Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms

ELEVEN: THE MORAL IMAGINATION OF THE KAGURU: SOME THOUGHTS ON TRICKSTERS, TRANSLATION AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

ELEVEN THE MORAL IMAGINATION OF THE I(AGURU: SOME THOUGHTS ON TRICI(STERS, TRANSLATION AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS T. o. Beidelman If comparison is the characteristic method of social anthropology, it does not follow that we shall be very effective with it. -Needham 1978: 32 Any claim to universality demands in the nature of things an historical or psychological, rather than a sociological, explanation, and thereby defeats the sociological purpose, which is to explain differences rather than similarities . . . -Evans-Pritchard 1963: 16 Recently I was asked to participate in a seminar on the concept of the trickster in African societies. As I surveyed the literature I became increasingly unsure as to whether this was a meaningful exercise, mainly because I doubted the usefulness of such a general analytical category as trickster. As I pondered why this should seem so, I began to question some of the ways anthropologists employ the comparative method to understand the meaning of collective representations in other societies. I found no satisfactory solution to my questions, but I have now recognized some of the misleading assumptions that impede our understanding. In this chapter I indicate what these seem to be. While I begin this essay as a consideration of tricksters, I end by addressing critical but insoluble issues at the heart of what anthropology is about. THE KAGURU TRICKSTER 175 TRICI(STERS The theme of the trickster has prompted a wide range of explanations for what seem to be, to quote Evans-Pritchard (1967: 29), "unedifying incidents." Anthropologists leave us with confusing arguments as to what this figure means. For example, at one pole we find EvansPritchard (1967: 29) writing: "... there is nothing buried. All is on the surface and there are no repressed symbols to interpret." At the other pole, his student Street (1972: 101) reanalyzes the same Zande material and concludes that the trickster is at the very heart of Zande metaphysics , presenting "a model of the 'meaningful' to the audience and show[ing] how it developed and is continually being developed out of the meaningless, the amorphous." Recently, Babcock-Abrahams (1975: 182-85) surveyed the writings on tricksters, coming up with six functional explanations, although favoring a Turnerian interpretation of a trickster as a liminal figure expressing "anti-structure," a phrase that Turner has employed to characterize situations in which the hierarchical and authoritative aspects of societies are purported to be temporarily dissolved. While I am not in full agreement with Babcock-Abrahams' views (see Beidelman 1978b), she does provide useful coverage of the basic literature. There is little to be gained by covering the same ground, from Radin to Levi-Strauss, especially when I believe that few new insights on the topic will be gained from such a general, global approach rather than from more intensive studies, single or comparative, of particular societies. It may be that trickster is too general a category and that those such as Babcock-Abrahams who consider characters as culturally disparate as Ture the Spider and Easy Rider may have begun backwards. Unless we know particular tricksters and their contexts well, we cannot assume that they represent a valid analytical grouping. In an argument similar to mine attacking the global concept of trickster, Kirk (1974: 18-21) criticizes the tendency to place a wide and disparate range of texts under the rubric of myth. This is not to reject such terms out of hand, but rather to urge analysts not to begin their analyses by assuming the obviousness of categories they are about to examine. The category of trickster may be merely the product of a series of false translations, much as terms such as family and witchcraft seem incomparable cross-culturally when taken out of context. Certainly, all six functions cited by Babcock-Abrahams seem 176 BEIDELMAN plausiblel and may well apply to any such material, even that not related to such figures. What this suggests is that perhaps broad questions of function are unprofitable; instead, we may ask what texts suggest about a particular society's mode of thought and form of organization, rather than raise questions about tricksters in general. Not surprisingly, I propose as my particular case the oral literature of the Kaguru, an East African people with whom I am familiar. In so doing, I include a group of characters that everyone may not agree to call tricksters, but which exemplify certain forms of supposed disorder and mischief, sometimes even malevolence...