Okay…. Had to read this several times. Trying to think of an easy example…. Don’t have a particular quote in mind, but I was thinking about Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”. It has one meaning in the original, but it was hoodwinked, er, used by a Republican presidential candidate, taking it out of context and asserting that it meant something completely different. Is that the general idea of re-entextualization? Does it also apply to music? Am I way off?
That would be my understanding of it too, Louise! Mr. Mnemuka was making the nuanced distinction to describe the research approach/lens through which he analyzed a popular folktale once used by Tanzania's first, immensely influential--think Gandhi or Dr. King level in East and Southern Africa-- President Julius Nyerere, of which a snippet of his version of the telling of a folktale in one of his popular speeches was repurposed by a subsequent Tanzanian President Magufuli, where the snippet was recognizable by the rallied audience and sufficient to explain that Magufuli was intent on fighting corruption...without having to explicitly say that.
We all see and do these things with our language and culture, but I like when I get the academic term for it. We are perpetual students, are we not, Louise?! :) If we do life right, lol.
Thank you for chewing over my post! It totally took me two days to read it, lol.
🤯
Okay…. Had to read this several times. Trying to think of an easy example…. Don’t have a particular quote in mind, but I was thinking about Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”. It has one meaning in the original, but it was hoodwinked, er, used by a Republican presidential candidate, taking it out of context and asserting that it meant something completely different. Is that the general idea of re-entextualization? Does it also apply to music? Am I way off?
That would be my understanding of it too, Louise! Mr. Mnemuka was making the nuanced distinction to describe the research approach/lens through which he analyzed a popular folktale once used by Tanzania's first, immensely influential--think Gandhi or Dr. King level in East and Southern Africa-- President Julius Nyerere, of which a snippet of his version of the telling of a folktale in one of his popular speeches was repurposed by a subsequent Tanzanian President Magufuli, where the snippet was recognizable by the rallied audience and sufficient to explain that Magufuli was intent on fighting corruption...without having to explicitly say that.
We all see and do these things with our language and culture, but I like when I get the academic term for it. We are perpetual students, are we not, Louise?! :) If we do life right, lol.
Thank you for chewing over my post! It totally took me two days to read it, lol.
Happy day, global citizen!