Lecture image placeholder

Premium content

Access to this content requires a subscription. You must be a premium user to view this content.

Monthly subscription - $9.99Pay per view - $4.99Access through your institutionLogin with Underline account
Need help?
Contact us
Lecture placeholder background
VIDEO DOI: https://doi.org/10.48448/b93s-k886

technical paper

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

November 18, 2021

Baltimore, United States

In Racialized Language Discourse, What Counts as Authority and Evidence?

keywords:

cultural politics

circulation

folklore

This panel addresses so-called “folkloric” forms of evidence and authority in contemporary political and legal contexts. Scholars have historically seen such authority in supposedly modern contexts as acts of transplantation•character toys of Taiwanese gods are transplanted gods, Berkeley-based shamans are New Age re-creations of older roles. However, this overlooks the intricate ways in which political relations and folkloric notions of authority and evidence are co-constitutive. The speakers are exploring two intertwined questions about the mutually constitutive links between social relations and contexts, namely: How, and with what baggage, do folkloric indexes travel from context to context? And, to what extent do particular social relations and folkloric indexes recursively constitute their contexts? To address this question ethnographically, the authors explore how folkloric authority•when framed as traditional and locatable--is promised and performed in contexts constructed as modern and displaceable. Following Briggs' insights in his 2021 book, Unlearning, this panel examines how people engaged in establishing persuasive political frameworks increasingly find the dichotomy between the traditional and the modern good to think with, often implicitly invoking the dialectic processes inherent to this dichotomy in efforts to understand widespread economic, legal, and social transformations, and propose alternatives. While the comparison between tradition and modern seems endemic to the political moment, the techniques with which people create this dichotomy are quite divergent, techniques which produce different forms of authority, different gendered relations, as well as different sorts of hybrid contexts. Not all techniques for producing such dichotomies are equally effective, or mutually compatible. Sometimes these diverse political projects resonate with each other for a time, creating productive yet finite collaborations. The connections between authority and folklore are culturally specific, and it is this specificity that structures both how well forms of authority travel, and how well they articulate with putatively modern contexts.

Downloads

Transcript English (automatic)

Next from AAA Annual Meeting 2021

Intergenerational Re-Signification & Changing Political Contexts in Northwest China
technical paper

Intergenerational Re-Signification & Changing Political Contexts in Northwest China

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

Michael Zukosky

18 November 2021

Similar lecture

Cute, Sexy, Composite: Recent Transformations of the Goddess Mazu in Taiwan
technical paper

Cute, Sexy, Composite: Recent Transformations of the Goddess Mazu in Taiwan

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

Teri Silvio

18 November 2021

Stay up to date with the latest Underline news!

Select topic of interest (you can select more than one)

PRESENTATIONS

  • All Lectures
  • For Librarians
  • Resource Center
  • Free Trial
Underline Science, Inc.
1216 Broadway, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10001, USA

© 2023 Underline - All rights reserved