Фолклорът – пътуване към себе си (Към въпроса за фолклора като родово-етнична категория)
Folklore – a Journey into One’s Own Identity (On Folklore as a Generic and Ethnic Category)

Summary/Abstract: Present-day studies of the category of ethnicity in logical and historical terms focus attention on folklore as a specific mechanism of preserving and transferring generic knowledge (Sapiens, Lore). This knowledge is ethnically specified and individually meaningful, i.e., it exists as a value for culture and for individual persons. It is genetically determined and forms the basis of human culture upon which society builds the achievements of its cultural and historical experience. Generic knowledge is inherent in culture as personal knowledge and value (“immortality formula”) and is preserved in time through folklore as a people’s knowledge. Thus folklore itself can be more widely defined as generic people’s knowledge. Generic knowledge should be seen not only as information (genetic and cultural) but also as generic and social experience. It is inherent in culture and the individual in two ways: first, through spontaneous emotional and rational forms of behaviour built into the individual person’s biogenetic and biosocial experience and, second, through the individual’s socialization by the assimilation of and involvement in the norms and values of culture. That is why today folklore and folkloristics cease to be a narrow speciality, but are becoming an individual and cultural necessity, a means of realizing the desire for self-knowledge and inner integrity.

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