Daniela PETROŞEL
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - daniela.petrosel@gmail.com
Kitschul. Trecut, prezent şi viitor. Introducere / Kitsch. Past, Present and Future. Introduction
Kitschul este unul dintre acele concepte, puţine, care refuză înscrierea în rigorile unei singure discipline, constituindu-se la intersecţia mai multor domenii, estetică, psihologia individului sau a colectivităţilor, sociologie, etică etc. Fibra lui interdisciplinară nu are de-a face cu trecătoare mode academice, ci cu varietatea formelor lui de manifestare. Căci kitschul atacă pe mai multe flancuri: degradează idealuri şi idei artistice, transformând Arta emoţiei estetice într-o pseudo-artă a dorinţei de consum. Modelează mentalităţi, cultivând mediocritatea şi devenind agent al răului în lume; când Hermann Broch [Broch 1969: 76] vorbeşte despre kitsch ca despre un principiu al răului, el nu are în vedere doar simpla deteriorare a gustului artistic. Vizată este o întreagă cultură a lenei generalizate, ale cărei consecinţe depăşesc cu mult sfera cercurilor artistice. Pe termen lung, kitschul promovează o cultură a emoţiilor digerate, a omului validat şi conservat prin alegerile lui, fără a fi scos – chiar şi cu temporaritatea trăirii catharctice – din lumea propriilor dorinţe. Iar consecinţele acestui fenomen sunt atât estetice, cât şi sociale. Anti-artă fiind, kitschul oferă un confort imediat, menajându-i individului sentimentul de autosuficienţă mediocră. Arta scoate individul din lumea lui şi îl lasă victimă în spaţiul problematizărilor; kitsch-ul vine el însuşi în spaţiul domestic al consumatorului şi îi confirmă statutul, valorile, opţiunile. Kitsch-ul este conservator, chiar retrograd, arta este progresistă. Ea mişcă mulţimile şi le scoate din amorţirea propriilor non-valori. Cum spune Roger Scruton, ,,Arta înnobilează spiritul omenesc şi ne prezintă o viziune justificatoare despre noi înşine, ne prezintă drept ceva mai înalt decât natura şi separat de ea” [Scruton 2017: 61]. Kitschul se vinde drept artă, înşelând consumatorii, căci îi lipsesc, cel puţin, trăsăturile inerente oricărui demers artistic: febra inovaţiei şi un act al receptării fundamentat pe distanţare critică şi defamiliarizarea receptorului. În locul acestora, el propune o identificare facilă privată de fapt de trăire estetică, o parodie a catharsisului (Theodor Adorno).
Camille BÉGUIN
Université Côte d’Azur, SIC.Lab Méditerranée (UPR 3820) - beguin.camille@gmail.com
Marbres antiques en couleurs : « kitsch » aujourd’hui, légitimes demain ? / Antique Marbles in Colours: “Kitsch” Today, Legitimate Tomorrow?
Abstract: In 2019, The Museum of Mediterranean Archeology in Marseille opened its new permanent exhibition, which offers visitors the opportunity to (re)discover its collections in a new light – with their original colors : “Thus, contrary to this diaphanous Antiquity, we have to exercise a colossal effort of imagination to glimpse what the colorful environment of the Ancients could look like, what they like to see and which, for us, is more akin to “kitsch” than to the ideal splendor of our ancient imagination”, specifies one of the texts in the exhibition. The use of this notion (frequent in this context) raises questions: what does it really refer to and what does it cover when it is associated with works from the past? Can antique marbles be polychrome without being kitsch? To answer these questions, our analysis is based on a corpus made up of interviews and observations. Through the data collected, we understand that polychrome antique marbles are considered kitsch because the color transforms an idealized past into a commercial Antiquity, and works of art into consumer products. But above all, the field shows that polychrome antique marbles are considered kitsch because they are unusual – “kitsch” then designating an ephemeral state.
Keywords: ancient marbles, polychromy, kitsch, transition.
Samia GRIMIT
Université Abdelmalek Essaadi, Tétouan, Maroc - agrmit@gmail.com
L’oeuvre kundérienne face à l’utopie kitsch / The Kundersonian Work Facing the Kitsch Utopia
Abstract: The concept of the kitsch is one of the central themes in Kundera’s novels, particularly, in Unbearable Lightness of Being. The author denounces all attitudes of kitsch because he considers it as an enemy of art. The men-kitsch presented by Kundera is a person who looks for a perfect image. He tends to exclude everything which may be unacceptable in human existence. He creates his own world where everything is in harmony with his aspirations. Therefore, the aim of this article is to study the anti-kitsch attitude in the novels of Kundera.
Keywords: kitsch, anti-kitsch, Kundera.
Emanuela ILIE
Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” din Iaşi - iliemma@yahoo.com
Kitschul, răul absolut şi lumea distopică / Kitsch, Absolute Evil and the Dystopian World
Abstract: At a first glance, the touch points between kitsch and dystopia are quite few. The dark and unsettling universe of this species that proposes, in summary, the image of a perfectly evil world seems to be created by an authorial instance for which ideas such as waste, opulence or “relaxation hedonism” [Călinescu 2017: 275] are totally foreign to it, while austerity seems to be, on the contrary, a letter of law. The result of his demolishing projections appears in the form of a grim fictional world, where lives a humanity for which the cruelty of hopelessness seems to be one of the essential conditions of survival in a limited, rigid, pauper space. A dark, cruel world, in which habitation involves coercion and strict obligation to comply with harsh rules, but freedom of organization and expression is impossible, and any human being is forced to develop with objects either an ascetic
relationship, or a strictly functional/cybernetic one, and by no means a kitsch one. [Moles 1980: 26-30] Looking at things in depth, however, such a parallel is not at all difficult to achieve. Both the creator of a dystopian world, and that of a kitsch universe, work with a certain stylistics of evil (be it deeply ontological, strictly socio-political, broader culturally or just aesthetically), rely a lot on repetitiveness/stereotyping, cliché, falsification, but also implicit satirization of what they offer, constantly resort to counterfeiting and mystification, etc. Moreover, unlike most authors of dystopias (be they technological, scientific or catastrophic) of the twentieth century, the prose writers who chose to capitalize in the last few years on the structural and formal patterns of dystopia have managed to configure crowded, eclectic, almost suffocating dystopian universes, populated by human figures with attitudes and gestures suspiciously similar to those of kitsch-men. Such narrative choice probably has to do with the profound need to sound, in the good tradition of dystopia, a strong alarm signal regarding the aggravation of some collective diseases that during the pandemic have almost become chronic – from the striking increase of socio-economic inequalities and the inefficiency of some institutionalized forms of education to the hallucinatory, media-fueled consumerism, passing, of course, through the dependence on gadgets of all kinds, the obsession with rapid digitalization, etc. In order to reveal these correspondences, I will analyze one of the most interesting dystopias that have seen the light of print in the midst of the pandemic: Ligia Pârvulescu’s debut novel entitled Translucent, which won the “First Novel” contest, organized by Litera Publishing House in 2021, but also one of the prestigious Chrysalis Awards, recently awarded by the European Science Fiction Society.
Keywords: Romanian dystopia, kitsch, post-Covid era, hybridization, totalitarianism, utopia, spirituality.
Judith S. NEULANDER
Case Western Reserve University - jxn37@case.edu
Tchotchkes: A Study of Popular Culture in Tangible Form
Abstract: American-Jewish identity is commonly expressed in decorative objects that are neither liturgical nor traditional, but belong to an ethnic display category of inexpensive items known as “tchotchkes”. This essay examines the great intrinsic value of these mass-produced objects in negotiating, reflecting, shaping and reinforcing Jewish identity in contemporary times.
Keywords: American Judaism, material culture, popular culture, ethnography, identity.
Jean Marie YOMBO
Higher Teachers Training College, Bertoua, Cameroun - jyombo@yahoo.fr
Le kitsch dévoilé par Milan Kundera / Kitsch Unveiled by Milan Kundera
Abstract: Kitsch is a feeling that superimposes the illusion of an idyllic world on reality in order to satisfy the human longing for paradise lost. By casting a veil over the unsightly aspects of life, kitsch has the function of falsifying the authenticity of concrete experiences and devaluing them. Kundera represents it as a category that affects all aspects of existence, imposing itself as the plane of reference that should guide our tastes and choices. In order to oppose it, he uses the novelistic means of variation and irony: by varying the situations in which kitsch is revealed through the actions of his characters, the humour he uses allows him to lift the prudish veil with which kitsch covers the body in order to embellish it and present it without defilement. Likewise, as a good demystifier, he attacks political utopias in a jesting way, since they arouse feelings that make the world look different from what it is. Finally, the novelist ridicules artistic practices that make the work of art the reflection of ideas commonly shared by society. From this point of view, Kundera wants to reconcile man with the concreteness of life from which kitsch tries to separate us.
Keywords: unveiling, idyll, irony, kitsch, variation.
Marie Katienin COULIBALY NONTEHE
Université Félix Houphouët Boigny d’Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire - coulibalymariekatienin@yahoo.fr
Paralittérature et discours médiatique / Paraliterature and Media Discourse
Abstract: The tendency in Ivorian society to play down or laugh at a phenomenon considered serious or important is growing. It can reveal, apart from a trivialization of the facts, a particular rhetoric in order to achieve a particular objective, which is surely to draw attention to a fact or simply to raise awareness. This study is an essay on the analysis of press cartoons on migration. The press cartoon takes its source in the comic strip, a genre of paraliterature, which can too quickly be classified in a “sub-literature”.
Keywords: paraliterature, comics, press cartoons, migration.
Mariana BOCA
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - mariana_boca_ro@yahoo.com
Distant reading sau despre kitsch-ul ideologic postumanist / Distant Reading – the Posthumanist Ideological Kitsch
Abstract: In this paper I make the connection between three concepts with a very obvious ideological core – kitsch, posthumanism and what defines Franco Moretti through distant reading. All these theoretical representations are reflected differently in cultural realities. The aim is to identify in literary criticism called distant reading a symptomatic form of the radicalization of posthumanist ideology, by assuming a discourse and thinking specific to kitsch. Distant reading is thus about to transform from a theory of academic communities, into a form of popular culture, in the sense given to the concept of American multiculturalism. Therefore, the analysis focuses mainly on the concept of distant reading, launched by Franco Moretti. Kitsch and posthumanism are instrumentalized and evoked extremely summarily, from a critical perspective necessary for an effort to problematize the consanguine connection between distant reading and posthumanist kitsch.
Keywords: kitsch, posthumanism, distant reading, improved man, literary criticism.
Tudor-Cosmin CHELARIU
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - tudorcosminc94@yahoo.com
Kitsch şi cultură de consum / Kitsch and the Consumer Culture
Abstract: The present paper aims to discuss the concept of kitsch and the subsequent relativization to which it was subjected, in a succession imposed by an internal dynamic of the evolution of the phenomenon. Therefore, different critical approaches will be presented by providing numerous examples, many of which are innovative, considering that the discussed notion has generated some of the most nuanced perspectives which have gone from assimilation of many contexts to challenging and reformulating them, thus emphasizing the extremes of the later conception.
Keywords: kitsch, consumption, literature, taste, unoriginality, modernity.
Lucreţia PASCARIU/Alexandra OLTEANU/Manuela TICAN (URSU)/Oana IONESCU/Raluca BABII
Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, Iaşi - lucretia.pascariu@gmail.com/olteanualexandra99@yahoo.com/manuel.tican@gmail.com/oana_i17@yahoo.com/raluca.babii@yahoo.com
Romanul haiducesc al lui N.D. Popescu / N.D. Popescu’s Hajduk Novels
Abstract: In the light of the cultural changes that the 19th century had brought to the Romanian literary space, N.D. Popescu’s hajduk novels seem to be a harmonious mixture of different subgenres as historical, social, and moral novels. Therefore, by processing the historical document and the literary techniques specific to the Romantic movement, N.D. Popescu succeeds in emulating the local imaginary of the heroic figure of the hajduk. Also, the literary formula prevailed by N.D. Popescu had adapted the already used blueprint of the popular novel (dramatic dialogue, sensational plot). In this manner, the historical documents seem to be an artistic pretext for the hajduk rebellion.
Keywords: novel, melodrama, outlaw/hajduk, pulp fiction novels.
Constantin-Andrei PĂTRĂUCEAN
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - andreiconstantin150@gmail.com
Kitsch-ul în cultura populară a huţulilor din Bucovina – resurecţie a sensibilităţii estetice? /
Kitsch in the Folk Culture of the Bukovina Hutsuls – Resurrection of Aesthetic Sensibility?
Abstract: The popular culture of the hutsuls from Bukovina proves the integration in the ethnofolkloric dynamism that currently exists within the minority ethnic groups in the Bukovina area. As society evolves, values acquire a different meaning, and so it is inevitable that bad taste will not appear in the culture. Known as kitsch, illusory art does not avoid the hutsuls either, although this group seems to live in isolation, more than any other rural community, due to its scattered settlements on the mountains since ancient times. The popular culture of the hutsuls, like that of other minorities in Bukovina, does not escape the auspices of kitsch, both because of its incorporation into the world of multiculturalism and because of the lack of a lasting aesthetic education. In the hutsul minority, kitsch becomes a paradox, as it represents at the same time both a degradation of art and a proof of the continuity of tradition, which metamorphoses under certain aspects of contemporary art. Contemporary art is a denial of previous values, so we will see if kitsch in the culture of the hutsul is the expression of bad taste or simply exists as an expression of contemporary culture.
Keywords: kitsch, culture, Bukovina, art, dinamism.
Mircea A. DIACONU & Claudia COSTIN
Universitatea ,,Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - mircea.a.diaconu@gmail.com / claudiacostin@litere.usv.ro
(Despre) un model intelectual umanist: Otilia Hedeşan /
(About) a Humanist Intellectual Model: Otilia Hedeşan
Abstract: The present work represents the Laudatio for the Laurea Doctor Honoris Causa of the “Ştefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, bestowed upon dr. Otilia Hedeşan, a professor at the West University of Timişoara. A prestigious personality in the Romanian academic environment, with an excellent scientific and teaching career in the field of humanities in general, but particularly in the field of ethnology and anthropology, professor Hedeşan is an intellectual role-model, always concerned with her professional achievement. This text reveals the most significant aspects of her scientific and teaching activities or her membership to various relevant investigation projects; all of the above testify to the passion, devotion and vocation of a personality that increases the visibility of Romanian humanities within the international cultural environment.
Keywords: Otilia Hedeşan, humanities, ethnology, humanist spirit, prodigious scientific work, professional perfection, intellectual model.
Otilia HEDEŞAN
Universitatea de Vest din Timişoara - otilia.hedesan@e-uvt.ro
Cum am devenit etnolog? (Despre) trei contexte / How did I become an Ethnologist? (On) Three Contexts
Abstract: The author presents the field research – organized as a folklore camp – in which she participated in the summer of 1982. The long discussions carried out with the peasants from the villages Mălini and Băişeşti (Suceava county) during this folklore camp determined her to really „change her life”. Consequently, she has decided to become an ethnologist, even before she had a very exact perspective on this science. The author’s memoirs are presented in relation with three broad contexts: (a) within the wider framework of the organization and functioning of higher education in Romania during the last decade of communism, with a
special focus on social sciences and humanities; (b) as part of the recent history of the humanities in Romania, implying here the complicated relations between official studies of folklore, ethnology and cultural anthropology; (c) Bukovina region and its traditions at the end of the twentieth century and, of course, at the end of the millennium.
Keywords: Romanian communism, Bukovina region, history of Romanian ethnology, folklore camp, Romanian studies.
Anton ADĂMUŢ
Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” din Iaşi - antonadamut@yahoo.com
Despre ierarhia valorilor în „Doctrina substanţei” / On the Hierarchy of Values in the “Doctrine of Substance”
Abstract: The problem of substance is the most difficult issue raised by the theme of theconcrete, because substance is both nous and history, and freedom and necessity. Since it cannot be given itself, it remains for the substance the ability to be possessed by mediation, and we find these in meanings. The number of meanings of an object is indefinite, and this indefiniteness requires a selection of meanings and the realization of a hierarchy in what becomes the hierarchy of values. The issue raised by substantialism is not a new one: what are the criteria according to which we operate the hierarchy of meanings / values? The criterion is that of the structure of concrete. We cannot think concretely if we do not make an in-depth adjustment to what the constitutive structure of the concrete means. Absolute presence is a given, an objectification, and the meanings of the given are all concrete and of different values. All these structures essential to the concrete and unified by substance will form the substantial structures. They are polarized on the devolving axis and bears polarization due to the polarization of the substance itself towards the pole of nous. This is more substantiated than the pole of necessary reality. The devolving axis transmits to the
substance the character of bidimensionality, and its resultant is the necessity-nous function. On this resultant, the substance behaves differently. As long as it is the pole of the necessary reality, the substance realizes the concrete structure, the presence, and on the nousic dimension, seen as a knowing pole, its nousic (noocratic) value is realized. There are degrees of reality in relation to the need-nous axis and they can be best detected in the categories of the substance. The imperative of fullness (or of organicity) tells us that there are no privileged areas of the real, that historical reality must be seen in its fullness. We are interested in the fact that, being all the values of the substantial body, their interactive hierarchy is given by organicity. Letţs see how!
Keywords: Camil Petrescu, noocracy, hierarchy of values, organicity, history, substance, concrete.
Mircea A. DIACONU
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - mircea_a_diaconu@hotmail.com
Ion Creangă. Mic studiu de imagologie? / Ion Creangă. A Short Study of Imagology?
Abstract: Published 185 years after Ion Creangă’s birth, the present study analyzes one of the writer’s stories, Ivan Turbincă, constituting a plea for a non-contextualized reading of the great classic.
However much he may be associated with the true spirit of the people, as Mircea Vulcănescu proposed in the 1930s (his retrograde, localist, national position still causes admiration today), Creangă is, before anything else, an artist. Even when the situations in the opera are dramatic, he builds, on well-known folklore schemes, genuine spaces of livresque emotion, located beyond any ideology and any updated reading. This is what the detailed analysis of Ivan Turbincă’s story demonstrates, which uses the tools of imagology and otherness, not to dismantle clichés and stereotypes regarding the identity of the other, but to reveal that the only thing that matters is the world that has become a text, and finally, a true show. The optimism that the work conveys, does not belong to ideology, but to the condition of art.
Keywords: Ion Creangă, Mircea Vulcănescu, imagology, otherness, the condition of art.
Ioan FĂRMUŞ
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - farmusioan@yahoo.com
Scurtă istorie a romanului modern. Procesul legitimării unei specii / A Short History of the Modern Novel. The Process of Legitimizing a Genre
Abstract: This paper is an attempt to tell the story of the novel’s long process of legitimation. Perceived for a long time by the poeticians of old as a genre that was not worth mentioning, because of its vulgar origins, the novel, in its modern form, has undergone a radical transformation that saw it, at the cross of the 19th and 20th centuries, at the top of the genre system. That is why I will try to point to the processes that made the novel what it is today: the dominating species, modernity’s offspring, at the same time a menace and an assetto the literary field.
Keywords: novel, legitimation, poetics, realism, modernity.
Anca-Elisabeta TURCU
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - turcuancaelisabeta@yahoo.com
Scurta trezire la realitate a artei germane: Neue Sachlichkeit / A Brief Awakening to the Reality of German Art: Neue Sachlichkeit
Abstract: The article focuses on the German cultural movement that was born as a response to Expressionism and the aftermath of World War One. Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Sobriety, intended to keep arts and artists away from the political debate through a
firm anchoring into scepticism and objectivity. Through an ironic twist of history, most of these artists were soon turned into victims of the National-Socialist persecution which eventually led to the demise of this distinctively German attitude in arts.
Keywords: Neue Sachlichkeit, German Expressionism, cult of the machine, detachedness, objectivity.
Alexandra Ana-Maria DIACONIŢA / Elena-Andreea ŞCHIOPU (MAFTEI) / Irina MAXIM (IOSUB)
Universitatea „Al. I. Cuza” Iaşi - alexandra.diaconita16@yahoo.ro / andreea.mdm@gmail.com / irina.m.iosub@gmail.com
Victor Eftimiu şi Demostene Botez, scriitori de literatură pentru copii / Victor Eftimiu and Demostene Botez, Writers of Children’s Literature
Abstract: The children’s literature in Romanian publications fulfills a predetermined role, that of the formation of the young lecturer, by using symbols both from his current life and the fantastic one, to propagate him in a new world, most of the times that the fairy tale. Moreover, this type of literature is responsible for the dissemination among the young audience of messages with an ideological background. In this article we aim to highlight the contribution of writers Victor Eftimiu and Demostene Botez to the formation of children’s literature, considering two perspectives: analytical and panoramic, with the aim of presenting the writers’ own style. We observe, therefore, themes of nature, discipline, respect and discremination, which convey various teachings to the readers.
Keywords: children’s literature, story, tale, ideology, moralization.
Anamaria GAVRIL
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - anahert@yahoo.com
Biblia – Cartea simbolurilor / The Bible – Book of Symbols
Abstract: Critics and historians who have addressed Ukraine’s most important thinker of the 18th century have made numerous statements and comments on the importance of the Bible for Skovoroda’s thought. These efforts to emphasize the crucial role of the Bible in Skovoroda’s interpretation of reality are centered on the idea that the Bible is a symbolic world that cannot be understood in any other way than allegorically. The emblematic nature of the biblical images allows Skovoroda to interpret them as a species of divinely inspired poetry or fiction. He shows how the Scripture contains a multitude of images through which the truth is told differently and a text is created, a work that aims “to make spirit out of flesh”.
Keywords: Skovoroda (Сковорода), the Bible, allegory, symbolic language, theology, philosophy.
Otilia UNGUREANU
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - otiliaungureanu83@yahoo.com
Al. Macedonski. O structură individuală problematică / Al. Macedonski. A Problematic Individual Structure
Abstract: In this paper we aim to analyze some of the attitudes of the man Macedonski, through which he approaches the problematic psychology of Mannerist individualities. Acquiring a partially “educated” personality, overwhelmed by negative criticism, but satisfied that his name is on everyone’s lips, Macedonski projects through his way of being, many of the existential dilemmas of the Mannerist man. Self-worship and emphatic attitude become the core of the most controversial manifestations at the individual level. Therefore, in this part of the study, we discussed the poet’s relationship with temporality, the oscillation between dream and reality, the failure as a tragic end that pursues the destiny of the Mannerists, the dandy spirit, the mystification of reality and the deficient relationships with otherness.
Keywords: Alexandru Macedonski, Mannerism, dandy, alterity, mistification.
Claudia COSTIN
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - claudiacostin@litere.usv.ro
Aspecte culinare în basme populare din Bucovina. Reprezentări ale unui sistem socio-cultural / Culinary Aspects in Folk Tales from Bucovina. Representations of a Socio-cultural System
Abstract: Representing a cultural and social system, the foods from the Romanian folktales show the dimension of the identity of the traditional world. This paper highlights symbolic aspects and valences of the culinary dimension from fairy tales collected from the Bucovina region by Simion Florea Marian, I. G. Sbiera, Ludwig Adolf Staufe, Petru Rezuş. Sometimes influencing the hero’s trajectory, revealing his social status, his character profile or that of adjuvants/opponents and, sometimes, even that of the narrator – “witness” to the eventuality, the dishes/culinary elements become an identity in the narrative discourse landmark, a “vehicle of essential values” (Izard Bonte) of Romanians and/or ethnic communities in Bucovina. Equally important for the valorization of a cultural system is the presentation of the meal at the end of the fairy tale. Its pantagruelic dimension is eloquent in order to know and understand the real and imagined coordinates of the human universe to which the anonymous creator belonged. We consider that the mythical-symbolic and sacramental valences that food has in the sequences/stages of the hero’s initiation, in this world and/or in the orther world, also represent a significant aspect. Obtained in a natural or magical way (with the help of magical objects invested with beneficial valence), the dishes in the fairy tales from Bucovina highlight customs and behaviors specific to this mythofolkloric area.
Keywords: culinary references, fairy tale, cultural system, collective mind, identitary.
Codruţ ŞERBAN
“Ştefan cel Mare” University of Suceava - codrutserban@litere.usv.ro
Historicizing the Horse (II). The Tale of the Wind Horse (Choctaw)
Abstract: This article continues the analysis of the process of historicizing the horse in Native American cultures by exploring its representation(s) in a Choctaw myth – The Tale of the Wind Horse. The horse’s role in transforming tribal life at all levels generated a need to incorporate it in the body of knowledge that provided distinguishable identity and helped set differences of representation between various tribes. And since myths and stories were the repository of tribal knowledge, the horse was submerged deep into the mythical realm – an approach that manifested throughout all horse cultures – in order to make it logically fit in with a tribe’s narrative. In creation myths the horse was tamed, in a cultural sense, and made a familiar presence, in a historical sense. The horse was a new historical reality for the Choctaw; embedding it in myth was a method used to internalize it in the tribe’s narrative and the denouement shows a symbolic transfer of the horse from the mythical realm to the historical one. The analysis focuses on how the process of enculturating the horse was conditioned by one of mythicization and historicization.
Keywords: horse, enculturation, mythicization, (de-/re-)historicization.