UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

Friday 17 February 12:00 – 1:30: Panel E2: Economic and Political Development in Central and Eastern European Countries

Jan Grill (University of St Andrews): ‘Re-defining the folk: the case of Czechoslovak ethnography in the 1950s’

The aim of the paper is to outline some processes characterizing the post-1948 period’s development in the discipline of Czechoslovak ethnography. By looking at examples of one academic field I shall point out larger characteristics of ideological processes that were taking place during 1950s in the former socialist Czechoslovakia. The ethnographic texts will provide a window onto educated (scholarly and political) re-constructions of the folk and popular culture. Consideration will be given to underlying principles of exclusion and inclusion in considering the appropriateness of what are constitutive objects of ethnographic inquiry. I will set out some debates concerning the images of folk, and how these entered into a relevant discursive field.

The discipline of Czech and Slovak ethnography was born out of the romantic national revival during the 19th century and institutionally took shape at the turn of the century. It played an important part of the Czech and Slovak national emancipation project and nation building. However, following the 1948 communist seizing of power, there was a radical critique and reappraisal of previous ethnographic representations and practices. The former scientific fields were accused of being ‘bourgeois’ and the new, more ‘progressive,’ rhetoric of Marxism-Leninism was trumpeted. The former image of a noble peasant as a prototypic Czech/Slovak ‘aboriginal’ was replaced by the ‘differentiated’ peasant and worker who was traditionally exploited by the class struggle. However, the official rhetoric did not entail the sudden ‘erasure’ of all previous practices and organizing principles of classification. The socialist ideological reading of collective self proclaimed itself replacing and criticizing the previous ethno-national ‘bourgeois’ one. Nevertheless, this replacement was done by means of the forms entrenched discursively in the previous system of classification. To make the new version legitimate was to render the previous representation ‘false,’ and offer instead a more ‘authentic’ representation of social reality. However, to prove something to be more authentic implied to fall to the same tendency to essentialize the concept and the reality it represents. I shall highlight how different conceptualizations of folk firmly entrenched in intellectual and political discourse built into essentialist assumptions.

I will spell out one aspect of the Marxist critique by looking at the transformations of the crucial concept of folk and folk culture in several concrete cases. I shall focus on the logic of the arguments and articulated attacks of some of the Marxist-Leninist scholars against the ‘nationalist’ and ‘bourgeois’ conceptualizations. By analyzing some aspects of this criticism, I hope to demonstrate similarity in the structure of argumentations and the common ground these visions share. I will suggest that by basing their arguments on naturalized dispositions of the class differences, the Marxists inevitably reproduced the reified version of the concept of folk. Additionally, the relation between an ideologically tuned ‘authenticity’ and the politics of folklore will be discussed. This will be illustrated on the case of folklore festivals and performing ensembles, as well as on one concrete example of the transforming versions of the folklore tradition concerning the legendary Slovak brigand Juraj Jánošík.

©2005, Last updated Sept-05