As one of the keywords of our discipline, the concept of authenticity appears in folkloristics quite often, suggesting a complex web of interactions, especially in the days of globalization, mass production, and neo-liberalization.
Not the scholarly views, per se, but the emic understandings of lovers of authentic folklore are at stake in The Paradox of Authenticity: Folklore Performance in Post-Communist Slovakia. At hand we have folk-dance as a representative genre, and Slovakia as an ethnographic site. In this book, originally written as a doctoral dissertation, Joseph Grim Feinberg treats the term “authenticity” in a post-socialist, or as he terms it, a post-Communist context, presenting the understandings of performers of folklore next to eclectic scholarly views on authenticity in a variety of disciplines. The idea of authenticity, the author argues, is rooted in the intentions of people, in folk-dancers’ claims of “returning to authentic folklore,” an idea that Feinberg characterizes as a contemporary movement in Slovakia. The performers accentuate the premise that, under Communist rule, the people forgot what authentic folklore is, partly due to the popularity of “stylized” folklore events organized and supported by Communist rule (he uses the term in the capitals, referring to the activities of the Communist Party).
Feinberg concentrates on the folk-dance performances in post-Communist Slovakia, particularly evidenced ethnographically in the city of Košice, juxtaposing the work of folklore performers with the performances conducted under the ancien régime. The author attends to the activities of the Club of Authentic Folklore Lovers (Klub milovnikov autentickeho folkloru/KMAF) at tane?ný dom, the dance-houses or cultural centers of folk-dance, where the performers and spectators gather to dance various village folk-dance styles. But the ethnographic sample in this study is not limited to this city and this group.
The idea of a return to authentic folklore comes across as an remarkable and challenging case, as the author delves into the processes, actors, and sites involved in the making of what the participants take to be authentic folklore. Feinberg takes the reader through the customary discussions of authenticity, as seen in North American contexts—a matter that I will return to later. Feinberg locates the concept of authenticity in the creative tension of many dualisms, especially those outlined and discussed in detail in his conclusion under the rubric “reflective authenticity” (see pages 187-202), a term he borrows from the Italian political philosopher Alessandro Ferrara (1998). Feinberg contends that in Slovakia, authentic folklore should be understood to be an intimate affair. Relying on his informants’ words and his participatory experience at the dance houses, he underscores that real folklore is not transmitted through mass media for an anonymous reading or viewing or listening public, but that it should take place in face-to-face contexts and must be passed on from person to person.
The book is organized into four chapters, which are preceded by an introduction and followed by two creative essays (one, in lieu of a conclusion). The author is attentive to the discussions on authenticity in North American folkloristics, and he enriches these through a presentation of European and East European scholarship on modernity and folklore, weaving (political) philosophy, sociology, ethics, and anthropological perspectives into this central folkloristic concept.
In the introduction, Feinberg presents a context of folkloric performance during the time of Communism. He endeavors to demonstrate that under Communism, folklore meant staged performance, rapaciously put to use as public spectacle. To bolster his arguments, he takes the reader through statements of the Slovak Communist officials as well as into the aesthetic views of Slovak novelists. In chapter 1, titled “The Paradox of Publicizing Folklore,” the author argues that in the post-Communist context folklore, here specifically folk dancing, is innately authentic when it is practiced in the intimate realm. Folklore, he argues, is no longer authentic as soon as it is brought into the public realm to become an object of the public gaze. In chapter 2, “Folklore as Performance and Organization,” Feinberg discusses problems involved in the performances and organizations of folk dances. He participated and observed as a dancing member of a folk dance group, combining participation and observation in his fieldwork. Chapter 3, “Folklore and Festivals between the Public and the People,” describes folklore festivals in Slovakia, with a particular focus on the Východná Folklore Festival, where amateur ensembles perform folk dances for an international audience. Here we see that the tension between public spectacle and the intimate domain creates a dilemma. In chapter 4, “The Poetics of Authenticity,” the author discusses the symbolic categories employed by his lovers of authentic folklore, describing the role of choreography and improvisation. Here, he delves into the ambiguities of authenticity, framed through concepts of presence, self-expression, style and skill, performance and anti-performance, internalization, and the composition of dances. The authentication process presents further ambiguities and dialectics, in such terms as publicizing/performance, politics/poetics, and public/people, which cannot be fully resolved in his analysis. These symbolic categories are not seen as conclusive but rather as blurring our understanding of the case study of Slovakia. Feinberg argues that the juxtaposition of intimate (people) versus public (spectacle) makes sense only in the presentation of folklore in contexts of modernity, where the frame of the public is included in the concept of folklore.
One can see this book as addressing problems of performance and the reconceptualization of “the people” in post-Communist Slovak folklore. But it is not a simple task to illustrate the politics of culture on display. Overall, the book signals the importance of ethnographic insight as well as aesthetic theory and political philosophy. Furthermore, Feinberg’s treatment of folklore performance goes beyond the discussion of public folklore in the United States as he weaves in eclectic literature on the topic. Among other sources, he draws on Søren Kierkegaard‘s philosophy of paradox and Theodor Adorno’s The Jargon of Authenticity (1973 [1964]). Last, but not least, the treatment of authenticity against the backdrop of sociological and philosophical stances is a novelty for readers in the United States. In particular, the author presents perspectives offered by Jürgen Habermas on the notion of the bourgeois public. This is perhaps something that North Americans are not accustomed to finding in discussions of public(izing) folklore.
These European frameworks should be read, however, vis à vis North American discussions, for example, those on “public folklore” (e.g., Spitzer) and “folklorists in public” (e.g., Kirshenblatt-Gimblett). Some folklorists might not have worked closely with the notion of intimacy as in discussions of “folklorismus” (e.g., Bausinger) and “fakelore” (e,g., Dorson), to offer two examples. Feinberg also references Regina Bendix, who notes that performance-oriented folklorists tend to present performed folklore as more authentic than unperformed folklore. Perhaps this is a result of these scholars not closely examining the tension between public performativity and intimate authenticity.
I find the author’s usage of the term “authenticity” without any quotation marks throughout the text interesting, and I suspect it to be a deliberate choice due to the “emic” identifications of his informants.
In winding up this review, I kept thinking about performativity and authenticity beyond folk dancing, which is one of the most “suitable” genres for public display (in festivals, for dance organizations, or touristic purposes). I wonder if the argument on intimacy and the will-to-authenticity can be sustained in the case of less canonical verbal or material folklore genres in Slovak folklore. Lastly, different settings for folklore movements, from the Baltics to the Americas, inform different political, cultural, and economic contexts, as a brief perusal of recent literature over the last decade shows. Joseph Grim Feinberg takes a less traveled road as he brings ethnography, philosophy, and history together, and he offers fresh insights on folklorization, authenticity, and publics. Overall, I find it interesting that anthropologists are delving into the study of concepts that are deemed central in folklore studies – often, it is the other way around. The author presents what I see as new literature for folklorists (or old literature, but perhaps new to many folklorists). But a note of caution is warranted: if readers have not yet encountered these sources, they may need to detour to these texts as they take up The Paradox of Authenticity. Folklore Performance in Post-Communist Slovakia.
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[Review length: 1359 words • Review posted on February 25, 2021]