Babcock Adams A Tolerated Margin

Main Argument

• The trickster is a fundamentally paradoxical, interstitial figure whose systemic violation of rules and boundaries (“antistructure”) is a necessary and universal condition for cultural order, vitality, and creative self-awareness

• Babcock-Abrahams argues against traditional, reductive interpretations of the trickster (such as viewing trickster myths as primitive stages of undifferentiated consciousness)

• Trickster figures and their picaresque narratives embody a "creative negation", in which they live “betwixt and between“ social, spatial, physical, and temporal categories

• The trickster exposes the arbitrary nature of cultural structures and opens up a realm of possibility and reflection towards them

"Trickster, 'the foolish one' — the negation offering possibility — stands in immediate relation to the center in all its ambiguity... And for this we not only tolerate this 'margin of mess', this 'enemy of boundaries', we create and re-create him." - p. 186

Reinterpreting Marginality and Liminality

• Phase vs. Type / Synchronic vs. Diachronic: Drawing upon Victor Turner and Everett Stonequist to distinguish between marginality as a temporary ritual phase (liminality) and as a permanent personality or social status (outsiderhood). Tricksters break down barriers between these dimensions and constantly shift between them

• Necessary Dirt: Drawing on Mary Douglas, Babcock Abrahams argues that peripheral figures represent the rejected elements of an ordered system

  • Society needs a “tolerated margin of mess“ because all systems define themselves by what they exclude rather than what they include

• Volitional vs. Nonvolitional, Comic vs. Tragic: Unlike tragic scapegoats who are sacrificed to restore order, the trickster operates in a comic modality by doing things like dissolving events and avoiding final judgement or death

"Dirt is 'matter out of place' that 'implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order'... In this sense 'peripheral' people such as tricksters, are the 'dirt' of the social system... Marginality is, therefore, universal in that it is the defining condition as well as the by-product of all ordered systems. We not only tolerate but need 'a margin of mess'." - p. 152

Modality definition (side note)

a particular way in which something exists, happens, or is done

Character Profile of the Trickster

The trickster is defined by a constellation of recurring cross-cultural characteristics:

• Spatial & Temporal Interstitials: Lives in/frequents places of transition (crossroads, thresholds, shorelines) and operates outside standard time.

• Physical & Biological Ambiguity: Portrayed with exaggerated libidos, multiform or unstable sexual statuses, animal/human dualism, and a tendency toward being enfatuated with excrement/feces

• Dialogic Nature / Coincidence of Opposites: Simultaneously creator and destroyer, wise and foolish, sacred and profane.

"In Trickster we find a 'coincidence of opposite processes and notions in a single representation [that] characterizes the peculiar unity of the liminal: that which is neither this nor that, and yet is both.' Trickster is 'at one and the same time, creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes and who is always duped himself.'" - p. 161

The Trickster as Culture-Hero (The "Sacred Violator")

• Babcock Abrahams rejects nineteenth century theories of "degenerated deities" and early psychoanalytic views of "undifferentiated consciousness"

• She instead embraces Laura Makarius’ model of the Trickster’s power being derived from their vocation as a violator of taboos

• The trickster becomes a sacred culture hero precisely because of their transgressive behavior for the profit and survival of their group

"Trickster is a sacred being and the founder of the ritual and ceremonial life of his society precisely because he violates taboos for the profit of his group." - p. 164

Deep Syntagmatic Structure in Trickster Narrative (Winnebago Analysis)

• Analyzing the Winnebago trickster (Wakdjunkaga), Babcock-Abrahams refutes claims that trickster cycles lack overall plot structure

• The trickster cycle instead follows a macro-syntagmatic arrangement analogous to a rite de passage (from separation to limen to reaggregation) or a Bildungsroman (developmental novel)

• Wakdjunkaga’s transgressions are a form of systematic satire, parodying core Winnebago institutions in order: the rituals of war, moiety/clan balances (Thunderbird vs. Bear clans), sexual and kinship taboos, biological control, and religious practices like puberty vision quests.

"This process of increasing biological, psychic, and social awareness to the point where he returns to society and appears as an almost thoroughly socialized individual and, further, to a realization of his role and identity as culture-hero, is similar in structure to the Bildungsroman or developmental novel." - p. 181

Moeity meaning (side note)

one of two approximately equal parts, halves, or distinct subdivisions that together form a whole

Socio-Cultural Functions of Trickster Narratives

The author synthesizes six main functional interpretations of trickster narratives, emphasizing the final three as the most vital:

• Entertainment / Relaxation (temporary distraction).

• Operative / Validatory (myth as social charter or etiology [study of diseases]).

• Psychological Outlet (steam-valve for social restrictions).

• Evaluative / Critical (satire that exposes social rank as arbitrary).

• Reflective-Creative / Cognitive Dissonance (forcing reflection by juxtaposing incompatible frames of reference—"bisociation"—and revealing that social order is non-necessary).

• Creation of Communitas (dissolving social hierarchies to forge a primal, shared human connection).

"Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise... In short, by throwing doubt on the finality of fact by holding the social world open to values which transcend it, Trickster 'reveals to us our stubborn human unwillingness to be encaged forever within the boundaries of physical laws and social proprieties.'" - p. 185