Vernacular Turns: Narrative, Local Knowledge, and the Changed Context of Folklore

Abstract

(American Folklore Society Presidential Address, october 2013)NUMEROUS AFS PRESIDENTS HAVE COMMENTED OVER years on daunting nature of task that now stands before me. A presidential address is an intimidating endeavor, particularly as it signals movement toward completion of your time in office, time which inevitably comes a close in blink of an eye, before one can accomplish even tiniest of earth-changing initiatives that only yesterday seemed so achievable. The genre itself is intimidating, generally conceived of as an attempt take note of state of one's discipline-assessing field's past, considering its present, or charting its future (roberts 1999:166), all while being widely relevant and yet specific in a way that reflects our discipline's situated ethnographic focus. Perhaps most important challenge of this effort for me is conveying passion i feel for our field. Attending AFS over years has meant being continually nurtured by insight, strength, and enthusiasm of many mentors, colleagues, teachers, students, and friends who made it possible for me always feel that we were keepers of a special secret, a field of study with wisdom, heart, breadth, depth, endless inspiration, and enormous potential for facilitating social change.But, as i outline for you difficulties of this task before me, i have be honest and tell you that real problem is that on november 2, 1974, in Portland, oregon, Dell hymes gave my talk. Folklore's nature and Sun's myth (hymes 1975) was, and is, exactly talk i would want give, if only Dell had not.1 of course, there are many that Dell wrote that i wish i had written instead, but Folklore's nature and Sun's myth explored distinctive center of discipline, fundamental perspectives that identify us as folklorists. i tell my students often that special secrets are hidden there, in Dell's now almost 40-year-old words. Dell was my teacher, chair of my dissertation committee, and someone i deeply admired-so preparing write this talk, i went him for counsel. Since he is sadly no longer with us in body, i went back over his presidential address looking for wisdom and direction i so often found there. And what i found, apart from fine words and ideas i had remembered, was a place of difference. Writing of limitations on our field, Dell noted that the discipline grows where there are dedicated individuals and interests not otherwise met, but it is difficult define a general nature for folklore, such as would demand a place in any institutional or theoretical scheme of things (hymes 1975:346). to too great an extent, he wrote, is perceived as study of neglected by others, leavings of other and [a]s kroeber once observed of anthropology, a residual science cannot permanently justify itself (1975:346).Forty years ago, i think Dell would have been correct in characterizing folklore as perceived as study of neglected by others and leavings of other sciences. but we have seen a profound sea change in academy and in world around us in last 40 years, which i think we haven't paid enough attention in our discipline, and which i wish make center of my talk today. i will argue that over those 40 years, our intellectual context has pretty radically changed in light of a growing populism in intellectual, bureaucratic, and popular world around us that (for better or worse) now pays greater attention voices and knowledges2 of vernacular culture. not be naive, that move toward appreciation or at least consideration of vernacular is deeply tied theoretical and political crisis brought on by poststructural and postmodern turn away from positivist modes of inquiry and related lack of faith in grand or master cultural narratives (lyotard 1984). nevertheless, while i still continually encounter individuals who do not know or understand our discipline, my interactions with people in humanities and social sciences, medicine, and law, or at post office and corner store suggest a residual trivialization of our discipline, but a stronger appreciation of we study. …