• DOI:10.1353/jaf.2004.0073
• Corpus ID: 145691975

The Politics of Origins: Collective Creation Revisited

@article{Hafstein2004ThePO,
  title={The Politics of Origins: Collective Creation Revisited},
  author={Valdimar Tr. Hafstein},
  journal={Journal of American Folklore},
  year={2004},
  volume={117},
  pages={300 - 315}
}

• V. Hafstein
• Published 26 July 2004
• History
• Journal of American Folklore

Is collective creation a figment of the nineteenth-century imagination? Have folklorists long since surpassed communal theories of creativity? That, at least, is the official position of the United States government. Who knew the government even has a position on the origins of folklore? That, in and of itself, warrants further exploration. More important, this position carries consequences that extend to international politics and trade. These consequences illustrate the nexus between theory and policy, to which folklorists (in spite of appointments to public offices) have long been remarkably indifferent. Theory and practice are divorced in a bifurcated field, rendering the political articulations of folklore theory all but invisible.1 What follows is an attempt to render visible the political dimension of concepts of creativity that are widely accepted (yet rarely articulated) among folklorists in the United States. The official U.S. position on the origins of folklore was put forward at the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Folklore at the Geneva headquarters of WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) in December 2002.2 In her opening statement, the head of the U.S. delegation (Linda Lourie of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) questioned the notion that folklore is “communally developed,” referring to the reports prepared by the WIPO Secretariat for this meeting that indicate traditional knowledge “is generally understood as being the result of creation and innovation by a collective originator: the community” (WIPO 2002c:31).3 The chief delegate of the United States scoffed at what she described as “nineteenth-century notions” and claimed that, on the contrary, folklore is “always individually created and then adopted by the community” (author’s notes, December 9, 2002). Her statement gave this folklorist pause. Perhaps a little context will help explain why. Some ninety-four national delegations,4 eighteen intergovernmental organiza-