Tradition presents itself in one of two ways, depending on whether it is viewed externally or internally: 1) as the way it has always been (let "it" be what it may), or at least the way it has been since before one's initiation into the field in which the tradition in question holds sway, and 2) as a pattern introduced into a temporal process, belonging to some subjectivity (let this be an individual or a community) which would otherwise have the possibility of being introduced into the same field in a variety of different ways. In general, it is impossible for any tradition to be regarded in both of these ways at once (since to accept the possibility of having been introduced into a field in some other way is to cease to be traditional with respect to that field), and this is the point of describing one as internal and the other as external.
But note that this description is not neutral. Rather, it requires an external perspective to imagine the possibility of both. If we would like to understand the nature of tradition while remaining traditional we will have to abandon this dichotomy.
Eluveitie is folk metal: bringing the tradition of folk music that is deeply rooted in their land into a unity with the metal of contemporary times. Their new album is titled "Everything Remains (as It Never Was)."
ReplyDeleteThis alone is sufficient for reflection. Be warned if you want to listen to their music: although there is some singing, there is a lot of screaming.
What do you make of that aphorism, Mr. Jones?
ReplyDeleteI cannot say that I understand everything that went on in your other posts about tradition, but I can say that I like your inclusion of inventing, founding, and its opposite, "the thoughtless aping of a fetishized set of protocols, which can be the foundation of no community" (Natality and Fate of Tradition).
ReplyDeleteThese inclusions, along with your posts in their entirety, argue that tradition roots a person, or a community, in eternity, even though any tradition as such must have begun, been invented, been founded, not been.
The temporality of tradition, it seems to me, means casting the time preceding the founding into a different mode--call it unreality, call it the era of myth, call it the waters before creation.
If meaning requires difference (so that to mean this is to mean not that), then traditions retain meaning for those who contrast this time that is within the tradition to that time which was before it--the partition being the founding. This time is real, that time is unreal, or rather, this time is always being made real and that time is always being made unreal.
This feature of the temporality of tradition, the always being made so, seems to be that whereby tradition may root a person or a community in eternity. The continual action is the sound by which a person or a community may "heed the eternal."
There are questions that follow from this, for example, do not many tradition have little to do with eternity (have very little meaning) and how do traditions become decrepid (lose meaning)?
Eluveitie, which in Helvetic Gaulish means "I am Helvetian," states the problematic of tradition in their very name, because they call themselves Helvetian, but the reign of that tradition has ended, with modernity (become postmodernity) taking its place. They cannot be Helvetian. They sing about their tradition and play in its styles, but they join that to modern styles. They are, at least, not purely Helvetian. But were the Helvetian people Helvetian?--I mean to ask whether they did not have to be introduced into that tradition. They must have, if that is what the temporality of tradition is--continually to enter the founded time from the unfounded time. Therefore, for Eluveitie to be Helvetian, they have to do what the Helvetian people did, and that is to heed the eternal, and that means that they enter the founded time from whenever they are. Eluveitie is Helvetian.
If I seem to say that anyone can belong to any tradition, please do not judge me so. In principle, I suppose it is possible. But if tradition is that whereby one is rooted in eternity, then a tradition is a tradition insofar as it roots a person (or community) in eternity, and a person (or community) belongs to a tradition insofar as by it, one (or a community) takes root in eternity.
ReplyDeleteThe statement that everything remains as it never was could be a statement of cynicism, the impotent attempt of malcontents to establish profundity by means of irony. I pray that that is not what Eluveitie means.
The statement could signify, altenatively, what I have been saying, namely, that they are traditional by this: not being in the tradition not being like those who were in it, they enter it by being like those who were in it...who were not in it but entered it.
By "everything," they mean everything according to the tradition, which as a tradition makes a claim about what the world is and what is to come for it, which for those in it, pertains at least to continually heeding the eternal. By "as it never was," they refer to the implication that the world, according to the tradition, was no so in the time prior to the founding.
It is hard to say because the album has not yet been released and I have not found the lyrics online.
I state another question that follows from what I have said: is there not then a great kinship between those deeply rooted in tradition, whatever that tradition may be, and is that not absurd, because traditions differ very greatly?
Here are the lyrics, of "The Dance Of Victory" from Eluveitie's Spirit (2006).
{
The most heinous con
refuge of evil
cloven tongues that speak of truth
With false, specious words
they sold what can't be bought
Acherontic saints of holy sales.
Damn bloody lies
Burn me alive
Silence! Those mouths are stuffed by truth
Hark! At the ruins of the vile I will dance
... in victory!
They don't heed the eternal
I can see the fruits
of a spirit putrescent
The ogre burning heretics
the cleansing stake
I'm not daunted by distress
for all lie in inanity.
but some stretched out their hands
and touched the awen.
}
Anyone who has come under the influence and allure of the NES reset button, and subsequently found themselves cutting off and denying larger and larger swaths of their life until the sickening realization set in that half and perhaps more than half of everything they could have been is lost in static obscurity can perhaps understand why it would become desirable and yet horrible to have a fixed partition between real and unreal time.
ReplyDelete