December 14, 2014 — George Hansen

[Burnt State]

I would urge everyone to keep in mind that Hansen's theoretical approach is rooted in functionalism (perhaps structural functionalism? I get them confused) which 1) carries its own assumptions and, thus, implicit critiques and 2) is very outdated. Grab your local anthropology or sociology grad student and they will be happy to talk your ear off about it. Functionalist theories have significant limitations in explaining even normal phenomena - limitations which have been understood and driven new theory development for the last quarter of a century. If you want to build on Hansen, you have to understand the limitations of that foundation. That doesn't mean necessarily reading his book so much as reading generally in anthropology, folklore, history and the sociology of science. No problem, right?!

Sue, do you have other suggestions for whom we can read to build off of? We have Hansen, O'Brien and Jung in the mix so far, and the history of cultural myths and contemporary examples that these three bring forward. If you were going to read about the trickster who would you turn to?

I just re-read Jung's Four Archetypes section on the trickster and what I see is an underlying focus of Blake's contraries at work - that the trickster is also the shadow, that in the trickster we see the demon and the creator. Seems to me that the trickster is all about opposites, and the use of opposites for specific social purposes when engineered by a human. Jung sees the trickster as the unconscious, as something we have forgotten is an intimate part of ourselves and our own personality. Basically, the trickster is us.

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

I recommend these two books highly...
Paul Radin, The Trickster
Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

 

[Wade]

So I sent an email to George about his recent appearance and asked him a question that I had wished I had thought of before his appearance and it was in relation to memes. I had asked him if he had any insight regarding a possible connection between the trickster phenomena and the idea of memes as a way of promoting (maybe accelerating) change that is to get ideas passed down from person to person...sort of crowdsourcing change to push things along , this was part of his reply

"...I've only done a very little reading on memes (primarily Susan Blackmore).

Instead of reading on memes, I've spent more time on Saussurean linguistics and semiotics. Those fields led to the development of structuralist ideas, and in my view they have been very fruitful. I don't see similar connections and fruitfulness with the work on memes, but again, I'm not really familiar with that field.

Semiotics makes the distinction between signifier and signified. Umberto Eco noted that the signifier is anything that can be used in order to lie. So the signifier is the tool of the trickster..."

He also welcomed any furthur reading he could pursue regarding memes. I know a few.

 

[SheaOlmsford]

Sue, do you have other suggestions for whom we can read to build off of? We have Hansen, O'Brien and Jung in the mix so far, and the history of cultural myths and contemporary examples that these three bring forward. If you were going to read about the trickster who would you turn to?

I just re-read Jung's Four Archetypes section on the trickster and what I see is an underlying focus of Blake's contraries at work - that the trickster is also the shadow, that in the trickster we see the demon and the creator. Seems to me that the trickster is all about opposites, and the use of opposites for specific social purposes when engineered by a human. Jung sees the trickster as the unconscious, as something we have forgotten is an intimate part of ourselves and our own personality. Basically, the trickster is us.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but Joseph Campbell had a lot to say about the Trickster in Native American cultures.