Cultural Purity and the Refute
Folklore, Myth, and Culture - 355:201Cultural Purity and the Refute of the Inevitable Momentum In the introduction to "The Pure Products Go Crazy," James Clifford offers a poem by William Carlos Williams about a housekeeper of his named Elsie. This girl is of mixed blood, with a divided common ancestry, and no real collective roots to trace. Williams begins to make the observation that this is the direction that the world is moving in, as Clifford puts it-"an inevitable momentum." Clifford believes in that, "in an interconnected world, one is always to varying degrees, 'inauthentic.'" In making this statement, Clifford is perhaps only partially accurate. In the western hemisphere, where Williams was located, perhaps it can be said directly that the influence of modern society has attributed to the lack of general ancestry, as one culture after another has blended with the next. Perhaps it can be said as well that, as Clifford puts it, "there seem no distant places left on the planet where the presence of 'modern' products, media, and power cannot be felt" (Clifford, 14). The intention of this paper is to contend first that there is essentially such a thing as "pure" culture, and contrary to Clifford's bel
Where else then can we find a similar situation, where an ingrained cultural practice has helped the culture to remain pure among outside influence? (Keeping in mind that an impure culture, according to Clifford, is simply one in which "many traditions, languages, cosmologies, and values [are] lost. [What cockfighting the accomplishes] is to render the ordinary, everyday experience comprehensible. " Practices such as the cockfight and Voodoo in essence, do just that. It is not a question of a simple practice to the people of Haiti; it is a means of existence. If then the loss of cultural traditions is the most important condition of cultural endurance, than it is these certain cultural practices previously mentioned that have helped the people of Bali and Haiti to remain pure as a whole. The owner of the cock lives out his frustration, his joy, and his pain all through the cock. All were created with the purpose of increasing the quality of life. I propose that a "pure" culture is one that has either not had to deal with such circumstances, or has dealt with outside influences, without altering what is wholly exclusive about itself. However, rather than the people seemingly infusing Christianity into Voodoo, they simply acknowledge its presence and accept that it's there, without changing their practices. (Geertz, 172) What comprehensibly is there place in the world-that is, society. In general, however, it would seem that vacancies in the priesthood are filled through a transference of title, and a man becomes a houngan or a woman a mambo, by inheriting "secret" forces passed on at death by a predecessor. but also, and at the same time, with he most fears, hates, and ambivalence being what it is, is fascinated by-"The Powers of Darkness". This allows the Balinese to remain pure to his ideal being, because certain practices believed to savage in the Balinese Culture are either ignored or accepted when it comes to the cockfight.
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