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- Convenors:
-
Férdia Stone-Davis
(University of Music and Performing Arts Graz)
Lillis Ó Laoire (NUI Galway)
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- Stream:
- Bodies, Affects, Senses, Emotions
- Location:
- VG 4.106
- Start time:
- 29 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
The panel explores an aesthetics of dwelling in relation to hospitality, focusing on the balance of proximity and distance across cultural frames and considering the relationship between ideas and bodily existence, tradition and novelty, and movement between bodies, ideas and cultural expressions.
Long Abstract:
We inhale the world and we breathe out meaning" (Rushdie 1996). Just as certain sounds, gestures, and expressions are hospitable to certain forms of meaning so are songs, musics, stories, and aesthetics. They are embedded in different worlds and in different ways of being in the world; hospitality is a fluid, multidirectional dynamic.
Philosophical concerns deriving from the mainstream western tradition tend to separate ideas such as hospitality from aesthetics, preferring, in a Kantian sense, a distanced appeal to objectivity. Arguably, however, distanciation is balanced by the desire for appropriation; an aesthetics of dwelling would include such a balance. This panel discusses ideas of an aesthetics of dwelling by inscribing the body as a creator, a breather of meaning, in a linkage that acknowledges our existence as beings of thought, as thinkers of being. The study of folklore and popular culture contributes to this in a major way, revealing deeply ingrained human concepts of the aesthetic that continue to persist across cultures and that are everywhere present in contemporary mediascapes.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Ailbhe Nic Giolla Chomhaill (University of Limerick)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores Micheál Breathnach's representation of masculinity in ATU650. The enhanced masculinity of the tale's hero is interpreted within the storyteller's own Weltanschauung, showing the clear link between the narrative and the principles of dwelling in such a place at such a time.
Paper long abstract:
The Gaelic folktale 'An Peata a chaith i bhfad ar a Mhaim' ['The Pet who spent a long time on his Mother's Breast] was collected by Éamonn Ó Tuathail in Joyce Country, Co. Galway in September 1937. The storyteller was Mícheál Breathnach, a native of the Maam Valley, whom Séamus Ó Duilearga, founding director of the Irish Folklore Commission, regarded as one of Connacht's best storytellers. A variant of Aarne-Thompson-Uther 650, Strong John, the tale tells of a young boy whose mother suckles him for 21 years. The hero goes on to achieve great affluence and high social standing by combining superhuman strength with cunning shrewdness. He performs astonishing deeds of prowess throughout the tale and cleverly outwits the cruel farmer who tries to have him killed on various occasions. Finally, he returns home to his beloved mother.
This paper explores masculinity in this popular Irish narrative. The transformation from weakling to warrior allows the storyteller to display his linguistic proficiency. To provide a contextual understanding of the tale, the paper draws extensively on Breathnach's autobiographical accounts of his formative life experiences. The enhanced masculinity of the tale's hero is thus interpreted within the storyteller's own Weltanschauung, showing the clear link between the narrative and the principles of dwelling in such a place at such a time.
Lillis Ó Laoire (NUI Galway)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing parallels between popular beliefs about Gaelic poets and the liminal figure of the piper in the Hamelin legend, this paper shows that the aesthetics of reciprocity mediated through the persona of the artist/poet remains a cogent illustration of ways of dwelling in European society.
Paper long abstract:
An inquiry into aesthetics in the Gaelic world leads inevitably to the role of the poet as arbiter of alignments between the supernatural and natural worlds in medieval Gaelic society. The poet as spokesperson for the king mediated his communication with people and reinforced the balance between the fertility of the land and the well being of the people as signs of the king's right to hold power. A violation of the king's power resulted in failure of crops and general want. Consequently, the reciprocity of the king's power was reinforced by the poet in eulogistic verse. Contrastingly, a king's injustice was condemned by satire. In Maussian terms, Gaelic society was a 'gift economy' where the endless circulation of gifts reinforced and supported the social order. From this perspective, the paper reads the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin (Hameln) in terms of the Gaelic poet's attributes. The crosáin (fools/buffoons/jesters), for example, were known for their pied attire and poets in Gaelic society were also popularly believed to have the power to expel rats. By drawing parallels between popular beliefs about Gaelic poets and the liminal figure of the piper in the Hamelin (Hameln) legend, this paper will show that the aesthetics of reciprocity mediated through the persona of the artist/poet remains a cogent illustration of ways of dwelling in European society, that predate capitalism and that still continue to inform our attitudes today.
Férdia Stone-Davis (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores Irish Traveller song in Galway, where traditionally, in the flux of dwelling, music was bound up with hospitality. The nomadic way of life has changed but song remains a powerful vehicle of movement, reinforcing connections with family and with the travelling way of life.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores an aesthetics of dwelling through Irish Traveller song in a Galway community. Traditionally Irish Travellers identified as nomadic and the practice of music enabled different processes of dwelling: making music allowed them to narrate aspects of their life, including its sorrows and joys; it formed a process of familial and community bonding; it accompanied the daily and seasonal activities needed to home-make; it provided a means of acquiring sustenance and money as they moved from place to place. In the flux of dwelling, music, and song in particular, was bound up with hospitality, including that between Irish Travellers and settled communities, changing environments, and kin, both living and dead. Although the nomadic way of life is no longer possible in the way it once was, as Irish Travellers have been assimilated into society by being housed, song remains a powerful vehicle of movement, reinforcing connections with family and with the travelling way of life through its capacity to draw the distant into close proximity.
Ryoto Akiyama (The Graduate School of Letters of Osaka University )
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the ways in which the brass players dwell in the Posaunenchor, namely, a congregational brass band. Its music making is a social interaction, a form of dwelling with hospitality. Posaunenchor mediates the sense of being together and being accepted as a space of hospitality.
Paper long abstract:
Hospitality appears various forms. This paper explores an aesthetics of dwelling in relation to hospitality and through the case of brass band, though brass band is not immediately associated with this theme.
I will demonstrate the ways in which the brass players dwell in the Posaunenchor, namely, a congregational brass band in German protestant Church, based on my ethnographic fieldwork findings in Germany, and will try to describe how hospitality is emotionally and bodily shared with the brass players through their music making. Although Posaunenchor is commonly regarded as the music which signifies the words of the God, what is the most significant point of Posaunenchor is for the brass players to share a sense of being together and being accepted.
The music making of Posaunenchor is a social interaction, a form of dwelling with hospitality. Any players with a wide range of social backgrounds, age groups, and levels of musical ability feel accepted in the group and being in the sound. Through this form, the players experience the sense of intimately being together through their music making. As Ingold precisely said, sound is not an object of our perception, but "the medium of our perception" (2007: 11). This paper will show how Posaunenchor mediates the sense of being together and being accepted as a space of hospitality.
Tsz Wong (University of Göttingen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the developing of ‘The Spirit of Lion Rock’ from the song ‘Below the Lion Rock’, how its meaning and representation tangled and further evolved from 70s till recent time under the scope of Negus’s Mediation; and how the song became a representation of Hong Kong and Hong Konger.
Paper long abstract:
'Below the Lion Rock' was originally the theme song of RTHK's 70s TV production with the same title, yet the song transcended through time and was repeatedly reinterpreted especially in times of major social-political issues, for instance: Hong Kong's handover in 1997, SARS aftermath in 2003, and Umbrella Movement in 2014; it became an unofficial song representing Hong Kong and Hong Konger. This paper begins with the mediation and articulatory process (Negus: 1996) since the creation of the song. Mediation could also be seen in the further development of 'The Spirit of Lion Rock' derived from the song's lyrics - spirit of mutual support, enduringness, and persistence; a term often endorsed by Hong Kong government and local political elites to foster social cohesion. Yet such 'pacifying' agenda was often rejected by the pro-democratic oppositions. Since 2003's Hong Kong 1 July protests, pro-democratic protestors and political activists often use the song as a symbol to defy the establishment. During the 2014 Umbrella Movement, the song was sung by protestors right after a giant banner to call for universal suffrage was hung on top of the Lion Rock - a remarkable symbol of bringing 'The Spirit of Lion Rock' from 'Below' back to the top. This paper explores how 'Below the Lion Rock' has transcended beyond lyrical and melodic intensities into a social-political complex of mediated connections which produces new meanings to the sphere of such interactions.
Aisling Ní Churraighín (National University of Ireland, Galway)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the role of the family homestead in the professional collection of folklore in Teelin, south-west Donegal (1935-1975) and indeed vice-versa, focusing on the renowned folklore collector Seán Ó hEochaidh (1913-2002) and the Ó Beirn family of Iomaire Mhuireanáin.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the role of the rural visiting house as an agent to the enterprise of national folklore collection in Teelin, south-west Donegal, during the years of the lrish Folklore Commission (1935-1975). Seán Ó hEochaidh (1913-2002), one of the most successful collectors of the IFC and a native of Teelin, flourished as a collector thanks to the hospitality afforded to him by numerous folkloristic networks in dwellings across Donegal. Ó hEochaidh's field diaries highlight the significance of folkloristic networks in Teelin as he was often assisted by his second cousins, siblings, Conall Ó Beirn and Máire Ní Bheirn whose homestead was one of the primary visiting houses in the locality. The 1940s saw the intimate hearthside of the Ó Beirn family dwelling quickly transform into an international stage for narration, attracting the BBC, The Picture Post and internationally renowned Swiss linguist Heinrich Wagner
In his reassessment of James Delargy's influential lecture, The Gaelic Storyteller (1945), Michael Briody recognises Ó hEochaidh's field work in Teelin as a direct source for the talk and our understandings on the visiting house 'institution' in rural Ireland (2013). The Ó Beirn family partook in the national folklore collection from 1935-1975, sharing their dwelling space and both oral and material resources with the collector and extended network. In analysing Ó hEochaidh's professional yet intimate relationship with the Ó Beirn family dwelling, we can gain fresh perspectives on the collector's influence on local folkloristic networks and gendered spaces within the National Folklore Collection.