STORYTELLING: A CULTURAL STUDIES APPROACH Qm Lindsay M. Brown B.A., University of Toronto, 1986 B.F.A., Nova Scotia College of Art and Desen, 1989 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION @~indsa~M. Brown Simon Fraser University June 1997 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL t NAME: Lindsay Brown .- DEGREE: MA TITLE: Storytelling: A ~uliuralStudies Approach EXAMINING. COMMITTEE: CHAIR: Prof. William Richards ,' Prof. Pat Howard Supervisor School of Communication, SF-1 Prof. Jerald Zaslove Examiner English and Institute for the Humanities, SFU Date: 13 June 1997 ABSTRACT This thesis examines a phenomenon in which a number of stoqding practices appear to he enjoying a "revival:" these practices include public stowlling performances, oral 'w history projects, and a vast and growing popular literature which either incorporates or analyses "traditional" sto+s. At the same iirne. the thesis describes the c-nt widespread appeal of the idea of storytelling and all it signifies. Its research question asks why storytelling is currently the object of so much interest and desire. Little academic work on these twin phenomena has thus far been undertaken. This thesis serves in part toprovide a preliminary introduction to this popular but little studied area of interest. The conceptual framework for this discussion is based on interpretations of the cultural and political character of narrative and speech as elaborated in recent traditions of communication, critical and literary theory. A close analysis of the concepts and categories by which weqterners currently grasp the idea of storytelling is used as a case to examine these ideas. ' Through this analysis I show that the modern relation to storytelling is in part a relation to the idea of tradition. Many Westerners now look to the modes of communication of "traditional" cultures and knowledge systems in order to construct meaning as well as social and collective relations in new ways. The paradoxes and tensions of this relationship art: many. As the thesis shows, certain uses of storytelling participate in the reification, appropriation and commodification of the speech of past traditions as well as of contemporary 'marginal' cultures in what is a nostalgia industry, satisfying a contemporary longing for a simpler and a sanitized past. The thesis also describes other uses in which hearing and telling stories is a method of building historical consciousness in community and of imagining an alternative position-the past, other cultures-from which to critique the social formations of the present. he attempt to revive storytelling can be seen as part of an ongoing struggle to tind tools for living in an always changing contemporary context. The thesis addresses the question of why practices of storytelling have regained popularity in the west over the past three decades. I draw on the work of Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson, literary and critical theory to interpret the growing appeal of these narratives and to speculate on their cultural and social meanings. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As with the old stories, this thesis is the product of more than one voice. Research for this thesis involved conversation with hundreds of people, only a fraction of whom I can mention here. To all those who have offered their thoughts and insights on the subject of storytelling, thank you. Above all, I would like to thank Gail Faurschou, without whose very generous, painstaking help and friendly support this unwieldy project would not have been undertaken and this thesis would not have materialized. I am grateful for her friendship, her engaged and sustained interest in my work, and her unfailingly creative suggestions. I would also especially hke to thank everyone at the Vancouver Society of Storytelling, especially Helen O'Brian and Jill Baird, for generously sharing their knowledge, insight, support, and love of storytelling with me. Ginger Mullen, ~eresa Vandertuin, Doug Waite, Kim Fedor, Mary Moltrnan, and Linda Lines have all been delightful and helpful friends over the two years in which I researched this thesis. I am indebted to all those storytellers who inspired this project and who showed so much enthusiasm for it. I ain particularly grateful to the wonderful storyteller Dan Yashinsky for his thoughtful correspondence, humour, friendstup, and hls provocative writings on the storytelling art. It was Dan who first introduced me to Hodja Nasrudin stories in Whitehorse during the 1995 Yukon International Storytelling Festival. I would like to extend a very special thank-you to Meryl Arbing and Lome Brown, both of whom offered so many valuable thoughts and suggestions for this thesis and whose work on Appleseed Quarterly provided me with a wealth of material on storytelling. Joan Meade very kindly took me in during my research in Fredericton in 1995. I would like to thank Karyn Whitfield of The Storytellers School of Toronto for her encouragement and for first suggesting I talk to Dan Yashinsky about revival storytelling and its history in Canada. Jan Andrews in Ottawa, Melanie Ray in Vancouver and Kate Stevens in Victoria were all generous with their time and their encouragement and I am grateful to them all. I sadly regret that the First Nations storyteller Tom Heidelbaugh is no longer alive to share stories with children at risk from poverty and violence in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. Conversations with Tom in 1995 first convinced me that storytelling was a valuable thing and worthy of more study than it has received. To these and all the other many storytellers who have spoken to me about stories and storytelling, thank you. LJ' LJ' Special thanks goes to Diana Arnbrozas, friend and one-person lending library, endless source of delightful and obscure novels, for our many conversations about narrative and cultural theory. Many of the ideas in this thesis were refined through conversations with Diana. I also owe Sourayan Mookerjea a big thank-you for his generosity with his extraordinarily wide-ranging knowledge of narrative, and for his J # . vi excellent coohng. Thanks also to all my other cblleagues at Simon Fraser who offered encouragement for this prbject and whose thinking contributed to it in so many ways: Wreford Miller, Janisse Browning, Stuart Poyntz, Ron Vida, Silva Tenenbein, Bev Best, Dorothy Kidd, and William Santiago-Valles. .I would like to thank Pat Howard and Alison Beale for their support throughout my time at Simon Fraser and for their interest in hsproject. I m especially grateful to Tony Wilden for many years of friindship and challenging talks and for his faith that the strategic use of language can help us get somewhere in the struggle against myth. - Lucie Menkveld, administrative assistant, and Neena Shahani, grad secretary, have been extraordinarily helpful with employment and adrninistrative'support, and 1 appreciate their consistent good humour and patience. Thank-you to everyone at the Banff Centre for the Arts and all the participants in the 1995 Artist's Residency "Telling Storieflelling Tales," especially Doma Brunsdale, Su Ditta, Lisa Brenneis, and Rodrigue Jean, all of whom tell stories in their own s~phisticated,experimental, and comedic ways. I am very grateful for their continuing friendship, encouragement, and conversation. I would also like to acknowledge the material support of the Bahff Centre during a phase of the research for this thesis. I owe a big thank you to all those old friends who have shared their stories and their reflections on stories with me over the years. I am particularly indebted to Lani Maestro and Stephen Home, who have been so formative of my thinking and so lund in their encouragement. As my teachers at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and during our years 'of work' together on Harbour Magazine, with all its stories, Stephen and Lani helped lay the seeds for this project. Dagmq Dahle, too has been a caring and supportive friend over many years. " I especially appreciate the support of my family during my research, particularly my parents, Alan 'and Alix Brown, and my sisters, Julie and Alison. My lifelong friend and favourite aunt Vicky Husband provided me with constant refuge in her house in the woods of Vancouver Island during the writing of this thesis, and Patrick Pothier, her partner in life, offered me his delightful company and stories of his storytelling uncle, Franlue Pothier, in pre- and post-war southern Nova Scotia. Last, but not least, I am affectionately grateful to my grandfather Harold Husband for his support, his extraordinary storytelling talent, and his ohsewation that my generation's stories have no point and no ending. Finally, I am very grateful to Andrew Carlisle for his constant support and encouragement, his always original and incisive comments on storytelling. the many hours he spent editing this work, and his ability not only to listen, but to hear. TABLE OF CONTENTS % Approval ...................................................................................... n ... Abstract ....................................................................................... u1 Acknowledgements ................L ................................................... v Table of Contents ......................................................................... vii Introduction .................................................................................