Republic, Folklore and Tradition
What Discourse of Authority in “France 1900”?
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Abstract
In 1900, there were around one thousand folklorists writing about folk traditions in France. While some were “pioneers” endeavoring to establish a discipline scientifically, most of them just indulged their curiosity on a part-time basis. All of them, however, contributed to an increasing interest in knowledge about “the people.” This invites us to question what folklorisme says about the nature of folkloristic discourse. Although it never met a “science of tradition,” folklorisme always mobilized an interpretation of the world in which tradition was considered an authority. Straddling the registers of a modernity it supported and a tradition it was forced to work with, the Republic did not, however, bank on folklorisme. There is something of a paradox here that needs to be clarified.
Contributor Notes
Laurent Le Gall is professor of contemporary history at the University of Brest. His work focuses mainly on two fields: 1) the democratic order in France from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century (A voté, Anamosa, 2017; ed. by Philippe Lagadec et Laurent Le Gall, “Qu'est-ce qu'un drapeau?”, Ethnologie française and 20&21. Revue d'histoire, 2023); 2) intellectual mobilizations around ethnology (Jalons pour une ethnologie du proche, Presses du CRBC, 2016; Tradition, Anamosa, 2024).