Introduction to ENG 549 by M. Alvarez, Ph.D.

One can hardly look anywhere these days without noticing the persistent, underlying assumptions that the idea of “authenticity” has imprinted all over our “way of life.” Beginning with foundational notions about the “self” and the idea that some things express what we really are, and others don’t, since its origins in the eighteen century the concept of authenticity implies, in the words of Lionel Trilling, a “downward movement through all the cultural superstructures to some place where all movement ends, and begins.” Coincidentally, the emergence of cultural analysis proceeded historically, since about the same period of the late 1700s, taking into account, already at its genesis as a formal field of inquiry, this longing for connecting to something deep and true ---in and about individuals, nations, art, experience, groups, ethnicities, identities, politics, beliefs, spirituality, vocation, grief, and happiness. In other words, the “whole enchilada” of human existence. The “wholeness” invoked here (i.e., the way that these values and ethics encompass a horizon of thought and possibilities) places us squarely in the realm of a phenomenon that is fundamentally ideological in nature. The fact that there is a symbolic order of things as well as a material reality that undergirds such totality does not detract from its ideological (phantasmagorical) character; quite the opposite, it is through the material that the symbolic gains traction and through both that an ideology of subjectivity is produced. 

While as a discipline "Folklore" may not have achieved quite the success of its biological parents (Literature and Anthropology), as a mode of inquiry it is fair to say that it has surpassed the expectations of its humble beginnings (and subject matter). First and foremost, Folklore has succeeded by functioning (almost in stealth mode) as an interpretative framework for all things cultural. It is out of Folklore's penchant for discovering "potentiality" in every aspect of society, no matter how oddly marginal, that the core idea of authenticity in all manners of being "in the world" obtains legitimacy. Folklore was present at the birth of anthropology and psychology; it holds bragging rights to the genesis of English Literature; it was the maiden that compelled exploration, discovery, nationalism, art......heck, the very idea of "community" (how it is constituted, by whom, and how it endures) is nourished by its key assumptions. Decidedly European in origin, in the United States folklore transforms into its most generative form yet: it supplies and shapes a truly original American rhetoric of pluralism (where being "authentic" is not longer just a right of the individual Self, but also the pride of the collective imaginary). This version of American pluralism would become distinct precisely in relation to its extreme dependency and attachment to mechanisms of "aesthetization" of groups of people marked by race, ethnicity, and class. We would come to know what "Americans" were, in the late 19th c., primarily as signifiers and signifieds of originality (Natives, frontiermen, ethnics, WASPs, etc.)  through the language and lens of Folklore. As a discipline in the academy and an administrative apparatus in government agencies and philanthropic institutions, folklore would carve for itself a niche: tradition and expressive forms of culture. In other words, the vernacular "structures of feelings" of localized groups as these go about their everyday lives (habitus) will become Folklore's expertise. 

In this seminar, we will explore each and everyone of the ideas expressed above in great detail.