1 a: an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom) b: a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the past that are commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable2: the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction3: cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions4: characteristic manner, method, or style
I begin with this lexical definition of tradition because I want to make a distinction between the philosophical and the historical/anthropological. In my own work I mainly use tradition in the sense of 4, while the readings for this week are using it in the sense of 1-3. I am interested in the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics and creating/”inventing” a new school of thought within that tradition. Is this still inventing tradition in the sense Hobsbawm intends? He makes a distinction between tradition, which has ritual and symbolic function, and convention or routine, which has no significant ritual or symbolic routine. He says: “Such networks of convention and routine are not ‘invented traditions’ since their functions, and therefore their justification, are technical rather than ideological (in Marxian terms they belong to ‘base’ rather than ‘superstructure’.)” (Hobsbawm, p.3) This ‘base’ facilitates definable practical operations that are readily abandoned to adapt to changing practical needs. On the one hand I want to say that my ‘invention’ falls under the category of technical rather than ideological, after all scholars of philosophy, by and large, tend to think of themselves beyond ideology in the sense that they are logically objective and the ideology is inherent in the specific philosophy/philosopher of study rather than them. Yet on the other hand I know first hand that this is never really the case. Plenty of scholarship attacks various commentators for having a hidden political/ideological agenda. In fact the very discussion of the term ‘philosophy’ and what can or cannot fall under it is itself ideological. In most departments philosophy encompasses only thinkers who fall within the historical genealogy of the Greek intellectual tradition, thus all “non-Western” thought is excluded from the department. Now, it could be argued that this is merely a technical contention that is slowly changing. In current philosophy departments there is likely to be one or two classes on eastern philosophy; however, is the language of technicality hiding the political? In the space I have left I want to discuss the political implications of “invented tradition.”
The brief reference Hobsbawm made to Marxist thought in the passage I cited above is tantalizing enough to make me question the ideological foundation of Hobsbawm and his term ‘invented tradition’. Does this theory rest on a purely Marxist foundation? Is Hobsbawm trying to hide this? I found this sentence that introduces his discussion of political and nationalistic inventions of tradition to be rather startling. He says: “More interesting from our point of view, is the use of ancient materials to construct invented traditions of a novel type for quite novel purposes.” (Hobsbawm, p. 6) Now, this may just be a personal opinion, but I find his use of the word ‘novel’ to be unsettling. To me, again this may just be a personal idiosyncrasy, the adjective had connotations of lightness and amusement. My unease is not helped by the fact that he mentions the formation of Swiss nationalism in the aftermath of its association with Nazi abuses, but excludes the fact that the construction of invented traditions “of a novel type and for quite novel purposes” equally holds for the Nazi party and for various socialist regimes. There is a dark political side to this idea of invention that seems to be completely glossed over. This bothered me and reminded me of Milan Kundera’s novel “The Joke”. Among other things the novel explores the use and manipulation of folklore and tradition by the Soviet party in Czechoslovakia. Early in the novel one of the characters tells his friends:
“Capitalism had destroyed this old collective life. And so folk art had lost its foundation, its reason for being, its function. It would be useless to try to resurrect it while social conditions were such that man lived cut off from man, everyone for himself. But socialism would liberate people from the yoke of their isolation. They would live in a new collectivity. United by common interest. Their private and public lives would merge. They would be connected by a host of rituals. Some they would take from the past: harvest festivals, folk dances, customs bound up with their daily work. Others they would create anew: May Day, meetings, the Liberations anniversary, rallies. In all of these folk art would find its place. Here it would develop, change, and be renewed.” (Kundera, “The Joke”, p. 141)
Folkloric tradition can be reinvented to promote socialist values. This is the novel invention for novel purposes. Yet, at the end of the novel, the same character, tells the reader:
“…my life had been robbed of values that were to have provided its foundations, and that were in origin pure and innocent; yes, innocent: physical love, however devastated in Lucie’s life is innocent, just as the songs of my region are innocent, just as the cimbalom band is innocent… just as the word comrade, though for me it had a menacing ring, is as innocent as the word future and many other words. The fault lay elsewhere and was so great that its shadow had fallen far and wide, on the whole of the world of innocent things (and words), and was devastating them.” (Kundera, “The Joke”, p. 313)
The dark shadow of political ideology tainted the innocent nature of the folksong, etc. Should this be a warning for the scholar? Is it possible to preserve and study the innocent tradition? Can invention of tradition be innocent, this might be what Post is trying to argue, or will it always be tainted by political motivation? I wonder then how my reinvention/addition to the tradition of virtue ethics will evolve?
4 comments:
Just a note, I looked up Hobsbawm after writing this and discovered that he is indeed a Marxist. Interestingly he said that if the the socialist utopia (in Russia) came into being it would justify the 20 million deaths. He also qualified this saying since it did not come into fruition that the deaths are an atrocity.
Hey Rebekah!
I really enjoy your analysis of Hobsbawm’s statement: “More interesting from our point of view, is the use of ancient materials to construct invented traditions of a novel type for quite novel purposes.” I especially like the way you incorporate passages from Kundera’s novel to illustrate what bothers you about his definition of “invented tradition.” For me, this very effectively reinforces why the political ideologies that motivate the invention of traditions need to be grappled with.
In particular, when you quote from p. 313 of Kundera’s novel where the character says, “my life had been robbed of values that were to have provided its foundations, and that were in origin pure and innocent,” it made me think about the possibility of impoverishing or even rejecting the usefulness of a specific tradition by failing to understand what gave rise to it. I wonder how crucial a collective society’s proper understanding of traditions is to their ability to provide the “foundations” for life? If so, how many need to possess this “right understanding” in order for the tradition to be made effective and does it matter from which social class they are from? How significant is an individual’s individual belief and understanding of tradition? In other words, how does one read the statements of Kundera’s character: as an individual expression of a collective opinion or as a single person’s expression of an individual opinion? And does/should the answer to this initial question have an impact on the weight that these statements carry?
Rebekah, your blogs are always very insightful, and this week is no exception. I would like to comment on the following:
"Can invention of tradition be innocent, this might be what Post is trying to argue, or will it always be tainted by political motivation?"
No, invention of tradition is never innocent. Everything that humans do have motivation outside the purely logical. Logic can, by no means, invoke intention or movement in an agent. On the contrary, logic is always employed in the service of prior commitment. The invention of religious traditions, just as its political usage, is full of power/political motivation. Nazism is a good example of the abuse of tradition, but so is Christianity, which takes from Judaism then bashes it for millennia. The early church fathers were very manipulative of tradition, and used the rhetoric of tradition to maim countless individuals throughout history. How is this any different from what the Nazis did? It just happened to people "long ago", so we tend to forget.
Rebekah, thanks for highlighting the political undertones of Hobsbawm's introduction. I wonder if the politics of invented tradition is brought in by his own interests?
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