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A
Transcription of
an Interactive Talk via
Videoconference on "Researching
and Rethinking Folklore, Communication, and Kannagi" Date: 6th May 2022 Speaker: Dr. Eric Miller, in Chennai Host and Organiser: கோ இரவீந்திரன் Professor and Head, Dept. of Media and Communication, Central University of Tamil Nadu, Thiruvarur - 610005 Formerly Professor and Head (Retired), Dept. of Journalism and Communication, University of Madras. ______________________________________________ Ravindran Gopalan: I am introducing Dr. Eric Miller. He is from New York City, in America, and
has settled in Chennai. Eric is the
director of the World Storytelling Institute. As he has written in a column
titled "In Praise of Citizen Kannagi" that was published in The
Hindu newspaper in 2006, I write
in praise of Kannagi, global symbol of justice, and of the dignity of the
individual! Kannagi
is a very relevant figure in the world today.
She is just beginning to become known in the global consciousness, and
I believe she is destined to be an important figure there. However, it is not Kannagi as a woman who I
praise today -- it is Kannagi as an individual. In my hometown, New York City, we have a
pessimistic saying: "You cannot fight City Hall." But Kannagi proved you can fight City Hall,
and this is the core of the story.
That one person -- with no money, in a place that was not native to
her, with no family in sight -- could go before the highest civic authority,
and speak, and win her case -- that is great. All of
the world's political leaders should know the story of Kannagi, and of the
Pandian king. For the great hero of
the story -- after Kannagi -- is the Pandian king, for he punished himself
when he realised he had made a mistake. So, Eric, please tell us more about
your thoughts and your work. The floor
is yours. Eric Miller: Dr. Ravindran Gopalan, thank you so much
for inviting me to speak today. It is
a wonderful honor. When you were head
of the Communication and Journalism Department at the University of Madras,
you also kindly permitted me to teach your students there, which I enjoyed
very much. So thank you for that
also. And thank you for arranging the
session today. Today’s topic is
"Researching and Rethinking Folklore, Communication, and Kannagi". And I think you especially are interested
that the students who are doing fieldwork might learn more about the value of
approaching fieldwork with a multidisciplinary mindset. So I'll say some words about that also. Kannagi To begin with, Kannagi
(pronounced kun-na-gee, rhyming with tree).
Some of you may not know the story, so I'll tell it very briefly. The king of Madurai punished
Kannag's husband, Kovalan, unjustly.
Her husband was accused of being a thief and the king put her husband
to death, but it turned out that her husband was innocent of the crime of
which he was accused. So Kannagi went
to the king and proved her husband's innocence in the following way: When Kannagi and her husband
Kovalan had reached Madurai and were in its outskirts, they agreed that he
should walk into Madurai, go to the gold market, and try to sell one of
Kannagi's anklets -- this was the only wealth they had left. Kannagi's anklets had rubies inside its
numerous small gold casings. As
Kovalan was trying to sell the anklet, one man said to him, "Please come
with me. I know someone who would be
interested in your anklet." This
man was the goldsmith of the king of Madurai.
By coincidence, this goldsmith had stolen a similar-looking anklet
from the queen of Madurai the day before.
When the king of Madurai saw the
anklet Kovalan was trying to sell, he thought that Kovalan had stolen this
anklet from the king's wife, and without conducting a full and proper
investigation, the king had Kovalan beheaded.
When Kannagi became aware of what had happened, she went to the king
and indignantly broke open her remaining anklet: rubies came out. She requested that the anklet her husband
had been carrying should also be broken open. This was done, and again rubies
came out. Now Kannagi requested that
the queen's remaining anklet should be broken open. This was done -- and pearls came out. This proved that Kannagi's husband had been
carrying one of Kannagi's anklets, not one of the queen's anklets. Upon seeing this, the king
apologised to Kannagi -- and then he died.
He fell down, he stopped breathing, he stopped his blood
pressure. He died of a broken heart
that he had misapplied justice. So
it's not just Kannagi who is great in this story. The king of Madural, who is known as the
Pandian king, was also great, in that he had a conscience. Both of these characters -- the
king and Kannagi -- are not unique in Tamil culture. In both cases there are variations. Regarding the king of Madurai: in ancient
days, there was another a king, a Chola king, whose son was driving a chariot
too fast. The chariot hit a calf, and
the calf died. The king put his own
son to death as punishment. So there's
a tradition of kings taking responsibility and giving justice, even if the
justice would hurt them. Regarding Kannagi: she began as
an ordinary human, although there are different stories about her possible
divine background. But after she
proved her case to the king, she went outside the palace, walked around the
city three times, and requested Agni, the God of Fire, to purify the city by
burning it, in part because she felt that some of the people had not
supported her. So she requested that
good people and animals should escape, but that the city should burn to be
purified. She did not set the
fire. She just suggested it to the God
of Fire, and it was done. And then she
and some of the good people of Madurai walked to the western mountains where
they started a new tribe in the forest, together with some local tribal
people. There are similar stories in
Tamil Nadu of women who felt violated, or who felt that their families had
been violated, and of the terrible things that happened as a result. One of these characters is known as Nalla Thangal,
the Good Younger Sister. Nalla Thangal
was very close to one of her brothers, but when she married, she had to move
some distance away. And then when she
came to visit her brother with her two children, her brother's wife would not
let her in the house. The brother was
away and the brother's wife was not a good host. She did not let them come in. Nalla Thangal was so upset, she took her two
children and threw them in the well and she also jumped in the well. And a great flood came up and flooded the entire
place. So that is another example of
personal, internal fury which escalated into a "natural disaster"
-- in this case, a flood. Another related character is the
goddess, Isakki. This story was told
to me by a Villupattu artist in Nagercoil, Mrs. S. Saraswathi. (Villupattu is a folk genre of
storytelling, involving a secondary speaker and musicians.) The story about Isakki is that there was a
lady who became pregnant by a temple priest, but he denied being the
father. So she went away, had the child,
and came back with the child. She said
to the the village leaders, "This man is the father of my
child". But he was still denying
it. So the village leaders suggested
that they sit and talk amongst themselves, which they did. But eventually she reached over, opened his
chest with her bare hands, and plucked out his heart. He died.
It was murder. She had taken
justice into her own hands, literally.
This kind of behavior -- and
Nalla Thangal jumping in the well -- these are not exactly models that we
want to set for human behavior. But
somehow in Tamil culture, these models of great pain leading to rash
behavior, now these women are worshipped as goddesses. It's interesting. It's not recommended human behavior, but
they are on a mythical level, they are goddesses. So, these are some
variations. In folklore, we talk about
variations on a theme. And I believe
these stories are important because they show people getting forms of
justice. We may not agree with exactly
how the justice came out, but at least the women stood up for
themselves. I walked the path of Kannagi,
from Tamil Nadu's eastern coast to its
western mountains, a distance of approximately 450 kilometers, in 1988, 34
years ago. I did this as a way of
learning more about the story. Now I take people to the places
of Kannagi by air-conditioned bus. And
sometimes we meet with community members along the way, and we engage
them. We hire them to give us lessons
in the local form of storytelling, both telling the Epic of the Anklet,
as Kannagi's story is known, and other stories. And regarding the goal that every
prime minister and president should know the story, I don't know how much
progress I've made in 34 years, but hopefully today is a step in the right
direction. You know, when countries
invade other countries, a lot of people die.
If the leaders who do this sort of thing might know the Epic of the
Anklet, maybe they would think twice before taking action that leads to
peoples' deaths. Kannagi, Nalla Thangal, and Isakki
are variations of the south Indian local goddess who is loving and
protective, but is also sometimes very angry.
While these characters may not be comfortable to some people, I
believe that these stories are very important and valuable aspects of the
human heritage. Now I am going to stop and ask
for any responses, any comments or questions. Student #1: This story – Eric Miller: Did you know that story about Isakki? Student #1: Yes.
I grew up hearing the story from my mother. Eric Miller: Yes.
You heard it from a human being.
But you know, that story, it can not be found on the Internet --
except in one place where I mentioned it.
Aside from that, it does not exist on the Internet. It has not made it into the electronic
medium for some reason. But please go
ahead. Student #1: My mother also told me the story of
Kannagi. There was a temple in my
mother's homeland called, Devi Temple, and they say that Kannagi is the God
who's residing there. And she came
there after the incident in Madurai with the king, and she's sitting there. Eric Miller: As I am sure you are aware, Kannagi is
criticized by many women today that in the beginning of the story, she was
very quiet when her husband went off with another woman for a year. She did not get angry then. She only got angry later, at the king, when
she lost her husband a second time.
You see the first time she lost him, when her husband went off with
another woman for a year, she did not complain or get angry. Some people think that this is a good thing
about her. Some people criticize her
for this. How do you feel about this? Student #1: I feel it's the culture and tradition of
Indian, south Indian culture at that time, because -- Eric Miller: Yes, at that time. Student #1: Yes, we were taught to respect our husbands
and treat them as God back in the day.
So to Kannagi, I would think she felt like she had no right to
complain because she was supposed to consider her husband as an elder, as a
God, as a superior. Eric Miller: Yes. Student #1: Maybe that’s why. Eric Miller: Yes.
And my interpretation is that she did not react and she did not blame
him, but inside she was in pain. So
then when she lost him a second time, to the king, then she expressed all of
the pain. Student #2: Can I add something? Eric Miller: Yes, please go ahead. Student #2: In those days, marriages were held at very
early ages. Probably Kannagi was just 12
or 13 years old when she married. Eric Miller: Yes. Student #2: And probably the young man she married was
in his late adolescence, maybe 18 or 19.
Probably that age difference was there. And he was a business-class person. I think business-class men and kings in
those days had this privilege of having multiple wives. Eric Miller: Yes. Student #2: I also wonder: How old was Madhavi, the young woman he
went off with? Eric Miller: Well, she had just given her first public
dance performance. So she probably was
the same age as Kannagi, which as we were saying was probably 12, 13, or
14. We have to remember that in those
days, the typical life lifespan was only about 40 to 45 years. So as soon as puberty would occur in young
women, then sometimes they would get married and start having children. In those days, children were
wealth. You could put your children to
work. And in our old age we would hope
our children might help to support us.
Now, today, raising a child is very expensive. So it is a different situation. Kannagi was also in the
business-class. She had been adopted
by a merchant family in Poompuhar. I'm
not sure if there was a class difference between them, but there was very likely
an age difference. And certainly a power
difference due to him being a man and she being a woman. Okay.
Let us go on. Folklore The word, "folklore"
can refer both to the activities of the folk, and also to the academic
discipline in which these activities are studied (when used in this second
way, the word is often capitalized).
Let me quickly define folklore activities. Folklore can be defined as
"traditional and conventional ways of understanding, expressing, making,
and doing things". But a modern
definition of folklore is that "whenever two or more people have a
common experience, they develop folklore about that experience". If you look at it this way, almost all of
culture is folklore. The verbal arts,
including storytelling and children's verbal games, especially have been studied
in the academic discipline of Folklore.
Until around the 1960s, the scholars felt their main job was to write
down the stories, and analyse and classify them. You know, "This is a folktale, this is
a myth, this is a legend". But then in the 1960s a
revolution occurred in the field, which was led by my main professor who I
studied with at University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Roger Abrahams, who passed
away five years ago. He led a
revolution called the "Performance-centered approach to folklore",
which looked at the social context of the storytelling event: who is telling
to who, who is present, who cannot be present, what time of day, what time of
year? -- all the social factors. And
of course the tone of voice and the body language of the storyteller. So we have a rich history of studying both
the stories, and the methods of telling the stories, in the field of
Folklore. The Multidisciplinary
approach Folklore is multidisciplinary by
its nature. For one thing, we are
often looking at language. That is
Linguistics. We're looking at
Sociology. And there is a
combined-field called Socio-linguistics which concerns ways people speak in
particular communities, in particular situations, in real life. That is part of Folklore. Folklore is a separate
discipline, but it is also a subject within Cultural Anthropology. Cultural Anthropology concerns the systems
of a culture, the belief systems. And
of course, History is involved. The
study of Literature is involved. The
study of Communication is involved.
Using various academic disciplines is an artificial way to approach
reality because life, experience, comes to us in a mixture of all of the
academic disciplines. And so it is
"keeping it real" to have a multidisciplinary approach. I'll give an example of a story that
especially calls out to be studied in a multidisciplinary way. The Kanikkaran tribal people live
in the very southern end of the Western Ghats mountain range. Half of them live on the Tamil side, half
of them live on the Kerala side. I did
my fieldwork for my PhD with some of those people in the mountains there, on
the Tamil side, north of Nagercoil. The Kani people have a
grandmother story called the Youngest Brother. In that story, the six older brothers say
to their younger brother, "Come with us, let's go to the forest to hunt
the wild pigs". And they all had
spears. When they got to the forest,
I'm sorry to tell you, the six older brothers turned on their younger brother
and killed him with their spears. We
don't know why. Maybe they wanted to
inherit what he had. The younger brother had two dogs
who had come on this hunting trip.
These two dogs went back to the younger brother's wife, and they
communicated to her, "Come with us!" So the younger brother's wife followed the
dogs to her husband's body. And of
course she started screaming, weeping -- this is called oppari in Tamil
Nadu. It is expression of raw grief,
but there are also some melodic and verbal expressions that people scream or
speak, and physical behaviors that they do, as they're expressing their raw
grief. Nearby, there was a mongoose and
a snake playing -- vilaiyaadu, vilaiyaadu, vilaiyaadu. They were running around in circle. This is very unusual because usually the
mongoose is attacking the snake. You
know, they are enemies. But on this
day, they were playing and the snake and the mongoose came and the snake said
to the lady, "Madam, we see what has happened here. Don't worry. We will get the medicine". And the snake and the mongoose
went off and got a certain plant. And
they brought it back and grounded and mixed it and put it on the younger
brother's body and he came back to life.
And so the younger brother, his wife, and the two dogs, went back to
the village and they told the panchayat leaders what had happened. The six older brothers were forced to leave
the village. They were exiled. In those days, that was one of the most
serious punishments. Let us look at this story for a
moment. To really study this story, we
also have to think about the plant medicine, right? So this brings in Chemistry, Biology, and
Ethno-botany. And the Kani people
believe that their knowledge of plant medicine was given to them by the Hindu
Saint, Agastya. They believe that the Tamil
language itself, and certain ritual songs, were given by Agastya. So to study and understand the story fully,
we have to also study and understand Agastya’s perceived contribution to the
culture. So, you can see a lot is
involved in thinking about a story like this.
It's not just Folklore, it's also Biology, Chemistry, History,
Sociology, Theology, and so on. This
is why scholars from different disciplines often work together in teams. I would also mention that this
story a wonderful variation of the theme of a wife seeking to bring her
husband back to life -- the regenerative power of the female principle. You see, Kannagi was not able to bring her
husband back to life. She tried. When she found his body in the street with
his head cut off, in her delirium she tried to put his head back on. According to the earliest written text we
have -- which is estimated to have been written approximately 1,600 years ago
and is attributed to Prince Ilango Adigal -- for a moment Kannagi thought her
husband was alive and that he said, "Don't worry dear, we'll be together
soon". But it was just her
fantasy. It was not real. So that's when she went and spoke to the
king. But in the Youngest Brother
story, with the help of the animals and the plants, the wife was able to
bring her husband back to life. I feel that living in nature has
given these tribal people a more optimistic feeling about the possibility of
revival, resurrection -- of life continuing, that even if life is lost, it
can be recovered. So again, I consider
the Epic of the Anklet and the story of the Younger Brother to
be two variations on the theme of a wife trying to bring her husband back to
life. We have many other stories like
this. There's one story in which the
wife follows the King of the Underworld and tricks him into agreeing to give
her husband back to her, alive. I'm
sure you all know this story -- the story of Savitri. The Folk When we use the term folklore,
let's think about, who are "the folk"? It turns out that we are all the folk
because people will say, "Come on, folks", and "Move along,
folks". Even your professors will
say that, right? They'll say,
"Please hand in your assignments, folks". So folk has come to be a friendly term for
any group of people. Originally,
however, it referred to people who 1) lived in the countryside, 2) were poor
economically, 3) could not read or write, and 4) were very group-oriented. But these very terms, folk and
folklore, were created under some very specific social conditions. These terms did not always exist. They were created by European intellectuals
who lived in cities in the early 1800s, who were nostalgic about life in the
countryside. They might have been
thinking, 'We are modern individuals.
We are alienated. We are alone. We are intellectuals. But wouldn't it be -- isn't it -- wonderful
that the people in the countryside are connected with nature, they are
members of groups, and they can sing and dance together?' You see it gave these urban intellectuals a
good feeling to think about, to imagine, the folk and folklore. In reality, people who live in the
countryside do not always sing and dance together. They are also individuals. But folklore as a field is a conception of
intellectual Europeans in the early 1800s.
That was when the "Industrial Revolution" was beginning in
the cities. So the conception of
folklore was a reaction against the alienation and mechanisation of modern
urban life. Fieldwork Now let us look at fieldwork in
Cultural Anthropology -- and as mentioned, Folklore is a topic within that
academic discipline. The classic type
of fieldwork we do is that we go someplace and sit there for one year, and we
ask to be taken into people's homes, and to be taken into their
communities. And we pay money, you
know, we contribute, at least we pay for our food. And perhaps we pay for the services of a
Research Assistant. We also do
"Participant Observation", which means we observe what people are
doing and we ask, "Oh, could I try to do that too? Could you teach me how to do it?" So that is "Ethnographic Fieldwork
with Participant Observation". Dear Communication and Journalism
students, I think you might be doing different types of fieldwork. When I walked from Poompuhar to
Madurai, and then into mountains -- we don't really call that fieldwork,
because I was on the move. I was
interviewing people in different communities.
In my field, that's not considered fieldwork. But then when I stayed with a group of Kani
people in their village for a year, that was fieldwork. But the thing today is that
because of this pandemic, the last two or three years, the fieldwork has been
impossible, right? Because the
outsider is looked upon as a possible carrier of disease and many
communities, tribal communities for example, either them or their governments
would not permit visitors to come. So what has happened in these
cases and others, sometimes the students ask their professors, "Can I do
part of my fieldwork online? Can I
talk with them via Google Meet or Zoom?"
Because some people in the community might have the technology and
might be using it. Now even many
people in forest areas have mobile telephones, and coverage. Many of them can do video calls. So the PhD students are asking their
professors, "Can I do some of my fieldwork online?" And do you know what the
professors are answering? Can anyone
guess? The senior professors that I
know would say, "What? Are you
out of your mind???!!! That's not the
way fieldwork is done. You have to go
in-person, with your body, and sleep there and eat there!" And the student might reply,
"But it's not possible now, professor". So this is going on in
Anthropology and Folklore departments around the world. I guess they're working out some
compromises. And maybe, as the
pandemic is lessening, maybe physical fieldwork is becoming more possible
again. Communication and
Community More and more people, more
members of communities, are conducting their lives online. You know, some tribal people who have
telephone coverage, they're on the phone half the time. And not just tribal people, any community,
half the people are online half the time.
So life is changing. Community
is changing. And so maybe fieldwork
also has to change. What good is it if
you go and do fieldwork and stay with people -- but those people are online
half the time? If you really want to
understand and experience their lives, you have to go online too, because
that's where they're living their lives to a large extent. So all of this is in flux, it is
in-process. Now, about community. As we all know, "communities of
choice" are becoming more and more important in people's lives --
communities of choice, communities that we choose to join, as opposed to
communities that we're born into. Of
course, caste is still very strong and blood relations are still very strong. But as more and more people are educated in
the modern fashion, and travel and telecommunicate with people all over the
world, communities of choice are becoming more important. So being "an active member
of a community" and being "in the midst of a community" are no
longer necessarily about being in a physical place. The community is located within the
communication between its members, it is in the network of relationships
between the people. So this would seem
to indicate the importance of joining people online -- but maybe a
compromise: visiting people in-person, and also participating online with
them, perhaps especially when they are participating with other community
members online. I began the fieldwork for my PhD
20 years ago, and I lived in the village for almost two years. At the end of my fieldwork period, I
invited some of the people to Chennai and we did videoconferences between the
Kani children from the village who were visiting Chennai (with their parents
in most cases), and Tamil children in America at my university in Pennsylvania. In these videoconferences, children on both
sides demonstrated their verbal games and such. And I was pointing out how these activities
help people to develop their spoken-language abilities. So the primary title of my
dissertation was "Ethnographic Videoconferencing", because I used
videoconferencing as a way to facilitate the sharing and recording of the
culture of the people I was studying.
I stated that "Ethnographic Videoconferencing" was an
evolutionary development based on "Ethnographic Photography" and
"Ethnographic Film and Video".
"Ethnographic" in this case means that the documentation
occurs after at least a year of physically-present fieldwork. But I was criticized, and I did
not get one grant, because some senior scholars said, "You cannot let
tribal people videoconference. It will
ruin their culture". Even then
the community members were getting radio and television. They could consume multimedia and
advertising, but certain senior scholars were not comfortable with assisting
them to play an active role -- as creators and authors -- in relation to the
technology. Now almost everybody, even in
forest areas, has mobile telephones -- in many cases, multi-media
smartphones. So now I am not sure we
could find anyone who would say members of a certain human community can use
this technology in passive ways (receiving ony), but they should not be
encouraged to use it in active, expressive, creative ways. The Zoom Pandemic,
and the Great Dispersal My final point is: I call this
pandemic that we are now hopefully finishing the "Zoom Pandemic",
because Zoom is the most famous video call app, and this social-historical
event, like many other social-historical events, has ushered in the widespread
use of a new technology. There was video calling for many
years, but it had not really caught on.
There had been no burning need for it.
It was used only in some business and government contexts, and by a
few unusual people who would use it to talk with their family members over
long distances. But the pandemic
ushered in the videoconference, video call, video chat revolution among the
masses. And there's not going to be an
end to it. It's going to continue, in
combination with physically-present activity. A very powerful form of
communication -- which we are kind of doing today -- is that some people are
physically-present and some, like myself, are joining online. So for you at the University, it is a
"blended" event, with some attending via physical presence, and
some attending via tele-presence ("tele" means "from a
distance", as in "telephone" and "television"). This is the future. More and more classrooms will be like
this. It's a little hard to do it with
just one laptop computer -- at the University there you have a laptop and a
big projection screen, and multiple microphones, I believe. So people are experimenting, developing
blended events in various ways. The social distancing that we did
with the pandemic -- we are doing social distancing today by videoconference,
right? Except for you people at the
university. The rest of us, we are
socially distanced from each other, and from you. Being in physical contact, or even in close
physical proximity, with other people is still somewhat risky behavior
because we don't know exactly if the pandemic is over or not. I believe this has acclimated us,
this has prepared us intellectually and physically, for an upcoming stage in
the evolution of human society which I call the "Great
Dispersal". We are beginning to
go into outer space. When we go on
this Great Dispersal, we will also be socially distanced from each other, by
millions of miles. This pandemic has
gotten us used to isolation from each other.
And being isolated, quarantined, in your home is not going to be so
different from being isolated in a rocket ship. We've had the International Space
Station for 23 years, since 1999. The
Great Dispersal is the way humans now are slowly going into space. From our point of view it seems to be
happening slowly, but in historical terms, it is happening very quickly. One hundred years from now a lot will have
happened in this area. A few months ago, three
billionaires went into space. They are
developing their own rocket ship companies.
Who are they? Jeff Bezos,
Richard Branson, and Elon Musk. They
are developing private companies for visiting and exploring space. For space travel and space tourism. There are plans for hotels in space. A very small number of us may go
to outer space, but we will all know that it is possible and that some people
are doing it, and this knowledge will affect the culture very deeply. There are numerous possible
benefits to this great dispersal.
Number one, those of us who go, we will be putting less pressure on
the earth resources, you know, resources are finite, water and so forth. And I hate to say it, but there's the
danger that human life on earth could destroy itself, through any number of
means. This has come up recently in
relation to the invasion of one country by another country. But it also comes up in relation to global
warming. So when we go off on space
stations -- and you know there are space stations, at least in movies, in
which thousands of people can live, and the point is not even to go to
another planet or solar system, the point is just to live on these space
stations. So it means that humanity,
and its cultural heritage, would be safe from destruction, from
self-destruction and from destruction by others (human and non-human). Isn’t that good news? But what I hope is that stories
-- even difficult and disturbing stories -- will be taken along and
told. Stories about characters such as
Kannagi, Nallathangal, and even Isakki should be known. But as we know, things can be erased from
the Internet, if the-powers-that-be might prefer such. So that's why I think people have to know
these stories "by heart".
Like somebody said a few minutes ago, "My mother told it to
me". There have to be people in
these space stations who know these stories and can tell these stories. You see, these space stations,
they are going to be built and operated by governments and corporations and
billionaires. These will be
controlled, engineered environments and societies. The missions may be profit-motivated. They may be colonising and
imperialistic. "Participatory
democracy" may not be a high priority among the people and organisations
who create and maintain these space stations.
So we cannot depend on the Internet in a space station because the
people who control the Internet there may make available to us only what they
want us to know. I am ending my comments today
with mention of this possible next stage in human evolution on earth and
beyond with the hope that the human heritage of the kind of folklore we've
been talking about will survive and will be passed on to generations to
come. Please somebody give some
feedback. Student #3: Sir, your whole topic about Kannagi and your
take on it and your take on the world, how the world is now with the
technology and the social distancing and what would happen in the future is
very interesting. Your takes on all of
these issues are very unique and they have already given to me a few
ideas. So thank you for all this, sir. Eric Miller: You are most welcome!. Student #4: Can I ask a question? Eric Miller: Please do. Student #4: I work at a museum and since this talk
predominantly is about folklore and sort of understanding our changing
interactions with it, I was wondering how you believe we can actually catalog
or conserve or preserve folklore so that it can be displayed as material
objects in a place like a museum. Is
it even possible? Eric Miller: It's hard to talk about preserving culture
because culture is a living thing. It
is a process. We can preserve relics
of cultures, but not cultures as ways of life. I like the term, "Living
Museum". In a Living Museum the
objects on display are still in everyday use and members of the community
participate in explaining about them to visitors. So whenever we can get members of the
community to participate and be paid, we should do so. We have to "make a living" from
our culture to really respect our culture.
If our culture cannot help us to "earn a living", we tend to
abandon that culture. So when I work
with a community -- whether it's fishing people, tribal people, or others --
I'm on the lookout for community members who might be interested in
developing an exhibition for the public, to educate the public about the
traditional knowledge. Also, we can support and
encourage members of traditional communities to teach the traditional ways to
their young. People in traditional communities
will always have two levels of expression: one that they just do amongst
themselves, and one that they do for
the public. For example,
"saami", which in English is called "spirit possession". That is a very important part of the
cultures of many of the people I work with, including members of the
sea-fishing community in Chennai. But
if saami is put on a stage, it has to be modified and, you know, some members
of the public don't want to see it.
They might think it's inauspicious or backward, they might be afraid
of it. So people in the community have
to discuss, "What are we going to show to the outsiders? What are we not going to show to the
outsiders? How are we going to educate
them about our lives in a way that they will learn from it and enjoy it and
respect it?" Regarding material culture, I
suggest: as much as possible try to get members of the community to be
involved in the selection and exhibition and explanation process, even
possibly to record their voices or have them be involved in any other way,
including that they should make some money from it. Student #4: Thank you so much. Eric Miller: Thank you.
Anybody else? Student #5: Can I ask a question? Eric Miller: Yes. Student #5: I'm currently conducting research to
reinvent and redesign for children the Thirukkural, one of the gems of Tamil
literature, so that they can easily understand it. So I'd like to understand how you collected
your data. Was it through field notes
or recording? Eric Miller: Well, for my PhD, I did a study of
children's songs and verbal games.
There's a long history of studying that in the academic discipline of
Folklore. So, I just hung around for a
year and I was learning their language, their spoken language, just like as
if I were a baby. And naturally I was
interested in how the young people in the community were picking-up
speech. So, after a year, finally we
recorded 14 of the activities. I
taught interested members of the community how to operate the video equipment. And my fieldwork guide (also known as a
research partner) -- he's a better camera man than I am. Student #5: May I ask a follow-up question? Eric Miller: Go ahead. Student #5: During your recordings when you used video
cameras, how did you get permission from them? Did you have some kind of paperwork that
you asked them to sign in order to record them? Eric Miller: That is a good thought, and that practise
is increasingly appropriate today, when we are thinking about
"intellectual property rights" and all. But to be honest, 15 years ago, it did not
occur to me. I was working mostly with
children -- although there were some games that were demonstrated by older people
also. I told them I would give them
copies of the raw footage, and I did so, on VCDs and DVDs. Most members of the community did not know
how to read or write, in any language.
If I would have asked them to sign contracts, that would have caused a
lot of confusion. My project was very
non-controversial: children's songs and games, and language learning. Your government in New Delhi kindly gave me
permission to live in a forest area for two years to study this, which I'm
very grateful for. And the people in
the community, you know, Tamil people are generally very happy if somebody is
coming to study and learn their language.
So, I was welcomed on that level.
While I was there, I also was
listening to the grandmother stories like that story about the woman who
brings her husband back to life with the help of the snake and the
mongoose. Actually I had wanted to do
my entire PhD about the telling of local grandmother stories, but my language
ability was not good enough. So along the way I shifted, since
I was like a baby learning language, I shifted to how young people in the
community learn language with the help of these activities -- through the
repetition of phrases, and through the body actions they do to go along with
the spoken words. And they are often
acting out little skits as they do it.
So all of these things help with the acquisition of spoken
language. This is not even written
language. This is spoken language. Student #5: Great.
Thank you. I just wanted to
understand, because I'm just beginning to do fieldwork for my own research. So I just wanted to understand how you went
about it. Eric Miller: Yes.
You know, we tend to have very romantic ideas about tribal people, but
even before I got there, there was a dance group in the village, which did
dance, like hip-hop dance, to Tamil cinema.
They went to different villages, both tribal and non-tribal and did
hip-hop and different kinds of cinema dance to recordings of Tamil cinema
songs. Since I had the equipment and a
generator with me, I let people use my equipment to videotape their cinema
dancing. So, you know, you help people
out, and they help you out. In the old
days, a scholar might help write a letter that the people had to write to get
some government service. And the
people would be grateful that the scholar would write the letter. But 15 years ago I shared the video
technology I had, including a projector and a generator. So you end up adding these things to the
pool of resources in the community you're working with. Student #5: Right.
Thank you so much. Ravindran Gopalan: Can you tell us about the mapping of
Kannagi’s route? Eric Miller: Yes.
Well, you go to Poompuhar and then you go to Mayiladuthurai and then
you go to Thanjavur. Thiruvarur is
south of Mayiladuthurai. So
unfortunately Thiruvarur is not directly in the path of Kannagi. It would be a slight detour if Kannagi
would've gone to Thiruvarur. We don't
know exactly where she and her husband walked, but they came from Poompuhar
to Madurai. My point was not to map an
exact geographical route. I stayed on
the main roads. I didn't go
"off-road". But you know, folklore scholars
are are not historians. It is not
really our job to determine whether or not an event actually occurred. Our job is to understand the model of behavior
and the psychological meaning of a story. So I had a wonderful time. In ancient days, a south Indian poet wrote,
"All places are my home, all people are my family". I felt it.
I still feel it. That's why
I've moved to Tamil Nadu. I feel Tamil
Nadu is really a culture of people having an open heart. But I fear that if somebody like
me might try to do the same 450km walk today (with a sleeping bag and a small
tent, like I had), the visitor might not feel as welcomed as I felt, because
I sense people are now generally more insecure economically, and people might
be afraid of an outsider bringing disease.
But anyway, I walked across the countryside and it was a wonderful
experience. I learned that the basic building
block of civilization is a tea stand -- a little tea stand with a tin
roof. That's where people would
gather, especially men would gather, and talk. And that was the smallest building block of
social gathering -- in relation to buildings, to architecture. So, ever since then, whenever I see a tea
shop, a tea stand, even in a big city, I think, "Ah, this is the
basics". I wrote a small book about this
walk. You can find it on my
website. I gave the first copy to Dr.
Karunanidhi. I would like to mention one more
thing. Globally, we are generally
dating time from the year of the birth of Jesus Christ. We're in the year 2022 AD (Anno Domini, In
the Year of Our Lord). It seems to me
that this is not appropriate as a global system. Jesus is a figure in one religion. It's not fair to all the other religions,
and to rationalists, for the birth year of this figure to be the universal
point of reference for marking time. I
suggest that we date time from a common human achievement. And the achievement that I would suggest is
the moment that humans first went into space, first went beyond the pull of
gravity. That was in 1961. A Russian man went into space in that
year. So by this system, 1961 would be
the year 0, 1962 would be the year one, and this year, 2022 AD would be 61 --
61 AS (After Space). That's my
proposal. Does anyone have any
responses? Might anyone second my
proposal? Student #5: I think I’d agree. Student #6: I will. Eric Miller: Thank you so much! Ravindran Gopalan: Eric, one more question. Student #7: I've been listening to your lecture. During your lecture, you said one of your
aims was to spread the word of Kannagi to the leaders of world. Eric Miller: Yes. Student #7: And hoping to really get change. Eric Miller: Yes. Student #7: What change are you expecting? We have been surrounded by these stories,
which have some kinds of morals -- folklores, fairytales, religious
rituals. We’ve always heard stories of
wisdom. What kind of change can the
story of Kannagi make in the world? Eric Miller: Oh, the story makes a big difference, just
in Tamil Nadu. You know, it's taught
in the schools, and every government official in Tamil Nadu knows that if he
or she makes a mistake and punishes people unjustly the world could fall on
their head because it happened to the Pandian king. So it's in the air. People know that this is a danger, a
possibility. I think this leads
government officials and other authority figures to be a little more careful,
to think twice before they take rash actions against people. I've certainly had good luck with
government officials here. And I think
it's because when people hear the mention of Kannagi, okay, they're flattered
maybe that someone is researching about the story, but thay also might, to
some small degree, in the back of their minds, be a tiny bit afraid that they
might make the same mistake that the Pandian king made. Student #7: They're afraid of something from God? Eric Miller: Perhaps. There is the saying that something
can "put the fear of God" into you. Student #7: What if they don’t believe in God? Eric Miller: It is not about believing in any particular
God. It is about the mysterious
workings of the universe. If there is
an action, there may be a reaction.
You know, in Tamil culture, if a woman feels violated, it's a
dangerous situation. In the cases of
Nalla Thangal and Kannagi, "Mother Nature", or the God of Fire,
gets involved. Things can accelerate,
they can escalate in very dangerous ways.
So, people are aware of the danger.
A story is a model of the past and a possible model for the future, or
a warning about the future. So, I like
to believe that if a president or prime minister has this story in mind, he or
she might be a little slower to invade other countries, maybe, because you
know, when we invade other countries, a lot of people get killed. Student #7: Thank you, sir, Eric Miller: And I must say I'm also referring to my old
country, my home country, the USA. We
all know the USA has made this invasion mistake numerous times. Ravindran Gopalan: Thank you, Eric. Eric Miller: Professor, can I ask you to give me some
feedback? Did I do what you imagined I
would do? Ravindran Gopalan: Yes.
As always you satisfy my expectations, Eric. Thank you very much. Eric Miller: Thank you. Ravindran Gopalan: I was in particular interested by a few
things you mentioned. I think you
remarked that we are on the cusp of an evolutionary change. That is what you call as a dispersal, a
dispersal towards outer space. That
seems very likely. I'm always
impressed by Stanley Kubrick’s vision of this, through his movie, 2001: A
Space Odyssey. I'm not sure that I
am interested in what Elon Musk and Richard Branson are putting across. These people are capitalists and they have
their own agendas. But have you seen
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey? Eric Miller: Yes, of course. Ravindran Gopalan: As you were speaking, I was reminded of
some of the scenes in that movie. Your
idea for dispersal towards outer space was contextualised by Kubrick in that
movie in 1968. And your suggesting of
a universal calendar is well-taken. We
should have a human-centric approach to dating time. And you are suggesting that we can consider
the first visit to outer space as the point of reference. I think this is agreeable because there is
no religious bias. And your call to the prime
ministers and presidents of the world to be influenced by a story that might
help them to be more just rulers. These are some of the remarkable
thoughts that you have spoken today.
As a folklorist, you want to be of service to human beings in the
present period. I appreciate that very
much. And you are reading the story
differently. I think this has many
lessons for the journalism and communication students in the audience. So I thank you, Eric, for sharing
your thoughts and I thank all of the others also who participated. Eric, how did you find this session? Eric Miller: Wonderful.
I'm very grateful to you. I
just want to add one thing about this dispersal process. We will not always know who is going where
and what is happening to them. If
there's a rebellion or a revolution on a space station, we might not know
about it. So we just have to get used
to this fact, and live with the fact that we are not going to know all of the
details about how these different social experiments are going to evolve. There might be many surprises that we might
learn about later, or we might never learn about them. We just have to learn to live with this
uncertainty. Ravindran Gopalan: Yes.
This is another important thought you have provided today, that
students of communication should take this seriously. Now many people are telling their stories
on YouTube. Eric Miller: Yes. Ravindran Gopalan: Are you saying we should not put our
stories on internet? Eric Miller: No, no!
I am saying, "Put the stories on the internet, but don't depend
on that." Because they can be
deleted, or the system administrators could create algorithms which might
make certain stories difficult or impossible to access. Ravindran Gopalan: Yes.
What if YouTube disappears tomorrow?
What if Facebook disappears tomorrow? Eric Miller: Correct. Ravindran Gopalan: So these are not permanent mediums. Eric Miller: Yes.
We used to trust books because books had a certain permanence, but now
books are out of fashion, but hopefully we will always have books. But in the end, finally, we have the human
mind. So as long as a human being is
alive, that human being can store and share the information. Ravindran Gopalan: Okay.
So the first priority is the human mind. Second is printed world, isn’t it? Eric Miller: Yes, as I see it: First the human mind, then the printed
world, then the Internet. There is no
foolproof method. We should use all of
them. By the way, I have placed links
to video recordings and readings related to today's talk at https://storytellinginstitute.org/6May2022a.html Ravindran Gopalan: Thanks very much! Now I invite one of our students to propose
the vote of thanks. Student #8: Good afternoon to all. Let me take this opportunity to thank our
lecturer, Dr. Eric Miller, Director of the World Storytelling Institute,
Chennai. It was a fresh take on the
folklore of Kannagi and it was an amazing experience to be a part of it. I hope everyone felt the same and will have
new insights regarding fieldwork and all of the other topics that were
covered today. I extend my thanks to
Dr. Eric Miller. Thank you so much,
sir. I also thank Professor Ravindran
Gopalan and all of our other faculty who give us such wonderful opportunites,
and all the other participants who have joined to be part of this
lecture. We are researching and
rethinking ways people communicate with each other in Tamil Nadu. Last but not least, I thank all my fellow
students and scholars of this particular University. Thank you.
I would also like to thank our office assistant, Rajesh sir. He has been working hard to make this
happen. Thank you, Rajesh sir. Thank you, everyone. Ravindran Gopalan: Thank you, Eric. Eric Miller: Thank you, Dr. Ravi, thank you so
much. It's always an honor to work for
you. Ravindran Gopalan: Thank you.
We thoroughly enjoyed. Eric Miller: Thank you very much. Ravindran Gopalan: Thank you.
Best wishes, Eric. Thank
you. Next time, we'll meet face-to-face. Please visit our University here in
Thiruvarur. Eric Miller: I would be delighted to do so. Ravindran Gopalan: Yes.
Thank you. Eric Miller: Thank you, all of you! Ravindran Gopalan: Bye-bye! ____________________
https://storytellingandvideoconferencing.com The
website of the NGO Dr Eric directs, https://storytellinginstitute.org Links to video recordings and readings related to today's talk
are at https://storytellinginstitute.org/6May2022a.html To
send an email to Dr Eric, please send to eric@storytellinginstitute.org
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