Study Day: Popular Culture and Literature: Universal and Particular Features - Protocol of study day
Organising section: 1 Text and context
Organisers: Prof. Dr. Stefan Leder, PD Dr. Hans Harder, Dr. Asma Hilali
Study day subject: Popular Culture and Literature: Universal and Particular Features
Place: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, seminar room
Time: April 12, 2006 13:00-18:00
Participants: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Paul, Prof. Dr. Stefan Leder, Sourav Kargupta, Felix Otter, Lutz Greisiger, Nicole Keusch, Dr. Susanne Klien, Dr. Elvira Wakelnig, Kai Porwoll, Dr. habil. Ildikó Bellér-Hann, Antje Lenora, Prof. Dr. Christian Oberländer, Nicky Göttling, Inga Beinke,Thomas Anzenhofer,
Structure of the study day:
After a short introduction by session chair PD Dr. Hans Harder there were several papers presented and individually discussed. (In this protocol either the abstracts submitted beforehand by the participants or a short summary of the individual presentations are provided.) The session was subsequently closed by a general discussion regarding the topic of the study day.
Individual papers and discussions:
1. Dr. habil. Ildikó Bellér-Hann - Problematising Popular Culture
Summary:
The presentation of Dr. Bellér-Hann consisted of three parts. First she presented different approaches to define the term "popular" in cultural studies and history. She then problematised the notion of the term "popular culture" with regards to the emergence of this term in Europe (Peter Burke). Concludingly she showed different approaches to the topic of "popular culture" for people focussing on texts.
Discussion:
Sourav Kargupta mentioned 3 points in his comments on the presentation. a. That it would not be wise to conflate the two categories:
- (a desire to ’discover’) authentic ’culture’ produced by the ’people’ and
- (a desire to ’produce’) marketable popular culture which will be bought and consumed by the people.
Cat. A was directly linked to nationalist ideology as indicated by Hans Harder and can be called ’folk-culture’ or ’people’s culture’, but is different from ’popular culture’ which is unthinkable without the means of mass reproduction of artefacts (like printing machine, CD/DVD burner etc.) which makes the accessibility of the cultural products like books, films really ’democratic’ (cp. Walter Benjamin’s famous essay ’Art in the Era of Mass reproduction’). This category should not be called "pop culture", but rather "people’s culture" or "folk culture".
b. That the word "culture" was once used only to mean high and refined culture. At least in the English-speaking world, this starts off from the classic book by Mathew Arnold Culture and Anarchy, where Arnold placed culture as ’binary opposite’ to ’disorder, anarchy, unreason’ and also mentioned that the new middle class will lead the way.
c. That Dr. Bellér-Hann did not mention the most revolutionary theoretical intervention of the cultural studies approach, which was the foregrounding of ’culture’ as a part of the ’base’ in the Marxist base-superstructure model. This assertion, of course went against the orthodox Marxist view that the base only consists of economic elements.
2. Antje Lenora - Features of the popular in medieval Arabic narrative
A summary/abstract will be provided on the centre website soon.
Discussion:
Dr. Asma Hilali commented that Antje Lenora’s presentation about the Sira evokes some common points with hadith:
- style: vocabulary, since we find non-arabic words (Fârsî, different Arabic dialects...)
- content: topics of daily life: food, perfume, music
- context of transmission in the circles of story-telling: participation of the public in the recitation of hadith. But in contrast it is not possible
a. to distinguish two classes of hadith: the popular hadith vs. high hadith (as the classical authors want us to believe).
b. to confirm that official hadith exist before the popular transmission of hadith (as the classical authors also want us to believe).The canonical hadith can be used in popular context of recitation. In the same time, there are traces of the popular hadith (apocryphal traditions) in the canonical texts. It is difficult to determine the boundaries between the two types of texts and to determine the process of popularization of hadith.
Dr. Hilali did not agree with the idea of Antje Lenora concerning the link between the oral and the written form of the transmission of popular texts. She stressed that the written form is more than a technique of memory; it consists to a different relation to the text and to the history. It’s a different position in the world/word.
Concludingly Dr. Hilali asked about the relation between stylistic aspects of the sîra and the transmission of the text.
3. Felix Otter - Is There Popular Literature in Sanskrit?
Abstract:
The proposed title of my contribution is ’Is there popular literature in Sanskrit?’ The trouble is that Sanskrit ceased to function as the first language of any considerable proportion of the Indian populace at a rather early date. So, if by ’popular literature’ we understand literature that is widely read (or listened to), it is clear that Sanskrit literature by definition doesn’t fit the description.
That is not to say, however, that there are no Sanskrit texts that either (1) are considered popular today - circulating in numerous translations, for example, or (2) bear all the hallmarks of popular literature in terms of style etc. Obviously, there seems to be a contradiction here somewhere, and that is what I am going to focus on.
To illustrate this I am going to read two popular stories from Sanskrit literature.
4. Kai Porwoll - Popular Culture in Japan: contemporary developments
Abstract:
In the beginning of the 1990s Japan seemed to be on top of the world if at least in economic terms. After decades of catch-up to the industrial and technological level of the Western industrialized countries Japan was prospected as a new leader, a real challenge to the Northern American hegemony. This is reflected in a mass of newly published books on the reasons for the success of the country in that period, the authors included Japanese writers as well as Westerners and their fields of expertise were similarly wide-spread. Intellectuals as well as pseudo-intellectuals idolized Japan’s society to be the key model for the future.
However, the 1990s did not bring the expected change. Once Japan entered the Heisei recession after the burst of the bubble economy in 1992, the country was shaken by several catastrophes, like the great Hanshin-earthquake and the sarin gas attack on the Tôkyô subway by the Aum Shinrikyô (today: Aleph) in 1995. Last but not least the Asian banking crisis of 1997 left nothing of the perfect picture from the beginning of the decade. Whereas the Western world just shifted their focus to other countries, the Japanese writers were tossed into a deep pit of depression. The fact that many members of the younger intellectual elite of Japan belonged to the supporters of the Hindu-Buddhist group Aum Shinrikyô hit the Japanese public hard.
The developments of the first half of the 1990s are strongly reflected in the changing motives of contemporary Japanese popular culture. The literary writers and other artists - once again - set out to question their origins and identity. Motives mainly include occult tendencies, the hereafter and rather dark Japanese folk tales, but always work together with issues from everyday-life. The central aspects of the spiritual discourse can be characterized with "self-search" (jibun-sagashi), "healing" (iyashi), "salvation" (sukui) and "renewal/revival" (saisei). As examples, I shortly present the motives of the works of two authors, Abe Kôbô and Kirino Natsuo, as well as two animation films by Miyazaki Hayao, who are all well-known, not only in Japan, but also in Germany or the US.
If the integration of these new tendencies and motives into literature, films and other media resulted in creating a new genre is currently subject for discussion for several scholars in different sub-fields of Japanese studies. However, the new traits developed in Japanese popular culture after the crisis before the turn of the century seem to attract more and more audience. This is not limited to Japan only, but can be seen in a growing interest in Japanese literature, film, animation and other popular culture artefacts.
Discussion:
Dr. Susanne Klien added some points about the role of classical Chinese poetry in Japan. First it was written mainly by monks and then was gradually adopted by members of the higher classes as a prestigious pastime. Especially elite bureaucrats liked to compose classical Chinese poems because they could express their feelings more freely than in native poetry. For them, it was a medium of rebellion, too, since they could communicate their opinion about the government and official politics using this genre. In the course of time, however, classical Chinese poetry changed from an exclusive genre to something which was appreciated by growing parts of the Japanese population. Nowadays, there are innumerable groups of older Japanese from various social backgrounds who enjoy composing and reciting classical Chinese poems together. This is just one example of a genre which was highly restricted, prestigious and exclusive first and gradually evolved into a popular genre. Sourav Kargupta remarked that it would be interesting to investigate why manga has a universal popularity nowadays.
General discussion:
Dr. Harder asked the specialists of Arabic literature about the category of "popular culture". Prof. Leder precised that the categories "popular/elite" exists in the Muslim medieval society, but the concept of "popular culture" does not exist in the Arabic Muslim thought. However there are some categories closed to the signification of "popular culture": for example, we find the category of "popular poetry" or "poetry of the common people". The Arabic attributes linked to the "popular culture" evoke a pejorative judgment, a sort of contempt in opposition of an idea of the high culture. Dr. Hilali added that one common aspect between Japanese popular culture and Arabic popular literature is the motif of local heroes. There are different versions of one popular story in the Arabic world with various heroes. The variety of the heroes depends on the area of circulation of the story.
Sourav Kargupta repeatedly remarked that the discussants kept conflating and confusing "people’s art" (eg. folk songs) and "popular culture" (eg. Harry Potter, Japanese manga).
Appendix I:
The general discussion was followed by a social gathering where the dispute did not cease to continue. Lutz Greisiger mentioned a point which was considered noteworthy here.
Jazz music began as a form of "folk music" of a marginalized group in northern American society. In the 20s and 30s Jazz became a major trend in popular music. Not only the Nazi ideologists considered Jazz as "Negermusik" and as cultural degeneration - theorists of the "Frankfurter Schule" criticized Jazz as a product of the "culture industry". Theodor W. Adorno saw the people ’dancing to the rhythm of their own suppression’. In the 40s Jazz reached a hay day of popularization in the US (Big Bands, Swing). At the same time small circles of musicians (re)constituted their music as a means of the emancipation of the black ’minority’ (Be Bop). From there Jazz evolved into a highly sophisticated art-form as which it is considered mainly by the European public. While Jazz in the US is still perceived as a form of popular music musicians often ’emigrate’ to Europe where the are acknowledged as authorities and even are appointed to professors at conservatoires and Universities. Within a few decades (and a relatively small spatial range) Jazz evolved from a feature of "folk culture" to one of "popular" and "mass culture", to a ’anti-official’ medium of social protest and to a highly estimated form of art and integral part of "official culture".
Appendix II:
Due to yet unexplained technical problems one commentary on the introductory note of the study day got lost in cyberspace. As a supplement to the study day discussion we decided to provide in this protocol also the missing e-mail of Lutz Greisiger:
Popular legends are playing an important role in the interaction of religious (or generally: socio cultural) communities which share common religious and cultural traditions. One could, for instance, write the history of Jewish-Christian relations merely in terms of the evolution of legends (and counter-legends), myths and folktales and their representation of the respective others and of the relations with them.
An example is the Late Antique Jewish legend of a soldier named Panthera who was said to have seduced Mary and to be the natural father of Jesus, thereby polemising against the Christian claim of the virgin birth. This story seems to have crossed the boundaries of Jewish and Christian traditions several times undergoing several metamorphosises. So it is integrated into genealogical lists of Jesus, extant in a number of Christian literary works, where Panthera is turned into the grandfather or great-grandfather of Jesus, thereby neutralising the menacing story. Some time later the motif of the adulterous parentage (involving a Roman soldier) was devolved from the (false) Messiah to the Antichrist. In this form it (re-)occurs in 7th century Christian apocalyptic texts but it is not clear whether this metamorphosis is of Jewish or Christian origin.
The story seems to be of popular origin but became so influential that it was received widely in ’official’ literature. Another aspect of the virtue of popular legends, even in religious/cultural interaction is their ambivalent relation with power.
A well studied example is medieval anti-Judaism. Popular legends can undermine authority and power, as was the case in the anti-Jewish revolts prior to the arrival of the crusaders in many towns and cities of France and Germany in 1096. Accusations of ritual murder, poisoning of the wells and the like, in combination with the crusadepropaganda caused pogroms with in numerous victims. This was against the interests of secular and ecclesiastical authorities who were economically dependent of the wealthy Jewish communities. Contrariwise citizenries frequently exploited those anti-Jewish legends and provoked such pogroms to expel the Jews and to disease them in order to get rid of their creditors and debts.
In a broader perspective we should clarify the notions of "legend" and "myth" and their relations to ideology. Furthermore one might ask for the relevance of popular/official in the context of the dynamics of fundamentalist movements.
Kai Prowoll