Response Paper To Ballinger, Franchot: On Scholars And WAndering

It is a well known factual statement that history is written and retold by the conqueror and not the conquered, or by the colonizer and not the colonized. In Franchot Ballinger’s essay, eurocentricscholarly approaches on the Native American “trickster” are summarily analyzed by looking at how this quintessential character of Native American folklore and tales has been viewed and studied.Various scholars play with the thought and depiction of the trickster. From Daniel Brinton’s conjectural viewpoint, James Mooney’s incarnation claims, Boas’ cultural heroism, Radis’ psychoanalyticalanalysis and ‘dualistic perception,’ to MacLinscott Rickett’s characterization and humanistic advances, Claude Levi-Strauss’ paradoxical treatment, Stanley Diamonds’ ethnocentric perceptions, AnnDoueihi’s elitist and degrading examination and others.
From my understanding of Ballinger’s essay, in the indigenous mythological realm, and in the study of its folklore, a trickster can be a god,goddess, joker, man, woman, or animal that plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and norms of behavior. He can portrait one or many roles simul. Whereas a trickster crosses several culturaltraditions, according to Ballinger, there are significant differences between tricksters in many Native Americans traditions and those in the Euro-American tradition. However, the native tricksters mustnot be mistaken with his fictitious and crafty Euro-American counterpart. And this points to a revealing idea in Ballinger’s essay that sum up his argumentative reasoning: One of the most importantdistinctions that we can see in the American native trickster is his frankness and openness to the multiplicity of life itself and the paradoxes that are largely absent in the moral Euro-Americanmodern tradition and finally how the Native American trickster eludes any dualistic characterization of good and evil or any other definitive description. He argues that such dichotomy approach is...