Short Abstract:

Popular erotica has frequently been associated with laughter and the comic. In this panel we intend to de-trivialize the category of sexual folklore by exploring its potential to reflect disturbing aspects like sexual violence, fear, shame, power relations, traditional censorship institutions etc.

Long Abstract:

Popular erotica (folklore ethically categorized as “obscene”, “pornographic “,

“unprintable” etc.) has frequently been associated with laughter, lightness and the comic. On the

contrary, building on the heritage of Friedrich S. Krauss and Sigmund Freud, the American

folklorist Gershon Legman believed that sexual jokes, erotic stories, riddles and folksongs offer

unique access into issues which are actually not funny at all, such as sexual violence, sickness,

fear, carnal economies, pleasure and pain, guilt and shame, but they also reflect power relations,

traditional institutions of censorship and their contestation, borders and regulations and the

transgression of those borders and so on. Moreover, if folklore always accommodates a historical

component, then the way popular erotica reflects the dominant ideas and crises of the time

constitutes a particular sample of sensibility, one that organizes meaning according to its themes

and concerns, indeed revealing social, cultural and historical tensions in a new, distinct light.

In this panel we intend to de-trivialize the category of sexual folklore by exploring its

potential to highlight such disturbing aspects. We welcome contextual interpretations, case studies,

relevant fieldwork experiences accounts, but also reflections on significant moments in the history

of local ethnologies as well as theoretical reflections on the matter.

Propose paper