Appropriation, Authenticity, and Performances of Indigeneity (Natasha)

Jon Cruz's book struck at the heart of several issues I struggle with in my own research, but the issue I'll  speak to here is that of identity politics and performances of indigeneity in the contemporary Chicano community. Since the 1960s there have been movements to recognize the indigenous origins of Mestizo and Chicano peoples, despite the fact that conquest, centuries of colonialism, and concerted efforts to miscegenate the nation have left many Chicanos without concrete cultural practices, Native languages, and other concrete practices that connect them to their indigenous roots. There have been impressive efforts to recognize and revive elements of Mexican popular culture, religiosity, healing practices, etc. that are recognizably rooted in indigenous knowledge systems. However, Chicano groups have also adopted practices, dress, and symbolism rooted in Aztec culture and this is where things get a little thorny.

In the late 19th century, Porfirio Diaz began campaigns to valorize Aztec culture because he thought the Aztecs were the Mexican indigenous group most worthy of being part of modern national identity. Over the course of several decades, Aztec-inspired symbolism and architecture was incorporated into the Mexican nation and given increasing value. These efforts were put on pause during the decade of revolutionary fighting, but in the aftermath of the Mexican revolution the nation needed to congeal and indigenous identity again became a convenient tool for unification. In an effort to articulate clearly an identity that would unite the nation and quell further rumblings of revolt, the revolutionary ruling elite sought innovative ways to incorporate the Indigenous masses. By integrating Indians both culturally and biologically, these leaders hoped to solve its “Indian problem” while forging a modern national identity that set it apart from Europe and the United States.

Revolutionary leaders were inspired by Diaz's previous valorization of the Aztec and they continued to be the indigenous group deemed most worthy of inclusion in modern Mexico. A new generation of scholars (historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists) developed and learned (mostly from American social scientists) techniques for studying other cultures and, in doing so, rendered them "cultural objects" that could be appropriated and manipulated at will. Throughout this process, Aztec identity continued to be romanticized and carried the most cultural value. The authenticated conceptualization of indigeneity that emerged from these efforts was then appropriated by revolutionary nationbuilders and made central to Mexican national identity. A wealth of popular visual culture emerged to support this vision.

So, I find it interesting but unsurprising that Chicano activists chose to identify so closely with Aztec identity. I don't think that what the Chicano did was appropriation so much as a reclaiming of an identity, but I do think it's important to consider the politics of why Aztec was such a viable and visible option when that community sought to reconnect with its indigenous roots.

A late note on last week's reading (Awndrea Caves, though she is currently known as Jessica Rabbit)

Last week I did not manage a post, but I did want to point out one idea that I felt could be fruitful.    Mullen mentions Johannes Fabian's concept of "intersubjectivity."  Mullen says "Since absolute objectivity is impossible, the ideal is to consider various subject positions to arrive at a consensus of intersubjectivity that in this case would include cross-racial dialogue even before research results are published" (11).  I am not familiar with Fabian's concept and find it intriguing, though I feel sadly skeptical of it actually bearing out in academic publications.  We spoke in class about how the subject's voice is ignored in a lot of academic folklore work.  Someone mentioned Rigoberta Menchu's work "I, Rigoberta Menchu."  I read this book for my MA exam.  This book had some of the flaws that we have been pointing out in discussion.  We do have more of Menchu's own words, but she had co-authors, who had a strong hand in presenting the material.  These were Elisabeth Burgos-Debray and Ann Wright.  Burgos-Debray wrote the introduction and this is where the reader may first notice the discordant moments that suggest the editor's presence in way that may obscure Menchu's voice.

 At least this was my understanding from reading it and from my discussions with my exam adviser.  But it had less of this problem than "Conversations with Ogotommeli," in which the writer was clearly the more paternalistic type, such as Lomax.  However, according to some sources, Marcel Griaule, the researcher, actually threatened the Dogon spiritual leader, Ogotemmeli with exposure of sacred sites in order to gain information on some of the Dogon practices outlined in the book.  "Black Elk Speaks" would be the classic American and American Indian example of setting up a work as from the mouth of one who is the “other” and knows sacred knowledge, while having the heavy hand of the researcher doing the recording, transcribing, and editing.  "Black Elk Speaks" can be a touchy subject because of its importance, but I believe not to acknowledge how much control John G. Neihardt had in its presentation would be dishonest and misleading about the work as it is and how it could really be applied in American Indian studies.  Interestingly enough, Neihardt wanted, in later editions, to have his name listed as Flaming Rainbow, his native name, and have himself referred to the interpreter rather than the author.  These examples show an interesting range of how the researchers worked with and presented the voice of the “other.”  These make me wonder what “intersubjectivity” would really look like.

P.S.  There will be a post forthcoming over this week’s reading, but just now I must put on my Jessica Rabbit costume and go to Prof. Alvarez’s birthday party.   :) 

Fisk Jubilee Singers - Lindsey's Post

Out of the many intriguing topics in Jon Cruz’s Culture on the Margins: The Black Spiritual and the Rise of American Cultural Interpretation, the one I found most interesting was his discussion of “disengaged engagement” introduced in chapter one. Cruz explained that in the decades following the abolition of slavery, sympathetic audiences (who were often college educated, upper class, and white) began listening to spirituals sung by black choirs. Those in the audience were never comfortable truly understanding the messages these spirituals contained, messages of daily hardship borne by those who lived and worked on plantations. These abolitionists patronized events where spirituals were sung and appreciated their aesthetic beauty, all the while ignoring the social and political circumstances from which these “slave songs” arose.  Cruz notes a rift between two actions: 1) listening to this music for its aesthetic beauty, and 2) understanding the struggle inherent in these spirituals. He argues that this rift continues today.

A few months ago, I heard a story on NPR about the Fisk University Jubilee Singers. The audio report briefly documented the legacy of this all-Black singing group, who are most well known for singing the spirituals that arose from the days of slavery. The group has been in existence for over 150 years, and is an interesting case study to highlight many of the sentiments found in Cruz’s book (Cruz briefly mentions the Fisk singers throughout his text, but I will go into a little more detail). A link to the audio and transcript is below:

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/26/134028602/at-fisk-university-a-tradition-of-spirituals

This news segment mentions that, as the Jubilee singers began touring the northern United States and eventually the world, there were qualms about them performing traditional ‘Negro spirituals.’ On the one hand, the choir’s first director (and anthropologist) John Work II believed that this group’s performances would not only raise money for Fisk University, but would allow for a dissemination of Black culture in arenas where it had previously been ignored. On the other hand, some prominent figures at the time worried that the performance of spirituals were simply a cruel reminder of slavery, that the audiences would not respond to the spiritually and emotionally laden sentiments of these songs. Work II, though, recognized the need to sing these songs to a broader audience, and the group became internationally renowned.

I find the story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers interesting, because it does not exactly parallel the cultural appropriation or commodification that Cruz discusses in his book. There are certainly echoes of it in this case; when listening to the NPR story, one could recognize that Work II’s role may share a few similarities with John Lomax’s (whom we discussed last week). In addition, the Fisk Jubilee Singers have recently performed with various artists like Neil Young and Faith Hill, potentially hinting towards the appropriation of these traditional spirituals. Yet, the Fisk Jubilee Singers offer a more complex case, probably stemming from the fact that this group was associated with a University, thus shielding it from the idealized ‘folk’ narrative of which many Black choirs were ascribed.

What I found especially interesting regarding the Fisk Jubilee Singers is an aspect of the racial narrative not totally explored in Cruz’s book. When researching the choir group, I found a promo of a documentary about the choir’s trip to Ghana in 2005. The link is below:

In this video, the current choir director discusses how important it is for the college student singers to visit Ghana, to experience the link between two cultures separated by an ocean, to understand the true roots of the spirituals they sing. Shortly after his eloquent narrative, the documentary promo shows the Fisk Jubilee Singers staring out the bus as they drive through Ghana’s capital, Accra. The camera focuses on several women walking through the streets carrying baskets on their heads, as the students from Fisk show surprise and wonder at how the women do such things. What I found most compelling about this segment was how much these young students had to learn about the very same culture the Fisk students 150 years ago were apprehensive to display.

A cultural rift exists between white and black Americans, exemplified by the tension inherent in performances of traditional spirituals by groups like the Jubilee Singers. This divide was certainly amplified by the ways Black culture was portrayed, and later appropriated and commercialized, by white individuals (with various motives). As this rift formed in the days after slavery leading up to the present, there formed another one, a spatio-temporal rift for individuals trying to portray their own culture. This, I think, is a trend that Cruz would see as a symptom of the appropriation of Black spirituals throughout time. I think, though, that it is also an important place to start correcting these symptoms. Everyone should be able to listen a song, and everyone should be able to learn about who one is, where one comes from, and what the song really means.

Disengaged Engagement and Cultural Theft--Katie Moore

It is often said that great suffering is necessary to create the most profound art.  While some artists actively seek out hardship in order to improve their art, while others have it thrust upon them.  The slave spiritual most definitely falls into the latter case, although the slaves who created and sang these songs likely did not consider themselves artists creating art, but rather a group of people expressing themselves in one of the few acceptable mediums.  Cruz constantly refers to black spirituals as “songs of sorrow,” borrowing the phrase from Douglass, who also described spirituals as telling “a tale of woe …they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish” (Cruz 1999:23). Numerous other historical accounts of black spirituals cited by Cruz also emphasize the intensity of emotion and lament inherent in the songs and their performance.

Cruz engages with the spiritual within the context of the social, political, economic and cultural constructs of the time in order to understand how a burgeoning awareness and interest in black culture shaped the way minority or ethnic studies would develop in the United States.  For those abolitionists sympathetic to the plight of life, many were entranced by the spiritual as they “discovered” slave spirituals as “meaningful” sound rather than incomprehensible “noise”  (Chapter 2).  However, many could not face the reality of what the spiritual represented, preferring instead to hover in the limbo that Cruz calls “disengaged engagement.”  While developing a growing appreciation for the aesthetics of slave spirituals, they refused to come to terms with the social, religious, political, and economic structures that informed their message and their sorrow.  Masked in romanticism and sentimentalism, the white users of the slave spiritual were able to admire the beauty and passion of it at a comfortable psychological distance without genuinely engaging in the source of the pain within the voices.  “As a mode of disengaged engagement, aesthetic appreciation divorced from the artist’s life functions as a denial of that life” (31).  After their “discovery” by white listeners, the sounds of the “authentic” spiritual quickly entered mainstream and entered a cycle of appropriation and commodification.  Cruz terms this the “narrative of cultural theft,” where black cultural expression was transformed from “genuine” to “tarnished,” moving from “‘black roots’ to ‘white fruits’” (25). 

The idea of “cultural theft,” is just as relevant in discussions of American music (once the term also included blacks in the concept) as it is in the present.  I took a class during my undergraduate studies entitled “American Popular Music,” which covered popular music forms in America, from the minstrel show as the first truly American music, to Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, Hillbilly, blues, rock and roll, punk, New Wave, etc.  One of the most shocking things I took away from the class could be very aptly named “cultural theft,” as it was theft in the most literal sense.  Although there are many examples of this, the one that stuck with me was the dual recording of the song “Sh-Boom,” first released by an all-black R&B group called The Chords in March of 1954, followed by its release just months later by an all-white group called The Crew-Cuts in late July.  While songs hit songs were often covered by multiple artists, before it had mainly been a racially homogeneous affair, with white artists covering other white artists’ songs, and black artists covering black songs.

(The Chords Version)

(Crew-Cuts version)

The Chord’s version was one of the first doo-wop/rock-n-roll song to reach the top ten on the pop charts (rather than the genre-specific R&B charts), however, The Crew-Cuts cleaned-up, more traditional version reached #1 on the Billboard charts for 9 weeks and stayed on the charts for 20 weeks.  While previously, covered songs were noticeably different in their various versions, the commodification of black songs by white groups took a different turn, replicating the melody, arrangement, and rhythm of the black versions.  This seems like cultural appropriation to the extreme, crafted during a time when rising racial tensions necessitated even more disengagement with black cultural expression, while there was still a fascination and appreciation for their cultural and musical aesthetics (especially among teenagers who were more likely to engage with African American artists and songs).  Cruz points out that there has recently been some “cultural amnesia” within the scholarship of cultural analysis that disregards the roots of cultural studies in its outgrowth from the historical and social relationships of the 19^th century (14). By combining the framework of cultural constructs that shaped the relationships of “makers” and “users” of cultural forms over time, we can reach a deeper understanding the ways we interpret and relate to “cultures on the margins,” which often includes appropriation and disengaged engagement through overlooking the implications of  commodifying culture.

The Message in the Music: It's Almost Midnight by s. rocha

Listen closely to the message in the music—the Negro spiritual. 

      What Douglas was trying to say is that there is something to be learned from the power of voice--not to be heard through the skewed reception of ethnosympathy, but through pure and unobjectified listening.  This is the kind of listening that requires a particular extended dialogue that involves an interlocutorship between the producer of the song and the recipient.  In that voice one will most determinedly hear the strength of resistance and the resolve of survivance (to coin a Gerald Vizenor term).

      Sterling Brown explained that the parallels between songs of freedom for the White man and for the Negro meant something very different—it meant freedom from slavery for the Negro.  For the White man it meant freedom from his own sins.  It was the only bondage he understood, and the only one he could identify with.  There is no reason to think that the Negro would address the issue of freedom from sin in a figurative manner. 

      Cruz describes how “The abolitionist movement began to rally around” the spiritual and created “ethnosympathetic” ways of hearing the music.  And though the intellectual formation that determines how a spiritual might mean to such a community, the reception of the music by the community that produces it is based not on a marketing schematic nor an institutionalized American commodity. The spiritual serves its producers as an emancipatory adroitness that gives vitality to the fearless spirit of struggle. Even more, it is metaphysical and the effects are far more reaching than the mere singing of a song.  It is, according to W.E.B. Dubois, a gift of true and traditional American music—perhaps the only American made musical truth.  At least, the first.  

“Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.” (The Souls of Black Folk)

The words of the gospel song, “It’s Almost Midnight” play in the back of head as I read this text.  It sends old chills of wonder as I re-experience the might of a spiritually charged moment through song.  I am embraced in the cradling arms of recall:  my grandmother, my father, my young brother, my many loved ones who have passed.  The power of this particular song stands omnipotent in the face of Cruz’ descriptions of “intellectual formations”.  I feel relieved knowing that the folk element of the music will never be anything more than the lore of the intellectual.  The profundity and timelessness of the spiritual rests in the endurance of the voice and the place it lives within the Soul of Black Folks.

It’s almost midnight

     The cry is about to be made

     Behold the bride groom cometh

     Have you any oi,l are you saved?

     It’s almost midnight

     The master is on his way

     He just might come tomorrow

     He just might come today

     It’s almost midnight

     The rapture is about to take place

     Shame on you if you miss it,

     Please accept is amazing grace

     Enough of the Bible has been fulfilled

     This should give your conscience a spiritual chill

     It’s almost midnight

     Did you hear what I said

     Time is winding up

     It’s almost midnight

    

Mary Mack Mack Mack by Sheila Rocha

For me, there was a great deal of nostalgia reading Mullen's chapter on childrens' rhymes that echoed memories of the Black power movement of the early 70's. I was part of that movement as a young woman of color--being Tarasco, Mexican, Chicano, Indian whatever one might call me...and mixed with more.  In the eyes of the kids I went to high school with, as we fought for ethnic studies and Black literature classes, all they knew was that I was mixed, I was of color and I belonged with them. The context of the verses resonated first and foremost with us in the assertion of voice, the word and the image it produced.  We rioted-whatever that means.  We walked out.  We got the first Black theater production in Omaha Public School history.  Lorraine Hansberry's "To Be Young Gifted & Black".
           Mary Mack Mack Mack
           All dressed in Black Black Black
           With silver buttons buttons buttons
           All down her back, back, back
And it was all in the context of Hansberry's pledge that in the words of Nina Simone, "There are millions of girls and boys, who are young, gifted & black--And that's a fact!"  That was a source of inspiration for all of us kids of color.  Didn't matter what color--we all shared the same deep desire to be acknowledged as gifted.  Our brown shades of skin, a thing of beauty, and our cultures were embodied in the voices of revolution like James Brown "I'm Black and I'm Proud",  Nina Simone, Curtis Mayfield and Aretha Franklin.  Mullens asks the question, did these children understand the political meaning of the verses?   On some level we did.  But it was the freedom to assert the icons postured in the body of the verses--that and the joke, the play on words.  Consequently, about 12 years ago I founded the longest running African American Theater ensemble in Omaha history and I named it Young, Gifted & Black in honor of Lorraine Hansberry and all the brothers and sisters who accepted me and allowed me to be part of the struggle.  The image in this post is from an Ananzi play (talk about folk tales) we did back in about 2008.  These young people are the product of the struggle we went through in the early seventies.
I have to mention Mullen's  "self-aware escape into fantasy".  It was truly just trickster gaming on many levels.  We tricked, we learned language in multiple ways in order to suggest, prod or simply play (159). All of this arose directly out of the Jim Crow our parents endured as well as the more subtle forms of racism that bit at our heels.

Now for my children in the early 1990's, the rhymes were something different.  I never learned the hand claps--they embraced the hand claps and it became a motor-skill challenge--a neighborhood game of action.  All children of the inner-city of Omaha learned these rhymes.  Icons such as James Brown were sidewalk celebrations of culture and meaning that remained as significant (and to a broader audience now) as it did for those of us two decades before.  Representation...and the forms it takes.

And by the way.  I talked with my daughter this evening and she corrected Mullens (156)...she laughed and said, "we did it our way".  And that's about it--the song is always the same, it's just transposed into the right key for the kids on the corner.

I went downtown
To see James Brown
He game me a nickel,
To buy me a pickel,
The pickel was sour,
So he bought me a flower
The flower was dead
So this is what I said--
               (here's where regionality influences the verse)

Nicky nacky number nine

Going down Chicago line

Now let's get the rhythm of the head

ding dong

(move head)

Now we got the rhythm of the head

(move head)

now let's get the rhythm of the feet

(stomp feet)

now we got the rhythm of the feet

(stomp feet)

now we got the rhythm of the hot dog

(move body)

put it all together and what do you got:

ding dong,

(moved head)

(stomp feet)

Hot dog!!

(move the body)

Mullen Adrian

Mullen's Text, The Man Who Adores a Negro opens the door to the re-examination and analysis of African American culture/folklore. The text brought into question the influence of white research folklorist and their work with African-American communities. Also it is not the folklorist that dictate the culture better yet there is an exchange between the white and black culture resulting in mediation. Whether a folklorist, a historian, or a mathematician, Mullen makes the point the past work needs to be revisited and possibly updated. From the text I enjoyed most reading chapter 7, children lyrics and hip- hop.

The Man Who Adores Rudyard Kipling's Kim, by Stephen Pallas

     Written by a British author at the turn of the twentieth century (the novel was published in 1901), Rudyard Kipling's Kim, does not directly deal in terms of African American race relations in the United States.  However, many of the questions of ethnic authenticity have emerged during the British Modernist period of literature, perhaps most densely with Kim.  For a brief overview, the boy Kim (birth name, Kimball O'Hara) was born to two Irish parents.  His father served in the British military in the Indian subcontinent.  After his parents died, Kim was adopted and mostly raised by a Hindu woman.  Later on, Kim meets a Tibetan lama, in search of a river and the Great Soul through which he may escape the cycle of death and rebirth.  After taking up the journey with the lama, Kim is caught sneaking around a British camp and questioned by an Anglican minister and an Irish Catholic priest.  They find papers on him that betray his identity as the son of a British soldier.  They take Kim, train him, and make him a spy for the British Secret Service.  All the while, for Kim's part, he insists throughout the novel that he is "not a Sahib," a respectful name given by Indians to the British, wanting instead to be with his lama--although he fluctuates between the two roles.  Ultimately, the answer to the question, "Who is Kim?" is never fully resolved.  Kipling deals with what becomes a modernist tradition: when systems of order breakdown and reveal the true chaos of the world, individuals deal with what becomes a global identity.  The problem with the modernist global identity leads into the absolute horror of the two World Wars, the rise of capitalist-communist hatred, the emergence of nuclear weapons, and modern terrorism.  Throughout all this chaos, individuals and individual cultures attempt to hold on to those entities which define them, perhaps even too categorically and systematically.  Toward the end of his project, Patrick Mullen suggests that "self-representation by African Americans is necessary to correct the past mistakes of white folklorists" (177), the larger picture being, self-representation by any group or individual is necessary to prevent mistakes by "other" folklorists, historians, academics, and writers.  Kipling's Kim attempts to represent a multicultural landscape macronomically and individually with dense aesthetic, linguistic, and cultural appreciation.

     Much of Kipling's novel is a work of translation, which reminds me of Patrick Mullen's observations on Roger Abrahams work, who, "along with Dell Hymes, Richard Bauman, Dan Ben-Amos, and others, formulated the performance approach based on the ethnography of speaking from sociolinguistics" (132).  Kipling recreates the sociolinguistics of India by translating at points, and retaining the verbiage at other points, the language of natives, Europeans, and other foreigners.  He also emphasizes the recreation of cultural tropes, such as the Buddhist notion of the Wheel of Life, the Hindu caste system, and the relationship between Catholic and non-Catholic Christians.  Like the movements in the bazaars of India, Kipling's instillation of Modernism into the literary canon is cosmopolitan, transcending parochial classification systems (such as nation, religion and ethnicity).  As a product of modernism, the human trajectory incorporates an international style, which is supranational, and transcends other taxonomic systems, such as race and religion.  Kim is associated with that project--yet still maintains an imperialist mindset (in not imagining a space beyond)--providing a presentation of hybridity, for to inhabit this subcontinental Indian space cannot be anything but hybrid.  And since there are so many ways of being hybridized in Kim, the novel allows us to accrete the information of modernism through an entirely new lens.

Deconstructng Self-Understanding the folk-The Awakening

Blog-10

Pat Bc

10.25.2011

This is a profound look at the self and belief system based on social construction of race and the racist effects which political ideology and the media use to shape us.   I never really thought about the negative sexual construction of blacks through music or poetry.   Mullen’s (The Man Who Adores the Negro) use of Critical Race Theory causes me to revaluate the relationship of literature, music, and policy toward my self-construction.  It helps me understand   the effect of oppression placed on Latinos/as, Indigenous, Asians, and Blacks/African-Americans and the importance of deconstructing myths.  Delgado and Stefanic (Critical Race Theory:  An Introduction, 2001) is introducing me to “color blindness” and “liberal neutrality” utilized to validate racial attitudes toward race and racism by maintaining a sense of false consciousness through political conditioning.    Deconstruction must first begin with self then we can understand the folk.  Yes, I must admit folklore and CRT this semester is life-changing!

Part Two: A Man Who Adores Mexico? (Joshua Salyers)

While yes, I stole this title from Sarah; her application of Patrick Mullen’s analysis of white folklorists studying African Americans expressed a reflexivity that any non-Mexican scholar of Mexico, male or female, must consider. Mullens illustrated how white folklorists, operating under the social and political influences of their eras, influenced “constructions of blackness as folkness” (7). The examples provided by these scholars and Mullen’s reflection on his own work stressed the need for understanding your (as the historian) relationship to your historical subjects. As I begin preliminary research for a dissertation project not yet completely formulated, Mullen’s book has incited a deeper awareness of who I am and from what contexts I study Mexican history. What practical possibilities for developing a reflexive approach exist for “outsiders” such as Sarah and myself?

My proposed research project has an even more distant subject from the social and political realities that have informed my historical view. My topic in its current incipient form explores the material culture of poverty during a time when the federal government sought to “Mexicanize” consumption and to create a modern consumer culture. What level of reflexivity would justify my responsible study of poverty in Tepoztlán, one likely village for my research? As Kelley discussed in some detail, these questions haunt the historian, who must deals with countless divisive barriers aside from just racial constructs. Put simply, finding that balance reflexivity while trying to hold on to our legitimate right to study groups to which we do not belong entails doing the best we can. All I can hope for is that my education allows me to develop a culturally flexible approach and a reflexive historical consciousness.

A Woman Who Adores Mexico?

I couldn’t help but be struck this week between the apparent similarities between Patrick B. Mullen’s reflexivity on his previous work and my work as a Mexican Cultural historian as a gringa. I never studied Mexico past the occasional high school Spanish class growing up, and I had no real reason to go to Mexico the first time I flew there. I had a friend who invited me, I never planned to transform my life after that short trip… but I did. Yet, I struggle at least once a week with being a gringa (and even worse a gringa who grew up in the North East only hours from the Canadian border and in a suburb almost as white as a snowstorm) and studying Mexico. Unlike many of my Mexican, and Hispanic, friends I find myself daily searching new cultural references, musicians, artists, and all things Mexican folk, that they intrinsically know. I wonder if I am able to step outside my work as Mullen has, however, to see how my status as an outsider affects my work. As of now, it seems a daunting and discouraging task.

What I am able to do is see what a firm knowledge of American popular and folk culture allows me to bring to the table that my Mexican counterparts cannot. Being established in one folk community and well versed in another I am able to make connections and comparisons that others are not. I work on Mexican comics, and growing up reading American comics has allowed me insight into defining what Mexican comics are through discussions of what they are not.

Similar to Mullen, I find my friends in Mexico and people I talk to about comics and Rius, mediate their discussions with me on multiple levels. I am a woman. Normally this would not set off alarms in the US, but in Mexico a woman in a position of academic authority is still not the norm. In addition, the comics I work with are not known as being conservative or reserved. They are sexually explicit and constantly use nudity and gross-stereotype, alongside political commentary and word play. So unlike Mullen who is able to common with his subjects and develop a relationship through locker-room humor, very similar concepts are limiting to my research. Some people are uncomfortable telling me what they most enjoyed or remember from the comics because they think they will offend me or that what they are saying will be construed as improper.  

These are the realities that mediate my experience as a New England raised-gringa-modern Mexican cultural historian working on at times vulgar and explicit comics in Mexico, but what can I say… Puritan folklore just did not interest me.  

- Sarah Howard

A Case for (Reflexive) Collaboration - Natasha

In The Man Who Adores the Negro: Race and American Folklore, Patrick Mullen uses several historical case studies to develop a critique of white folklorists’ research on African American folklore. He illustrates how research reflects constructs of race and identity of the historical period from which it emerges and frequently influences the nature of the research and its outcomes. Because folklore research is informed by racial and identity constructs, the outcome of this research can also inadvertently serve to perpetuate existing constructs and power structures. In other words, it helps to further normalize existing racial or colonial attitudes.

Mullen does all this reflexively so that his own work is as much a part of his critique as is the work of others. His heightened awareness of issues of race, power, and privilege at play in his own research directly impact his role as a researcher, the nature of his inquiry, and his scholarly response to his findings. It also influences his analysis of what went wrong in his attempt at collaborative research with Jesse Truvillion.

The Truvillion episode is an interesting one and Mullen gives it a central place in his book by devoting the entire conclusion to a reflexive analysis of it. As Mullen explains, he made an attempt to engage Truvillion in collaborative research but because of social and racial assumptions that influenced them both, the collaboration ended in disaster. Although I’m not sure I understand the exact details of what caused the communication breakdown (the footnote in the special journal issue he references makes it clear that some accidental contradiction occurred but I don’t understand why the episode escalated quite so much after that). Mullen’s suggested solution is that more reflexivity is needed in research but he doesn’t offer any concrete suggestions on how to practice such reflexivity. This seems a major shortcoming given that the ideals he held for collaborative research failed because he wasn’t able to fully incorporate it into the everyday moments of the research process.

Overall, I found this book to be a useful demonstration of several concepts we've discussed this semester. I wish it had done more to develop a methodological approach to conducting reflexive, collaborative research but, at the very least, it made  a strong case for why that research approach is indeed valuable. 

The Student Who Adores This Book- David Meyerson

As usual, there is so much to talk about here that I don't know where to begin.  The book made me look at American racial politics in a deeper way that will benefit my future students.  It seems to me that how we look at race, or what paradigm we choose, determines the stance we take on cultural/racial functions in our studies.  We can readily disprove the theory of race from a biological perspective.  I watched Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s show on PBS that looked at the DNA of different groups of people.  His own DNA is ultimately constructive- an professor of African-American studies that "looks" Black, yet has much more White DNA.  Fascinating.  Of course, we have to go beyond the science because, so often in our history (and especially these days) science is not trusted to tell the whole story for it might counter our trusted belief systems.  Gates looks Black and takes pride in his Blackness, therefore his DNA doesn't really matter.  If we can't look at science to rid society of Whiteness and its hegemonic structure, we must look at the "function" of race in society.  I use this too much, but it just wouldn't do for Barack Obama to be looked at as White or Tiger Woods thought of as Asian-American.  Their racial makeup serves a function for White and Black people alike.
Mullen does a good job explaining the limitations of functionalism, but like the goal of "no Whiteness", I wonder if we're throwing out the baby with the bath water. We can look for the ideal, race-free landscape today.  We are certainly closer to that than ever before because racial mixing is not as taboo, but this view is ultimately Polyanna-ish and dangerous.  It's not just who you mix with racially, it's how you are perceived by others.  Instead of spending time debunking functionalism and other isms of the moment, we can embrace the tensions inherent in our all too human decisions and desires.  Some tension exists because we rail against essentializing race, yet embrace our racial qualities to the point of generalizing theory and practice.  In the case of the Black/White divide, Mullen and others rightly label this "pathology".  Some say you can't have it both ways.  Sure, you can!  We all do in any given moment.  Barack Obama embraces an African-American Christian preaching tradition in many speeches, yet distances himself from "inflammatory" statements coming from his pastor.  Is there contradiction here? Yes, and I believe it to be as natural as anything else.

If the potential result of functionalism is "pathologizing" a group, then we make a decision.  Is it politically expedient to air the contradictions? Or do we hush that cacophony in our heads and hearts?  I appreciate the book looking at the dichotomous relationships revealed by Critical Race Theory. Toni Morrison's explanation of Whites projecting the "not-me" is instructive.  Years ago, I read Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew.  One idea that he writes is if the Jew didn't exist, the anti-Semite would create him.  Sartre's Jew is recognizable only by those who believe he is, in fact, a Jew. This may be my own pre-conceived prejudice, but while Sartre is denying a Jew the right to define himself/herself, he is not living in Israel or the United States.  Outside of these two concentrated places of Jewish empowerment, "Jew" has always been an epithet.  We pathologize race in this country because we have to.  "Black" exists in order to avoid defining ourselves.  Mullen points out Whiteness does not exist without its contradicting form, Blackness. There is inherent danger in this, and history has shown us how horrifying enactment of differences can be.  Where do we go from here? We have a need to essentialize (different than pathologize) in order to give a context for the specific performances of culture we encounter, participate in, and/or study. I'm not ready to throw out functionalism per se.  I do want a melding of the theories to create a new understanding of how dynamic the process is.  Almost everything has its place.  Dell Hymes played a critical role in moving folklorists, linguists, and anthropologists beyond the limits of cultural or racial function by looking at the minutiae of detail.  He didn't intend for the detail to not have a context.  However, he might have wanted the contextual aspects of this research on "folk" to live side-by-side with the absence of context (I'm at a loss for the right word) in order for us to see that while functional theory can give us a big picture, it doesn't or shouldn't give us the big picture.  There needs to be room for agency.

Constructions of Race in Academia -- Katie Moore

In The Man Who Adores the Negro, Patrick Mullen talks about the historical scholarship of discourse on race relations, black folklore, the construction and self-representation of race, and the inextricable nature of “blackness” and “whiteness” in social constructions of reality.  Mullen talks about how whiteness and blackness are two sides of the same coin; each uses the other as a way to draw out assumptions about itself.  This can be seen in fiction and folklore scholarship when “as white scholars wrote about African Americans as folk, they not only created images of blackness, they also constructed whiteness since concepts of the two races were oppositionally determined” (Mullens 2008:7).  The construction of “folk,” initially conceived by Europeans as applied to the peasant class of whom they could romanticize for their quaintness while still defining themselves against them as modern, quickly moved to incorporate African Americans along with the marginalized lower class whites in its American applications.  The simultaneous romanticization and marginalization of blacks in folk scholarship as a result of the hegemonic nature of relations and scholarly discourse is a persistent problem, although researchers are aware now more than ever of the constructs that influence our perspectives.  In academia we combat these problems with reflexivity, but race relations in the United States remains a difficult topic in many fields, including folklore, anthropology, archaeology, and history.

 

The marginalization of African Americans as a group in archaeological research also has a long history.  Nineteenth century biologists and archaeologists justified racial inequality through the “science” of biological differences between races, with methods such as craniometrics which consisted of taking measurements of the human skull and linking them to race.  Measuring skulls was then linked to brain size, and subsequently intelligence. Around the same time, anthropologists were using cultural evolutionism to construct a progression of culture linked to race, with some groups at one end (savagery), and other groups (guess who?) at the pinnacle of civilization (See Chapter 2). 

Throughout the early years of American historical archaeology, colonial plantations were being excavated with a focus on architecture, centered on the main house of a plantation.  Slavery was not really explicitly addressed in the research design of colonial archaeology until the late 1960s, in conjunction with the Civil Rights movement and the New Social History.  Along the lines of other forms of colonial American culture contact, when slavery was finally acknowledged at all, it was treated through the lens of “acculturation.”  The term was often twisted to mean a one-way transmission of culture from Euro-Americans to slaves, where the more Euro-American goods were found in a slave context, the more acculturated that group was assumed to be (regardless of the context, use, or meaning behind the objects).  While currently slavery is often interpreted from the archaeological record in terms of dominance and resistance, which at least affords more agency to slave than acculturation models did, this still frames African American actions in a framework governed by Euro-American perspective rather than in its own right.  It seems impossible to get away from the hegemony of race relations.  Using the term “resistance” only has meaning when place in opposition to someone to resist, a dominant power, a colonizer, a master.  But how much was done as a conscious resistance to those in power, and how much was done simply because you do what you need to do to survive within your own context of cultural practice?  The resistance/domination dichotomy does not seem universally applicable to all contexts of slave life, and therefore other framworks are needed to understand the archaeology of slavery and race relations..  Mullens explanation of the intertwining of white and black relations begins to illuminate why it is so hard to interpret one experience of plantation live without balancing the other perspectives.

Folklorists and Historians: The Etic/Emic Divide

The Man Who Adores the Negro by Patrick Mullen (2008) caused me to reflect on my own field, History, and how the task of historians differs in crucial ways to that of folklorists and ethnographers.  In this week's reading, Mullen criticized his own approach, plus a handful of other mid-20^th century folklorists who worked across the white-black racial boundary.  He highlighted how predetermined understandings held by the white, highly educated folklorists about black culture helped form the understanding, interpretation and narrative the folklorists constructed about their subjects of study.  In doing so, these folklorists further solidified racial stereotypes upper-class, white, highly educated scholars held about the black community.  Most compelling in this book was Mullen’s own reflective turn on himself, where he criticized the methodologies he used in the past, and outlined his attempts to overcome the one-sided nature of his research by  working collaboratively with a black scholar who came from the community he wished to study.  Interestingly, his first experiment with collaborative work fell apart.  Mullen blamed this on the same race and power dynamics that underlie U.S. society in general, dynamics that could not be avoided even by two academic professionals attempting to overcome these differences.  In the end, despite the challenges he faced in this failed collaboration, Mullen concluded that continued emphasis on cross-racial research is essential to avoid the negative consequences of mis-representing, mis-construing, or mis-understanding another culture from an outsider’s perspective.

Mullen’s book deals primarily with the racial divide white/black.  Clearly, this is not the only cultural divide scholars must worry about.  Beyond the regular litany of race/class/gender/urban-rural/age/linguistic differences, other groups develop with their own cultural practices and nuances, overlapping and intersecting,  formed by individuals who belong to multiple overlapping groups simultanously.  If one understands every human experience as a universe in itself, there are as many cultural divides as there are individuals on the planet.  For academic purposes, neither fully emic nor fully etic analyses of cultural practices suffice, whether across racial, class or gender boundaries, or between two individuals who would be indistinguishable on a demographic statistics page.  Mullen’s suggestion, with steps take to avoid the pitfalls he faced (and others certain to emerge), would be best applied to all ethnographic research.

Finally, I would like to comment on the poor historians who find value in an emic/etic dialogue when writing about culture, but who can only imagine the dialogue they might have with people who lived many lifetimes ago.  Historians work across racial, cultural, class and gender divides where all of Mullen’s concerns apply.  Even working within one’s own cultural past is problematic.  As L.P. Hartley famously said, "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."   As a cultural historian, I find myself in a cycle of evaluation and re-evaluation of myself and my field, trying to avoid a sense of despair from the impossibility of my task.  I face the both the inability to completely accurately represent the past and the complication of writing across language, culture, and nation. This is compounded by the knowledge that my own experiences taint the manner in which I view and write about the cultures I wish to represent.  In the absence of emic/etic collaboration, historians rely heavily on humility (not believing their observations can be the ultimate, all-encompassing account of the past), reflexivity (acknowledging one’s own background so the inevitable subjectivity can be filtered at least partially by other readers), and the work and interpretation of other historians.  Within the multitude of approaches and backgrounds from historians working across time and continents, some observations gather some legitimacy over time. That is, until the next archive opens or the next generation of historians comes along to take our philosophy to a new and deeper level.   

Kelley Merriam Castro