Assessing Jewish Argentine Verbal Art. Concepts and Methods

FERNANDO FISCHMAN

Louisville, Kentucky, EE.UU.

Congreso; “120th Annual Meeting” - American Folklore Society; 2008

American Folklore Society

This paper analyzes the construction of a Jewish Argentine identity through the articulation of a distinctive folklore. Jewish immigration to Argentina, which took place mainly from 1880 to 1930, evolved in a sociopolitical context that favored the settlement of people from diverse nations and ethnic and religious backgrounds. However, certain criteria for cultural homogenization, which implied the blurring of identity traits were imposed. The homogenization procedures promoted and carried out both by state educational policies and by cultural industries proved to be succesful in terms of the integration of those immigrants into mainstream Argentine culture. In spite of the integration of immigrant communities, Argentine Jewry managed to shape a singular identity vis à vis mainstream society. Also,  the local social dynamics allowed for the forging of a “Jewish-Argentine” identity different from that of Jewish communities from other parts of the world. One of the means by which this singularity was accomplished was the performance of verbal art forms. This creative practice, which has been a sharp means to problematize the group’s historical experience continues in the present. A century after the beginning of the immigration flow, Argentine Jews perform complex verbal art forms. They draw upon a wide variety of sources -Sacred Texts, nineteenth century Eastern European and contemporary Israeli culture -  and put them in dialogue with  national hegemonic discourses  - mainly those instilled through public education- and from the cultural industries –novels, film- and those from other local social collectives  –folk expressions from other ethnic groups. By means of contextualization processes, fragments of discourse from diverse sources are selected, experiences are singularized, and recontextualized in discourses performed with the use of resources of the poetics of language. These processes allow for the creation of a single and reflexive repertoire of an ample range of verbal art expressions. These expressions encompass speech play and narratives of personal experience that address issues like the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in the national context, conflicts over citizenship rights, the inclusion of Jews in the national imagination. They also deal with differences among Jews based both on the diverse places of origin and on developments of Jewish life throughout recent decades in Argentine history as well. I argue that research on these forms requires a specific approach, one that combines the conceptualization prevalent  among Latin American social scientists that view Jews as a collective akin to the mainly European immigrant groups that settled in Argentina a century ago, and the one that prevails among some Jewish Studies scholars that perceives Argentine Jews and their folklore expressions as contingent manifestations of a diasporic community.