Among the PALMs1

Lee Haring

doi:10.3390/h7020044

Abstract

Born out of the convergence of intellectual traditions and owning a borrowing capacity analogous to the one that engenders creole languages, the study of folklore, or folkloristics, claims the right to adapt and remodel political, psychological, and anthropological insights, not only for itself but for the humanities disciplines of philosophy, art, literature, and music (the “PALM” disciplines). Performance-based folkloristics looks like a new blend, or network, of elements from several of those. What looks like poaching, which is a common practice for folksong and folk narrative, can be examined in the PALM disciplines under names like intertextuality and plagiarism. Nation-oriented traditions of folklore study have convergence, borrowing, and remodeling in their history which are also discoverable in other disciplines. Linguistic and cultural creolization—what happens when people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds are forced together to learn from one another—lies at the center of folklore; its study opens paths for research in all humanities fields. The study of folklore, while remaining marginal in universities, is undergoing a self-transformation which should lead to the acceptance of its methods and findings in the PALM disciplines.

Highlights

The Challenge from CreolizationThis word comes out of linguistics, a non-PALM subject that influences all the humanities disciplines
Born out of the convergence of intellectual traditions and owning a borrowing capacity analogous to the one that engenders creole languages, the study of folklore, or folkloristics, claims the right to adapt and remodel political, psychological, and anthropological insights, for itself but for the humanities disciplines of philosophy, art, literature, and music
The study of folklore, while remaining marginal in universities, is undergoing a self-transformation which should lead to the acceptance of its methods and findings in the PALM disciplines

Summary

The Challenge from Creolization

This word comes out of linguistics, a non-PALM subject that influences all the humanities disciplines. That social context links creole linguistics to folklore studies, which gravitate to the productions of enclaved and subjugated groups. When the linguistic discoveries are applied to the realm of expressive culture, situations of cultural convergence are seen to produce their own, autonomous behaviors and expressions Such “creolized” folklore has a new artistic shape, as well as new social and linguistic functions. Creolization reminds the scholar to direct attention to the power differences between dominating and dominated groups It challenges the PALM disciplines, and all the humanities, to view cultural production from the subordinated underside. Appropriation, adaptation, transformation: these are the processes that creolization puts in the foreground, asking humanities disciplines to add the context of power differences to the techniques they already use, and to focus on process at least as much as on product

What about Philosophy?

Philosophy of Folklore Impossible?

Folkloristics Transforming Itself