Trickster Mythology

В данной статье автор рассматривает произведение А. Кукушкина и М. Гурова «Alma Matrix, или служение игумена Траяна», относящееся к текстовому единству – бурсацкой художественной прозе, в котором посредством выработанной классификацией атрибутов А.Р. Ахметшина и А.В. Горбатова выявляет репрезентацию архетипа Трикстера. В итоге, в качестве трикстеров в данном произведении выступают два персонажа – Гайда и Настоящий, соответствующие выделенным атрибутивным признакам: игровой характер действий, невозможность вписаться в известные рамки, хаос, непредсказуемость, наличие трюка, склонность к трансформации, трансляция каких-либо идей, юмор.

In this article, the author has reviewed the work of A. Kukushkin and M. Gurov «Alma Matrix, or service of abbot Trayan», which belongs to the literary genre — The Bursa’s prose. Reviewing this literary work, the author, using A.R. Achmetshin’s and A.V. Gorbatov’s universal system of attributive signs, reveals the representation of the archetype of Trickster. As a result, two characters – Gayda and Nastoyashiy represent the archetype of Trickster as corresponding to the universal system of attributive signs: a playing manner, inability to keep within certain limits, unpredictability, presence of trick, inclination to transformation, dissemination of ideas, humor.

Próba antropologicznej analizy fenomenu sławy rapera Kanyego Westa, autora m.in. płyt My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Graduation czy College Dropout. Według pracy, popularność Amerykanina może wynikać z faktu, że jest on postacią, która jest ucieleśnieniem modelu przedstawiciela nowych pokoleń. Dodatkowo fenomen sławy uzasadnia się nawiązaniem do mitu Trickstera z mitologii Indian północnoamerykańskich.

The idea of a trickster has established itself as a cultural hero whose creativity extends and strengthens the culture of the mythological world they belong to. They are almost always male, and each of them has their own distinctive ways to handle the situations, but all of them cling to a certain set of features that make them alike. Tricksters basically hold a double-edged sword; they are the embodiment of binary oppositions, they are deceivers, shape-shifters, invert-ers and messengers of the gods. Greek god, Hermes and the Norse god, Loki are among such tricksters and both of them bear a resemblance in the ways they conduct themselves. (Spinks) A trickster is both a creator and destroyer, giver and negator, a bestial and divine being. This duplicity almost shows itself in every case for Loki and Hermes. While Loki's mischief is the root of many troubles, he is also the one who solves those troubles with similar mischief. For instance, after stealing Sif's hair, Loki takes a bet with Brokk who gets to take Loki's head in the end. Even though Loki loses the bet, he comes up with one more trick up his sleeve. Thus Brokk never gets to return with Loki's head. Nevertheless, Loki is the one who provides gifts to gods like Thor's hammer. (Gaiman) Another trickster is the Greek god, Hermes who is a messenger and less of a central focus but shares a similar ground with Loki when it comes to the inventiveness and creativity. Hermes was only a baby and the first thing he did was to kill a turtle to make a lyre from the shell. Shortly after, he stole Apollo's cattle and herded backwards as to not have the tracks easily followed. Apollo soon learned this, but they resolved the problem and exchanged gifts. Apollo gave Hermes a whip, and Hermes gave Apollo the lyre he had invented and this became Apollo's symbol as a God of music. (March 97-8) Consequently, both Loki and Hermes are akin to each other in regards to trickery and inventiveness. Identifying them according to these features might be fairly easy, but providing a consensus about their essential nature is a heavy task. Who and what they are (or can be) lie deep within their repertoire of tricks which leave us in a stage full of ultimate ambivalence, thus Loki and Hermes become so elusive that they disappear as quick as a magic trick in this sea of possibility .

In his 1972 Terry Lectures, the founder of Archetypal Psychology, James Hillman, spoke of "psychologizing" as a way of "seeing through" the literalness of any image portrayed to the human mind: "Psychologizing goes on whenever reflection takes place in terms other than those presented. It suspects an interior, not evident intention; it searches for a hidden clockwork, a ghost in the machine, an etymological root, something more than meets the eye; or it sees with another eye.  It goes on whenever we move to a deeper level...We see through the logical by means of the imaginal...look at conscious events and intentions from the unconscious, from below. Look at the daylight world from the night side, from fantasy and it's archai." (Re-Visioning 135,139) I have employed Hillman's psychologizing tool to the Arthurian Legend of the Green Knight.

Статья посвящена феномену чуда на Кубе. Прослеживая историко-культурные особенности развития Кубы, автор развивает идею о транскультурации чуда и анализирует, как афрогенные традиции, такие как сантерия, пало монте и другие, обогатились европейско-христианскими и индейскими элементами, приспособив их к своим космологиям и своим магическим практикам. Особое внимание уделяется роли духов-трикстеров, в особенности Эшу, а также колдовству, связанному с опасными, демоническими силами. Статья основана на полевых материалах, собранных автором на Кубе в 2013 и 2019 гг. с помощью неформальных интервью и включенного наблюдения.

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of a miracle in Cuba. The author traces the historical and cultural features of the development of Cuba and develops an idea of the transculturation of the miracle. He analyzes how Afro-genic traditions such as Santeria, Palo Monte and others were enriched with European-Christian and Indian elements, adapting them to their cosmologies and magical practices. Special attention is paid to the role of the trickster spirits, especially Eshu, as well as witchcraft with the help of dangerous, demonic forces. The article is based on the field material collected by the author in Cuba in 2013 and 2019 through informal interviews and participant observation.

The trickster is a common figure across mythologies from a variety of cultures and ages. In these many myths, he often plays a dual role, the trickster often acts as both creator and destroyer. As a figure of disorder, but also a hero. While myths normally condemn and punish malice and deceit, the trickster’s forms of trickery are often praised. One can argue that the role of the trickster in myth is to maintain the balance between order and chaos and they are amongst the few mythical figures to make use of both. Making use of Jung’s archetype theory, as well as Tylor’s stages of religion from the primitive to the modern, to examine and compare between trickster figures from various mythologies, I hope to show that the trickster figure is representative of both sides of humanity’s development of consciousness, the primitive and the modern. The trickster is representative of both sides of the coin, his chaos and foolishness are a representation of man’s primitive past, however, his wit and ability to use unconventional methods to produce beneficial results can be seen as a part of man’s transition to the modern and an age of knowledge. Thus, he is simultaneously both the figure of disorder and a scapegoat in primitive society as well as a culture-hero who makes the existence of modern society possible.

Este libro es el resultado de una docena de años de enseñanza universitaria sobre pensamiento mítico. En él se indaga sobre la naturaleza del mito como fenómeno cultural, como narrativa y como forma de pensamiento. Desde una perspectiva multicultural, se examinan los mitos y los elementos que los componen agrupándolos en tres categorías: mitos de creación, de aventura y de destrucción, ilustrados con numerosos ejemplos sacados de tradiciones varias.  Tras esto, se presentan las diversas interpretaciones que se han dado a los mitos a lo largo de la historia según las diversas escuelas de pensamiento, relacionando el pensamiento mítico con las ciencias, la religión y con la historia. Finalmente, se analizan los procesos de desmitificación y remitificación en nuestras sociedades.

The privileging of physicalist ontologies and rigid experimentalism within parapsychology helps to expose a 'hole' in the praxis of the discipline proper; what psychoanalysis generally refers to as a " lack ". Certain not to fill this hole, using the psychoanalytic approach pioneered by Jacques Lacan (i.e., Lacanian psychoanalysis), the following reading aims to develop theoretically a scene by which parapsychology can come, more self-reflectively, to better take in its scientific practice—the unconscious of its subject, how the discipline has chosen to carve itself out within, what Lacan calls the chaotic, polysemic pool of lalangue, that place where meaning slides around. Indeed, such a return to the unconscious actually opens up the field to more counter-hegemonic phenomena that are typically viewed as fringe. To illustrate this point, I deploy the Lacanian après-coup, otherwise known as retroaction (a causality not from the present time), in conjunction with extrasensory perception research to stage just such an encounter, between the subject of parapsychology and its lack. This not only thwarts the so-called 'source of psi' problem by showing how parapsychology is running from itself, but also reveals a homology between psi and the objet petit a—the little object of desire that must always be tamed. As such, the disciplinary contouring of parapsychological science evokes the wily qualities of the trickster. It follows that, in the future, a further psychoanalysis of parapsychology could work to develop the theoretical insights of this article with some of Lacan's other concepts, such as the jouissance of the body (i.e., the anxious pleasure that animates the subject), and the relationship between drive and desire.

Rheomorphia is my master's dissertation for LUCA School of Arts. It covers the topic of aesthetics from a Mortonian object-oriented approach and attempts to move away from an anthropo- and egocentric worldview. To this end, a variety of topics are discussed — such as the liminality of human language and its discord with the aesthetic, gender- and queer theory; new media art practices, trickster mythology, cyborgs and rheomorphs; animal phenomenology; and also sound and resonant events.

In 1929 D. F. Bleek wrote that |xam people she encountered in the Upper Karoo two decades before were unable to tell her a single story, and that their folklore `was dead’ and so was, by extension, their culture and sense of community, thus encouraging the notion that the |xam people had become extinct. Archival research and fieldwork in the area by the author in 2011-2014 shows that no such extinction took place and that a rich oral tradition, with strong connections with that documented by Bleek and Lloyd in the 19th century, is still very much alive in the area.

Don Juan es una de las figuras trágicas que más atención ha acaparado en Occidente. Hasta ahora los críticos han encontrado a varios seductores de carne y hueso que pudieron servir de inspiración al autor (o a los autores) de los dramas del siglo XVII. Sin embargo, a diferencia de Don Juan, ninguno de esos candidatos pudo ser –evidentemente– un anfitrión de difuntos.
En este volumen conoceremos a unos personajes de ficción que fueron seductores de mujeres; pero, además –como el burlador sevillano–, fueron sacrílegos y blasfemos, se mofaron de los muertos, los convidaron a cenar y acabaron duramente castigados por todos esos excesos. Poco a poco iremos siguiendo el rastro de esos relatos por varias regiones de Europa, África y Asia hasta remontarnos a las huellas que han dejado en la Antigüedad clásica.

Abstract

The anarchic trickster spider Anansi, whose origins can be traced back to West Africa, is predominantly found in Anglophone Caribbean folktales, while Brer Rabbit, who originates from South, Central and East Africa, is popular across the French-speaking Caribbean and USA. Brer Rabbit tales entered white American mainstream culture in the late nineteenth century through Joel Chandler Harris’s ‘Uncle Remus’ collections. Harris, whose collections are replete with nostalgia for the plantation past, explains to readers that Uncle Remus, the contented enslaved storyteller, has “nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery” (Harris 1880 xvii). In 1926, American ethnomusicologist Helen Roberts proclaimed that while Brer Rabbit had become “byword of our own nurseries”, due to their ever-increasing popularity, “there has been no Harris for Anansi” (Roberts 244). Through scrutinising representations of Anansi in late-nineteenth-century collections in Jamaica and Brer Rabbit tales collected during the same period in the American South, this essay compares the very different trajectories of the two trickster figures. It explores how variances in cultural and political context have affected interpretations of the trickster folktales and suggests that having “no Harris for Anansi” was key to the continued sense of pride and ownership felt by African decedents in the Anglophone Caribbean for their trickster folk-hero, in contrast to the problematic racial representations the American Brer Rabbit still provokes.

Abstract: This paper is concerned with mythology and ideology in media coverage of the financial crisis. I argue that the Mail Online’s ‘critical’ discourse of bankers is a mythological construction of the trickster, which causes ideological and discursive dilemmas for the Mail as a right wing news source. Some stories featuring the banker as trickster suppressed discussions of systemic failings in the financial system. However, other instances mobilised systemic questions and concerns about global trading and the free market. By conducting a Critical Discourse Analysis of Mail Online news stories I show that the Mail’s criticism of bankers does not reflect an ideological compromise or opposition to the systemic design and ideals of free market capitalism. Rather, paradoxical mechanisms occur when the Mail represents bankers as the immoral individuals (tricksters) who take advantage of the system: whilst these criticisms call for some form of punishment or legislation to control the problem, there is reluctance to compromise free market values or legitimise state regulation of the banking sector. The complex characteristics of trickster figures in the stories analysed demonstrate current dilemmas and anxieties about the power and practices of financial institutions. Whether bankers are the genius providers of wealth or the reckless destroyers of economies, their ridicule highlights a sensitive balance of values and interests in journalistic storytelling. As Radin argued, “If we laugh at [the trickster], he grins at us. What happens to him happens to us” (1955:169).  If it is true that we need the expertise of bankers to recover in the global market then this provides another dilemma for publics, politicians and storytellers to consider.

keywords: mythology; ideology; bankers; trickster; critical discourse analysis

"¿Qué habrá, por otra parte, más convincente que el gesto de volver las cartas sobre la mesa? Lo es hasta el punto de que nos persuade un momento de que el prestidigitador ha demostrado efectivamente como lo anunció, el procedimiento de su truco, cuando sólo lo ha renovado bajo una forma más pura: y ese momento nos hace medir la supremacía del significante en el sujeto" (Lacan, 1988, p. 36). El gesto paradójico que abre este artículo pertenece a Jacques Lacan, un psicoanalista francés del siglo XX. Lo más notable es que Lacan es famoso por tomar la teoría psicoanalítica freudiana tradicional y aplicar conceptos estructuralistas saussureanos 1. Esto produjo un tipo de interpretación psicoanalítica que consideraba el discurso-o el lenguaje en general-como lo más importante, por encima de algunos de otros enfoques del psicoanálisis que, en contraposición a Lacan, prefirieron conceptualizar el tema a través de la biología, las relaciones de objetales, los arquetipos o el bienestar del ego. En el psicoanálisis lacaniano, el término sujeto se refiere a cualquier ser que posea un inconsciente. En la clínica, durante la práctica del psicoanálisis, este ser se conoce como analizante o el que desea tratamiento. Sin embargo, en un sentido más amplio, sujeto también puede referirse a un conjunto de prácticas, rituales y reglas implícitas que se agrupan formando, a los efectos de este trabajo, la disciplina llamada parapsicología.

Trickster is a mythological figure which seems to be remarkably tempting for those who create popular culture. The trickster’s complexity, multidimensionality, the splitting between different worlds, and his transgressed nature make this figure an attractive model to construct many literary characters. In my article I present figures of triksters in novels written by masters of a Scandinavian crime novel.

ENG SUMMARY (text práce slovenčina):

In the present monograph Notes on the Trickster as a Literary Character in the Archnarratives (Thematic and Cultural Contexts), we used a transcultural and heterogeneous genre sample of archnarratives, and through intertextual and intercultural confrontation tried to describe the constitutive principles of depicting a mischievous figure of a trickster, which appears in the religious-mythological notions of each civilization and cultural circle in a wide range of possible representations and renditions. As mentioned in the introduction to the present work, the trickster is a distinctive and unmistakable figure, which is difficult to grasp due to his ambiguous and variable character. Based on the initial analysis, we believe that this archetypal figure is defined by the following universal properties:
- absence of internal development as a literary character,
- ambivalence,
- cunning,
- liminality,
- power of transformation,
- comic-grotesque poetics.

The above properties also condition the structure of the underlying trickster narrative/thematic algorithm: the way literary characters appear on the scene and the definition of their character (exposition) → the trickster causes a conflict by his jokingly fraudulent actions → the trickster escapes from the "crime scene" (exodus). Based on the research of our textual material, we found that the sujet formula in a trickster narrative branches into four variants, i.e. separate modes with their own logical-content sujet scheme: civilizer (cosmology), user (body and corporeality), fool (sacred category), scamp (satirical-eschatological principle). From a purely linguistic point of view, we can view the listed functions as information-saturated sememes with a distinctive and complex structure of rendering, and the archfigure of a trickster as an abstract archetypal semantic theme. In brief, let us summarize the basic profiles/definitions of individual functions. The trickster – civilizer is a functional type appearing mainly in etiological, anthropogonic and cosmological myths. Through his deceptive and unpredictable actions, he brings culture and civilizational achievements to the people. Especially in the natural archaic communities, he semantically intersects with other ancient figures – the ancestor and the demiurge – and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish whether he is a human or an animal. Conversely, in cultures with a more developed constitutional state-building institution, where the totemic hypostasis is not so strong, he is usually a (semi)god with a body, or imago homo, who usually only has the function of a cultural hero. The trickster – civilizer function differs most distinctively from other functions and it is easy to identify. In order to label the trickster in a story as a civilizer, the story must take place in the so-called mythical age of the birth of the world and, and a certain progressive or regressive cosmological/civilizational change must be evident at the end of the sujet, which the trickster causes (often accidentally). In the trickster – user typological-character function, the trickster appears as physically lustful and dissatisfied, which results in the strictly libido-driven to instinctively animalistic motivation for his actions. It is most evident on the motivic plane of sexuality and hunger/digestion. For the trickster to satisfy his desires for food and sexual intercourse, he uses various tricks, illusions and lies. The poetics of the stories about the trickster – user is thus conveyed on the level of grotesque obscenity, the Dionysian principle of physical and spiritual boundlessness, chaoticism and (excessive) abundance. His crazy and instinctive actions, metamorphic hyperbolic play with the body and travestion of bodily manifestations in the sense of Bakhtin's natural physiologism come to the fore, and the line between the (potent) body and the world, life and death, vitality and old age is completely blurred. This also relates to the fact that the trickster – user maintains a residual connection with the ancient cults of the phallus and fertility, i.e. the mysteries of death and rebirth. The user function is often present as an ancillary function alongside a (dark) civilizer, because he often causes fundamental changes in the universe through his libido behavior. The trickster – fool function is related to the spiritual, supernatural and/or mystical world. He is personified by divine entities as the bearers/legislators of the ideal concept of "higher theological-social truth", which evoke a feeling of unattainability, anxiety and fear. The fool is able to maintain a sacred fragile contact with the sacred sphere, and it is this subtle communication that causes his different and strange behavior, which the uninitiated (ignorant, unconscious) usually explain as foolishness. In this context, folly is perceived as a stigmatized result of understanding of a kind of higher mystery (initiation mystery), which is sent by the supernatural beings and is otherwise inaccessible to the common man. Under the influence of divine inspiration, the fool controversially criticizes the sinfulness of man and the bodily and material aspects of the world, which is always semantized as something imperfect, impure and inferior in various religious currents and mythological ideas. However, the fool's criticism has a deeper spiritual message – his intention is to correct man and society in an effort to return to the original religious ideals and authentic renewal of the concept of the sacred in the profane world. The trickster – scamp typological-character function is an instrument of folk (collective) criticism directed against the system sanctified by tradition, i.e. the structure of the universe. As the name itself suggests, the trickster plays with other literary characters, makes mischievous jokes about them, makes fun of their shortcomings, and decoronizes and travests the secular and religious authorities. His critique, however, has no deeper (spiritual, mystical) meaning. The aim of the trickster as a satirical mocker is to humiliate the object of his ridicule as much as possible. This fact is to some extent also reflected in the genological line: the fool mostly appears in magical fairy tales and hagiographic legends, while the trickster – scamp is found mainly in the fairy-tale subgenres with realistic and humorous themes, satirical tales or allegorical short stories. Since the scamp often denounces gluttony and promiscuity as socially undesirable human qualities, the boundary between the trickster – scamp and trickster – user can often be blurred, especially if the trickster appears as an animal. However, if a particular story thematizes gluttony and sexual intercourse in didactic and moralizing ways, we are certainly dealing with the mischievous function of a scamp. The typological-character functions (modes) are not isolated; on the contrary, they are organic components of the complex archetype of a trickster, which represents one of the basic existential semantic themes of human survival. Through the various forms of expression and universal narrative images typical for the respective typological-character functions, it communicates with the recipient at the level of laughter folk culture and/or picaresque mythology. Finally, we can add that the individual functions of the trickster archetype are an important instrument in the effort to classify an otherwise difficult-to-grasp and ambiguous literary character of a trickster in a particular story.

After the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), in Serbia and other post-Yugoslav societies emerged а strong and obsessive need for
the research of the biography of Yugoslav lifelong president Josip Broz Tito. Numerous articles, books, biographies and essays about Tito, lost their previous ideological and political significance, while discourse on his personality broke beyond the boundaries
of political history. Contemporary discursive, practical and ritual use of Josip Broz Tito’s ‘real’ biography is shifting between a mere historical memory and a critique of
daily and political life during the transition. Enriched with ‘mystery’, narratives about Yugoslav past become a compensation for a sense of dissatisfaction, distrust in institutions and a general sense of failure in numerous political, economic and cultural plans of post-Yugoslav societies. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the quest for a miracle in contemporary Serbian yellow press by identifying three key figures (archetypes) that
initiate a discourse of Yugoslav hero, father and trickster

Na transžánrovo a transkultúrne pestrej vzorke starobylých textov (prednostne mýty a rozprávky) sa pokúsime predložiť systematickú rekognoskáciu šibalskej postavy: načrtnúť základný mytologicko-rozprávkový profil a cez to na základnej úrovni pojmovo uchopiť jej archetypálny význam. Ide o rekognoskačný výskum, počas ktorého sa budeme opierať o teórie bádateľov z medziodborovej oblasti komparatívnej mytológie a religionistiky (J. Campbell, J. Komorovský, K. Kerényi), kultúrnej i štrukturálnej antropológie (P. Radin, C. L. Strauss) a hlbinnej psychológie (C. G. Jung).

The figure of the clown has usually been seen as a sweet and harmless creature, although this perception has started to change in the last decades and the beloved circus character started to be associated with evil characteristics. The present study aims at analyzing the character of the clown within the plot of It, a novel by the American horror writer Stephen King, first published in 1986. The analysis is based on the archetypal approach proposed by Carl Gustav Jung in two of his works: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1968) and Four Archetypes (1971). The analysis consists of unraveling the figure of the clown, discussing the reasons why it is not uncommon to place the clown as an evil creature and no longer as a harmless character. Initially a historical background of the origins of the clown is presented. Later the study displays an analysis of the character in the storyline of It, showing the importance of Stephen King's work for the shift of perception in the nature of the figure of the clown and the possible reasons that may have caused this alteration. Finally, the study proposes Pennywise the Dancing Clown as a perfect example of trickster, archetype explained by Jung (1968). Resumo: A figura do palhaço é frequentemente vista como inofensiva e doce. Essa percepção sofreu uma mudança nas últimas décadas e o amado personagem de circo passou a ser associado com características malignas. O presente estudo tem como objetivo analisar o personagem do pa-lhaço dentro do enredo de It, livro escrito pelo autor de horror Stephen King, publicado pela pri-meira vez em 1986. A análise é baseada na abordagem de arquétipos proposta por Carl Gustav Jung em duas de suas obras: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1968) e Four Archetypes (1971). A análise consiste em desvendar a figura do palhaço salientando as razões pelas quais não é incomum considerar o mesmo como um ser maligno e não mais como um personagem inofen-sivo. Inicialmente apresenta-se o contexto histórico da origem do palhaço, em seguida, a análise do personagem na trama de It. Finalmente, o estudo sugere Pennywise o Palhaço Dançante como um perfeito exemplo de trickster, arquétipo explicado por Jung (1968). Palavras-chave: Palhaço; Stephen King; Trickster; Pennywise o Palhaço Dançante.

Transcription of a /xam narrative dictated by /han=kass'o in October 1879 that was not listed by L. Lloyd in her 1889 report, as it was written in one of Wilhelm Bleek's notebook. The story is a beautiful rendering of the final episode in the eland creation myth, in which Mantis (/kaggen) creates the Moon by throwing an ostrich feather to the sky.

L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è mostrare l’utilità del concetto di ironia sia come
oggetto di studio sia come strumento teorico per indagare l’identità. Mi sono concentrata
nello specifico sul processo di identificazione come remanescente de quilombo di una
comunità rurale del Pernambuco in Brasile, dove ho fatto una ricerca sul campo durata
quattro mesi.
Durante la ricerca ho raccolto indovinelli, storie trickster, versi in rima e
barzellette, che ho messo in relazione con gli strumenti intellettuali utilizzati dai membri
della comunità per mettere in atto l’identità in una situazione contraddittoria. Il processo di
identificazione è stato originato dall’esterno, dal governo brasiliano, e mediato da una
categoria tanto ambigua quanto separatista come quella di quilombola.
Attraverso l’analisi, su base strutturalista (Köngäs Maranda 1971) e comparativa
(George, Dundes 1963), di un ampio repertorio di espressioni orali da me raccolte durante
la ricerca, ho cercato di evidenziare che cosa avessero in comune tali forme espressive e
che ruolo avessero nel processo di costruzione di un’identità quilombola, o di etnogenesi
(Arruti 1997; Malighetti 2007).

Exhibition: Urban Thunderbirds/Ravens in a Material World LessLIE, Rande Cook, Frances Dick, and Dylan Thomas
Co-curated by LessLie, Rande Cook, and Nicole Stanbridge
At the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, September 20, 2013 – January 12, 2014

"There is an animus infusing contemporary Native art. It is ancient and new, fierce and comical. It is Trickster, a timeless archetype with a global diffusion, though its forms vary from culture to culture. Primarily, across borders of culture and ethnicity, it acts as a gentle goad to social evolution – a kind of ‘gentler, kinder’ cultural revolutionary force. The “Trickster movement’ in contemporary Native art represents a bloodless, ideological coup going on beneath the surface of current events, erupting only occasionally in populist expressions such as the international wildfire of guerilla ‘actions’ operating under the banner of ‘Idle No More.’ Taking place last summer after an inaugural action at the Hudson’s Bay company headquarters in London, these were non-violent protests and demonstrations utilizing a wide array of arts media to make their unified point. Indigenous people worldwide stood in powerful, symbolic unity to resist political and corporate theft, appropriation, exploitation and graft."  ~  Yvonne Owens, Victoria, 2014

This is the first comprehensive study of magic realism in cinema. Cinemagic realism deserves close examination because of its extensive presence and its power to combine aesthetic sophistication with political critique. The work traces magic realism from the criticism of pictorial art of early 20th- century Germany, through Latin American literature, to the recent US scholarly formulations. In studying magic realism as a cross-cultural and cross-medial phenomenon, the book conceptualizes trickster aesthetics that are applied in the analysis of films: Time of the Gypsies (Yugoslavia), Being John Malkovich (USA), and Run Lola Run (Germany), which jubilantly practice the magic of their medium. ?Imaginative, extensively researched, and philosophically rewarding, this work will appeal not only to film, media studies, and literary scholars but also to a wide range of readers,? Susan Linville, U of Colorado. ?CINEMAGIC is a very perceptive and original ?must read? study with a strong cross-cultural base,? Andrew Horton, U of Oklahoma. ?Popovich?s daring book vitally positions ?cinemagic realism? at the very core of world cinema,? Frederick L. Aldama, Ohio State U.
Publication Date: 2009
Publication Name: VDM Verlag, Germany