually divulge new artefacts, 80 Titon. 1997, 94 and often uses it to illustrate the strict codes of cleanliness and hygiene observed by his 81 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview people.. on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March 2008. 95 Stanley Robertson’s ability to invent stories from symbols became fully apparent to me 82 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview when he one day told a story of epic poten- on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March tial based upon the mass produced and, in my 2008. mind, unremarkable images of beans printed 83 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview on a disposable paper coffee cup. on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March 2008. 84 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview Works Cited on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March Abrahams, Roger D. 2003. Identity. 2008. In Eight Words for the Study of 85 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview Expressive Culture, edited by on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March Burt Feintuch, 198-222. Chicago: 2008. University of Illinois Press. 86 Stanley Robertson, Unindexed interview Basso, Keith H. 1996. Wisdom Sits in on “Ballads and Creativity”, Aberdeen, March Places: Notes on a Western 2008. Apache Landscape. In Senses of 87 Interview by Fiona-Jane Brown with Stanley Place, edited by Steven Feld and Robertson on behalf of Grampian Association Keith H. Basso, 53-90. Santa Fe: of Storytellers, Elphinstone Institute, 2006. School of American Research http://www.GAS.co.uk accessed 21.11.2007. Press. 88 EI 2007.112 Bauman, Richard. 1971. Differential 89 EI2005.130 “The Mysie”, is a term unique Identity and the Social Base to Stanley Robertson”s family. He describes it of Folklore. In Towards New as a corruption of the English language term “The Muse”. Other Travellers such as Sheila Perspectives in Folklore. Américo Stewart use the expression “The Coinyach” to Paredes and Richard Bauman describe this phenomenon. eds. Journal of American Folklore 90 Jeannie Robertson was renowned for this 84. ability.

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Ben-Amos, Dan. 1999. Afterword. to the Study of Repertoire. In In Cultural Memory and the Towards New Perspectives in Construction of Identity, edited Folklore, edited by Americo by Dan Ben-Amos and Liliane Parédes and Richard Bauman, Weissberg. Detroit: Wayne State 80-86. Austin: University of University Press. Texas Press. Braid, Donald. 1996. Personal Narrative Glassie, Henry. 1994. The Practice and and Experiential Meaning. The Purpose of History. The Journal Journal of American Folklore 109: of American History 81: 961-68. 5-30. Henderson, Hamish. 2004. Alias Buchan, David. 1997. The Ballad and Macalias, Writings on Songs, the Folk. East Linton: Tuckwell Folk and Literature. 2nd edi- Press. tion. Edited by Alec Finlay. Clayton, Martin. 2001. Introduction: Edinburgh: Birlinn. Towards a Theory of Musical _____. 1981. The Tinkers. In A Meaning (in India and Companion to Scottish Culture, Elsewhere). British Journal of edited by David Daiches, 377- Ethnomusicology 10: 1-17. 78. London: Edward Arnold. Daniels, Stephen, and Catherine Nash. Higgins, Lizzie. 2006. In Memory 2004. Lifepaths: Geography and of Lizzie Higgins. Musical Biography. Journal of Historical Traditions Records MTCD337-8. Geography 30: 449-58. Hufford, David J. 1995. Beings without Davies, Owen. 2007. The Haunted: A Bodies: An Experience-Centered Social History of Ghosts. London: Theory of the Belief in Spirits. Palgrave Macmillan. In Out of the Ordinary, edited by Douglas, Sheila. 2007. Narrative Barbara Walker, 11-45. Logan: in Traveller Scotland. In Utah State University Press. A Compendium of Scottish Ingold, Tim. 1993. The Temporality Ethnology: Scottish Life and of the Landscape. World Society, Oral Literature and Archaeology 25:152-74. Performance Culture 10: 213-24. Kapchan, Deborah A. 2003. Edwards, Emily D. 2001. A House That Performance. In Eight Words for Tries to Be Haunted: Ghostly the Study of Expressive Culture, Narratives in Film and Popular edited by Burt Feintuch, 121- Television. In Hauntings and 145. Chicago: University of Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Illinois Press. Perspectives, edited by James Kenrick, Donald, and Colin Clark. Houran and Rense Lange, 82- 1999. Moving On: The Gypsies 120. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. and Travellers of Britain. Hatfield: Goldstein, Kenneth S. 1972. On the University of Hertfordshire Application of the Concepts of Press. Active and Inactive Traditions

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Kristeller, Paul Oskar. 1983. Creativity _____. 2002. Narrating Names. Folklore and Tradition. Journal of the 113: 1-9. History of Ideas 44: 105-13. _____. 1991. The Past as Place: Names, Macauly, Cathlin, ed. 2002. The Carrying Stories, and the Remembered Stream: Newsletter of the School Self. Folklore 102: 3-13. of Scottish Studies. Edingurgh: Niles, John D. 1999. Homo Narrans: School of Celtic Scottish Studies. The Poetics and Anthopology of McCarthy, William B. 1990. The Oral Literature. Philadelphia: Ballad Matrix. Bloomington University of Pennsylvania and Indianapolis: Indiana Press. University Press. _____. 1995. The Role of the Strong McCombie, Rev. Charles. 1845. Parish Tradition-Bearer in the Making of Lumphanan. In The New of an Oral Culture. In Ballads Statistical Account of Scotland and Boundaries: Narrative Singing (1845), edited by The Society in an Intercultural Context, edited for the Benefit of the Sons and by J. Porter, 231-40. Los Angeles: Daughters of the Clergy, 1079- University of California Press. 95. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood Nora, Pierre. 1989. Between Memory and Sons. and History: Les Lieux de McDermitt, Barbara Rice Damron. 1986. Memoire. Representations 26: A Comparison of a Scottish and 7-24. an American Storyteller and Nord, Deborah Epstein. 2006. Gypsies Their Märchen Repertoires. and the British Imagination, PhD dissertation, University of 1807-1930. Vol. 49. New York: Edinburgh. Columbia University Press. Neat, Timothy. 1996. The Summer Okely, Judith. 1984. Fieldwork in the Walkers: Travelling People and Home Counties. RAIN 61: 4-6. Pearl-Fishers in the Highlands of _____.1983. The Traveller-Gypsies. Scotland. Edinburgh: Canongate. Cambridge: Cambridge Nicolaisen, W. F. H. 1990. D’un Conte University Press. ... À l’autre: La Variabilité Dans Oring, Elliott. 1975. The Devolutionary La Litterature Orale. edited by Premise: A Definitional Veronica Gorog-Karady with Delusion? Western Folklore 34: the participation of MicheÃle 36-44. Chiche, 39-46. Paris: Éditions du Panayi, Panikos. 2007. Gypsies and Centre National de la Recherche the British Imagination, 1807- Scientifique. 1930, by Deborah Epstein Nord. _____. 1995. A Gleaner”s Vision. Folklore Victorian Studies 49: 342-43. 106: 71-76. Porter, James, and Herschel Gower. _____. 1984. Names and Narratives. 1995. Jeannie Robertson: Emergent Journal of American Folklore 97: Singer, Transformative Voice. East 259-72. Linton: Tuckwell.

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Robertson, Jeannie. 1984. Up the Dee Titon, Jeff Todd. 1997. Knowing and Doon the Don. Lismor Fieldwork. In Shadows in the Recordings, LCOM7001. Field: New Perspectives for Robertson, Stanley. 1988. Exodus to Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, Alford. Nairn: Balnain Books. edited by Gregory F. Barz, _____. 1983. The Land of No Death. and Timothy J. Cooley, 87-100. Nairn: Balnain Books. Oxford: Oxford University _____. In press. Reek Roond a Press. Campfire.Edinburgh: Birlinn. Turner, Victor. 2002. Liminality and ______. 2001. Scottish Travelling People. Communitas. In A Reader in In The Compendium of Scottish the Anthropology of Religion, Ethnology, Alexander Fenton, edited by Michael Lambek, General Editor. Aberdeen: draft 358-75. Malden, MA: Blackwell submitted to the European Publishing. Ethnological Research Centre. Whyte, Betsy. 1990. Red Rowans _____. 2002-2005. Traveller’s Notes. and Wild Honey. Edinburgh: Interaction between Man and Canongate. Nature. The Old Road. And _____.1979. The Yellow on the Broom. Poor Circumstances, Rich London: Chambers. Culture. In Traveller’s Notes: The Williamson, Linda Jane. 1985. Narrative Traveller’s Project, The Elphinstone Singing among the Scots Institute, University of Aberdeen. Travellers: A Study of Strophic _____. 2005. The Last Fairy o the Variation in Ballad Performance. Auld Road Scottish Traveller PhD dissertation, University of Notes, The Travellers Project, Edinburgh. Elphinstone Institute Archival Yoors, Jan. 2004. The Heroic Present: Notes: University of Aberdeen. Life among the Gypsies: The Sharrock, Rodger. 1976. Bunyan: The Photographs and Memoirs of Jan Pilgrim’s Progress: A Casebook. Yoors. Edited by Ian Hancock. London: Macmillan. New York: The Monacelli Press. Sydow, C. W. von. 1948. On the Spread of Tradition. In Selected Papers on Folklore, edited by Laurits Bødker, 12-13. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger. Tedlock, Barbara. 1991. From Participant Observation to the Observation of Participation: The Emergence of Narrative Ethnography. Journal of Anthropological Research 47:69- 94.

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Response

Alice Binchy Cant by most Travellers. As settled peo- Tallaght Intercultural Action, ple, and perhaps especially as empirical Ireland researchers, we tend to have inordinate respect for the authentic and real: we would consider a fragment of Cant recorded in natural use by a Traveller as ara Reith’s highly insightful analy- “better” than a description by a Travel- sis will illuminate future research ler of how the language is used. When I Son Travellers and provide retro- set out to research Shelta, I realised that spective clarification of research already without recourse to unethical methods completed. Over a long period of field- like hidden recorders I would to find work and writing on aspects of Irish it hard to obtain specimens of the lan- Traveller language and culture, I came guage in natural use. Recognising that to understand that nomadism, kinship many Travellers were and are ambiva- and storytelling were all vital elements lent about the language being exposed in Traveller identity. Reith’s descriptions to outsiders, I decided to content myself of the working of creative memory on with descriptions of how the language Travellers’ life experience reveal Trav- is used, which I accessed through treat- eller identity as a process that is deeply ing recording sessions as exercises in rooted, vibrant and capable of endless storytelling. I now understand why this renewal. technique was successful. The contrast between Traveller life As Reith describes it, for Travellers, as viewed from the outside by settled telling a story requires one to enter into people and from the inside by Travel- the characters, places and events using lers is striking, and is well illustrated by all of one’s senses. From a settled per- the different methods by which Travel- son’s perspective, nomadism may seem ler culture is preserved for posterity. By irrational and, moreover, may seem to preserving their culture orally, Travel- denote a lack of attachment to place. lers allow tradition to be integrated From a Traveller perspective, however, with each storyteller’s reflection on his the nomadic life attaches importance to or her experience, creating an intensely place, both because the physical envi- personal and living narrative that feeds ronment is bound up with knowledge from and into communal history. As acquired there and because places have Reith indicates, by the very act of re- associations with people who spent time cording cultural elements, folklorists, there and events that happened there. anthropologists, linguists and other aca- Nomadism allows for the recognition demics investigating Traveller culture that life is a journey and that the more freeze them in a way that makes them you travel, the more you learn. There is seem like part of an idealized past to be a slight implication that if one is no lon- remembered with regret. I did so myself ger travelling, one is no longer learning, when I recorded the Traveller language, maybe even no longer living. As a Trav- called Shelta by many academics and eller man put it:

105 Sara Reith Through the “Eye of the Skull”

I don’t suppose a Traveller would ever does not mean that Travellers become forget the road. People would say to settled people. It means that nomadism you ‘Why don’t you settle down?’ becomes part of what is maintained by You’d try to settle down, but when memory of people and places, of being you’re there where I live, you’re there and doing, of learning and reflecting on wheels, you always know the Na- van road, or the Mullingar road, or and recreating through the medium of the Galway road or the Cork road is storytelling. out there. And I would go, and probably I will go this year, or probably go Works Cited next year. Living in a house, well it’s Binchy, Alice. 1994. The Status and jail, now isn’t it, you’re in prison… (Davy, quoted in Binchy 1994: 326). Functions of Shelta. PhD thesis, University of Oxford. Another Traveller linked nomadism and McDonagh, Michael. 1994. Nomadism kinship in the following way: in Irish Travellers’ Identity. In Irish Travellers: Culture and Country [settled] people organise ev- Ethnicity, ed. M. McCann, S.O. ery aspect of their lives…on the fact Siochan, and J. Ruane, Belfast: of sedentarism, the fact that they live Institute of Irish Studies. permanently side by side with a fixed group of people. Travellers organise every aspect of their lives around family ties; how far away other family members may be is of no importance, any more than how physically close non-family may be. The Traveller’s very identity requires ‘keeping in touch’ and this is turn requires travel. (McDonagh 1994: 98).

Stanley Robertson’s effort to share his culture in the face of change embodies the belief that nothing is gone unless it is forgotten. This point brings into sharp focus Travellers’ noted adaptability: when the trades which we as settled people saw as being “traditional” for Travellers died out, Travellers moved on to something else, without a back- ward glance. These trades were mere outward manifestations of the inner culture that is maintained and renewed by the methods described here. Not being able to “practice” their nomadism

106 In Anticipation of a Post-Memory Boom Syndrome

constant debate on what is now recog- In Anticipation of a Post- nized as an interdisciplinary academic field in its own right: “…how humans Memory Boom Syndrome remember and represent that memory, be it through literature, monuments, Guy Beiner historical works, or in their own private Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, lives”.1 All in all, the literature is exten- Israel sive. How does one separate the wheat from the chaff? Memory is a slippery term. Despite t would seem that at any given mo- all that has been written, its meaning is ment an academic journal is publish- not self-explanatory. Unreflective and ing an article, perhaps even a themed I uncritical references to memory inevi- issue, on memory. We are evidently tably induce banal conclusions. “Col- witnessing what Jay Winter has aptly lective memory”, conceptualized by labeled a “memory boom” (2000). The Maurice Halbwachs (1925,1950) in the number of publications is overwhelm- interwar period, remains, in the words ing. The ISI Web of Knowledge, which of James Wertsch, a “term in search of combines citation indexes in the social a meaning” (2002, 30-66), and contem- sciences and in the arts and humanities, porary research displays discomfort yields over 11,800 references to collec- with the vacuous ways in which it has tive/cultural/social/public/popular been applied. In particular, scholars memory, of which some 9,500 appeared have deemed the connotations of ho- during the last decade (1998-2008). It is mogeneity implied by the term “col- reasonable to assume that these tenta- lective” to be problematic. In the early tive figures fall short of the actual num- 1980s, a group based in the Centre for ber of relevant publications, which span Contemporary Cultural Studies at the many disciplines and often do not use University of Birmingham developed a distinctive adjectives. Google Books lists neo-Marxist model of “popular mem- 936 books published in the past decade ory,” which stemmed from two sets of alone with “social memory,” “collective dialectics: between popular and domi- memory,” “cultural memory,” “public nant memories and between private memory,” or “popular memory” in the and public memories (Popular Memory title (and 166 books with titles that re- Group 1982). A complementary study fer to memory and narrative). Google preferred the term “public memory” Scholar lists over 41,000 items with titles in order to signify the battleground be- that include one or more of these terms. tween dominant and subordinate social There are two journals exclusively dedi- frameworks (Bommes and Wright 1982). cated to this topic (History and Memory John Bodnar, whose study of American and Memory Studies), and numerous pe- commemorations focused on the “inter- riodicals have devoted special issues to section of official and vernacular cultur- this theme. H-Memory, an online discus- al expressions”, also employed this term sion network launched in 2007, features effectively (1992, 13). Cultural Analysis 7 (2008): 107-112 © 2008 by The University of California. All rights reserved 107 Guy Beiner In Anticipation of a Post-Memory Boom Syndrome

While these terms have persisted, (Hirsch 1997). In all of these studies, ref- other terms have also been added. “So- erence to a discernable identity implies cial memory” surfaced in the late 1980s that the amorphous fluidity of memory and has since gained currency (Burke can be contained and scrutinized in stat- 1989; Connerton 1989, 6-40; Collard ic form. Indeed, Pierre Nora’s highly in- 1989; Nerone and Wartella 1989). It fluential concept of “lieux de mémoire” was employed in a fruitful collabora- locates memory in specific sites from tion between the anthropologist James where it can be excavated (1984-1999). In Fentress and the medievalist Chris contrast, those who have followed Paul Wickham, who sought to dissociate Connerton’s use of the verbal noun “re- collective memory from a Jungian no- membering” prefer to put an emphasis tion of “collective unconscious” and to on the dynamic processes of construc- redress what they considered to be an tion and continuous reconstruction, on over-emphasis on group identities and memory being in a constant state of a neglect of individual consciousness flux (Connerton 1989; Middleton and in the writings of Halbwachs and of Edwards 1990). Despite the conceptual his mentor, Émile Durkheim (Fentress diversification implied by this -termi and Wickham 1992). Calling attention nological variation, however, much of to inequalities, shifting affiliations and the burgeoning literature is ultimately social contestations, Elizabeth Tonkin’s derivative and tautological. Though the study of African oral history also pre- mushrooming of memory studies shows ferred “social memory” (Tonkin 1992). no signs of abating, “memory fatigue” is Later in the 1990s, “cultural memory,” imminent. There is an imperative for an originally conceptualized by Aby War- infusion of innovative research agendas burg in the 1920s in reference to works that would offer new directions for de- of art (Gombrich 1989, 239-59), came velopment. into vogue, thus identifying the field Given that the appearance of what more firmly with the wider “cultural has been diagnosed as a “narrative turn” turn” and aligning it with the ascent of (Plummer 2001,,185-203) occurred more cultural studies (Carter and Hirschkop or less simultaneously with the contem- 1996; Ben-Amos and Weissberg 1999). porary re-emergence of interest in mem- The Egyptologist Jan Assman examined ory, it is not surprising that narrative, transitions between social and cultural though not the only form of remember- memory, distinguishing between codi- ing, is a central theme in memory stud- fied cultural memory and its more fluid, ies. The interrelationship of memory and informal initial appearance as “com- narrative is clearly a topic that can ben- municative memory” in primarily oral efit from critical interdisciplinary work, social interaction (1995). The transition and the three essays in this volume of from the study of testimonies of Holo- Cultural Analysis offer valuable contri- caust survivors to the “second genera- butions. At the same time, honing in on tion memory” of their children has gen- their shortfalls can serve to highlight la- erated yet another term: “postmemory” cunae in the current “state-of-the-arts” on this subject.

108 In Anticipation of a Post-Memory Boom Syndrome

Sara Reith’s glowing appraisal of the of Palestinian eyewitness testimonies, storytelling of the Aberdeen Traveller such as the al-Nakba Oral History Proj- Stanley Robertson attests to the rich- ect which has documented hundreds of ness of memory traditions associated interviews on PalestineRemembered. with landscape. Yet it lacks a compara- com. Drawing on a concept of exilic tive dimension without which the dis- narrativity, which he has written about tinctiveness of remembrance in Scottish elsewhere in relation to “a fragmentary traveller culture cannot be properly ap- narrative composed from a plurality of preciated. There are various forms of narrative voices,” Saloul demonstrates “vernacular landscape”, which I have how the interweaving of performative classified elsewhere as “topographies of aesthetics into a documentary movie ex- folk commemoration” (Beiner 2006, 208- tends past confrontations into a contin- 30) and, as anthropological and folklore uously troubling present. This probing studies have shown, these can be found analysis breaks new ground as far as the in many different traditional societ- conceptualization of cultural memory is ies. Moreover, Reith’s analysis of Rob- concerned, yet a post-structuralist sensi- ertson’s reminisces of the Old Road of bility would call attention to its neglect Lumphanan fail to consider the ethno- of the socio-historical contexts of cul- graphic present in which the traditions tural production and popular reception. were recorded, evidently in socio-cul- It is hardly a coincidence that the film, tural conditions remote from when they which dramatizes the bitter disillusion- were originally experienced and with ment of a Palestinian actor who has other listeners in mind. In consequence, had a highly successful career on Israeli her conclusion that memory is “not ‘en- stages, was made in 1998 in response to tirely in the past,’ but in the conscious- the jubilee celebrations of Israeli inde- ness of its eternal presence” is neither pendence. When discussing memory, it novel nor unique to traveller tradition. is too easy to forget that films, like plays, Ihab Saloul’s discussion of “performa- books, paintings or any other form of tive narrativity” in Mohammed Bakri’s cultural production that addresses the poignant film 1948 grapples with trau- past, do not in themselves remember. matic remembrance of the catastrophe Therefore the question of audiences is caused by the foundation of the State of crucial for understanding the dynam- Israel and the ongoing suffering of the ics of remembering. Perhaps one of the Palestinian people. A striking bricolage of most telling screenings of 1948 was in genres, which includes storytelling, the- 2002 at the bi-national Oasis of Peace vil- atre, poetry, ethnic music, and personal lage (Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salaam) testimony, distinguishes the film from outside of Jerusalem. It was apparent at more conventional documentaries on the screening that the film elicited -dif the subject, such as Benny Brunner and ferent responses from Jewish and Arab Alexandra Jansse’s Al Nakba: The Pales- viewers. Further, Bakri, who had just tinian Catastrophe 1948 (also produced witnessed the massive destruction of in 1998), and from the growing archives the Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied

109 Guy Beiner In Anticipation of a Post-Memory Boom Syndrome

West Bank (the topic of his subsequent edged that this objective entails striving movie Jenin Jenin), indicated that con- to keep abreast of ever growing crops veying the story of Palestinian suffering of new publications in the field. I have to Jews was a primary goal of the film.2 also stated the need for studies of cul- Developments in neuroscience and tural memory to transcend the examina- neuropsychology that shed new light on tion of texts (in the broadest sense of the how memory functions within the brain term) and to exhibit a critical awareness are mostly neglected by the concurrent of the contexts in which memories are “Memory Boom.” Timothy R. Tangher- generated and represented. To these de- lini’s original essay boldly proposes to manding yet elemental guidelines, I will bridge the two by suggesting that Multi- suggest one more direction which shows ple Trace Theory (MTT) can elucidate the promise of breaking new ground. physiological structures and biological If Paul Ricœur’s monumental Time processes through which people learn, and Narrative (1983) was seminal to the store, remember and perform traditions. emergence of interest in narrativity, his His experiments echo those of Frederic subsequent tome Memory, History, For- Charles Bartlett, the former Cambridge getting may be another landmark for Professor of Experimental Psychology, Memory Studies insofar as it forcefully which were also applied to the study of demonstrates the centrality of forgetting folklore (Bartlett 1920). However, unlike to our understanding of memory (2000, Bartlett, who defined memory as “an ef- 536-592). Whereas it is self-evident that fort after meaning” (1932, 44-5), or his there can be no remembrance without contemporary, Halbwachs, who exam- forgetting and practically all studies ined how memory was shaped by sur- acknowledge the inherent selectivity of rounding social frameworks (“cadres memory, the study of social/cultural sociaux”), Tangherlini is more concerned amnesia is still in its infancy. Contem- with a positivist “pass the parcel” con- plating the overall neglect of forgetting cept of transmission of memory which in psychology, Jens Brockmeier pro- does not adequately accommodate the posed a cultural-psychological approach regenerative and inventive dynamics of to narrative as a means of exploring the remembrance. It should alsobe admit- dialectics of remembering and forget- ted that, in its current stage, micro level ting (2002). Forgetting is the topic of neuroscience is still grappling with the thought-provoking treatises by David most elementary functions of memory Gross (2000) and Marc Augé (2004), and (Segev 2007) so that its ability to address more recently Paul Connerton has out- the kind of questions raised in advanced lined a preliminary classification which analysis of narrativity is at best limited. allows for more subtle distinctions be- So, what could be the new frontiers tween “types of forgetting” (Connerton for cutting-edge Memory Studies? I have 2008). Aspiring to move beyond these emphasized the importance of incorpo- initial steps, a sustained focus on forget- rating comparative analysis into case ting would require revisiting many of studies, though it should be acknowl- the sources associated with memory and

110 In Anticipation of a Post-Memory Boom Syndrome

rigorously interrogating gaps, omis- Bodnar, John. 1992. Remaking America: sions and absences in the narratives. It Public Memory, Commemoration, would also facilitate further debate on and Patriotism in the Twentieth the more ethically charged topic of for- Century. Princeton: Princeton giving, which is intrinsically tied to for- University Press. getting (Ricœur 2000, 593-658; Margalit Bommes, Michael, and Patrick Wright. 2000, 183-210). In its conciliatory sense, 1982. ‘Charms of Residence’: forgetting can play a role in assuag- The Public and the Past. In Mak- ing the lingering wounds of aggrieved ing Histories. Studies in History- memories. These are surely pertinent is- Writing and Politics, edited by sues for our times. When re-examining R. Johnson, G. McLennan, B. the relationship of narrative and mem- Schwartz and D. Sutton, 253- ory, let us remember not to forget about 302. London. forgetting. Brockmeier, Jens. 2002. Remembering Notes and Forgetting: Narrative as 1. http://www.h-net.org/~memory Cultural Memory. Culture Psy- chology 8:15-43. 2. http://nswas.org/bhc/updates/ Burke, Peter. 1989. History as Social 1948_02.htm Memory. In Memory. History, Culture and the Mind, edited by Works Cited Thomas Butler, 97-113. Oxford Assman, Jan. 1995. Collective Memory and New York: Basil Blackwell. and Cultural Identity. New Ger- Carter, Erica, and Ken Hirschkop, eds. man Critique 65: 125-33. 1996. Cultural Memory. Special Augé, Marc. Oblivion. 2004. Minne- Issue, New Formations 30. apolis: University of Minnesota Collard, Anna. 1989. Investigating ‘So- Press. cial Memory’ in a Greek Con- Bartlett, F. C. 1920. Some Experiments text. In History and Ethnicity, on the Reproduction of Folk- edited by E. Tonkin, M. McDon- Stories. Folklore 31: 30-47. ald and M. Chapman, 89-103. Bartlett, F. C. 1932. Remembering: A London and New York. Study in Experimental Social Psy- Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Re- chology. Cambridge: Cambridge member. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. University Press. Beiner, Guy. 2006. Remembering the Year Fentress, James, and Chris Wickham. of the French: Irish Folk History 1992. Social Memory. Oxford, UK and Social Memory. Madison: and Cambridge, USA: Black- University of Wisconsin Press. well. Ben-Amos, Dan, and Liliane Weissberg, Gross, David. 2000. Lost Time: On Re- eds. 1999. Cultural Memory and membering and Forgetting in Late the Construction of Identity. De- Modern Culture. Critical Per- troit: Wayne State University spectives on Modern Culture. Press. Amherst: University of Massa- chusetts.

111 Guy Beiner In Anticipation of a Post-Memory Boom Syndrome

Halbwachs, Maurice. 1925. Les cadres Plummer, Kenneth. 2001. Documents of sociaux de la mémoire, Travaux de Life 2: An Invitation to Critical L’année Sociologique. Paris: F. Humanism. London: Sage. Alcan; for a select English trans- Popular Memory Group, Richard lation see Halbwachs, Maurice. Johnson, and Graham Dawson. 1992. On Collective Memory. 1982. Popular Memory: Theory, Translated by Lewis A. Cosner. Politics, Method. In Making His- Chicago and London: Univer- tories. Studies in History-Writing sity of Chicago Press. and Politics, edited by R. John- Halbwachs, Maurice, and Jeanne Hal- son, G. McLennan, B. Schwartz bwachs Alexandre. 1950. La and D. Sutton, 205-52. London. Mémoire Collective, Bibliothèque Ricœur, Paul. 1983. Temps et Récit. 3 De Sociologie Contemporaine. vols, Ordre Philosophique. Paris: Presses universitaires de Paris: Éditions du Seuil; for an France; for an English transla- English translation see Ricœur, tion see Halbwachs, Maurice. Paul. Time and Narrative. 3 vols. 1980. The Collective Memory. 1984-8. Translated by Kathleen Translated by Francis J. Ditter, McLaughlin and David Pel- Jr., and Vida Yazdi Ditter. New lauer. Chicago: University of York: Harper & Row. Chicago Press. Hirsch, Marianne. 1997. Family Frames: Ricœur, Paul. 2000. La mémoire, l’histoire, Photography, Narrative and Post- l’oubli. Ordre Philosophique. memory. Cambridge, MA: Har- Paris: Seuil; for an English vard University Press. translation see Ricœur, Paul. Margalit, Avishai. 2002. The Ethics of 2004. Memory, History, Forget- Memory. Cambridge, MA and ting. Translated by Kathleen London: Harvard University Blamey and David Pellauer: Press. University of Chicago Press. Middleton, David, and Derek Edwards, Segev, Idan. 2007. What Changes in eds. 1990. Collective Remember- the Brain When We Learn. In ing. London: Sage Publications. On Memory: An Interdisciplinary Nerone, John, and Ellen Wartella. 1989. Approach, edited by Doron Men- Studying Social Memory.Com- dels, 165-76. Oxford and New munication 11: 85-88. York: Peter Lang. Nora, Pierre. Les lieux de memoire. 7 Winter, Jay. 2000. The Generation of vols. 1984-92. Paris: Gallimard; Memory: Reflections on the for a select English transla- Memory Boom in Contempo- tion see Realms of Memory: The rary Historical Studies. Bulletin Construction of the French Past. 3 of the German Historical Institute vols. Edited by Pierre Nora and 27: 69-92. Lawrence D. Kritzman. 1996-98. Translated by Arthur Goldham- mer. New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press,.

112 Reviews

Event Reviews #510: If the Shoe Fits…A through drawings, artists’ books, sculpture, Transformative Laboratory assemblage, and collaborative murals. Artwork included mentored collaborative Exhibition. student works from Kenya, South Korea, Betty Rymer Gallery, School Turkey, Ohio, and Chicago, as well as some of the Art Institute of Chicago, produced by pediatric patients working with the Snow City Arts Foundation. March 10-April 14, 2006. As a laboratory, the exhibition’s educational objective was to provide a forum Katherine Loague to critically analyze culture and a citizen’s Betty Rymer Gallery, Chicago, place within it. The artwork provided a USA platform for dialogue that allowed local and distant comparisons of experience and perspective. In presenting works by A living work of art is life itself, established artists alongside collaborative born from the dynamic fusion of student projects, the exhibition’s designers the self (the microcosm) and the intended to challenge the notion of privilege universe (the macrocosm)… If we within the gallery’s public space. The accept…the interconnection of all exhibition sought to construct a democratic living things, then art becomes the landscape where the cultivation and elemental modality through which exchange of individual perspectives could humans discover their bonds with be effectively achieved. In this regard, the humans, humanity with nature, and humanity with the universe. exhibition represented a critical intervention -Daisaku Ikeda, Creative life at in the art world trend toward privileging a Académie des Beaux-Arts, June 14, single point of view. 1989. Case studies and focus groups conducted among school-aged children provided data #510: If the Shoe Fits…(http://www.artic. regarding sustained level of interest in edu/webspaces/510iftheshoefits/) as hosted the tale, used to speculate on a projected by the Betty Rymer Gallery at the School laboratory/exhibition result. International of the Art Institute (SAIC) of Chicago versions of tale type AT 510A provided March 10-April 14, 2006, was developed students an effective interface with which to over the course of two years, plaiting the explore fixed notions of dating rituals, death, power of the oldest transformative folktale patriarchy, family dynamics (including step- (Dundes 1982,; Sierra 1992; Warner and/or mixed families), the complexities 1994) with a transformative experience of gender expectations, grief, magic, for students around the globe. Taking folk matriarchy, misogyny, privilege/power, tale AT 510A as its guiding subject and psychological/sociological phenomena, theme, the laboratory exhibition examined sexuality and/or spirituality that are at work the widespread interest in this folk tale. within the narrative, as well as the unique International artists provided their critical perspective each artist used to interpret and assessment and/or retelling of the tale type present the tale.

A sampling of the exhibited works by interpretations, including commercials students and artists follows: that use AT 510A to target youth as Snow City Arts Foundation’s (SCAF) consumers. artists selected an AT 510A version In the same vein, three studio classes of interest to them. In response, using at Chicago’s Multicultural Arts High medical supplies, they made plaster School deconstructed the Disney film casts of their own feet and then fit those classic Cinderella (Geronimi et al. 1950) castings into altered shoes. SCAF visual and produced a joint installation. artist-in-residence Lisa Fedich mentored Participants in Michelle Corpus’ studio hospitalized patients, enabling them, examined gender and stereotypes although physically confined, to walk found throughout the animated film, in another’s shoes. The works produced contrasting these to images found in included Lauren Youins’, In Response to consumer marketing aimed at teens. a Persian #510 Tale (2006) and Ashley Robin Roberts led a story-writing Bridges’, In Response to a Louisiana #510 studio allowing her students to update Tale (2006). In designing the shoes, each Disney’s screenplay using different participant carefully considered the genres told from various perspectives. lifestyle and location of the leading Tanya Brown Merriman’s fashion character in the representation he or she students altered clothing to design, chose. reenact, and document the story from a Similarly, under the guidance of hip-hop point of view. Pablo Serrano and Alberto Sepulveda, Aaron Knochel’s students at the Seoul students of Chicago’s Eli Whitney and International School reminded us that at their Rosario Castelleanos elementary schools best, folktales can hint at utopian societies created a lobby mural outside the gallery or at least articulate magical strategies with entrance as a response to AT 510A by which to improve occupational concerns. investigating cultural artifacts close to Jack Zipes, in his Happily Ever After: home: their family members’ castoff Fairytales, Children, and the Culture shoes. The students developed the Industry (1997) acknowledged the collective mural inscribed with their perspectives value of tales in his comment that: by writing slogans across the painted shoes where one might typically find We use fairy tales as markers to determine corporate logos such as the Nike swoosh. where we are in our journey. The fairy tale They studied international films and becomes a broad arena for presenting and representing our wishes and desires. It children’s book versions of AT 510A to frequently takes the form of a mammoth gain a sense of the social implications discourse in which way we carry on laced throughout multicultural versions struggles over family, sexuality, gender of the tale type in popular culture, roles, rituals, values, and sociopolitical and to consider how those themes are power. ( Zipes 1997, 17) expressed in their daily lives. While developing their own interpretations, The individual flash animations and the students deconstructed well-worn corresponding movie posters made

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by Knochel’s students did not defer to high school for young women, under Disney or any other storyteller. Instead, the direction of art teacher Genevieve in the style of Wendy Walker and Jane K’opiyo, collaboratively produced the Yolen’s contemporary fairy tales, their gallery mural Lwande Magera, a local interpretations critiqued oppressive legend that depicts the indigenous forces. The students examined the teachings of the Sodho clan of Kano oppression of homework, the dreaded (2006). Individual drawings made by SAT exams, dating, body image, war, students mentored at The Nairobi Boys and the struggle to balance all aspects School by art teacher Wanjiku Ng’ang’a of teen life—issues not easily resolved translated the essence of a benevolent that readily cross geographical borders. “fairy godmother” into ancestral The work of these students explored spirits. Such illustraions includeEdwin the potential of the Cinderella tale Kaseda’s The Walk Towards Help (2006), type to function as a tool of personal Peter Njeru’s Terrified Cinderella, and transformation that could assist them Dissent Ingati’s The Dance (2006). in dealing with the difficult issues of Extending this critique to a global adolescence. scale, other pieces pointed out that Likewise, Yesmim Sonmez’s tenth mass marketing calls attention to some grade students of TED Instanbul versions of folktales more than to others. Koleji collaborated to produce Turkish The versions variously produced by Cinderella (2006), a unique story about Disney and the Grimm brothers continue a poor village girl’s personal and to influence the public at large. An economic transformation. The girl, Ece, assemblage of individual artists drawn is forced to move to Istanbul after her from various geographic locations and mother’s death. In the city she befriends cultural heritages—Damla Tokcan-Faro Tan, a paralyzed youth who suffered (Turkey), Lucia Fabio (Italy), and Zsófia at the hands of his evil mother. Using Ötvös (Hungary) — illustrated the AT 510A motifs, the story chronicles impact of branded AT 510A characters. Ece’s transformation as she overcomes The artwork of Tokcan-Faro’s The the obstacles of servitude to become a ingredients for a life lived happily ever after, successful physician. By the end, Ece with Turkish to English translation (2006) marries and treats Tan; the evil mother’s and Fabio’s Cenerentola (2006) reflected heart is softened;and all live happily a childhood association with the ever after. Their piece was presented innocuous fantasy of Disney, while the onto the page as well as into audio series of paintings by Ötvös, Trying on recordings in both Turkish and English. the Shoe (2006), included the mutilation Students from Kenya pointed to the of the stepsisters at the hands of their cultural contingencies of the folktale by mother as graphically depicted by the attempting to rearticulate elements of brothers Grimm (Dundes, ed. 1982, the narrative in terms of familiar, but 28). Turkey, Italy, and Hungary each different, Kenyan folk motifs. Students claim a rich domestic canon of AT from Kenya High School, the national 510A variants, yet each of the three

R3 Reviews

artists found themselves influenced as and judiciary. In 1942, the introduction children by the longstanding marketing of Little Golden Books challenged the wizardry of the more popular versions privileged-status of literature in the and demonstrated the effects of this United States. At twenty-five cents each, influence in their works. children’s literature was made accessible Picking up on this thread, Eileen to most by expanding print distribution Maxson’s video Three Revised Fairytales to include sales in department stores. confronted and challenged the widely Amanda W. Freymann’s work Cinderella: disseminated Disney representation A Fairy Tale from the 1950’s (2006), of the Prince as a hero and Cinderella an altered Little Golden Book, used as a trifling girl. Overlaying imagery Cinderella to parody the sensibilities of from Disney’s film with audio from the American women in the 1950’s. TV show 90210, the work exposed the Many of the works displayed in #510: If Prince as a weak link in the story and the Shoe Fits… also celebrated collaborative Cinderella as a strong person who has practice. Marshall Field’s treatment of suffered, survived, and transformed Cinderella in the design of their Chicago into a perceptive judge of character, department store’s 2005 holiday window a woman who can smell a rat in royal display, inspired by the illustrations of garb. To the extent that it sought to Diana Marye Huff, was developed through a subvert a mass media fantasy in fairy partnership with New York’s Spaeth Design. tale form, Maxson’s version realized The collaborative effort demonstrated the the visionary musings of Angela Carter success of storytelling as a lure to bring on the potentials of technology in the customers into the store. Huff’s original production of narrative. Carter observed interpretation in the artist book Cinderella that “[n]ow we have machines to do the True Story (2004), focuses on a young our dreaming for us. But within that female protagonist who has aspirations ‘video gadgetry’ might lie the source of to become a fashion designer. In the end, a continuation, even a transformation, she marries the prince who finances her of storytelling and story performance” dream to own a fashion boutique. The shop (Carter 1990, xxi). eventually becomes a beloved store similar Other works in the exhibition to Marshall Field’s. Huff’s sketches and commented on the historical process Spaeth Design’s foam core prototypes for of how AT 510A was introduced to the The Prince and Cinderela had a fairy-tale public through print media. Chapbooks wedding and lived happily ever after (2005), such as Pamela Barrie’s Scottish AT 510A Tulle & Dye’s Cinderella Slipper (2005), letterpress variant The Ballad of Rashin and Spaeth’s Cinderella – Wedding (2005) Coatie (2005-2006), showed examples represent the eighteen-month collaborative of the initial mass-mediated treatment process and the numerous design teams of fairy tales. Chapbooks eventually behind the seasonal display. served as public curriculum, teaching The assertion that rather than the public how to behave according to teaching children about fine art, art the principals of well-positioned clergy can educate children about the world,

R4 Reviews

arises from the observation that Works Cited when children’s introductions often Barrie, P. R. 2005-2006. Ballad of constitutes an intellectual exercise in Rashin Coatie. Hand-colored status perception. In the art world, a Letterpress Chapbook. work appraised at a certain monetary http://www.artic.edu/ value is often assessed as being of webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ higher value than works by self –taught barriepage.htm artists or by folk artists. Frequently, Bridges, A., Snow City Arts pedagogical value is assigned only to Foundation. 2006. In Response celebrated visual art, in the same way to a Louisiana #510 Tale. Mixed that works by authors of distinction media: altered shoe, plaster become canonical on teaching syllabi. casting, fur, beads, and clay. As a result, the art product (text or http://www.artic.edu/ visual) is too often valued over the webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ artistic process. snowcity.htm In a child’s experience of art, Carter, A., ed. 1990. Old wives’ fairy tale the business of the “art world” is book. New York: Pantheon. irrelevant, but the process of discovery Disney, W., prod. 1950. Cinderella [Motion and imagination enables crucial Picture]. Walt Disney Pictures. developmental tasks. Great masters need Dundes, A., ed. 1982. Cinderella: A not shoulder exclusive responsibility folklore casebook. New York: for developing aesthetic awareness in Garland Publishing, Inc. students. Children can discover shape, Edwards, J., Tulle & Dye. 2005. Cinderella color, and the intent and execution of Slipper. Swarovski crystals, design in the images with which they size 7. http://www.artic.edu/ interact in their daily lives. Students are webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ flooded with text-based media that is fieldspage.htm ripe for investigation of content, style, Fabio, L. 2006. Cenerentola. Watercolor, and structure. Utilizing folktales, visual ink, plexiglas, volcanic and text-based artworks as a medium ashes from Mt. Etna, Sicily. of exchange has proven to be of value http://www.artic.edu/ in discovering and sharing authentic webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ cultural distinctions among students of fabiopage.htm all ages. What is more, the evolution of Freymann, A.W. 2006. Cinderella: oral tales and print media, as folklorists A Fairy Tale from the have often noted, is interwoven with 1950’s. Altered book. notions of social justice. Therefore http://www.artic.edu/ folktales represent a powerful genre for webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ teachers of all subjects to use in opening freymannpage.htm an accessible route to cultural awareness Grimm, J. and W. Grimm. Ash Girl and criticism for their students. (Aschenputtel). In A. Dundes, ed. 1982. Cinderella: A folklore casebook. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. pp. 22-29.

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Huff, D.M. 2004. Cinderella: Spaeth Design.2005. Cinderella. the True Story. Artist’s Wedding gown accented book. http://www.artic.edu/ with Swarovski crystals. webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ http://www.artic.edu/ fieldspage.htm webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ Ikeda, D. 1995. Creative life at Acadé mie fieldspage.htm des Beaux-Arts, June 14, 1989. In TED Istanbul Koleji. 2006. Turkish A new humanism: The university Cinderella. Artist Book with addresses of Daisaku Ikeda. New Turkish and English text, York: Weatherhill, Inc. pp. 3-12. English audio recording / Ingati, D. 2006. The Dance. Turkish audio recording. http://www.artic.edu/ http://www.artic.edu/ webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ kenya-boys.htm tedpage.htm Kaseda, E. 2006. The Walk Towards Tokcan Faro, D. 2006. The ingredients Help. http://www.artic.edu/ for a life lived happily ever webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ after. Turkish to English kenya-boys.htm translation: http://www.artic. Njeru, P. 2006. Terrified Cinderella. edu/webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ http://www.artic.edu/ faropage.htm webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ Warner, M. 1994. From the beast to the kenya-boys.htm blonde: On fairy tales and their Kenya Girls School. 2006. Lwanda tellers. New York: The Noonday Magere. Oil on canvas. Press. http://www.artic.edu/ Whitney, Eli and Rosiario Castelleanos. webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ Lobby mural/installation. kenya-girls.htm http://www.artic.edu/ Ötvös, Z. 2006. Trying on the Shoe. webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ Acrylic. http://www.artic.edu/ muralpage.htm webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ Youins, L., Snow City Arts Foundation. otvospage.htm 2006. In Response to a Persian Sierra, J. 1992. The Oryx multicultural #510 Tale. Mixed media: folktale series: Cinderella. altered shoe, plaster casting, Arizona: The Oryx Press. wire, oil pastels, fabric. Spaeth Design for Marshall Fields. 2005. http://www.artic.edu/ The Prince and Cinderella had webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ a fairy-tale wedding and lived snowcity.htm happily ever after. 3D model Zipes, J. 1997. Happily ever after: prototype: foam core, pencil, Fairytales, children, and the culture marker. http://www.artic.edu/ industry. New York: Routledge. webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ fieldspage.htm

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Playing Folklorists Online: beyond text-based presentation. The design Teaching about Folk Art and navigation structures of the websites on folkvine.org seek to simultaneously present through Interactivity the context for understanding cultural stories and the experience of ethnography and Natalie M. Underberg ethnology (method and interpretation). By creatively exploiting the characteristics of University of Central Florida, digital environments, folkvine.org reflects USA the narrative and reflexive trends in anthropology and folkloristics (Pink 2001; Van Abstract Maanen 1988). This review concerns an online game designed The Folkvine elementary school game is to teach elementary school students about the an online board game created with through artists on Folkvine.org, an interactive website the joint efforts of the University of Central about Flori I look da folk artists. In the review Florida and the Florida Department of State at the way that the game allows players to play the role of folklorists involved in public program- Division of Cultural Affairs . Elementary ming by intentionally foregrounding the research school students at Sterling Creek Elementary and public programming encounters within the in Orlando, Florida, created brightly colored structure of the game. The objective of the game artwork for the game, based on the artwork is to successfully plan a Folkvine public event at of Folkvine artists Lilly Carrasquillo, Ruby which the artists’ website is premiered to mem- C. Williams, and Kurt Zimmerman. The bers of the public. The “chance” cards in the game board consists of seventeen spaces for game are kernel narratives about the experience “task” questions about individual artists, as of doing public arts programming, answering the well as several “junction” spots (address- “task” cards mimics the ethnographic encounter ing key themes and requiring a detour if of doing field research and learning about artists, and the “junction” cards imitate the brainstorm- they are answered incorrectly) and “chance” ing about the titles/themes of artists’ sites. The spots (relating to unforeseen events and cir- project is intentionally playful in more senses cumstances surrounding the Folkvine pub- than one, and imitates the public programming/ lic events). Although there are three main fieldwork work folklorists do in sharing commu- game boards focusing on three artists, the nity-based arts. questions involve, to some degree, all of the seven artists featured in the first two years of he Folkvine project (www.folkvine. the Folkvine site (including Taft Richardson, org) is an effort to utilize new me- Ginger LaVoie, Wayne and Marty Scott, and Tdia to share the stories of Florida Diamond Jim Parker). folk artists and their communities on the The player joins the Folkvine team as an internet. Through the use of digital media, event planner in-training, and must complete the project seeks ways to present and, most several steps along the way. First, the player importantly, experience their art and culture mixes and matches a bobblehead avatar from as well. This form of online ethnographic various parts and color options. The player storytelling provides an arena for enacting then chooses an artist from a splash page. the research process in a way that moves When the user picks an artist, he/she is taken

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to the game board for that particular artist. As an event planner in-training, the The game board reflects the art and life of Folkvine elementary game player balances the artist. For example, Lilly Carrasquillo’s learning about the artist with considerations board has drawings of coquis (a type of frog of how to present that artist to the public. Af- common to Puerto Rico and the figure which ter all, an understanding of traditional arts she first sold when she became an artist) and cannot be usefully separated from the folk- Mexican sun masks (a form of art she cre- lorist’s encounter with the forces of the real ates). world that influence the public presentation Then the player can begin the game. of this art. There are three types of cards on the board. The “task” cards send the player to the art- “Task” Cards: Imitating The Ethno- ist’s site to answer questions about the art- graphic Encounter ist; question topics generally concern the Sarah Pink notes that: motivations behind, uses of, and history of various artistic practices. Solutions to these …working with hypermedia we can questions take the form of a multiple choice make multi-layered audio visual reflex- answer and a freeform response which ex- ive representations of anthropological pands on the multiple choice answer.. The research that allow students to ‘look be- “junction” cards are in play at two main hind the text’ (both written and visually) points in the game. These cards require to fieldwork experiences…By combining players to name the theme or overarching visual and written texts and printed and electronic media we can come closer to metaphor that structured the creation of the representing and learning in a way that artist’s site and provides the rationale for the draws theory and experience together.” public program’s title—information that can (2004, 218, 220) be inferred from an exploration of the site. Players are evaluated on the basis of these The Folkvine game enables this drawing to- answers; if players provide poor responses gether of “theory and experience” that Pink to these fundamental questions, they are sent cites by bringing students “behind the scenes” off on a detour lined with more task card to explore Folkvine.org in search of answers spots so they may learn more about the artist. to relevant art- and culture-based questions Finally, when players land on certain spaces, raised in the ethnographic encounter. Like “chance” cards are drawn. These cards rep- the ethnographic fieldwork on which the resent challenges or opportunities for the project is based and which the game mim- folk art event planner. “Chance” cards have ics, “task” card topics deal with biographical to do with the public event at which the art- issues, themes or topics in art, inspiration, ist’s website is presented to the community. cultural and geographical context, materials They address questions about the date, time, and processes in art, stories behind pieces of and place of event, as well as questions re- art, and so on. Questions for the Puerto Ri- lating to refreshments and the presentation can artist Lilly Carrasquillo’s game, for ex- schedule. Answers are scored “really good,” ample, concern definitions of traditions and “acceptable” or “poor,” and the player re- art (“What is a vejigante mask?”), functions ceives a different number of points based on (“When are vejigante masks traditionally his or her response to the “chance” card.

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worn?”), changes to the tradition (“How has “Chance” Cards: Kernel Narratives Lilly changed the tradition when she made About Public Arts Programming Expe- her own ofrenda?”), themes in the art and riences values of the artist (“What does Lilly say is As folklorists involved in public program- the most precious thing in the world? An- ming know, unforeseen events can impact swer: the sun”), and inspiration (“What kind the programs in ways that make for enter- of art has Lilly made inspired by the Taino taining anecdotes, but not usually for schol- Indians?”). These questions delve into a va- arly material. The “chance” cards attempt riety of topics relevant to the understanding to deconstruct just that idea. For example, of an artist’s work and life. a “chance” card from Lilly Carrasquillo’s game reads: “Junction” Cards: Imitating The Brain- storming Process A well known restaurant owner finds out about Lilly’s event. She calls you “Junction” cards result in the player advanc- and offers to write you a $200 check ing or being blocked in the progression of to help support your project. Do you: the game. These cards parallel the work of the folklorist who, in planning community a)take the money and use it for a cel- events, seeks to adequately interpret the ebration party after the event is over? folklore being presented to an artist. For example, again from Lilly Carrasquillo’s game, b)thank them but tell them you really “junction” questions revolved around appro- need $500 because $200 isn’t enough? priate titles for her public event, and major c)thank the donor, use the money on the influences on her art. In the case of Lilly event, and write them a thank you note? Carrasquillo’s public event, for instance, the Folkvine team hopes students will grasp that Other topics include publicity for the event, she is an artist who draws inspiration from equipment malfunctions, or issues of lan- a variety of cultures to teach and share art. guage. Students are encouraged to intuit this theme through the exploration of her site and its Questions such as these have their basis construction. If students answer these key in real life experiences of the Folkvine team questions incorrectly, however, they are sent in planning public events. Several examples back to answer more “task” cards before be- will suffice to illustrate. At an event for ing permitted to try again. Ruby C. Williams, the Folkvine team found the community center locked upon arrival The “junction” questions serve as remind- and the office closed. Incorrect directions ers of the folklorist’s job as advocate for the had been printed on the invitations. Pope artistic expression of traditional cultures and John Paul II died the day of Lilly Carras- artists, expressions that elite culture and the quillo’s event at the Puerto Rican Associa- mainstream media frequently overlook. As tion in Orlando (a large proportion of whose advocates in-training, players of the Folkvine membership was Roman Catholic). The game enact the public acknowledgement of city of Tampa and the University of Cen- folk art in the public sphere (Russell 2006). tral Florida could not come to an agreement

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on a bomb threat clause in the community ther social isolation in certain cases, but it center contract for Taft Richardson’s event; can also be used to effectively imitate social as a result, the Folkvine team was forced to processes in ways that draw young people host an event for over 100 people without into an appreciation of the culture around the requisite insurance. These circumstances them. The Folkvine elementary game em- formed the basis for “chance” questions in ploys strategies like imitating the research the game. and public folklore presentation process as Brian Moeran argues: part of the structure of the game. Rather than leaving this information on fieldwork As an anthropologist, how I record talk and public arts work outside the educational and accompanying stories also reflects game itself (and relegating it to anecdotes my own craft of telling stories…In other to be shared orally or in written form with words, the writing of stories is itself a sto- colleagues only), the Folkvine team has in- ry of writing, in which, as author, I choose corporated it into the logic of the game and to select certain themes, on the basis of of the educational experience. Playing the perceived relevance and importance, and ignore others. (2007, 161). game, then, requires young players visit the artists’ websites to research answers to Similarly, Linda Finlay argues that reflexive important questions about the art, give ap- stories: “open a window on areas that in oth- propriate responses to chance events that are er research contexts would remain concealed inspired by real experiences of the Folkvine from awareness…[and aim] to expose re- team, and identify the key ideas that express searcher silences” (2002, 541). With Moeran the main themes of the artists’ work and and Finlay, the Folkvine team members de- worldview. Players of the game thus become cided that instead of occluding issues of pub- public sector folklorists in-training and, lic presentation from the public record, they through this interactive experience, come to would draw upon actual experiences, using understand important lessons about art in its pseudonyms and other techniques to guard cultural context. privacy in situations that might be sensitive. Occurrences such as those outlined above Note are part of the politics of planning an event. The Folkvine Team consisted of an interdis- Exposing students not only to the cultural ciplinary team of faculty and students at the context of art but also to the socio-political University of Central Florida. The Folkvine context of public arts programming provides project was funded for three years by the students with a grounded, holistic view of Florida Humanities Council. The curriculum arts facilitators and artists as members of a project this review addresses was funded by complex social network. the Florida Department of State Division of Cultural Affairs and directed by Kristin Congdon and Natalie Underberg. Chantale Summation Fontaine and Nathan Draluck created the Timothy Taylor (2002) and Adam Chapman programming for the game, and Lynn Tom- (2004) view digital technology as inherently linson provided art direction expertise. social. Digital media may in fact lead to fur-

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Works Cited Van Meijl, Toon. 2005. The Critical Eth- Basso, E. B. 1996 The Trickster’s Scattered nographer as Trickster. Anthropo- Self. In Disorderly Discourse: Nar- logical Forum 15(3): 235-245. rative, Conflict and Inequality. ed. C. L. Briggs, 53-72. Oxford: Ox- ford University Press. Chapman, Adam. 2004. Music and Digital Media across the Lao Diaspora. The Asia PacificJournal of Anthro- pology 5 (2): 129-144. Finlay, Linda. 2002. “Outing” the Re- searcher: The Provenance, Process, and Practice of Reflexivity.Quali - tative Health Research 12 (4): 531- 545. Moeran, Brian. 2007. A Dedicated Story- telling Organization: Advertising Talk in Japan. Human Organiza- tion 66 (2): 160-170. Pack, Sam. 2006. How They See Me vs. How I See Them: The Ethno- graphic Self and the Personal Self. Anthropological Quarterly 79 (1): 105-122. Pink, Sarah. 2004. Making Links: On Situ- ating a New Web Site. Cambridge Journal of Education 34 (2):211- 222. Pink, Sarah. 2001. Doing Visual Ethnogra- phy. London: Sage Publications. Ruby, Jay. 1980. Exposing Yourself: Re- flexivity, Anthropology, and Film. Semiotica 30:155-179. Russell, Ian. 2006. Working with Tradition: Towards a Partnership Model of Fieldwork. Folklore 117:15-32. Taylor, Timothy D. 2002. Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture. London: Routledge . Van Maanen, John. 1988. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Book Reviews Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa A Gnawa lila (ceremony) with the jnun Trance Music in the Global Marketplace. (spirits) occurs at night. The drummers By Deborah Kapchan. Middletown: Wes- rhythmically bring the dancer into a trance leyan University Press, 2007. Pp. xi + 325, and the spirits into attendance. . The work introduction, notes, bibliography, glossary of a Gnawa ceremony is to give the partic- notes, index, illustrations. ipants—called “trancers” —knowledge of how the soul travels through life, death, and eborah Kapchan traces the evolv- back to life again, enabling catharsis. The ing tradition of Gnawa trance mu- catharsis, however, does not occur through Dsic from its Sub-Saharan African a purging of the spirits from the possessed origins to its increasingly commercialized person; rather, it occurs through the accep- form worldwide in Traveling Spirit Mas- tance of living in a possessed state. Cathar- ters: Moroccan Gnawa Trance Music in the sis, then, admits and empowers spirit/hu- Global Marketplace. She frames her work man cohabitation. The tropes of the colonial geographically in Morocco and France, and legacy of slavery and occupation resonate theoretically at the crossroads of perfor- in Kapchan’s analysis. However, she writes mance, poetics, and aesthetics. The danc- with openness to imagining and living with ing and drumming trance tradition traveled a multi-personality, which problematizes the first along the slave route, and today travels notion of personhood in provocative ways. a different sort of trade route—the airwaves “Spirits inhabit the bodies of their hosts, but of live or digitized world music. Many past cultural worlds also inhabit us, and as people studies of the Maghreb have taken largely and their sounds, images, and words travel, intellectual approaches, among them ex- we are inhabited by more and by different plaining trance’s functional aspects, its leg- worlds” (6). The reader might ask what it ibility as cultural text, or its existence as an means to be inhabited, to think and speak embodied history of colonialism. Kapchan from a body that is at once yours and not points out that it is possible to read the his- yours. How does culture both embody and tory of social theory and its tropes through express people? Are those possessed not these studies. What sets her beautifully writ- masters in their own houses? Or does the ten ethnography apart is that she also takes possession offer a sort of freedom? And the spirit world seriously. The Gnawa ontol- what does it matter if people are not really ogy is one of difference and its reality can possessed? How would we know, anyway? be grasped only in performance. It is not Kapchan writes that there “is a finely nu- enough to analyze it only intellectually. For anced notion of subjectivity among women Kapchan, Gnawa trance presents more than who are multiply possessed. While all ex- an object of analysis; it is also a vehicle of perience is authentic and real for the expe- knowledge that often possesses her. It is riencer, judgments about who is truly pos- from her unique position as both ethnogra- sessed (‘the poor thing’) and who is working pher and performer that the reader receives out stress in an emotional catharsis (‘to her such a rich description of Gnawan practices, health’ they say afterwards) are common in history, and possibilities for the future. the discursive world of trancers” (52). Rath- er than delve into or develop a procedure for

evaluating whether these experiences or the pression, re-opening old wounds and past spirits have scientific validity, Kapchan at- pain. “The spirit possession ceremonies of tempts to understand how metaphors of pos- the Gnawa are metonymic performances session inhabit the body, expressing them- in which somatic memories of slavery are selves in gesture, and further, how these invoked and symbolically mastered” (20). ritualized gestures—the jerking movements, This opening, often metaphorically enacted jumps, and falls—might effect changes of by physical slicing of the skin with knives temporal perception and subjectivity. How or burning of the flesh with fire, mimes the the trancers interpret their shifted subjectivi- wounds inflicted by slavery. The memory of ties both to others and to themselves relates slavery causes pain but also an opportunity to how they “see” themselves. The out-of- for healing. Only by recollecting the wound body, otherworldly experience of trance to discover what emotion, what traumatic provides an oneiric mirror for an alternative event, or what shameful desire became dis- view of one’s self, subject formation, and replaced in transference can one heal. Recol- interpreting identity. lection represents a process of self-recogni- Despite the nod to men as trancers, for the tion of the subject within his or her own bi- most part women’s dance features most ography which, in the Islamic Sufi tradition, prominently in Kapchan’s ethnography. The can be (re)enacted by Gnawa lilas and danc- male Gnawa play the trancing music and, ing with the jnun by reopening or revisiting while they also believe themselves pos- an old wound or loss. sessed, they do not dance. A woman who The temporal wound (re)opened and (re) trances “becomes an object to herself, an visited in trance, creates space for other tem- actor in a script. The script belongs to the poralities and beings to enter and circulate, jnun. They are the authors, yet their script— like the jnun. The wound or rift, in time, is which contains the reflexivity that mediation not simply a void. Revisiting the wound or fosters—allows her to see herself as if from loss in lilas or dreams can be the way to ar- the outside, from the perspective of ‘they’— rive at a kind of resolution, but the memory in effect, cinematographically. Like an actor, never truly fades nor does the wound ever she is possessed by her role, but is also aware truly close. The wound is an opening for that she is in it” (98-99). This kind of “be- change as death is an opportunity for rebirth. ing-outside-of-oneself” allows for a coming Gnawa lilas engender a ritualized death and to terms with possession, providing an onei- dreaming. In the Islamic Sufi tradition as de- ric mirror for the trancer to see her “self,” scribed Kapchan, the sleeping body mimes to be both in and out of her body. It also al- death. During sleep, the soul exits the body lows for the trancer to share her inner space and travels, meeting other souls and mixing with the spirits and her outer space with the with them. A dream and a trance is a rih- trance community, giving validation through la—a moving away from oneself, but it also a communal sense of a distinctive aesthetic. allows for a rediscovery or remaking of the Multiplicity no longer seems so exotic. self. Traveling Spirit Masters illustrates this The metonymic relationship of spirit with particularity to Kapchan’s own experi- possession to slavery and colonial violence ence of losing herself and regaining a new relate to trancing via re-enactments of op- identity, and creates a journey for the reader

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as well, following the narrative temporal and Risk and Technological Culture: Towards a spatial trajectory of Gnawa trance. Sociology of Virulence. By Joost Van Loon. What happens when Moroccan Gnawa London, New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp trance masters travel to other countries like ix + 234, introduction, notes, bibliogra- France to perform their music for an audi- phy, index. ence uninitiated to the knowledge and practice of spirit possession? Money has long he Classical Italians warned that been associated with the Gnawa tradition knowledge too hastily acquired is not and is acknowledged as necessary, but is not on guard. This sage monition ap- necessarily condoned. Kapchan attends com- T plies as much today as ever and finds mercialized performances in France which within the field of technoscience a par- contain all the spectacular aspects of Gnawa ticularly snug and foreboding fit. A trance without any of the healing catharsis growing body of literature is investigat- or ritual understanding. How far the spirits ing just how our mode of technoscien- can travel, and in what form, are questions tific “progress,” rather than embodying Kapchan weaves throughout the text. control, is instead ushering in an ever- The future of Gnawa trance appears nebu- expanding domain of uncertainty and lous. Its status as a tradition in danger of los- instability. We are coming to discover ing its essence as fewer and fewer practitio- that each attempt to avert or contain ners perform coexists alongside its status as risks through technoscience is responsi- an exotic world music genre. The identity of ble for producing further, and even less Gnawa traditions, not simply its practitioners, containable, contingencies. Today, the is at stake. Perhaps a highly commercialized elephant in the room is at once the bull public form will safeguard its existence, or in the china shop. As nuclear material, perhaps the public form will kill the essence non-renewable resources, and virulent of the traditional form. Death, however, as pathogens now line the shelves of this Kapchan reiterates through the book, is not proverbial shop, it is becoming appar- just an ending, but an event that opens up the ent just how little difference it makes if possibility for other beginnings. the bullwhip is cracked by ill- or well- meaning state agents, non-state agents, Ruth Goldstein or nature herself. University of California, Berkeley In Risk and Technological Culture, Joost USA Van Loon performs a meticulous anatomy of both deep-rooted and emerging processes by which “risk,” “threat,” “disaster,” and “danger” (all technical terms carrying meanings quite different from their everyday uses) come heavily to bear upon us. For Van Loon, an analysis of risk must focus on perceptions of risk rather than any actual risk, as such. “Risks are always threatening to take

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place, they never take place (as disasters stitutes a fundamental transformation do)” (29). In spite of this ontological “ab- in society away from modernity into a sence” of risk, Van Loon’s analysis must yet uncharted kind of present. “A risk navigate the complexities and paradox- society is a society where we increas- es involved in treating risk as a special ingly live on a high technological fron- kind of “presence” (insofar as risks do tier which absolutely no one completely in fact produce actual consequences). In understands and which generates a di- approaching the paradoxical material- versity of possible futures” (14). Viewed ity/non-materiality of “risk,” Van Loon sociologically, Van Loon argues that an engages Actor Network Theory (à la increased importance of risk relations Bruno Latour) and the systems theory (i.e. their avoidance and control) vis-à- of Niklas Luhmann, to develop a partic- vis class relations demands a new set ular understanding of risk as “virtual” of questions for reconciling and under- object. In Part II, Van Loon applies his standing the “emergent social (dis)or- theoretical insights to four case studies der” (185). This organizational elusive- of “risk” discourses. Discussing waste ness accounts for what Beck calls a “risk management, emergent pathogen viru- habitus” on the level of the individual. lence, cyberthreats, and riots in their This can be characterized as a paradox: specific historical contexts, Van Loon the arrival of some impending danger is treats each sub-section as explication of at once a product of expert systems’ fu- “risk” qua “virtual object” as well as ap- tility and a justification for their persis- plication of theory qua expansion on the tence. The upshot of the “risk habitus” is conceptual apparatus used to engage a schizophrenic trust/distrust of expert “risk.” systems (32) and a general culture of Ulrich Beck’s notion of “risk society,” (a ambivalence. very influential idea in Europe that is Moving beyond the ontological in- sadly given rather short shrift in Ameri- security inhering in the individual, Van can social sciences) serves as Van Loon’s Loon turns his attention to cultural dy- analytic anchor. Risk society, in Beck’s namics. He culls many of his insights formulation, is a concept of the social from Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory that recognizes an increasing relevance (1982, 1990). Systems theory, an offshoot of “risk” that has slowly replaced tra- of cybernetics, demotes the privileged ditional concerns with material “scar- conceptions of institutions as such, see- city.” Our technologies, if they had ever ing them solely in terms of networks of been unproblematic, argues Beck, are communications in a “more or less de- finally out of our hands. Beck’s risk so- liberate set of processing flows, which ciety notes that benefits and losses are interact with their environment in or- no longer tied to expectations and in- der to modify it” (35). Key to the logic tent. In his words, we are now dealing of systems is their capacity to become with “flows of goods and ‘bads,’ rather internalized and self-referential (or “au- than goods alone” (21). For Van Loon, topoietic”). Taking law as a model ex- closely following Beck, this shift con- ample of an institutional system, we rec-

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ognize that it functions more or less in- marked regions that reveal themselves dependently insofar as its justifications only through system-breakdown. Such are entirely internal to the system of a model as Van Loon’s might, for ex- law itself: “It affirms itself by assertion” ample, help to better understand the (112). Law reduces all transactions to the particulars of how gaping holes in the logic of law. Economics (as an example United States’ security apparatus only of another quasi-independent system) came into view after four jumbo jets had cannot be expressed in legal terms and simultaneously flown through them, so finds no truck within this system. or how billions of dollars of security- Looking at these productions of “inter- patching (including the invasion of two nal environments,” (at least so goes the countries) has served to open still other argument), we can better understand a apertures. certain assumed logic at work in society. It should be clear by this point that It is precisely this self-referential charac- Van Loon is interested in highly com- ter investigated in systems theory that plex abstractions. Some prove more accounts for a susceptibility to outside, helpful than others. Perhaps Van Loon’s unmarked contingences, i.e. risks. most useful distinction is that which he How, then, do different systems, af- makes between logocentric state appara- ter they achieve some degree of self-ref- tuses and the nomadological character of erentiality (autopoiesis), communicate? risks (86). For him, state apparatuses are In Van Loon’s estimation, communica- logocentric, which is to say, concerned tion between systems is done through a with order and classification, reduction, type of “translation.” This, he presents and discipline. They represent systems in the language of Actor Network The- that gesture toward autopoiesis and ory (ANT). Citing Latour, Van Loon ex- self-preservation. Anything that fails to plores how “risk” itself achieves the sta- fall within the system is to be considered tus of agent in technoscience and how a risk to it. For the logocentric system, risks become exacerbated by what he, risks are understood as boundary trans- after Latour, calls “immutable mobiles” gressions from the outside (82). It is this (51). This term refers to the maps, mod- logocentrism, Van Loon might argue, els, statistics, figures, or tables arising that allows for gaps, such as those that in one system and imported（a process facilitated 9/11, to form without attract- Latour calls “enrolment”) into a distinct ing attention. In short, logocentrism as a system as a “matter of fact.” “Techno- political model performs very poorly in logical culture frames risks in particular “the risk society.” “Supplementing this ways, but cannot contain the contingen- logos” Van Loon suggests, “is the pos- cies their social and symbolic organiza- sible availability of nomos—the practice tion sets into work, as a result of which of distributing intensities across a field of it destabilizes” (45). As systems become forces and intensities that is not its own” more complex, they include more tak- (159). Nomos is liquid, flexible, self-reen-for-granted elements. Resultantly, flexive, and emergent. It engages differ- the system produces ever-larger un- ence as difference, dispels the thought

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of “integrity” and forces us to not take to do with explaining the difficult first the taken-for-granted for granted (193). section and trace a tendency toward “For nomos, risk relates to a lack of mo- the commodification of “risk,” i.e. at- bility and movement, to incommunica- tempts by logocentric technical appa- bility of information flows, to codes that ratuses to always transform “risk” into cannot be decrypted” (82). market opportunity. This, however, is Somewhat surprisingly, even to him- not to say that Part II of the book does self, Van Loon singles out “commerce” nothing to assist the reader in unfurling as a model nomadic institution. This the convolutions of nomos. To note one is due to the way in which commerce such example, Van Loon argues that, “travels through the cracks in the vir- in light of recycling, “Waste inhabits tual walls of institutionalized moder- the ambiguous borders of ‘presence’” nity” (83). He finds HIV to be similarly (108). He continues, “Hovering between nomadic inasmuch as its surrounding presence and absence, [waste’s] ubiqui- discourses infiltrate countless social, po- tous ephemerality poses serious prob- litical, family, financial, symbolic, and lems even for a culture based on strong cultural institutions without becoming boundaries of inclusion and exclusion” reified or bracketed by any one of them. (108). The nomadological slipperiness HIV, he proclaims, “is a powerful, yet presented by such semiotic obstacles as ambiguous code” (83). The work done “recycling waste,” further complicates by Van Loon’s nomos is appealing, to historical and synchronic treatments of be sure, but there is an (albeit, arguably waste, and hence problematizes tradi- necessary) irony in his presentation of tional logocentric distinctions (here, be- terms. His critique of logos, conducted tween waste and resource). in logocentric terms, makes ample sense If, as Van Loon claims, this work whereas his characterization of nomos constitutes “an opening up of the state in nomo-centric terms leaves the reader apparatus” (193) in the face of a broad- utterly at sea as to how one might opera- based tightening up of security regimes tionalize nomological practices – if such (think airport security and the Patriot Act), is even possible – in “the risk society.” how well do its insights equip us to sur- The aim of this is to argue that from vive the apocalypse that awaits “the risk within, from without, and against tech- society”? How can we put these insights nological culture, new and old apocalyp- about technology, science studies, complex tic sensibilities have (re-)emerged that systems, logos/nomos, into operation and have appropriated risks to undermine make necessary adjustments away from a this autopoietic movement of techni- logocentric security apparatus to one of a cal systems and reveal new opening for more nomadological nature? The author’s radical change. (89) jejune attempt at answering these questions Again, how those openings might merits only brief mention here. Borrowing be exploited remains largely unclear. from the likes of Habermas, Van Loon sug- The four case studies that make up the gests that we work toward a societal substi- second section of the book have little tution of how we conceptualize trust: a re-

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placement of the instrumental fidelity with acute sense of risk (i.e. “risk habitus”). quasi-transcendatal, intersubjective fides. Events of enormous scale are sure to “There has always been another and more meet us in the form of deliberate (bio) transcendental sense of trust, that manifests terrorist attacks on the one hand and/or itself in a divinely inspired sense of fidelity chance pathogens of tremendous viru- (fides)” (201). It is in these normative claims lence on the other (avian flu seems the that a reader feels most poignantly that this likely candidate for the latter, Al Qaeda work, written largely before, and published for the former). Understanding risk in directly on the heels of the incidents of 9/11, its knowable, and for its unknowable, is already quite dated. dimensions is a sensible ambition not The most unfortunate irony of Van only for the purpose of creating better Loon’s difficult style, and the style of avoidance or containment strategies (i.e. the authors whose work he draws from, disciplinary regimes which inevitably is that each of his arabesque theoreti- break down at some point) but also in cal distinctions further ensures that the better contextualizing and problematiz- politics of urgency, which he so expertly ing dominant conceptions of technology outlines in the post-9/11 introduction, in light of this emerging “risk habitus” will play negatively upon any hopes for for purposes of preparedness. This book policy relevance in administrative risk serves as an object lesson in understand- discourses. This is to say that few, and ing technology not as a means to an end, still fewer in any position of influence, but as an emergent structuring—a cul- will feel compelled to labor through the ture of sorts—whose cultivation in the technical abstractions of this book for the name of progress might signal some rare moments of clarity. What is most ag- quite unprogressive and unanticipated gravating about this kind of spurning of consequences which will structure and a wider public is that Van Loon’s ideas be structured by risk. One might call it merit much attention. Many issues that a low-risk wager to assert that there will have come increasingly to the fore since be many more books in the coming years its publication would benefit from Van that attempt to parse the ever-emergent Loon’s self-reflexive treatment of cross- dynamic relationship between risk and institutional communication in light of technology. Van Loon’s treatment, in risk and security concerns. Logos and spite of its problems, offers productive nomos do promise further insight into insights into how this discourse might how certain risks are able to breach proceed in the first half of the 21st cen- security apparatuses, insofar as these tury. terms focus on the nature of the institutions themselves rather than relying on Ryan Sayre reductionist models and objectified no- UC Berkeley/Yale University tions of “risks.” USA It is less prophetic than pragmatic to state that in the ensuing years, the world will develop an increasingly

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National Dreams: The Remaking of Fairy ries translated by Edward Taylor from Tales in Nineteenth-Century England. By Grimms’ original Kinder und Hausmarch- Jennifer Schacker. Philadelphia, Uni- en, Fairy Legends and Traditions of South- versity of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Pp. ern Ireland by T. Croffton Croker, Arabian 198 + notes, bibliography, notes, index, Nights translated (and rewritten) by Ed- illustrations. ward Lane; and Webbe Dasent’s Popular Tales from the Norse. Shacker contends that rather than asserting their own pa- triotic identity through fairy tales, the n National Dreams, Jennifer Shacker English came to understand themselves, boldly claims that the England of the as well as foreign nations, through the nineteenth century had no real fairy I literature of their European neighbors. tales of its own and so had to depend By placing emphasis on compilers as on the collections of folk and fairy tales situated between two cultures, Schacker passed on to them from other nations. examines their influence on the text in Recognizing the political and economic framing audience perception of the Oth- potential of fairy tales in other Europe- er. Adeptly darting between folklore, an countries, English publishing houses Victorian studies, children’s literature sought to translate and print these for- and publishing history, National Dreams eign tales for their English audiences. emerges as a cohesive and focused work Schacker argues that in the process, fairy on the role of folklore collections in nine- tales became powerful vehicles for con- teenth-century England. veying cultural knowledge in England. In addition to serving as moral or etio- Schacker’s examination of these folk- logical stories for children, the way they lore collections leads her to conclude that were translated and fine-tuned allowed they owe their popularity in England the English to position themselves as to elitist attitudes valuing literacy over intellectually superior to their foreign orality. The tale collections of foreign neighbors. This, in Schacker’s view, nations were compiled by collectors of helped build an English national iden- oral folklore, who then rewrote the tales tity that ushered them into the twentieth in a literary style for their English audi- century. ences. These collectors often changed parts of the story, sanitized the language The object of Shacker’s study is the to make them appropriate for children, folklore book or collection of tradi- or incorporated what they considered tional tales. All of these volumes were “literary elements” that were lacking in chosen by English publishing houses, the originals. This process allowed the she argues, because they had already English to distinguish themselves from achieved huge popularity in their na- other nations on the basis of their lit- tive lands. Shacker specifically analyzes eracy, relegating the oral tales of foreign the contributions of four major works cultures to the genre of “folklore.” to the creation of a national identity in nineteenth-century England. These col- Schacker is attentive to the textual lections include, German Popular Sto- frameworks, context, aims, publish-

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ing details, and cultural history of each about foreign cultures. In doing so, she tale collection. In her analysis of German forces us to question the assumption Popular Stories, she emphasizes transla- that folktales from other countries give tion issues, collector/compiler troubles, us unmediated insight into the Other. history of publication, and notes that Schacker has smoothly developed the English version did better than the her rigorous research into a volume of original Grimms’ at press. She exam- value to folklore scholars and others in- ines Croker’s famous methodology and terested in literary history in the making less studied colonialist stance when she of national identities. In a work that suc- writes about Fairy Legends and Tradi- cessfully incorporates theory from such tions from Southern Ireland. For Arabian diverse fields as literature, folklore, his- Nights, Shacker explores the implica- tory, sociology, political science, and tions of Lane’s Arabian scholarship and humanities, Schacker demonstrates how an Egyptian national context for the these folklore collections, when consid- English. Taking a cue from Propp, she ered through the multifaceted lenses of closely analyzes the structure and con- these disciplines, represent an intellec- ventions of Popular Tales From the Norse, tual movement in nineteenth-century as well as national particularities within England. an Indo-European heritage of language and literature. Jennifer Schacker received her Ph.D. in Schacker also includes illustration Folklore from Indiana University and histories that suggest how the tradi- currently teaches in the School of Eng- tional accompanying artwork can be lish and Theatre Studies at University of seen both as part of the text and as es- Guelph in Ontario. sential to helping formulate the image of the Other. “In the analysis of fantasy,” she says, “ethnocentrism often shapes Anna B. Creagh the underlying conception of the real.” University of California, Berkeley Her critique of Richard Dorson is note- USA worthy; she criticizes the way he tried to downplay the degree to which proto- folklorists had catered to popular reading tastes. She offers instead the notion that their very popularity can be seen as a driving force in textual histories of these tale collections. Schacker’s provocative conclusion brings the study of nineteenth-century fairy tales to the present day. She asks her readers to consider contemporary uses of “multicultural folklore” in the classroom, which are often intended to educate children

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Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the to his argument, Nericcio cleverly jux- “Mexican” in America. By William Ner- taposes these infectious, defamatory iccio. Austin: University of Texas Press, Mexican portrayals with Hitler’s order 2007. Pp 1 + 248, figures, illustrations, to “his media industry to create a mass notes, bibliography, image credits, in- of common visionaries” (17). dex. The Backstory explains the whys and the hows of this sophisticated take on handling Hispanic “types.” Nericcio illiam Anthony Nericcio has explains how growing up in the border- published a timely and pow- town of Laredo shaped his early think- Werful study on the images of ing (and his own name changes). This the “Mexican” in American culture. book grew out of a vendetta for Speedy Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of Gonzales, but the mission of the text is the “Mexican” in America is timely, even strictly archival. Nericcio seeks to chron- though the author admits to a sixteen icle how the entertainment industry has year long gestation period, because of created a particular type of character the United States’ intensified focus on embedded with Mexican traits and how securing borders for national security that type has evolved to affect both indi- and the recent border wall proposal. vidual Americans and American popu- Tex[t]-Mex powerfully blends ethnic, lar culture as a whole. The Backstory cultural, and film studies with a strong also offers readers historical accounts theoretical foundation that uses humor of the Mexican revolutions and border to expose the agenda lurking beneath battles that coincided with the burgeon- the Mexican stereotypes that invade ing of Hollywood industry. American academia, film, and even car- The first two chapters give the reader toons. a Hollywood history lesson. Chapter Nericcio construct his close read- One, “Hallucinations of Miscegena- ing of the Mexican stereotype using a tion and Murder: Dancing along the Backstory, two Image Gallery sections, Mestiza/o Borders of Proto-Chicana/o and five chapters. The chapters include Cinema with Orson Welles’s Touches of topics such as Hollywood films, actors, Evil,” explains why Touch of Evil is the cartoon characters, and a hopeful look quintessential Tex[t]-Mex film. Welles at contemporary Chicano/a artistsVi- produced a film about a border town sual supplements throughout the book that reinforces cultural stereotypes with bolster Tex[t]-Mex’s central theme of the the majority of the cast; however, one importance of images on stereotypes. Mexican completely disrupts the type- The images range from hand-drawn cast by not being dirty, drunk, or sexual- sketches to elaborate collages of board ized. While looking critically at Touch of game box tops, surgical procedures on Evil, Nericcio engages both film theory Speedy Gonzales, advertisements of and Chicano critical theory. Aunt Jemima, and boxes of Tide. To From that critical advantage, Neric- reinforce why these images are so vital cio dissects Margarita Carmen Cansino’s

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(Rita Hayworth’s) Hollywood career in more recent Hispanic sex-icons/ac- Chapter Two. His poignant remarks tors such as Jennifer Lopez and Selma reveal Ms. Hayworth as a studio simu- Hayek. Nericcio employs four accounts lacrum, an actor who’s subtle Mexican of vomiting (from disparate authors) to traces were deliberately erased for profit construct his argument for Velez—Luce and exploitation. Irigaray, Frantz Fanon, Rosario Castel- The third chapter, “Autopsy of a Rat,” lanos, and William Faulkner. Neric- asks the reader to focus on, and simulta- cio wants readers to help “clean up the neously imagine, a reconciliation of var- mess” and shut the door “on one of the ious critical and cultural images includ- more bizarre chapters” of Mexicans in ing certain entertainment characters like American culture (172). Freddy Lopez in A Very Retail Christmas, After Velez’s tragic suicide, Neric- Speedy Gonzales and Ren and Stimpy. To cio ends Tex[t]-Mex on a hopeful note ensure that readers can understand the in Chapter Five. In “XicanOsmosis,” author’s deconstructed Speedy Gonzales, Nericcio claims the only response to the Nericcio catalogues definitions of load- negative image overload is a “broadcast ed terms and confesses his obviously of other and othering images” (191). psychoanalytic theoretical bent. Nerri- Citing Tino Villanueva’s poetry, Manuel cio contends that violence can be dis- Alaverz Bravo’s and Adam Sergio Ro- covered in a stereotype’s etymology and driguez’s photography, and Gilbert Her- that the reproducibility of stereotypes nandez’s illustrations, Nericcio proves does the most damage—distribution that positive images are available and equals recognition. Speedy Gonzales is a ready for mass distribution. violent stereotype; he looks, speaks, and The borders Tex[t]-Mex defines are dresses the way that a Mexican suppos- similar to the borders that separate high edly does, but he is not Mexican; he is culture and popular culture. Thus, Ner- a “Mexican” as imagined by the Ameri- iccio concludes that by analyzing nega- cans who were once at war with Mexi- tive images of the “Mexican” in popu- co. Additionally, another major concern lar culture, underlying stereotypes can about Speedy is his intended audience. be deconstructed. Nericcio admits that This popular animated star has come to he let go of his anger for Speedy Gonza- function in children’s memories as a re- les; he instead doggedly catalogues and inforcement of a politically charged type exposes the empty shells of other nega- of “Mexican” on “American” soil. The tive stereotypes. Tex[t]-Mex’s strengths image of Speedy lingers well into adult- resonate because of the author’s hones- hood. ty, his deliberate use of humor, and his The last two chapters of Tex[t]-Mex ability to confront an age of visual ide- focus on images of the Mexican that ology with many images. Tex[t]-Mex’s should linger, but do not. The fourth weaknesses are declared by the author chapter, on the tragic tale of film star in the Backstory. The chapters are not Lupe Velez, reminds readers that Velez’s logically or chronologically ordered be- big-screen sexuality paved the way for cause they are ordered according to the

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author’s personal encounters. Nericcio Check It While I Wreck It: Black Woman- tries to complete amazing feats of cohe- hood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public sion with the introduction paragraphs Sphere. By Gwendolyn D. Pough. Boston: but gaps remain. Other distractions are Northeastern University Press, 2004. Pp. apparent. Almost every page offers a 265, introduction, notes, bibliography, different image, an additional anecdote, index, illustrations. or a sidebar; the reader can get lost in the myriad of visual options. The varied n Check It While I Wreck It: Black visual options, constantly shifting tone, Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the and authorial confessions also make Public Sphere, Women’s Studies pro- this work’s audience appeal ambigu- I fessor Gwendolyn Pough makes signifi- ous. Serious critical theorists might be cant contributions to both black femi- confused by the rambling prose; graphic nist thought and hip-hop scholarship. design students might miss the crux of A third-wave feminist of the hip-hop the argument. generation, Pough critiques rap music’s Quite possibly, reaching a wide- masculinist dynamics but stops short of ranging audience is the author’s intent. dismissing hip-hop culture as inherent- Anyone (academic or not) can pick up ly misogynistic or thoroughly corrupted Tex[t]-Mex and find a worthwhile pas- by commercialism, as is the tendency for sage because Nericcio connects Derrida second-wave feminists and other schol- to cartoons and Speedy Gonzales to simu- ars who came of age before rap. Rather, lacra storytelling. Tex[t]-Mex provides Pough convincingly argues that hip- a timely and powerful archive of the hop offers rhetorical tools to invigorate Mexican stereotype in American popu- black feminist discourse and increase its lar culture that bloggers and theorists relevance to new generations of female can equally appreciate. intellectuals and activists of color. Central to Pough’s argument is the Taylor Joy Mitchell conceptualization of hip-hop as not sim- University of South Florida ply an aggregation of artistic texts and USA performers – as is the case with most research on hip-hop, which takes the form of cultural history – but as a sphere of discourse, an expressive space within which young people, including young black women, communicate their experiences and articulate their political concerns. Yet it is a contested, male-domi- nated space in which women struggle for room to maneuver; hence, Pough’s central metaphor of “bringing wreck,” the hip-hop slang term that “connotes fighting, recreation, skill, boasting, or

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violence” (17). More specifically, she U.S. public sphere” (17). Check It While asserts, bringing wreck with regard to I Wreck is part of a growing body of black women in hip-hop means to “fight scholarly efforts to rethink the traditions hard and bring attention to their skill and practices of African-Americans in and right to be in the public sphere” relation to Habermasian ideals, framing (17). black culture in the U.S. as a “counter- Another key term Pough continually public” formed in response to bourgeois invokes is the aforementioned “pub- exclusions and thriving today in places lic sphere,” a concept she productively of African-American congregation, from mines to develop her spatio-political barbershops to Baptist churches to street theorization of hip-hop as a locus of corner block parties, as is the case with political and personal expression. Her hip-hop. primary theoretical orientation derives Although Pough directly links hip- from the Black Public Sphere Collec- hop to the enduring legacy of black pub- tive, a group of African-American schol- lic culture in the U.S., she argues hip-hop ars who in the mid-nineties reworked exists today as a counterpublic in its own critical theorist Jürgen Habermas’ in- right in which African-American youth fluential notion of the “public sphere” “claim control of the public’s gaze and a of civic participation to include the ac- public voice for themselves” (17) despite tivities of black civil society. In Chapter oppressive ideologies and structural One, Pough offers a succinct synopsis of conditions that continually marginalize Habermas’ central claim: that the public them. She acknowledges, however, that sphere is an egalitarian zone of demo- the public voice of hip-hop culture has cratic debate in which individuals put largely been male. Part of her project is aside personal differences and private to criticize the gender inequities within interests to talk about a common good. what she calls the “uniquely testoster- Pough’s first chapter serves as a use- one-filled space” (9) of hip-hop. More ful introduction to the basics of public- optimistically, however, she locates mo- culture theory for those unfamiliar with ments in hip-hop’s thirty-plus year his- the literature. Here Pough also provides tory in which women’s voices broke an astute overview of the Black Pub- through the bass-and-baritone bluster lic Sphere Collective’s key criticism of of rap music, issuing street-level femi- Habermas: that those bourgeois spaces nist critiques. She defines these ruptures he idealized – the cafes, meetinghouses, continually in terms of “bring[ing] wreck and salons of the eighteenth century – – that is, moments when Black women’s were always hostile to minorities as discourses disrupt dominant masculine well as women, who could not as easily discourses, break into the public sphere, bracket off their differences as a private and in some way impact or influence the matter. Pough asserts that “as a result of U.S. imaginary, even if that influence is Black history in the United States…these fleeting” (76). Pough argues that, be- concepts have to be rethought when ap- cause hip-hop culture fosters the kind of plied to Black participation in the larger fierceness necessary to “bring wreck” to

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one’s opponent and, by extension, one’s hop. Among the most famous instances oppressor, it can serve as an important Pough invokes is Queen Latifah’s Gram- platform for future feminist expression; my-winning rallying cry “U.N.I.T.Y.,” in that hip-hop’s powerful rhetorical tools which the rapper calls for an end to sex- can be wielded as political weapons by ual harassment, domestic abuse, and the women as well as men. denigration of black women in the Afri- To those who view hip-hop as mired can-American community and beyond. in male chauvinism, this may seem an Pough characterizes the song as a “ped- odd assertion, and one that is difficult agogical moment” (88) for young black for Pough to back it up since her claim women, men, and listeners at large, a is largely prospective. Her argument lesson in feminism delivered in the con- about hip-hop’s political utility for temporary language of the streets. women of color is less a thesis than a Pough’s overview of women in hip- forward-looking call-to-arms for black hop includes not only artists working in feminists to “take up the cause and uti- popular music but also film and literary lize the space that Hip-Hop culture pro- genres. One of Pough’s most impressive vides in order to intervene in the lives of qualities as a researcher is her breadth young girls” (11). Check It While I Wreck of knowledge about hip-hop culture, It contains rousing, manifesto-like pas- which encompasses numerous modes of sages about hip-hop’s potential value expression, but also about black wom- to black feminism, which Pough argues en’s history, which she often invokes to needs to be more “accountable to young contextualize the artistic output of con- Black women” and to “come down from temporary black female hip-hoppers, its ivory tower” (192). She contends that suggesting they are part of a proud but “if conversations and critiques of rap often overlooked lineage of “womanist” music and Hip-Hop culture move past African-American expressive traditions. merely dismissing it, we will start think- She stresses cultural continuity through- ing about this particular public sphere out the book, devoting her entire second in different ways – ways that can start to chapter to the literary practices of hip- tap the potential for a more productive hop’s “foremothers” who, according struggle against sexism and point the to Pough, include nineteenth-century way toward meaningful disruptions of clubwomen and pamphleteers, early patriarchy” (13). What she lacks in evi- twentieth-century blues singers, 1960’s dence from the current state of hip-hop civil-rights activists, 1970’s Black Arts she somewhat makes up for with her poets, as well as everyday black women engaged, impassioned tone. keeping African-American storytelling Although the history of empow- and folk traditions alive. ered female participation in hip-hop is In Chapter Three, the author persua- somewhat spotty, Pough does manage sively links the activities of women in to highlight a number of moments in hip-hop to the vernacular practices of which black women “brought wreck,” these foremothers – speech acts histori- or made powerful contributions to hip- cally associated with black women such

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as “sass,” “talking back,” “going off,” Queen Latifah and Sister Souljah, who, “turning it out,” and “being a diva” (78). the author argues, fall victim to the She is at her best when finding these his- “myth of the strong Black woman” (122) torical continuities, connecting both the as the backbone of the heteronormative artistry and the negative portrayals of black family. This important observa- women in hip-hop to modes of behavior tion speaks to the way in which even and representation that preceded them. empowered women of the hip-hop gen- Throughout the rest of the book, Pough eration can be influenced by patriarchal demonstrates a keen ability to decon- norms. struct stereotypes as well as the cultur- Also significant and worthy of - fur al sensitivity to parse inherited codes ther development is Pough’s discussion of behavior assumed under racist and in Chapter Five about the castration patriarchal conditions. By linking con- threat “ghetto girl” characters pose to temporary hip-hop performance to the male leads in gangsploitation films. By kinds of everyday outspokenness black Pough’s account, the genre is rife with women have employed as a survival these female figures – represented by skill throughout U.S. history, Pough is the “hoochie mama,” the “hood rat,” the able to substantiate one of her greatest “gold digger,” and the “baby mama,” – insights – that female rappers, like their who represent traps to young inner-city foremothers, use frankness, audacity, black men. Whether money grubbing, and spectacle to combat their own invis- sexually voracious, or overly opinion- ibility in the U.S. public sphere. Given ated, these characters are always por- that “one has to be seen before one can trayed, Pough argues, as posing a dan- be heard” (21), the raunchy costuming ger to the precarious masculinity of the of Lil’ Kim, the roughneck posturing films’ main characters. Those familiar of Eve, and fantastical music videos of with the genre would likely agree with Missy Elliott can be seen in an inter- Pough, yet she provides only the briefest esting new political light, regardless mention of the roles played by actresses of whether one feels these images are such as Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina King, “positive,” or that they tow the correct and Nia Long, and even briefer descrip- line for feminism. tions of the sequences in which they are Though largely convincing, Pough’s featured. broad historical claims sometimes come The conclusions Pough draws from at the expense of close textual reading, these and other texts are compelling, to which the author devotes little time though somewhat flattened by the fact or space. Her interpretation of musi- that she does not provide a great deal of cal, cinematic, and literary representa- original source material – in the form of tions of black b-girls in Chapters Four, direct quotes, song lyrics, or scene-by- Five, , and Six are provocative yet too scene sketches – from which to build brief. More could be said, for instance, her interpretations. The reader of Check in Chapter Four about the homophobia It While I Wreck It simply has to trust Pough detects in the autobiographies of Pough’s readings of these works with-

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out having access to the kind of textual American Science Fiction TV: Star Trek, evidence one would expect in a more lit- Stargate, and Beyond. By Jan Johnson- erary-style analysis. Ultimately, though, Smith. Middletown: Wesleyan Univer- Pough establishes the authority necessity Press, 2005. Pp. 308, acknowledg- sary to render her claims believable. ments, introduction, notes, bibliogra- Her credibility is premised largely on phy, index, illustrations. the personal passion she brings to this project as well as her expansive knowl- an Johnson-Smith, a senior lectur- edge of hip-hop culture, black feminist er in film and television theory at thought, African-American history, and Bournemouth University’s media public-sphere theory. She skillfully puts J school in the United Kingdom, has pro- these elements in conversation with each vided a much-needed analysis of science other, offering a youthful and dynamic fiction television through an examina- remix of already established areas of tion of the narrative and visual patterns scholarship that is potentially useful to that the genre has produced. Science both academics and activists. fiction television has spawned legions of fans and clearly occupies an impor- Amanda Maria Morrison tant niche in American culture, and University of Texas at Austin Johnson-Smith takes on the ambitious USA task of sorting through the multitudes of applicable media content in American Science Fiction TV: Star Trek, Stargate, and Beyond. Johnson-Smith opens the book by introducing the science fiction genre to the reader and simultaneously acknowl- edging that defining the genre has been a contentious matter amongst “sf” fans. In fact, this very debate will likely determine many readers’ sentiments about the book. Johnson-Smith is cautious to group shows such as The X-Files, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits with mainstream science fiction television. In- stead, she places much greater focus on shows like Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, Baby- lon 5, Space: Above and Beyond, and Far- scape, a choice which may alienate fans (no pun intended) and scholars looking for a broad overview of the genre. The opening chapter does a fine job of exploring the historical context of sci-

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ence fiction, paying homage to specula- tion program of all time. Johnson-Smith tive literature and science fiction’s role discusses the representations of gender in the history of developing ideas about and race in the series, which again is not the future. In her discussion of metalin- exactly groundbreaking, but is neverthe- guistics and neologisms, Johnson-Smith less enjoyable to read and yields some notes that different approaches to sci- interesting observations. For example, ence fiction such as satire and parody, as Johnson-Smith points out that Star Trek evidenced in films like Brazil (1985) and has been considered by some critics to be Galaxy Quest (1999), respectively, “offer “naïve” and even racist for envisioning comment upon our own world through a white, American-led future. Intrigu- metaphor and extrapolation, with uto- ingly, she also notes that the infamous pian or dystopian visions of alternative interracial kiss between William Shatner realities” (30). and Nichelle Nichols on the original Star The book caters to the interests of Trek series, while brave, occurred while both fans and scholars alike, which is both characters were forcibly under the problematic at times. In Chapter Two, control of an alien power, “so it can be “Histories: The American West, Televi- viewed alternatively as a clever plot de- sion, and Televisuality,” Johnson-Smith vice with positive intentions, or as a less provides a lengthy discussion of how constructive expression of inter-racial science fiction television redeveloped [sic] relations, and a myriad of positions themes from Westerns to create “a new in between” (82). Johnson-Smith also frontier.” This is not a new development offers compelling analysis of Star Trek’s for scholars, but Johnson-Smith’s cumu- utopian idealism and the narrative and lative approach will appeal to lay read- visual styles that the series propagated. ers. Indeed, Johnson-Smith continually In Chapter Four, Johnson-Smith turns revisits this theme throughout the book, her attention to militarism in science fic- arguing that the Western mythos stems tion television. Another strong point of from an innate desire for exploration, the book, Johnson-Smith’s analysis of thereby contributing to the allure of sci- invasion and warfare in science fiction ence fiction television. The book often is riveting and complete, with a colorful reads like a dissertation, which it was sampling of numerous films and pro- in a previous incarnation, and those fa- grams that have broadcasted the theme miliar with the correlations between the of Earth under threat. Johnson-Smith Western and other genres may feel quite also surveys the impact of Vietnam on distracted by Johnson-Smith’s overzeal- science fiction, arguing that “American ous “name-dropping” of films and tele- mythology was fundamentally trapped” vision shows to contextualize her argu- by the war (133) and brings attention to ments. the popular theme of colonizing space, Clearly, the highlight of American Sci- and military history. Chapter Five, ence Fiction TV is Johnson-Smith’s cover- Wormhole X-Treme!, explores concepts of age of Star Trek, perhaps the most impor- space travel and its limitations, parallel tant and influential American science fic- worlds and dimensions, and time trav-

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el. Johnson-Smith’s discussion of time a book that claims to be “the first full- travel depictions and paradoxes is par- length study” of the television genre, it ticularly fun and insightful. Chapter Six is too narrow in scope. The material that examines Babylon 5 and contemplates Johnson-Smith scrupulously analyzes is the narrative patterns, types of verbal well-written and interesting, but may be and visual imagery, music, and plot de- off-setting for those looking for a broad- vices employed throughout the series. er work on science fiction television and Despite the insightful analysis and its impact on culture. range of topics presented by Johnson- The relationship between science fic- Smith, there are also some disappoint- tion television and fan culture deserves ing absences in the book. Given that further study. Conventions, costume the author is a native of the United and apparel patronage, festival atten- Kingdom, there is surprisingly inad- dance, and gaming are revered staples equate consideration given to the influ- of the most ardent sci-fi fanatics and de- ence of British science fiction television mand scholarly attention. After all, these on American programs and fan-bases. material manifestations of sci-fi culture There is no mention of technologically are among the most tangible measures groundbreaking British programs such of their impact on popular culture. I ex- as Space: 1999 (led by American actors pect that this book will be regarded fa- Martin Landau and Barbara Bain) or vorably by fans, especially enthusiasts the long-lived sci-fi comedy series Red of Stargate SG-1, Babylon 5, Farscape, and Dwarf; there are only vague references the Star Trek franchise, but will greatly to the longest running science fiction underwhelm scholars looking for a de- program in history, Doctor Who, a pro- finitive publication on science fiction gram that clearly has influential ties to television and its impact on popular cul- American science fiction programs like ture. Quantum Leap. Furthermore, science fiction television cannot be adequately re- Trevor J. Blank viewed without some discussion of its Indiana University, Bloomington influence and creation of fan culture, and this topic is ignored throughout the USA book. Still, American Science Fiction TV is, for the most part, a successful effort. It is an excellent introduction to the literature on science fiction, which will greatly aid the efforts of other scholars hop- ing to expand on the genre’s impact on American culture, but lacks the depth that most scholars would likely hope to see in a book purporting to fully cover American science fiction television. For

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