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This article addresses the role of “traveling theory” in the making of disciplinary histories by departing from and critically reflecting on the concept. In simple terms, Said defines “traveling theory” as “a theory divorced from its original real-life moment of articulation and applied to a later time and place” (1983, 226). Although Said revisited his earlier formulations and emphasized the crucial role context plays in “traveling theory,” both in its origins and in its adaptations and modifications at different destinations (Said 1994), certain aspects of his arguments remained open. Among other issues, Said was criticized for not adequately considering the central role of translation in facilitating or thwarting the theory’s travels. I take this important concern as one of the anchor points of this article and highlight some of the evaded issues about translated texts in traveling theories and their impact on transculturation. Rather than sticking to the singularity of the original term “traveling theory,” I employ the term in the plural strategically and emphasize that theories can take multiple routes. As such, I evoke the images of assemblage (or agencement, in French)—a concept that frames social complexity through fluidity, exchangeability, and connectivity; and rhizome—a concept in post-structuralist theory, that refers to non-linear roots and networks. Taken together these images as theoretical models can prove useful for disciplinary historians, as ideas and concepts, taken up by different disciplines, can be mutated, and eventually become something completely different. First, by tackling issues of translation and considering delays, omissions, rejections, and appropriations of theories, I underline that texts enter dynamic translation processes. Travel itself generates contact (and often, conflict) zones between different actors, geographies, and histories—a mediated transference between “source” and “host” languages and subversions of such delineations. Thus, the process of translation becomes a creative act in itself, one that produces new meanings and insights. It challenges us to rethink the relationship between language and knowledge, and to consider how knowledge is created and transformed through translation. Second, I consider the role of theory in disciplining fields, in particular, in “disciplining folkloristics.” I analyze certain key texts, theories, and theorists in folklore. In the face of recent discussions on “critical folkloristics,” (Otero ve M. Rivera 2021), I suggest that writing disciplinary histories against the backdrop of recent global developments, such as Black Lives Matter, COVID-19 protests, and other post-colonial reading human reactions to social realities, is both possible and necessary. I also underline that mistakenly construed boundaries between academic and public folklore need to be rethought and reworked. Instead, I propose an integrated, activism-oriented, post-disciplinary traveling theories, from which folklore studies will greatly benefit. Last, I take transculturation as an effective tool to understand theory’s role in postdisciplinary histories. Transculturation is a term owed to Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz (1940), who questioned the common view that cultural encounters work only in one way. Instead, he suggests that they are reciprocal processes in which some cultural characteristics may be lost, while new elements emerge.

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