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Abstract: The following introduces a special issue of the Journal of Folklore Research (49/2, 2012) that focuses on situations in which individuals and the vernaculars associated with them are stigmatized. Authors in the special issue explore issues of reflexivity, representation, and 'stigma veneration' as they emerged during research on type 2 diabetes, accounts of tobacco farming, chaotic narratives of trauma, and the quest for political asylum. Here, the issue's guest editors introduce concerns about stigma, vernacularity, tellability, visibility, and valuation. A number of methodological issues arise as researchers struggle to hear what isn't voiced and attempt to determine what can't be said when writing about stigmatized groups or topics.
In a moving and now classic 1989 reconsideration of his earlier work on the Ilongot headhunters of Luzon, Philippines, anthropologist Renato Rosaldo described his inability to grasp the rage that would compel someone to cut offa human head. The Ilongot spoke of severing and tossing a victim's head away as an act that enabled the headhunter to discard the anger that arises from bereavement. In "Grief and a Headhunter's Rage," Rosaldo wrote of his inability to understand grief and anger so powerful that it would lead to such brutal action-until he experienced the sudden tragic loss of his wife Michelle in 1981, when during a fieldwork trip in the Philippines she lost her footing and fell to her death. Rosaldo characterizes his journal entries following Michelle's death by saying they "reflect more broadly on death and rage and headhunting by speaking of my 'wish for the Ilongot solution'" (1993, 11). He continues, "They are much more in touch with reality than Christians" (11). In a subsequent reflection, Rosaldo notes:
One burden of this introduction concerns the claim that it took some fourteen years for me to grasp what Ilongots had told me about grief, rage, and headhunting. During all those years I was not yet in a position to comprehend the force of anger possible in bereavement, and now I am. Introducing myself into this account requires a certain hesitation both because of the discipline's taboo and because of its increasingly frequent violation by essays laced with trendy amalgams of continental philosophy and autobiographical snippets. (2004, 170)
Rosaldo's words render visible the deep connections among...