Avenues of re-enchantment in Bulgarian mumming

ABSTRACT

While Bulgarians have purportedly been mumming since ancient times, the last 20 years have seen an increase of interest and participation in these multi-purpose rituals. The ‘revival’ has been accompanied by an increase of expressed belief in the efficacy of the rituals to exorcize evil and bring abundance. How can we account for this seeming re-enchantment? Following a brief description of the rituals, this analysis tracks three dynamics that have contributed to new expressions of belief: the impact of western postsecularism, the prior significance of ambivalence in how villagers related to the rituals, and widespread disenchantment with alternative programs for development and improvement. The article concludes with an examination of how these forces of re-enchantment articulate with a prior analysis of mumming as an expression of alternative modernity.

KEYWORDS:

• Folk revival
• belief
• postsecularism
• ambivalence
• political economy

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the editors of this thematic issue, the three anonymous reviewers, and Michael Stausberg for insightful and helpful comments on previous versions of the manuscript. Special gratitude goes to Alessandro Testa, Agata Ładykowska and Viola Teisenhoffer, for inspiring me to wrestle with the notion of re-enchantment and including my efforts with theirs.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I use the term mumming for multiple reasons. While survakari and kukeri are used generically in Bulgarian for these rituals, participants in villages that do not use these terms sometimes resent being labeled as such. The other common Bulgarian option is ‘masquerade', which I sometimes use as well, but in English that term evokes the carnival-like qualities more characteristic of mumming festivals than the village practices I emphasize here. For the same reason I do not use the term ‘carnival' itself, or ‘games', which are also used in Bulgarian. Anglo-Irish mumming is not a perfect parallel either (see e.g., Glassie 1975; Sider 1976), but since the term is less common it does not evoke as many inappropriate preconceptions as the other English options. This is not a criticism of scholars who use these other terms as I also use them on occasion, it is just an explanation why I use the term mumming more often.

2 This is not an exhaustive list (of either places or terms), and my objective here is not comparative. Some of these cases also evince elements of west European carnival traditions, while an excellent analysis by Ivo Strahilov (2021b) points out the Ottoman/Turkish and Roma influences on Bulgarian mumming. All these challenge common nationalist characterizations of mumming customs, although the Bulgarian case is perhaps distinguished by the extent of contemporary enactments.

3 This description is adapted from Creed (2004). For more details and different analyses see the voluminous writings on mumming by Bulgarian anthropologists, ethnographers and folklorists (e.g., Fol 2004; Kraev 1996; Manova 2009; Stamenova 1982; Strahilov 2020, among many others).

4 That it was unexpected points to our inadequate understanding of secularization, which several scholars have tried to correct (Asad 2003; Casanova 2006; Martin 2005).

5 This village did not have a mumming tradition. Those that perform at Lent do know when Easter is, but perhaps because it affects the date of mumming.

6 Testa (2017, 23) found similar claims and connections in applications made to UNESCO by the Czech Republic. See also Christoph Brumann (2014) on the expectation of continuity in heritage ‘belief'.

7 I should note, however, that despite the imperative of belief for Christianity, Bulgarians are sometimes less than fulsome in expressing their Orthodox faith as well, which is more often assumed as part of national identity than attested or practiced (cf., Davie 2008). In general, some of the qualities and dynamics I describe for mumming could be applied to Orthodox Christianity in Bulgaria, but I will have to leave that comparison for another place.

8 I am not the only anthropologist to make this choice. Indeed, anthropologists have debated whether belief is even an appropriate subject of study (see Needham 1972; Southwold 1979; Kirsch 2004). Many of the Bulgarian ethnographers and folklorists who study mumming don’t grabble with the issue either.

9 Gail Kligman (1981) documented a related progression for căluș rituals in Romania.

10 Carol Silverman (1983) describes a similar dynamic in the homogenization of Bulgarian folk music.

11 Klaus Roth’s (1990) discussion of socialist life-cycle rituals in Bulgaria provides an interesting comparison. Secular rites for marriage and christening met with a more varied reception, and in some places supplanted their Christian predecessors.

12 Since Eisenstadt’s (2000) offering of ‘multiple modernities,' different adjectives have been suggested from different disciplines and perspectives to emphasize particular dynamics and forces in the process (see e.g., Gaonkar 2001; Knauft 2002a). For the most part, these adjustments and refinements do not alter my claim about the concept’s relationship to re-enchantment.

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Notes on contributors

Gerald Creed

Gerald Creed is a Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research examines various dimensions of the postsocialist condition in Bulgaria, including religion/ritual, nationalism/populism, family/community and political economy.