The Dutch American Identity: Staging Memory and Ethnicity in Comm ...

As with literature on ethnicity in regards to European ethnic groups and their descendants in the United States, much has been written about articulations, stagings, and performances of heritage and tradition in the United States. By necessity, this literature has often been concerned with questions of the authenticity of such articulations, stagings, and performances. In the past, a number of scholars have taken a skeptical view of events that, like the festivals at the center of this study, are promoted as “authentic”² (or, at least, as containing authentic folk elements, such as costumes, dancing, craft demonstrations, etc.). Richard Dorson attempted to draw a distinction between authentic folklore and spurious “fakelore,” which he defined as “a synthetic product claiming to be authentic…but actually tailored for mass edification,” which “misled and gulled the public” (5). In a similar vein, Daniel Boorstin attacked “pseudo-events,” nonspontaneous events planned primarily (though not necessarily exclusively) for the purpose of being reported or reproduced and make themselves important by stating their own importance (11–12). And Dean MacCannell differentiated between authenticity and “staged authenticity,” which he defined as a setting designed in advance to appear authentic, but which, in reality, is inauthentic, geared toward tourists looking for authentic experiences (597, 599, 602). These concepts, however, are too skeptical to be useful in analyzing Dutch-American heritage celebrations. Such celebrations do often claim a measure of authenticity, but they are not designed to mislead or gull the public, as in Dorson’s formulation of “fakelore.” Nor are they the “contrived…cultural mirages” Boorstin denounces as “pseudo-events.” Similarly, MacCannell’s characterization of “staged authenticity” as “superficial” or “tacky” events designed to, in a sense, trap tourists (599, 602) does not ring true of the five festivals under study here. Indeed, none of these concepts do justice to, or seem particularly concerned with, the evidently earnest townspeople attempting to stage an “authentic” event for themselves as well as their visitors. The same is true of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s “invented tradition,” which is inadequate for understanding the ostensible “authenticity” present in these festivals.