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My family and I attended the North Texas Irish Festival this past weekend. We had a good time while we were there, enjoying music, arts and crafts, and food based upon those associated with Ireland in the US popular imagination, as well as the scenic Fair Park in Dallas, Texas. Ms. 8 wore herself out running around and seeing new things, exulting in them, and her mother and I were more sedate but no less happy to partake of the brewer's and distiller's arts as we enjoyed others. I did not get many pictures, and those I took are not the sort I'm like to post (unlike an earlier trip to the Kerrville Renaissance Festival, about which more here)--but I did not go to this festival with the intention of doing any work from it. That said, I seem unable not to work on such things, hence this post...
I commented to my wife that I find myself having mixed feelings about such events.As I've noted elsewhere, I appreciate seeing that people enjoy things, and that, through said enjoyment, they promote attention to the kinds of things I like to study. Admittedly, much of the "Irishness" celebrated at the recent festival is post-medieval, and it certainly ranges farther afield than Ireland--several Scottish clans were represented on site, as well as several yet nerdier organizations that I was far from displeased to see. And there were various forms of nerdiness and geekitude to be found; really, everybody present at the event was some kind of nerd or another, even those engaged in such traditionally "non-nerdy" pursuits as law-enforcement equestrian work. (I maintain that nerdiness is enthusiastic engagement with and delight in minutiae, making a lot of people a whole lot nerdier than they're likely happy to have pointed out.)
At the same time, a damned lot of the things valorized at the festival--at most such festivals--get used in heinous ways. An awful lot of raging fuckheads--and, no, I'm not going to "watch my tone" talking about racist, fascist asshat shithead fuckfaces; they deserve all opprobrium in every register--try to cloak their back-facing asininity in a "return to tradition" and "celebration of heritage." They do not realize, or do not want to realize, that the "pure" heritages they seek to use to justify their racism aren't. They are either 1) understandings produced by now-outdated research that was conducted with overt bias in attempts to justify putatively "scientific" racial hierarchies and that lacked access to our outright ignored information that points out how blended, mixed, nuanced, and against the tenor of racists' desires the older forms were; or 2) outright fictions produced for the same damned reasons.
Clearly, given my field of study and my continued engagement with it, I do not want to see a turn away from looking at and into older ideas. I do, however, want to see the looking done better and put to better ends than it seems to be. I do what I can to encourage people towards doing so and away from keeping their heads up their asses--but some folks are buried pretty deeply up their own shit-chutes, and I have to wonder if it wouldn't be easier and better to shove them far enough in that they can't bother anyone else.