THE POETICS OF THE THEORETICAL IMAGINATION

In this paper I describe native performances of theories of art, culture and society among the Uyghur minority in northwest China, and discuss these theories as grounded practice. THrough analysis of the interrelationships among the form, content and context of theoretical propositions, I demonstrate that the ideas cannot be separated from the concrete performance events. Whether it is the physical imitation of repetitive sounds in the world from which people are believed to have invented language and music, or the use of images of trees to explain the growth and branching of evolving culture, while it recycles its own detritus much as a tree consumes the nutrients in its own fallen leaves, Uyghur theories cannot be abstracted from social context, bodily practice, and mental images without losing their evocative power.

I use insights from Uyghur theory to suggest how the metaphorical foundations of folklore and anthropological theories--such as social action as text, hidden transcripts, coding, frame analysis, dramatism, and performance--serve as poetic guides to scholarly thinking, but remain largely unexamined as to how they inspire and constrain theoretical expression. By comparing Uyghur and American theories of culture, I seek a more reflexive consideration of the cognitive and institutional forms and meanings of theory, and facilitate interaction between emic and etic theoretical constructions by revealing biases arising from scholars' assumptions about what makes a theory persuasive and useful.

Further, I suggest that a clearer understanding of what makes theory appealing and useful in our own scholarly activity should liberate folklorists from rigid adherence to the serious, the formal and the abstract in theory. If we acknowledge that concrete images, material activities and social performances are the stimulants and expressions of theory, we no longer need to rely on somber mystification to give our work value. Theory can be just as rewarding and enjoyable as the folklore material we study, because in the final analysis folklore is theories of the world put into practical expression. If we accept this about other people's culture, we certainly should be able to recognize it in our own.

CONNOISSEURS OF CHAOS: THEORY AS GENRE (Panel Abstract)

We have borrowed this title from a poem by Wallace Stevens, who made a literary career out of examining the the interaction between theory, the imagination, experience, and representation. The purpose of this panel is to stimulate some thinking about how we use theory to organize our performance as scholars. Theory is not just a tool for explaining what we observe in the world: it is an art for making scholarship persuasive, a common language for insiders that shapes our perceptions and investigations, a powerful set of myths and metaphors that make thought and expression easy and effective. Theory is usually evaluated in terms of its "truth," or accuracy as a model of the world, while ignoring the ways poetics, performance, and politics influence a theory's "success" or acceptance.

In this panel participants will explore ways to overcome the confusion of reality with its theoretical models, to reclaim a space for a true dialectic of discovery in which theory does not dominate reality with a priori research methods and explanatory principles, and to analyze some of the ideological and institutional conditions within which theories are produced. In particular, by considering theory as a genre of performance folklorists can turn their analytical methods on this central dimension of their own practice, and compare it more effectively with theoretical expressions found in other cultures.

In order to understand the practical effects and meaning of theory in scholarly research, the first presenter will discuss modes of theoretical explanation (overt or implied, predictive or interpretive), and the scholarly styles of engagement and resistance and construction of authority that accompany these modes of theory. The second presenter will investigate the theorizing impulse and its perils in a consideration of the academic dialectic between generalizing thinking and concrete particulars. The third presenter will explore the shifting ground of social practices and their objectification in scholarship. This scholarly objectification is particularly problematic in folklore theory because the categories of practice are always to be discovered and their status is frequently contested on unequal institutional terrain inside the academy. The final presenter will consider the poetics and politics of theory in Uyghur culture, and through comparison with American folklore theory and its social and institutional contexts, suggest the ignored practices that mystify theory and by denying its cultural contingency remove it from the play of interpersonal creativity into the domain of metaphysical commitment.

© Nathan Light 1996

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revised 3/8/2001.