ugliness is created.
When people see things as good,
evil is created.
Being and non-being produce each other.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low oppose each other.
Fore and aft follow each other.
Tao Te Ching ..Chapter 2
E PLURIBUS UNUM ( "out of the many,one")
We differ in our temperament, yet we concur in our humanity. For every action there is an equal reaction. The riddle of reality expresses itself through polarities; man and women, night and day, hot and cold, hawk and dove.
Life is by nature dual and ambivalent. Life in this sense is a dance—a dance of differentiation by which culture explores, discovers, marks, articulates, rearticulates its very narrative existence. The trickster through his dual and ambivalent nature can help us to better understand the world after the Bindu: (when the unmanifest became manifest-creating the pairs of opposites). This trickster figure will then double his way into semiosis(semantics) setting up a conjunction of opposites out of which is spun the cultural illusion of a binary (dualistic) system.Since this use of doubling and pairing is so close to the nature of mythic and narrative development this section on ambivalence will examine the Trickster element of differentiation and doubling.(Spinks 2001)
Ambivalent - having mixed or contrasting attitudes
Syn: mixed, conflicting, contradictory, wavering,
vacillating, undecided ,confuse, indecisive
Ant: certain, concrete, “no two ways about it”
Homeostasis - a state of physiological equilibrium produced by a balance
of functions within the organism
Sign - anything that stands for something else
“indirect communication”
Symbol - a form of sign in which the meaning is conventional and
must be learned
Semiotics - the science of signs that investigates the way meaning is
produced and transmitted
Epistemology – the science that investigates the nature and origin of knowledge
(Epistome - knowledge)
Semiotics
How do we make sense of what we see? The basic principles of semiotics, or the science of signs can be used to help us understand how we find meaning in images and, by extension, in life, in general. The relationship between a word and an object it stands for is arbitrary or conventional. This fact explains why dictionaries need to be revised all the time, because language is always changing. This same relationship between a word and its object also applies to all kinds of other phenomena, in which we learn that something (a word, an object, a concept) signifies or stands for something else.
There is a science that is of great utility in helping us understand how visual phenomena
communicate—a field of knowledge called semiotics, the science of signs. There are two theories to consider: one is the field known as semiotics, which was developed by the American philosopher C.S. Pierce, and the other is the field know as semiology, developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll use the term semiotics to cover both of these theories. (Berger 1998)
A sign, from the semiotic perspective, is anything that stands for something else. What does this statement mean? Only that a great deal of communication is done not directly but rather indirectly, by using various signs.(Berger 1998)
In Semiosis, Marginal Signs, and Trickster, C.W. Spinks was interested in marginal signs: that is signs which are not at the center of semiosic processes and are consequently more than usually subject to question, doubt, confusion, deception, and creativity.(Spinks 2001)
Spinks was particularly concerned with Trickster as a model of the processes of semiosis generation of sign creativity in the narratives of culture. The Trickster figure is one of the oldest mythic and most universal narrative we know. The trickster figure often articulates cultural values (sometimes by inverse example), Trickster seems an ideal illustration for sign generation. Various scholars looked at how Trickster functions with cultural boundaries in a semiotic way. ( Spinks 2001)
Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator,
he who dupes others and is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously.
At all times he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he
has no control. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He
possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites,
yet through his actions all values come into being…. Laughter, humour, and
irony permeate everything Trickster does ( Radin 1956, xxiii-xxiv)
Trickster is the source of troubles, and his ambivalent nature, his ambiguous state, and his oxymoronic character make him a serious difficulty for rationalists. In fact, Trickster is so ambiguous and ambivalent that Hynes and Doty, representing the Trickster Myth Group of the American Academy of Religion, see Trickster (quoting MacLincott Ricketts) as “one of our most
perplexing problems” (Hynes 1993)
Hynes and Dotty render the history of the Trickster as problematic. They question Radin’s assertion of Trickster’s universality and archetypal nature By saying, “Radin’s approach parallels earlier attempts…to explain the diversity of beliefs by resorting to a unitary, evolutionary model, as if all specific instances of belief represented a position on a single worldwide scale. Many earlier treatments of the trickster figure advanced simultaneously a theory of evolution or devolution of a Creator, Culture Hero, or similar Founding Figure”(1993, 22) Hynes and Doty specifically reject evolutionary models, which see trickster as an “inferior” or “primitive” and rather stress that
Such an image represents a potent source of creativity and insight for even
the most sophisticated adult because it is full of ‘delightful, Dadaistic energy.’
…Thus a recurrent theme in trickster tales is that, even after taking into all the
bumbling and anarchic social behavior, the trickster contributes substantially
to the birth and evolution of culture” (Hynes and Doty 1993, 22-23)
Trickster is a boundary-crosser. Every group has its edge, its sense of in
and out, and trickster is always there, at the gates of the city and the gates of life
making sure there is commerce. He also attends the internal boundaries by
which groups articulate their social life. We constantly distinguish—right and
wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old,
living and dead—and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse
the distinction. Trickster is the creative idiot, therefore, the wise fool, the gray-
haired baby, the cross dresser, the speaker of sacred profanities. Where
someone’s sense of honorable behavior has left him unable to act, trickster
will appear to suggest an amoral action, something right/wrong that will get
get life going again. Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and
ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction, and paradox.
The Trickster- figure keeps semiosis an open-ended process and able to adapt to new situations. Thus, the openness of the sign system, ironically is seen most clearly and most powerfully at the boundaries where the sign system switches between codes and interpretation. For most of us, that means the process of semiotic clarification is most evident when the boundaries of the categories are least clear; as in paradox, oxymoron, irony, inversion, contradiction or logical contraries—a state that troubles logicians to no end, but delights storytellers, artists, and poets everywhere.
(Kristeva 1994, 149)
by
A.R. Ammons
I found a
weed
that had a
mirror in it
and that
mirror
looked in at
a mirror
in
me that
had a
weed in it
