Cheeky Behavior: The Meaning and Function of ‘Fartlore’ in Childhood and Adolescene
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Abstract
Using an interdisciplinary framework drawn from psychoanalysis, folkloristics, and sociology, this essay seeks to elucidate the means by which children and adolescents attempt to circumvent, challenge, or cope with adult authority in their confrontation of social taboos while establishing their own identities. Through a survey of historical and contemporary texts, I interpret the projective functional purpose and meaning of fartlore in the social worlds of pre-adults. In doing so, I contend that the data I have accumulated represents a distinct genre within children’s and adolescent folk culture in which folklore about bodily functions — especially those with scatological themes — is ubiquitous. In addition, my study of fartlore intends to demonstrate that fartlore is a subversive and compensatory genre that is a reflexive manifestation of unspoken societal attitudes and anxieties (see Sidoli 1996). Ethnographers should consider the value of collecting folklore for the broader interpretation of gendered and life-course experiences (including in national contexts) and especially those areas that dwell outside of mainstream scholarship boundaries in their future research endeavors.
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