The territory of ‘the popular’ is a contested one, not least in an Irish context. While discourses, ranging from politics to aesthetics, regularly claim to know what is popular and why, there is no consensus as to what defines the popular: is it a function of mass and majority, or is it rather an essentialist category springing from the folk tradition of a given region or site?
This problem of definition and delimitation has etymological roots. Popular literally means ‘of the people’, but what of the Germanic alternative to the Latin root ‘populus’: the folk?
This conflict between imaginings of the popular has been thematized in the British and continental European debate about the culture industry, where mass culture was considered evil (because of its capitalist origins and profit-making function) and a corrupting influence on the authentic culture of ‘the folk’, whether urban working class or rural. High or elite culture on the other hand was traditionally considered as having a civilizing or didactic influence on the people (giving them the possibility of becoming ‘cultured’). We thus have a triangle of cultures battling for the domain of ‘the popular’: ‘folk culture’ claiming the territory of the authentic; ‘mass culture’ claiming pride of place for its dominance in terms of volume; and ‘high culture’ claiming dominance because of its didactic capacity and permanent aesthetic value.
The conference seeks to explore the contested ground of ‘the popular’ in an Irish context: The popular vs. the folk; High art vs. folk art; Mass culture vs. elite culture.
Papers on all manifestations of the popular in Irish culture, literature, arts, society and history are welcome. Phenomena to be explored could include, but are obviously not limited to: