Spring 2010 Course Descriptions
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Folklore 162
Translation in Folklore and Culture
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Lee Haring
“I am convinced that the German Shakespeare today is better than the English,” wrote the German romantic poet Novalis. European literature, in the eighteenth century, applauded Macpherson’s translations of poems from a nonexistent folk original. The Grimm brothers selected folktale texts and rewrote their content for a readership of middle-class parents. In folklore and literature studies, translation is foundational. But so it is in every other discipline. In classics, philosophy, and comparative literature, the discourse about translation is monotonously evaluative: a translation is either good or bad. This course demonstrates through folklore that there is much more to say. As soon as a tale is written down from oral performance, it demands translation or interpretation. Any movement between two systems of communication (novel to film, e. g. The English Patient; drama to opera, e. g. Verdi’s Otello) is a translation. There’s always something than has to be interpreted, whether it is an African proverb, a folktale from Madagascar, a philosophical treatise, a sacred text, a poem, or a dream. There’s always some audience that needs the interpretation. In West African society, a royal spokesman must act as the chief’s mouth and ear. Isn’t he, and every spokesman, a translator? Some people think the essence of translation is that it conveys misinformation: how can we trust translations of oral folktales from "exotic" languages?
This course examines the fundamental role of translation, in this broad sense, in folklore; also in literature, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology. It brings together students of all these disciplines to ask, “Can everything be translated?” What, really, is the “conversation of mankind”? Can we understand one another? We retrace sequences of translation and interpretation of proverbs from Madagascar, Native American narratives, classical mythology, folktales from the Southwest Indian Ocean, and other attempts to bridge the gaps between cultures. Psychology enters with Freud’s contention that the language of dreams must be translated, in the setting of unequal power that was his consulting room. Philosophy enters with Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance, which combines the production of difference(s) with endlessly deferred meaning. Différance comes in every time an oral folktale is performed or a song is sung. As soon as we understand that language, or any other signifying system, is a system of differences, we notice translation coming into play. The course interrogates relations among different codes of communication and the ethics of mediation. What theoretical implications arise from the continual play of cultural forces?
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German 178
Semiotics
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Irmengard Rauch
No prerequisites. This course is strongly multi-disciplinary attracting students from both the natural and the humane sciences across the campus including the GTU, as well as independent scholars via enrollment in the Extension. Over the past twenty-five years this regularly scheduled Semiotics course has successfully accommodated/served both undergraduate and graduate students. Readings are emphasized according to the students’ levels, scholarly backgrounds, and fields/interests. The fundamentals of the study of semiotics; the semiotic tripod of medicine, linguistics, philosophy; and the Peircean paradigm weave the principal thread throughout the course. -
Folklore 262B
Folklore Among the Disciplines
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Lee Harring
Based in interdisciplinarity, this seminar uses the epistemology of folklore to develop a broad theory: that creativity, among the “folk” or among scholars, arises out of the blending, sometimes the clash, of distinct discourses. Folklorists act as though diverse intellectual traditions are fundamentally related and belong together: anthropology, literature, psychology, sociology, art and music criticism, and history. So what is their “discipline”? A systematic study of some area of capitalist life. The countertendency, now called interdisciplinarity, explains the very existence of folklore studies, which continually protests the fetishizing of anthropology, literature, and critical theory in university department structures.
A particular “linguistic turn,” the discovery of creolization, has expedited the countertendency. Linguists discovered that the languages called creole and pidgin develop through the convergence of diverse linguistic traditions, within specific situations of social contact. Moreover, creoles and pidgins, far from being “hybrid” or “broken,” and therefore inferior, are emergent, historically discontinuous, and autonomous. People who devise pidgins and creoles develop a capacity for remodeling and adapting. The discovery provides a model for understanding folklore studies, which were born out of the convergence of intellectual traditions. Having developed a borrowing capacity analogous to what happens in creole languages, folkloristics acquires the power to adapt and remodel political, psychological, and anthropological insights. Consequently, folkloristic discourse speaks to several disciplines at the same time. Folkloristics now embraces the study of multiculturalism, multilingualism, and communicative competence in ordinary life.
Any viable theory of world culture obligates us to assemble facts about the cultural convergence that is revealed where languages and traditions mix. Any viable theory of the intellectual world, as it internationalizes, obligates us to recognize that disciplines are converging. Consequently, folklore can (re)construct itself away from a discipline with boundaries into a pluridisciplinary or transdisciplinary network. The seminar will move through several fields. Psychoanalysis and structuralism demand reconsideration. Deconstruction, cognitive linguistics, and poststructuralism all connect with folklore studies to create a true interdisciplinarity.
