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"Natural context"
is a sort of fetish for folklorists (myself included!). The belief, rightly
so, is that when you go out to collect folklore, you should try to collect
it in as "natural" or typical a context as possible. So, if
your family only tells certain stories at holiday gatherings, it's best
to try to collect those stories during those gatherings--not randomly,
from individuals, at other times of the year.
It's clear why this methodology
is preferable: when you observe and collect in a natural context, it's
easier to make sense of the folklore dynamics as a system. You can see
how the whole event works (and not just the isolated pieces of the event),
and you can better determine the dynamics of the folk group involved.
But what's "natural context"
when it comes to e-lore?
Without face-to-face contact
and simultaneous exchange (i.e., the "teller" and his or her
"audience" experience the exchange at the same time), when does
"performance" even happen? Is it when the sender makes the choice
to pass something along to a particular person, and hits the "send"
command? Or is it when the receiver opens and sees/reads the message?
Or both?
Without an explicit moment
of "performance" that can be documented and analyzed in traditional
ways, our ability to interpret e-lore can be seriously compromised. Most
of our clues about the "context" of e-lore are implicit, rather
than explicit: unless the sender provides a clear commentary about what
s/he is forwarding along in the e-mail message itself—which happens
very rarely—we’re left to our own devices to interpret the person’s
motives and intent in sending the item.
So what are some of the "implicit"
contextual clues we "read" in e-lore in order to make sense
of it (i.e., in order to complete our end of the "performance")?
Largely, we rely on our knowledge of the sender and our relationship with
the sender to make sense of the item. Is this something we suspect the
person found funny (in the case, for example, of e-lore jokes) or believable
(in the case of e-lore legends, for example), knowing what we do about
their sense of humor, political viewpoints, beliefs, and so forth?
In some ways, this isn’t vastly different from what we do when we’re
the "audience" for a face-to-face folklore exchange; in that
situation, as well, we’re relying not just on the features of that
particular performance to shape our interpretation of it, but also on
our understanding of the deeper context of our relationship with this
person or within a specific folk group. The significant difference lies
more in the fact that e-lore tends to be stripped of the kinds of explicit
contextual clues that reinforce or validate our "implicit" assumptions
and interpretations about the folklore.
Again, unless there is an explicit comment "introducing" the
item, the implicit context is all we have to operate on, and for many
of us, that seems like dangerous territory: we don’t want to "assume"
an interpretation that isn’t capable of being supported by obvious
"evidence." To be sure, a real danger in collecting and interpreting
e-lore is the ease with which we can overlook the "contexts"
in which we received such things and interpret them in broad and oversimplified
ways.
Plus, there’s the additional complication of whether the e-lore item
is something we received "spontaneously," or whether it is something
we outright solicited. There’s a parallel to more traditional fieldwork
here, as well: most of the face-to-face collecting we do is also "solicited,"
rather than being stuff we just "happened" to catch on tape
as it was occurring "naturally." Still, we tend to know more
about the history of the folklore we collect that way, and more about
the group(s) in which it circulates. Because e-lore can follow such circuitous
and anonymous paths in its transmission, it often comes to us without
that kind of history and personal connection. This, too, complicates the
task of identifying even the implicit contextual and performance features
of any e-lore item.
Nevertheless, there’s no disputing that these items are folkloric:
they’re generated from the bottom-up and circulate widely and informally;
they tend to be public, not private, property and discourse; and they
tend to follow their own inherent traditions in terms of their structure,
themes, and so forth. And, as the items in this archive suggest, collectively
they offer us an incredible insight into the communal reaction to current
events—a reaction that generally cannot be documented with any specificity
through more formal channels (such as the mass media). Even with all of
the challenges that collecting, interpreting, and archiving e-lore poses,
we simply cannot afford to miss these things while they’re circulating.
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