Page 229 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation
P. 229
204 Hema Rairkar
of knowledge. A traditional capacity of self-introspection sanctions
and confirms one’s permanent right to speak for oneself. A tradition
of sharing between miller-womenfolk calling one another to witness
together, as women, what they have to say in common links up directly
to present practices of collective reappraisal and practices of social
action. A new consciousness emerges on the ground of an age-old
awareness of one’s identity.
We discovered that the first constitutive characteristics of a pat-
tern of valid cultural action that takes as its base an ancient cultural
material, alien to the context and idiom of those who later on do try to
avail of it (dramatists, filmmakers, social activists, musical composers,
and so on) is the congenital affinity which prevails across the variety
of idioms or circumstances, and transcends contrasting ideological
backgrounds, contexts of civilization, systems and forms of commu-
nication. A genuine cultural action can exist only in continuation of in-
built homologous urges, drives or representations, acknowledged and
re-processed as endogenous stepping-stones. Failing this, the exercise
will prove to be one of exogenous semantic over-imposition, external
manipulation, allegorical use, academic utilization; in brief, appropria-
tion by alien agencies for alien messages and alien purposes, and as a
2
result reduction to a mere instrumental status. This may be anything
but cultural action.
Further questions to be raised in this respect relate to the nature
and extent of this affinity; to the practical procedures and methods of
collection, archiving and preservation capable of revealing and foster-
ing this affinity; to the drives along which this homogeneity develops
or thanks to which it reveals itself; to the cognitive modalities condu-
cive to semantic reinterpretation of old representations. Here I try to
address these queries.
A Shared Self-insight
A few examples dealing with gender issues will give a hint, first, of the
deep affinity that links the feminine tradition of the grindmill songs to
modern critical discourses. Second, they stress, with regard to processes
of communication, the specific strength that concrete, poetic and sym-
bolic images and direct speech give women’s songs. The latter display