A lecture by Konstantin Bogdanov. Spiritual Bonds: Folklore Metaphors and Modernization Traumas

ABOUT THE LECTURER

Hear a talk on the evolution of cultural traditions in the context of nation-building.

According to Konstantin Bogdanov, folklore is shaped by the role society ascribes to tradition. There are many scholarly definitions of tradition, but people invariably turn to it at the moment they realize how traumatic their present is. The definition of folklore studies is close to schizophrenic: it’s “what folklorists talk about” as well as “everything folklorists are interested in.” But no matter how we understand tradition and folklore, the social role of those two concepts is determined by the utopian idea of translating social reality into symbols and creating a “symbolic universe” made up of material and virtual constituents of cultural heritage. In such a context folklore (folk wisdom, popular knowledge) is naturally used to cope with challenges posed by modernization and social change, and acts as a tool for those in power to use for social, cultural, and ideological stabilization. This talk focuses on several episodes in the history of this controlling strategy.

ABOUT THE LECTURER

 

Konstantin Bogdanov is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Pushkin House), a doctor of philology, and the author of many publications on the history of culture, sciences and humanities, including O krokodilakh v Rossii. Ocherki iz istorii zaimstvovaniy I ekzotizmov [Crocodiles in Russia. Essays on the History of Loans and Exoticism] (2006); Vox Populi. Folklorniye zhanry sovetskoi kultury [Vox Populi. Folklore Genres in Soviet Culture] (2009); Iz istorii klyaks. Filologicheskiye nablyudeniya [From the History of Blots. Philological Observations] (2012); and Peremenniye Velichiny. Pogoda russkoi istorii I drugiye syuzhety [Variables. The Weather in Russian History and Other Stories] (2014).

How to take part

Admission free, please register in advance

Priority booking for GARAGE cardholders.To become a cardholder, please email members@garagemca.org.

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