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REBUILDING AN ENLIGHTENED WORLD
REBUILDING AN ENLIGHTENED WORLD
Folklorizing America
BILL IVEY
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2018 by Bill Ivey
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ivey, Bill J., [date] author.
Title: Rebuilding an enlightened world : folklorizing America / Bill Ivey.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018017508 (print) | LCCN 2018018375 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253030153 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253029690 (cl : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH : Cultural awareness-United States. | Politics and culture-United States. | Enlightenment-Influence. | Folklore-Study and teaching. | United States-Relations. | United States-Cultural policy.
Classification: LCC E 169.12 (ebook) | LCC E 169.12 . I 94 2018 (print) | DDC 306.0973-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018017508
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For Susan
A vigorous culture capable of making corrective, stabilizing changes depends heavily on its educated people, and especially upon their critical capacities and depth of understanding.
JANE JACOBS , Dark Age Ahead
To understand the present is not altogether a minor achievement, and indeed may be the best we can hope for in gaining a vision of what is to come. If we can really know what today is like-if we can penetrate its depths, distinguish what is superficial and transient from what is enduring-we are at the edge of prophecy; we are at least in the realm where predictions can be made.
AUGUST HECKSCHER , The Flow of Time
The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step out of the frame.
SALMAN RUSHDIE , The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Contents
Prologue
1 Enlightened
2 Identity
3 Understanding
4 Negotiation
5 Stories
6 Listening
Afterword: Beginning Again 2018
Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Referenced and Consulted
Index
REBUILDING AN ENLIGHTENED WORLD
PROLOGUE
SUDDENLY, IN 2017, EVERYBODY IN WASHINGTON SEEMED TO be speaking my language. Josh Earnest, in his final appearance as Obama White House spokesman on MSNBC s Morning Joe , was asked by host Mika Brzezinski about reports that the incoming Donald Trump White House would close the pressroom, relocating correspondents to a space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door. Earnest answered that it was important that the new administration maintain traditions. A week later, RonNell Andersen Jones and Sonja West, both professors of law, elaborated on Earnest s point in a New York Times opinion essay, noting that there was one pillar of press freedom that Trump, now seems most keen to destroy: tradition. They continue, It is primarily customs and traditions, not laws, that guarantee that members of the White House press corps have access to the workings of the executive branch. This is why we should be alarmed when Mr. Trump, defying tradition, vilifies media institutions, attacks reporters by name and refuses to take questions from those whose coverage he dislikes. 1
This got my attention. Of course, like millions I agreed that we should be alarmed, but mostly I was startled to hear America s punditry framing political analysis in the terminology of my chosen academic discipline, folklore studies. After all, custom and tradition are folklore words, standing at the center of what folklorists pay attention to when observing the ways people work and talk in communities and groups.
In the fall, when NFL owners and players linked arms or took a knee in an act of protest and solidarity, we learned that although the law offered guidance on respect for the national anthem, there was no legal penalty for violating customary behavior. In late 2016 the New York Times critiqued the incoming Trump administration by observing that democratic institutions must be protected by strong informal norms, by unwritten rules of the game. 2
In an October 11 opinion piece, political scientist Greg Weiner sounded like a folklore scholar:
Customs are the punctuation marks of republican politics, the silent guides we follow without pausing to consider their authority. They operate in a space that is difficult for formal rules to codify. That the president of the United States speaks with caution and dignity, that he exercises the pardon power the Constitution grants him soberly rather than wantonly, that he respects the independence of law enforcement, and that, to the extent reasonable politics permit, he speaks truthfully-these are all customs , not laws [my italics]. Law is powerless to impose them and powerless without them. 3
Folklore scholar Lynne McNeill frames custom this way:
If you just openly picked your nose while your boss was talking to you, or if you greeted your date s parents by passionately kissing them, or if you sat down at McDonald s and tried to flag down a server to come and take your order-these are all things that our informal culture tells us are incorrect. This informal or unofficial level of cultural understanding is the folk level. Instead of laws we have customs; instead of guidebooks we have experience and observation. 4
For more than a year, President Trump had ignored and demeaned both democratic customs and their behavioral equivalent: long-established norms that established acceptable, traditional practice in politics and government. Just as customs memorialize critical behavior, norms constitute the accepted standard against which behaviors can be measured and critiqued. Just as customs and traditions are beliefs and practices sustained by informal communication, a norm represents a standard, model, or pattern: an accepted behavior that may be explicit-such as candidates releasing tax returns-or implied-such as the need for moderation, respectful exchange, fairness. Trump disdained daily security briefings, ignored long-standing protocols framing relations with China, and equivocated when asked about his plans to divest himself of investments and business-a widely accepted and important norm (and a matter of law for most government officials) designed to eliminate the appearance or reality of conflict between the new president s public and private commitments.
New York Times columnist David Brooks weighed in, invoking a more expansive folklore idea, lamenting the corruption of America s true myth. His take on the genre surprised me; it is close to what a folklore scholar might say:
Myths don t make a point or propose an argument. They inhabit us deeply and explain to us who we are. They capture how our own lives are connected to the universal sacred realities. In myth, the physical stuff in front of us is also a manifestation of something eternal, and our lives are seen in the context of some illimitable horizon.
Brooks then takes aim at an elusive target-the American myth: America is at the vanguard of the great human march of progress. America is the grateful inheritor of other people s gifts. It has a spiritual connection to all people in all places, but also an exceptional role. America culminates history. Nice try, but Brooks s formulation feels more mythic than real myth. Still, he is drawn toward a version of folkloric thinking. 5
My folklore studies colleagues understand the pervasive importance of unwritten tradition, but mainstream commentators seemed shocked to learn how much of our government of laws, not men, was in fact not memorialized in legislation at all, but rather inhabited a realm of assumed practices maintained through speech and face-to-face demonstration, passed through imitation and anecdote from one generation of leaders to the next. Political analysts once content to study law, treaties, and regulations now tracked affronts to custom, tradition, and norms. Throughout 2017 it appeared Americans had suddenly acquired an appreciation for the critical role traditional practice plays in the effective functioning of democratic society. Greg Weiner concludes that while most political theory elevates contemporary reason above all else rejection of the authority of custom is more dangerous than we realize because without custom, there is no law. 6 In turbulent times, when the thin conceits of civilization seem weak, we instinctively and wisely fall back on the communal reassurance of folk belief and practice.
This new prominence of traditional knowledge and behavior, and a related retreat from science, history, and other hierarchies honored by civilization, isn t just happening here. In fact, contempt for law and established order reflects a new set of challenges facing both international engagement and domestic authorities everywhere. But today we can clearly see the power of traditional knowledge in our own behavior, and the behavior of antagonists-revolutionaries and zealots determined to undermine Western influence. We have lived as though the official vocabulary of modern society and government-reason, science, law-frame all understanding, shape all behavior. But if our real life of culture and community is, in a sense, off the books -in a space of oral tradition beyond the hegemony of official rules, formal learning, and scientific evidence-we must step back and reconsider the way we see ourselves, understand other people, assess motives,