ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the idea of "authentic folklore", legitimated as a disciplinary subject through ever newly formulated shades of authenticity, has situated the field of folklore at the margins of both society and the academy. It presents the some scholarly efforts to channel the longing for authenticity into a field of study as a case study. Folklore is a particularly poignant example for understanding the ideological currents in cultural scholarship. The chapter explains how such commitments have shaped the course of the discipline. Postcolonial native ethnography, history, and linguistics have brought about an interest in unpacking phases of colonial encounters, the role of those encounters in shaping ideas of cultural self and other, and the imprint they left on disciplinary formations. The chapter examines the German literature on Folklorismus, catchily defined as "second-hand folklore". Folklore, if institutionally marginalized, has always been profoundly interdisciplinary. In terms of its base of practitioners and its institutional representation, folkloristics is thus recognizably metadisciplinary.
