Folklorinės atminties beieškant

LTMonografijoje skelbiami tyrimai atspindi akademinėje lietuvių tautosakininkų bendruomenėje subrendusį poreikį suteikti folkloristikai naują stimulą, rasti naujų argumentų jo įprasminimui negrįžtamai pasikeitus ir toliau besikeičiant kultūrinei ir socialinei aplinkai, su kuria anksčiau siejo glaudus abipusis ryšys. Tai labai teigiamas ir reikalingas vyksmas, žymintis intelektualinį pasiryžimą naujiems teoriniams ir metodologiniams iššūkiams, skatinantiems išplėsti savo kompetencijas kultūros ir žmogaus elgesio tyrimuose. Labai svarbu, kad visi iššūkiai būtų diskursyviai analizuojami pačios tautinės disciplinos epistemologijos rėmuose. Rėmimasis kitų šalių folkloristų patirtimi, be abejonės, yra svarbus ir net nediskutuotinas, tačiau bet kokios naujos kryptys neturėtų būti perimamos neaprobuotos vietiniame kontekste. Jų pagrindu negalima plėtoti lietuvių folkloristikai alternatyvių krypčių, nes tik išlaikius tautinės mokyklos tapatybę galima tikėtis tarti išskirtinį žodį tarptautinės folkloristikos forume. Tikslingiau "naujas kryptis" būtu vadinti "įtakomis", kurios gali suteikti teigiamu impulsų ir paspirčių jau egzistuojančiam akademiniam reiškiniui. [...]. [Iš straipsnio, p. 40-41]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Folklorinė atmintis; Tautosaka; Folkloro naratyvai; Folk memory; Folklore; Folklore narratives.

ENConcept of folk memory is rather new in Lithuanian folkloristics and therefore various approaches and interpretations regarding the meaning of this notion may be suggested. The article focuses on identity of the national folkloristics based on different epistemological presumptions in relation to this concept. Contemporary ideas and research tendencies related to the subject of research show attempts of the folklore scholars in seeking out new inspirations for the discipline, drawing from the rich research traditions on the one hand and from so far discursively not sufficiently explored empirical experiences on the other. The article presents those two sides as two different identity poles of the discipline, which obviously manifest themselves when such an important subject of folkloristics as memory is discussed. Memory is one of those scientific elements that attract, intrigue, and stimulate sustenance, denial or complementation of the archipelago of knowledge about the collective past. This realm of time was for a long time supposed to contain the origins of the Lithuanian nation. Thus along with its purely scientific interests, the discipline has elevated the folklore research to the level of cultural and moral mission: i. e. keeping the spirit of ethnicity alive and resisting the oblivion of the wisdom, inherited from the ancestors though folklore. No wonder that such notion as folk memory also appeared in scientific discourse primarily under the influence of this moral motivation. However, when recently memory itself became a subject of research, it was perceived not only as a storage of collective cultural heritage, but rather as a methodological and ethical tool to assess folkloric expressions of culture through the eyes of the individual narrators.This stimulated revision and attribution of academic value to the subjective knowledge, which has for a long time been conserved in the archives, diaries and minds of researchers. In this article, such knowledge is presented as the alternative identity pole of the discipline, constructed on the basis of the socially and even emotionally charged fieldwork experiences. Nowadays this pole grows increasingly important, since intense changes in society and culture have finally forced the discipline to face the contemporary ethnographic reality of the world, in which the old forms of folklore now rarely play meaningful role in people's daily lives. This reality seems like a new land to the folklorists, who have to recognize the extent to which the discipline has estranged the past from the present, the research material from its users. However, Lithuanian scholars are consciously approaching this new land, relying on their professional skills and intuition to provide the narrator with a new status of a guide in his/her own world. This individualized perspective in folklore provides the folkloristic research with another, undoubtedly the most important moral criterion: showing how deep and meaningful the world of ordinary people is. Studies of folk memory require not only relying on the research traditions of the discipline, which help perceiving wider cultural contexts than were expected by the interviewer. First of all, it demands noticing how the memory shapes and makes sense of the personal life, and treating folklore pieces not simply as things or manifestations of certain genres, but primarily as ways of expressing the individual experience and the subjective laws of the local world on the macro level. [Extract, p. 495-496]