In applying a long-standing Jewish ritual to his work at Winesburg, then, Marcus essentially works to "
traditionalize" his environment by attempting to make his work on campus "appear to be identical to or thoroughly consistent with older cultural precedents." (16) Unable to maintain or transfer the traditional ritual's sacred connotations, however, the meaning of that original ritual becomes distorted for Marcus, losing some of the power it held for him in the confines of his Jewish home.
Although some of us may feel we need to
traditionalize our attire, sartorial alterations are relatively easy to make.
One might argue that the National Outlook Movement, unlike other Islamic movements, has not negated tradition but has sought rather to
traditionalize the past by creating an invented ideal Ottoman society that would serve as a model for restructuring the present and the future.
Naidus definitively Jewish--as the exhibition effectively does--is to
traditionalize and essentialize her Jewishness, even as Na idus's work itself makes us aware of and ironizes that process of traditionalization.
The fact that we tend to
traditionalize such events, such as repeating the legendary open-air rock concert "Woodstock" of 1969, is testimony not only to the play of the market which is heavily in evidence in the Austrian touristic scene described above.