(Un)Changing theoretical trends in the study of folklore in South Africa

Abstract

In this paper, it is argued that as an antidote to the current theoretical paralysis which seems to have gripped folklore studies in Southern Africa, folklorists should welcome the profound influence of contemporary cultural and literary theories into the discipline. The judicious application of these self-conscious theories would dynamically transform folklore studies by exposing it to the newer, postmodern approaches which increasingly challenge the basic presuppositions of the mainstream, traditional ones whose orientation is primarily ‘formalist’ and therefore suspicious of change. From the outset, let me state unequivocally that this brief paper is an unapologetic attempt to conscientise folklorists about the prevalent theoretical stasis surrounding folklore studies in South Africa to which they (un)consciously make substantial contributions. The paper should therefore not be peremptorily condemned as a pernicious means of pointing out the theoretical naïveté of folklorists, nor the epistemological imperfections and shortcomings discernible in the diverse critical approaches applied to folklore; rather, it genuinely wishes to encourage South African folklorists to develop an even more efficacious critical-theoretical apparatus to deal adequately with the fast-paced global changes that characterise folklore studies. Even less portentously so, as the suspicious adversaries of theory are wont to conclude prematurely, the paper does not intend to solicit the wholesale importation of any theory, Afrocentric or Eurocentric, into South African folklore studies since it fully recognises the salient issues at the fulcrum of folkloristics.