Michel de Certeau and Furniture: Reflecting on this weeks readings. Joshua Salyers

As I work on projects for other classes, my readings for this class seem to always coincide with these projects. So, I will attempt to organize my thoughts here. On the level of theory, a couple passages in Jane Becker’s introduction to “Selling Tradition” reminded me of the issues of authority Michel de Certeau discussed in The Writing of History. She noted that in 1888 a group of academic, philanthropists, and collectors founded the folklore society. She stated “The Urban sophisticates who collected the myths, tales, ballads, superstitions, dialects, and material culture of such exotic picturesque peoples as southern Negroes and Indians thus assumed for themselves the right to define America’s “others,” or Folk.” As she argued, Tradition and Folk are ideologically constructed categories.

Michel de Certeau, who coined the term Heterologies, considered the work of historians and anthropologists, essentially the sciences of the other and questioned from what position do scholars look at things like popular culture. The same applies to the categorization of Folk. Certeau, as I understand him, argued that the ambiguousness of the complicated categorization of “popular culture” meant that scholars studied this popular culture only after creating the “other” as their subject (he also believed that all subjects temporally and spatially separated from the historian were constituted as an other).  Essentially, Certeau realized that as soon as a scholar established what popular culture was as a category, they inevitably left out practices that others might include. This act of categorization of a term, in this case popular culture that is often placed in opposition to folk culture, helps create the dichotomy between what Becker discussed as authentic or corrupted. Similar to Becker, Certeau understand the study of tradition as the practice of constructing the past in the present. Becker’s and Deloria’s articles came at a fortuitous time, as it helped me understand some of Certeau’s ideas, written with much less clarity, by providing me with examples of how people in a given society see the other.

Folk culture, however one defines it, essentially describes a series of practices, customs, etc. that is constantly changing. The moment the historian decides to study a specific culture, it has already changed. Thus, I find the concept of viewing folk artifacts as fixed representations of “traditions” ironic. Starting her introduction out with the criticisms of those who thought the Smithsonian Institution abandoned it responsibility to protect the nations heritage. Another project I am working is looking at furniture manufacturers in Mexico beginning in the 1930s and 1940s. Architects played an important role in the rise of furniture manufacturers by staging showing of what they sold as modern homes. Architects, such as Carlos Obregón Santacilia, got furniture producers, like Antonio Ruiz Galindo who owned Distribuidora Mexicana, S.A, Mexico’s largest manufacturer, to make modern pieces to show in their home displays. The Mexican government was also simultaneously pursuing a policy of attempting to “mexicanize” consumption, ostensibly promoting authentic Mexican commercial items.  Furniture manufacturers soon realized the market for “traditional” furniture styles. While my research is preliminary at this point, furniture manufacturers serve as an example of the tension between producing “authentic” Mexican furniture and mass-producing styles and having them shipped in from over seas. The notion of furniture as fixed expressions of culture, in some cases indigenous culture, surrounds the history of furniture production. I am interested to see where this project goes.