Imagining the Past

This Special Dispatch is a meditation upon imagined pasts and their relationship to folklore. In some respects, all pasts are imagined, even the ones we help to create. As individuals, our pasts are constructed by the events we experience, the ways we chronicle those events (journals, letters, photos, etc.), and the objects that stand as reminders of them (heirlooms, memorabilia, etc.) For example, we might go for a walk on a spring day, journal about the leafing trees, and press a flower between the pages of a book. Years later, the memory, journal, and flower might remind us of the walk. But memories can be faulty, journals only capture the highlights of an event, and the pressed flower is only one of many delights we saw that day. To fill in the blanks, we might imagine sunlight or bird song even if we can't exactly remember them.

Collective pasts are even more complex. Each individual in a group experiences an event and filters it through the processes I've just described. But then a negotiation takes place between group members to arrive at a unified understanding of this event. Some elements are highlighted and others forgotten. Official and unofficial accounts emerge. Public and private stories are crafted. Contested versions of these accounts and stories become apocryphal. For example, in the 1990s I was told that a friend's aunt had a "long-time roommate" who had recently passed away. That was the official story the family told to outsiders. The unofficial, insider story was that the aunt was lesbian and had lost a life partner. If an outsider told that story, the family's past would be constructed with an imagined narrative. But as anyone with a a beloved life partner knows, even an insider would likely have to imagine the relationship those women shared and the loss of it, unless that insider was the widow herself.

These same processes take place in a cultural gatekeeper invested in the official versions of a history, culture, and language, which have themselves been constructed by groups remembering and imagining the past. We can also find them in an ancestry tourist visiting the old country, who comes from a diaspora that necessarily remembers and imagines the old country differently from the people still living there. Farther afield, we can find them in a Neo-Pagan sifting through fragments of pre-Christian practice, which are memories and imaginings preserved in archaeology, literature, folk custom, and other sources. In all of these cases, the past is understood differently by individuals and groups with distinct relationships to it, and sometimes these understandings come into conflict with one another. When they do, which of them should win? Vernacular discourses about culture often say that the gatekeeper should, but folklorists understand that all of these people are contributing to the same cultural element. Let's explore this a little more deeply by looking at the ways our cultural gatekeeper, ancestry tourist, and Neo-Pagan might respond to an Irish jig.

The cultural gatekeeper might make certain the jig is in 6/8 time and has an A/B structure, determine which part of Ireland it originates from, and research the musicians who have performed the jig. Upon finding these in keeping with her expectations for traditional Irish music, she will seek to preserve the jig as it is, making certain it only passes to authorized tradition-bearers who will do the same. The ancestry tourist might play the fiddle, know the jig, and want to perform it with tradition-bearers in Ireland because performing the music there helps her feel more connected to the memory of her grandmother, who was from County Cork. But back home in New Zealand, she plays in a folk metal band writing an album of songs that include traditional jigs and reels. The Neo-Pagan has been using the jig in Beltane rituals for years and doesn't have an ancestral connection to the place of its origin but values Irish culture for its contribution to her spiritual life. She also studies Irish Gaelic and includes it in her rituals when possible. The jig, the Irish language, and the rituals are important to her spiritual practice, which helped her recover from alcohol addiction.

So which of our fictional people gets to keep this jig? Who do we accuse of cultural appropriation? Who do we tell to take comfort in something else? The cultural gatekeeper is an Irish woman who clearly cares about traditional music, but I've written some inflexibility into her profile. (Would a Turkish immigrant be welcome at her seisiún, I wonder?) The ancestry tourist is a New Zealander with an Irish grandmother who wants to take traditional music in a metal direction. The Neo-Pagan has no geographical or ancestral connection to Ireland, but in addition to using the jig in Beltane rituals, she's a student of Irish Gaelic.

My point is this. Each of my fictional people is rooted in an imagined past negotiated by individuals, groups, or both. Each of them is respectfully engaging with the same element of culture and will have a say in its future, which will become part of someone else's imagined past. This will happen whether we like it or not, because folklore is an interweaving of tradition and innovation that often moves in its own directions no matter what we ask of it. Yes, there are minority groups (largely indigenous) struggling to preserve their intangible cultural heritage, who actively limit these processes to insiders and invited outsiders. But there are many examples of cultural generosity among indigenous people, and some of them intersect with contemporary culture of other kinds, which rather supports my point. For example, check out this awesome haka performed by the New Zealand Black Ferns, which combines elements of Maori and rugby folklore.

I told you this was a meditation, and it is. I have no call to action here. But I do hope you'll meditate on these issues too because pasts are imagined, and cultural mediation cannot be reduced to the absolutes of insider approval and outsider appropriation. The more we globalize, the more we'll see blends like that haka, and folk metal jigs, and Neo-Pagan ceremonies held in Irish Gaelic. If we're lucky, they'll occur naturally, and there won't be any need for discussion about who gets to keep the jig. I have more to say on this topic, specifically about being a good guest in a culture not your own and (for my animistic readers) spiritual innovation without existing cultural touchstones. I'll get to those topics later this year.