'Tradizione E Contaminazione': an Ethnography of The
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
‘TRADIZIONE E CONTAMINAZIONE’: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE CONTEMPORARY SOUTHERN ITALIAN FOLK REVIVAL Stephen Francis William Bennetts BA (Hons), Australian National University, 1987 MA, Sydney University, 1993 Graduate Diploma (Communication), University of Technology, Sydney, 1999 This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia, School of Social Sciences, Discipline of Anthropology and Sociology 2012 ‘Pizzicarello’, Tessa Joy, 2010. 1 2 I have acquired the taste For this astringent knowledge Distilled through the Stringent application of the scientific method, The dry martini of the Intellectual world, Shaken, not stirred. But does this mean I must eschew Other truths? From ‘The Bats of Wombat State Forest’ in Wild Familiars (2006) by Liana Christensen 3 4 ABSTRACT The revival since the early 1990s of Southern Italian folk traditions has seen the ‘rediscovery’ and active recuperation, especially by urban revivalist actors, of le tradizioni popolari, popular traditional practices originating in peasant society which are still practiced by some traditional local actors in remote rural areas of Southern Italy. This thesis draws on interviews, participant observation and historical research carried out mainly during fieldwork in Rome and Southern Italy in 2002-3 to present an ethnography of the urban revivalist subculture which has been the main driving force behind the contemporary Southern Italian folk revival. In the course of my enquiry into why the movement has emerged, I combine both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, as well as a phenomenological analysis of revivalist motivation and agency, to explore the question of why contemporary urban revivalists have begun to take an interest in the archaic and marginalised cultural practices of rural Southern Italy. I show how and why this current second revival has reemerged from its original historical roots in the post-war leftist-inspired ‘first revival’ (ca. 1960-1980) to serve new cultural and political needs today, including ethnoregionalism, resistance to what revivalists see as the homogenising tendencies of globalised capitalism (cf. Applbaum, 2000), and the recuperation of modes of experience increasingly marginalised within contemporary urban reality (Baudrillard, 2000; Augé, 1995). On a geographical level, revivalism privileges the popular traditions of three regions of Southern Italy: Calabria, Puglia and Campania. This reflects a characteristic revivalist dualism between Southern Italy (sometimes represented within revivalist discourse as a ‘reservoir of popular tradition’), and Northern Italy (represented by revivalists as a substantially deracinated cultural wasteland now devoid of ‘tradition’). Whereas previous ethnographic research on Southern Italian revivalism has largely focussed on revivalism in a single one of these three regions, this study provides a 5 strongly synoptic and comparative perspective on regional variations in Southern Italian revivalist activity, thus destabilising revivalists’ representations of ‘popular tradition’ in their own region of interest. Both revivalist discourse and previous research have tended to focus on the agency of portatori della tradizione, elderly traditional local actors who are responsible for the transmission of popular traditional practices over time. By contrast, I foreground the agency of urban revivalist actors in the transformation of these traditional modes of cultural reproduction, through an account of the motivations and agency of urban revivalist actors from revivalist milieus in cities like Rome and Naples. Although some revivalists negatively gloss the contemporary transformation of these traditional practices as the ‘contamination’ of ‘tradition’ by globalised capitalist modernity, others view such processes in a more positive light, as a means for the creative hybridisation of traditional forms to serve new ends. Using an emic typology proposed by one of my informants, I contrast the motivations of ‘philological’ (scholarly), ‘spontaneous’ (countercultural) and ‘commercial’ revivalist actors, as well as exploring revivalist agency in relation to two central revivalist genres: the festa popolare (the traditional patronal festival of the local Saint or Madonna) and the newly invented Southern Italian folk festival. Finally, I assess the impact of revivalism at the local rural level, contrasting the motivations and agency of a range of local actors with those of the urban actors with whom they are being drawn together through revivalist activity within the local milieu. Despite revivalism’s characteristic ideology of ‘anti-globalisation’, I interpret these new modes of intercultural encounter and exchange within the local as themselves characteristic of wider processes of globalisation. 6 IN MEMORIAM ‘When one person dies, a library dies’ Michele Russo (Somma Vesuviana) 2003 Giorgio Di Lecce (Lecce) 2004 Wenten Rubuntja (Alice Springs) 2005 Andrea Sacco (Carpino) 2006 Francesco Tiano (Pagani) 2008 Pino Zimba (Salento) 2008 Pasquale Italiano (Perth) 2008 Uccio Aloisi (Cutrofiano) 21 October 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This doctoral research project was funded by research grants provided by the University of Western Australia, the UWA Department of Anthropology and the ACIS-Cassamarca Foundation. Supervisors: Dr Loretta Baldassar Dr Nick Harney Australia Chris Charles Liana Christensen Brendan Corrigan Sally Knowles Susann Lohse Beatrice Stotzer David Trigger Simon Watkinson Wynne Russell 7 Robert Graham, colleagues & traditional owners of the Northern Land Council Salento Silvia Colonna and family Francesco Gaetano the late Bernard Hickey Enza Pagliara Biagio Panico, Ada Metafune & Associazione Novaracne Stefano & Patrizia Polimeno Rome Giovanni Carelli Dafne Crocella Francesca Gabrini Anna Nacci Stefano Portelli i ragazzi di Casa Babylon di piazza Bologna Tamara Tagliacozzo Paola Vertechi Campania Michele Accardo Lello D’Ajello Riccardo Esposito Abate Padre Giacomo Anna Minopoli Lucia Patalano Ester Preziosi Mario Strazzullo the late Francesco Tiano Giovanni Vacca i ragazzi di Casa de Martino, Vico della Neve 30 i ragazzi di Casa de Martino, via Salvatore Tommasi 8 Calabria Angelo Maggio Associazione ARPA Domenico & Pina Lucano Associazione Città Futura ‘gli stronzi di Riace’ Catalonia Eloisa Perez-Bennetts Monument to Pablo Neruda by the Naples City Council and the Chilean Government, Parco Virgiliano, Posillipo, Naples. Photo: Bennetts. 9 10 CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………...…………….…………………….……...5 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION…….....………………….……………………………...…………13 CHAPTER TWO: ‘IO SONO UNA FORZA DEL PASSATO’: THE CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL ROOTS OF CONTEMPORARY SOUTHERN ITALIAN REVIVALISM………………………………………………………….…………..…67 CHAPTER THREE: THE GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT OF SOUTHERN ITALIAN REVIVALISM………………….……………………….……….…........111 CHAPTER FOUR: WHY REVIVALISM? A PRELIMINARY EXPLORATION OF REVIVALIST SUBJECTIVITY………………………..………………….……..…167 CHAPTER FIVE: REVIVALISM AND THE FESTA POPOLARE………………201 CHAPTER SIX: REINVENTING THE FESTA POPOLARE: THE CONTEMPORARY SOUTHERN ITALIAN FOLK FESTIVAL……….…………243 CHAPTER SEVEN: REVIVALISM, ETHNOREGIONALISM AND THE CULTURAL PRODUCTION OF SALENTINITÀ…………..………….…………...293 CHAPTER EIGHT: ‘FRICCHETTONI E PORTATORI DELLA TRADIZIONE POPOLARE’: A TYPOLOGY OF LOCAL ACTORS……………………………...341 CHAPTER NINE: CONCLUSION…...………………………………………..…..405 EPILOGUE…………………………………………………………………………425 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………..429 APPENDIX: ‘TRADIZIONE E CONTAMINAZIONE’: LIST OF SOUND RECORDINGS ON ENCLOSED CD………………………………………………459 11 12 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION The author records Mayor Piero Campisi’s version of events in ‘the Battle of Caulonia’ (see Chapter Six). Caulonia, Calabria, August 2005. Photo: Anna Minopoli. 13 What is the Southern Italian folk revival? Between July 2002 and July 2003, I carried out a year of ethnographic fieldwork on the contemporary Southern Italian folk revival, which re-emerged in the 1990s from the ashes of an earlier first revival in the 1960s and 1970s (Leydi, 1972; Bermani 1978; Chiriatti, 1998) after a long period of dormancy during the 1980s. This movement emphasises direct participation by urban actors in le tradizioni popolari (popular traditions), pre-modern cultural practices which are still practised in some corners of the Southern Italian rural periphery. The tradizioni popolari which are the focus of the contemporary Southern Italian folk revival include regional dance forms like Calabrian tarantella, Campanian tammurriata and Salentine pizzica, which are accompanied by musical instruments like the tamburello/tammorra (tambourine) and organetto (squeezebox). The revival also focusses on other traditional practices such as crafts, religious and work songs, storytelling and oral traditions, and participation in religious observances like pilgrimages and feste popolari (traditional local patronal festivals of the Madonna and Saints), as well as other agrarian festivals and Carnival. Tammorra player, Festa della Madonna dell’Avvocata, Maiori, Campania, July 2003. Photo: Anna Minopoli. 14 Contemporary Southern Italian revivalists engage mainly with regional popular traditions associated with rural Calabria, Southern Puglia and Campania (see Map One below). The movement has re-emerged since the mid 1990s in an idiosyncratic collaboration between two radically different sets of actors: on the one hand, a subculture of leftwing students and ‘fricchettoni’ (hippies), often from large cities to the north such as Rome,