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- Convenors:
-
Alf Arvidsson
(Umeå University)
Aleida Bertran (Latvian Academy of Culture)
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- Format:
- Panel+Roundtable
Short Abstract:
There is a politics of unwriting narratives: changing actors and agency, ascribing new morals and intentions, adding and excluding episodes. We invite to reflect on ‘narrative ontologies’ and ‘grand narratives’ through unwriting in multiple forms such as counter-narratives or regret narratives.
Long Abstract:
In the invitation for the panel, we called for attention to the questioning of "narrative ontologies" and "grand narratives," and welcomed contributions that reflect on unwriting narratives as a consequence of reflexivity in ethnology and folklore studies, as well as a general practice in society at large, and what forms this takes. The presentations included will give a variety of empirical examples and theoretical perspectives, spanning from the confrontation of grand narratives on the level of international politics with everyday experiences, over the deconstruction of established ethnological knowledge, to strategies for un/re-writing practices.
The politics of unwriting narratives can be described as questioning agencies and outcomes, problematising immanent tendencies and their general validity. Often this takes the form of re-writing: changing actors and agency, ascribing new morals and intentions, adding new episodes and excluding others. As a general tendency in society, narratives of unwriting can be conversion stories and coming out – stories, having the quality of negating previous stories of self. They can be the stories of collective shame and guilt, or the hastily made-up explanations in a crisis management. Unwritings and revisions may produce the problem of handling palimpsests: covering up or incorporating the unwanted facts that are still there, such as in the “stigmatized vernacular” of problematic heritage. Unwriting can also be a handling of life stories: re-evaluating and disqualifying what earlier was seen as turning points and decisive moments.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
Fairy tales are often perceived as heteronormative, reflecting and asserting gender and sexual norms. Yet, queer fairy tale fans are unwriting the fairy tale, viewing these traditional stories as remnants of a forgotten queer past, offering new understandings of queer folklore and the fairy tale.
Contribution long abstract:
Fairy tales are ubiquitous in society. From advertisements to video games, there are few storytelling mediums that the fairy tale does not permeate. As folkloric, originating as oral folktales or transforming from literary to oral storytelling modes, fairy tales reflect the world we live in, saying something about the conditions of life within a fantastical, utopic frame. Often, these tales express the realities of courtship and marriage, ending with a heterosexual “happily-ever-after” marriage union. Recently, scholars have begun to question the representation of sexual and gender norms in the fairy tales, examining the ways by which these tales queer understandings of gender and sexual identities and experiences through moments of rupture where our expectations of gender and sexual norms do not coincide with what the text presents.
My research seeks to understand how fairy tales are unwritten and “made strange” by queer audiences. How do queer fairy tale fans see themselves in tales that are supposedly heteronormative and patriarchal? For this presentation, I argue that fairy tales are used to think through temporality and history, where traditional stories are viewed as a means of disseminating a lost and forgotten queer past that is accessible underneath normative assumptions about these cultural narratives. In doing so, queer fairy tale audiences dismantle the heteropatriarchy of the fairy tale, revealing the ways in which these tales are full of queer voices and stories, offering new understandings of both queer folklore and the fairy tale.
Contribution short abstract:
Sámi narratives were for long time represented as collective, anonymous, and generalized. I have studied how three men In Jokkmokk, Sweden challenged this by performing at the annual fair from the mid-1960s until the 2010s, wanting people to hear stories from their home environment.
Contribution long abstract:
Sámi narratives were for long time represented as collective, anonymous, and generalized. In recent times, Sámi storytellers have performed in public, showing otherwise. The social force in the storytelling and especially in the yoik has primordial forces that survived centuries of oppression from the dominant powers in the north. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a generation of male yoikers I call the three tenors, from the Jokkmokk area in northern Sweden, and see their significance for the revitalization of yoik. In the narrative there is the language and it follows you throughout your life and is part of your story, you can also call it a future narrative, that is, you have the future in your story. Events and stories are, following Julie Cruikshank, something the narrator has been part of and experienced, which must then be interpreted to a listener, who in turn makes his interpretation. The narrator is himself, he usually talks about himself in the first person. Perspectives can shift quickly, also between performers. All stories have a moral point, but the narrator rarely speaks about it explicitly. The reader or listener must make that interpretation themselves. The stories create a world for the listener, provide an entrance to the narrator's inner framework and invite the listener to feel the meaning of morality. The three tenors have contributed to revitalizing yoik when it was not obvious to perform yoik from a stage. They did it because they wanted to present their stories.
Contribution short abstract:
Truth and ethical dilemmas of the folklorist in reflecting the narrators' vision of the past and historical memory are under discussion. It is a kind of metatext where the backgrounds and contexts of the already completed research “The Human Sausage Factory.” (2013) are analyzed.
Contribution long abstract:
Under discussion are the folklorist's dilemmas about ethics and truth based on the practice of previously completed research (The Human Sausage Factory. A Study of Post-War Rumour in Tartu (Rodopi 2013) when reflecting the narrators' vision of the past and historical memory. The presentation is a kind of metatext where the backgrounds and contexts of the already completed research are analyzed.
Rumors of human meat sausage factories operating in ruins after the war are traditional migratory legends that emerged in many parts of Europe after the Second World War. This story has been presented as fact in biographies and oral history reports and retold in fiction. This very contrasting us/them story has been part of the historical and personal memory in the consciousness of the older generation.
My group of interviewees was united by the desire to clarify the historical truth, defend the stereotypes and vision of the past of their generation. In most cases, this interview was also used as a criticism of society, in some cases also as compensation for one's own past traumas. While writing the monograph, I faced several ethical dilemmas: to what extent can I expose the gruesome images painted through the narratives, which amplified the narrators' arguments in bringing out their truth? To what extent can I associate a particular person with violence and xenophobia, which is condemned in society, and as a source of rumors and dubious information, and make him an anti-hero? Should I reflect in my research that the narrator lied?
Contribution short abstract:
This paper examines the story of Malaga Island a mixed-race fishing community off the coast of Maine, USA, evicted in 1911, in legend song, and history. While current-day rewritings of the Malaga story work to undo the othering present in prior ones, some continue to rely on a different binary.
Contribution long abstract:
Malaga Island lies in the New Meadows River off the coast of Phippsburg, Maine. For generations, it was home to a mixed-race fishing community, until 1911 when the state of Maine evicted its residents under the premise that they were “feeble-minded” and unable to take care of themselves and their homes and families, a decision motivated by the racist eugenics movement and an increased reliance on tourism in coastal Maine. For decades following the eviction, both descendants of the islanders and those on the mainland tried to cover up what happened, the former because of stigma and the latter because of guilt. For many people, the history of Malaga became untellable. In the twenty-first century, this has changed, and, although there are still some who want to hide the story, Malaga has received much attention among historians, writers, and artists in Maine and further afield. My paper examines stories, in the form of legend, song, and historical account, about Malaga’s residents over time and analyzes the motivations behind how they portray the islanders. Many of the older narratives told about Malaga and its residents in the years leading up to eviction and shortly afterward worked to cast them as an “other.” While many current-day re-writings of the Malaga story specifically work to undo this dynamic, there are others that, while still sympathetic to the islanders, unknowingly continue to rely on an “us vs. them” binary.
Contribution short abstract:
Narratives have ability to stop time and shake the earth. This one, about a (presumably) murdered person (presumably) buried on grounds belonging to my family, opened up a sudden and quite unwanted connection to post-war realities, cruelties, and memories that have been kept deep underground.
Contribution long abstract:
Narratives have ability to stop time and shake the earth. This one, about a (presumably) murdered person (presumably) buried on grounds belonging to my family, opened up a sudden and quite unwanted connection to post-war realities, cruelties, and memories that have been kept deep underground.
A short story, a sentence really, delivered during a pleasant evening over a glass of wine, had me crushing through the layers of history back to the 1940s. The story considered a person, identified as 'a Jew'. This is not a unique story, it is also not new. Throughout Central and Eastern Europe there are not only narratives, but also bodies, that are ignored, not spoken about, nameless, forgotten, general in nature and alluding to 'normality' of their existence under buildings, roads, hidden deep in the collective memory.
This presentation is an attempt to unpact the emotions of guilt, shame, and responsibility through a strange narrative that is rather preposterous and sensless, but (unfortunately) it makes sense in the spacio-temporal context that it exists in. A story of a murder that (presumably) occured around 78 years ago, still has a nameless victim and tropes that explain and excuse the context and situation of the occurence. The narrative positionings used in the story put the sense into nonsens, thus making in not only believable, but also inevitable.
Contribution short abstract:
Levi Johansson, one of the great folklife collectors of Sweden, honoured at home in the northern mountains, by The Institute for Language and Folklore Uppsala, PhD h.c. – but detested where he was a schoolmaster, according to records from the 1990s.
Contribution long abstract:
The representativity of the interviewer Levi Johansson calls for more knowledge of the person and his life as a schoolteacher. In summer vacations, a recorder of folklife in writing, he worked for half a century in his home community among the settlers in on the mountain border as well as in extensive parts of northern Sweden. Starting as a shepherd boy at nine around 1890, he was trained to become a schoolteacher in another distant community. Beside his autobiography, little was known, until the librarian Roland Tiger collected memories of him in the 1990s, revealing his double life. As much as the folklife recorder was appreciated in the mountain village and the academy, the teacher was disliked in the school municipality. Researchers before me have been puzzled by his interest in hygiene and sexualia, matters turning the interviewer into an interrogator. Problems to be considered: hunt for inbreeding, maltreatment of children, obsession of hygiene and sexual matters in his fieldwork, whenever opportunity. This led me to discover his hunt for inbreeding damages during the 1920s, when documenting Folk Types in field-notes, like any mainstream researcher in those days. But in 1947, when his book on the settlement and livelihood of his home community, was published, that chapter is fortunately missing, removed – by himself or the editor. At stake is the ethical consideration if there is an avail to reveal his dark side, justified for the purpose of representation knowledge, for the need to know the interviewer as a person.
Contribution short abstract:
This contribution aims to examine co-narratives of Greek resistance during the 1940s that do not fit into the grand narrative of resistance but are crucial for tracing the everyday experiences of partisans.
Contribution long abstract:
The paper shall discuss co-narratives in narrating Greek resistance movements during the 1940ies. The grand narrative of resistance in Greece is, as in other countries with a strong antifascist struggle during the occupational period, based on the heroization of male partisans, grand events and battles, re-producing a whole lot of patriotism and heteronormative gender attributions.
Narratives that do not fit into the grand narrative are not recognized by the official commemorative institutions and often by the former partisans and their descendants themselves. A closer look at resistance narratives shows, for example, that women's experiences are passed on when they fit into the image of armed resistance. Other acts of solidarity, activism and care fall between the lines, are only told in fragments and require dedicated listening, as well as caring piecing together by researchers.
Therefore, a methodological look is also taken at how seemingly fragmentary co-narratives can be translated and conveyed to a readership. Strategies are discussed that make it possible to make these co-narratives (e.g. women's narratives, narratives of those who did not remain loyal to the resistance groups) tangible and communicable. Walks, music interviews, the drawing of memory cards, narratives that revolve around objects of memory can be a way of capturing stories of everyday resistance and solidarity, of everyday experiences during the occupation beyond the grand narratives. Different writing formats, in turn like ethnographic poems, can be a way of conveying these narratives illustrating how they are interwoven into selection processes of remembering and forgetting.
Contribution short abstract:
This report examines the case of Boris Kinstlers, a member of the Nazi and Soviet security services, analyzing the practices of reconstructing the past. It explores impact on his son, Olafs, and granddaughter, Linda, highlighting themes of memory, responsibility, and divided collective histories.
Contribution long abstract:
The report focuses on the case of Boris Kinstlers, a member of the German SD unit in Nazi-occupied Latvia and a participant in the Holocaust, as well as an informant for the Soviet KGB after World War II. It will analyze different practices and perspectives on reconstructing—and, in some cases, not retelling—the past.
Previously suppressed narratives reveal B.Kinslers role as a double agent, working for both the Soviet and Nazi security services. Other accounts suggest that, in 1949, he was infiltrated into the Gehlen Organization in Western Germany, where he subsequently disappeared without a trace.
Among those affected by this unwritten history is Latvian chemist Olafs Kinstlers, born in Soviet-occupied Latvia in 1949. Never having met his father, Olafs escaped Riga with his family in 1988, eventually settling in California. For many years, he unsuccessfully sought the truth about his father. Another key figure is Linda Kinstler, the granddaughter of B. Kinstlers. Born in California in 1991 to a mixed Latvian-Jewish family, Linda is an journalist and a Ph.D. in rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Her book, Come to This Court and Cry (2022), has been widely praised and has gained recognition in non-fiction Holocaust literature in the West.
This paper will examine the interaction between the legacies of the Nazi and Soviet pasts, the memory space of individuals, families, and broader societies, and the divided collective memories of contemporary Western and post-Soviet societies. It will also address the imbalance between individual and collective responsibility and other related factors.
Contribution short abstract:
This presentation focuses on the shaping of the Palestinian Key, as a folklore symbol, crystallizing into one of the Palestinian national symbols. Situated in a field of contested narratives, the key became a symbol that embodies the conflict and symbolizes the Israeli-Palestinian encounter.
Contribution long abstract:
In my research I work on the theme of the Key in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Key has become a significant symbol in this conflict, mostly within the Palestinian context, as many families have taken with them their house Keys when they had to leave their houses during the 1948 War, known as the Israeli independence war, or the Palestinian Nakba, a disaster. Hence, the Key became a significant symbol within Palestinian folklore, as an object of memory and of hope to return to the lost houses. My proposed presentation will go through the shaping of the Palestinian Key, as a folklore symbol, crystallizing into one of the Palestinian national symbols. Following that, an analysis of the conflict's cultural and psychological mechanisms around the Key will take place, highlighting the variety of Israeli reactions to it and its symbol of Palestinian nationality as opposed to the Israeli identity, almost to the point of threatening it. Analyzing Key performances occurring during the last century allows new ways to view the conflict. Key performances are encounters, rituals, narratives and texts that involve the key as an object and a symbol. Situated in a field of contested narratives of nationhood and identities, the key became a symbol that embodies the conflict and symbolizes the Israeli-Palestinian encounter.
Contribution short abstract:
Speculative memoir blends real and folkloric elements to critique the false coherence of "happily ever afters" like fully recovering from abuse or overcoming grief. This genre evinces the overlap between personal narrative and ritual, remaining temporally and morally open and endlessly revisable.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper examines the genre of speculative memoir—first-person literary works that incorporate surreal and supernatural motifs and plot structures from folklore to locate meaning in personal, often traumatic life experiences—as rejections of “grand” narratives. Works like Carmen Maria Muchado’s In the Dream House, Sabrina Orah Mark’s Happily, and Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater pointedly frustrate genre distinctions, blending real and unreal elements in order to critique the false coherence of “happily ever afters” like fully recovering from abuse or overcoming grief. I argue that fairy tales are perennially popular texts for psychology and self-help because they offer, not meaning, but time: traditional storytelling shares key traits with the practice of ritual, in which transformation is made possible through the suspension, manipulation, and re-ordering of time, insulating the teller from reality and allowing for the simultaneous existence of multiple possible selves. Fairy tales, as collections of phenomenologically resonant images rather than predetermined moral arcs, are not an escapist genre but crucibles that root us in our bodies. Scenes of enchantment lull, scenes of horror arrest: motifs that make the story memorable fight the teleological momentum that pulls the story forward and drag us down into pure affect, into feeling without coherence. Memoir and first-person essays are an unusual, hybrid genre, an artifactualized performance, a literary work that derives its authenticity from re-staged or implied orality. Writers of speculative memoir exploit this liminal space to negotiate with expectations of a “life well lived,” offering fragmentary, polyvocal texts that resist closure and coherence.