The legendary character of the Trickster, notably known through Paul Radin's study of the Winnebago traditions, provides a fascinating model for the analysis of contemporary Western sexuality in its mythical, religious and ritual dimensions. In that sense, it offers new insights into our times. Focussing on some major phenomena which have appeared and developped over the past thirty years or so (the "sexual revolution" of the 60's, the Gay liberation movement of the 70's, as well as the chocking impact of aids since the beginning of the 80's), this paper intends to show how sexuality has been widely experienced on a religious mode by millions of our contemporaries, to the point of being often seen as the single most important way of salvation; but also how -- perhaps not unlike the return of a pendulum -- it has more recently evolved towards perspectives which have rather strongly laid the emphasis on moral concerns and values.

The Trickster is a fascinating mythical character found in several native cultures of North America. I discovered it many years ago, while I was doing research on the role and significance of homosexuality in the imaginary of French Québec culture. (The term "imaginary", which belongs to Lacanian vocabulary, is used here to render the concept of "imaginaire" as it was notably developed by Gilbert Durand (1969). At that time, I had tried to examine to what extent the anthropological model of the native North-American berdache -- or man-woman -- could be used -- and could be useful -- to understsand the contemporary reality of homosexuality in the West.

Berdaches, as it is probably known, belonged to an important social institution within several aboriginal cultures before the coming of the Europeans; an institution which provided a recognized place and a social status to men (but there were also women berdaches) who somehow failed to identify with the defined sexual role of their society. These men then became symbolically women and, among other things, they could have sexual intercourse with other men and even become their wives. And I had been struck to find that, in some important works of contemporary French speaking literature in Québec, homosexual characters played a role which was not without analogy with the one played by berdaches in several native creation myths (Ménard 1985).

The Trickster is another important character associated with creations myths in many native cultures. However, unlike the berdaches, the Trickster essentially presents himself as a mythical figure, although one could find Trickster-like characters in the rituals of some native cultures (the Navajo ritual clowns, for example).

One of the most important sources of our knowledge about this mythical Trickster is the research work published in the 50's by anthropologist Paul Radin (1972), together with enlightening comments by Karl Kerényi and Carl Gustav Jung. There exist other researches, notably in Québec [For example: R. Savard.1977. Le rire précolombien dans le Québec d'aujourd'hui. Montréal: L'Hexagone/Parti Pris], but Radin's own study on the Trickster in Winnebago traditions probably remains the most inspiring one.

Who was this Trickster? For Radin, this character embodies a very old myth widespread in several cultures of mankind, from the old semitic world to China, from Ancient Greece to Native North America. It is however among the aboriginal cultures of North America, and notably the Winnebago traditions, that the myth would have been preserved in its best and oldest form. According to Radin, this myth would be a remnant of an archaic past of mankind, when the distinction between the human and the divine was not yet perfectly clear.

The Trickster, the central figure of the myth, is far from being a «perfect hero». It is a much more complex character. He is both generous and mean; he is as destructive as he can be constructive; he is the victim of people's deception as much as he deceives others. Moreover, his actions are totally impulsive, without reference to any moral values: totally unconscious and irresponsible, in Jungian terms.

The Trickster roams the world, having all sorts of adventures, most of the time foolish, often mischievous, often erotic too. He spends his time playing tricks -- and notably with the sexual connotation of the term in American slang. He can take the shape of various animals. As a mater of fact, one could see the Trickster as an unfinished creature, not completely developed to its term. His features are blurred, as well as the proportions of his body. His members can have rather strange relations with each other. For example, he often carries his intestine -- or his incredibly long penis -- rolled around his waist. And both his hands can quarrel with each other without their knowledge of it...

It is actually striking to see how present and how important are, in the Trickster's adventures, his sexual organs in general, and his inordinately long phallus in particular. According to Karl Kerényi, the main characteristic of the Trickster is precisely the fact that he can be literally represented by his penis -- which he can carry on his back, in a kind of long violin-box, but which he can also detach from himself and send away (as well as his anus, as a matter of fact) to... fool around by itself, if I may say so, without his own knowing.

In the Winnebago version of the myth, it is a squirrel -- more precisely, a chipmunk -- which finally teaches the Trickster how to bear his genitals properly and which, after having fixed the penis once and for all at the right place, gnaws it until it reaches normal -- that is, normally human -- dimensions.

But it is also the Trickster's gender which is undetermined, interchangeable. And this can be a source of problems, of course, for example when people realize that he has turned himself into a woman in order to be able to approach a chieftain's daughter whom he wanted to seduce. But he can also really become a woman and beget children...

Indeed, as Jung puts it, the Trickster is a truly paradoxical character: «From his penis he makes all kinds of useful plants. This is a reference to his original nature as a Creator, for the world is made from the body of a god. On the other hand, he is in many respects stupider than the animals, and gets into one ridiculous scrape after another. Although he is not really evil, he does the most atrocious things from sheer unconsciousness and unrelatedness». (Jung in Radin 1972: 203)

Now... This portrayal is of course very fast and incomplete, it certainly does not do justice to the complexity of the character or to the subtlety of Radin's work as well as of his commentators'. Yet I think that one can understand how tempting it is to see the character of the Trickster -- indeed, almost at face value -- as a quite fascinating metaphor of contemporary Western sexuality, and more precisely of the so called "sexual revolution" of the 60s and 70s. Let me try to develop and ground this intuition a little more.

According to Carl Gustav Jung, again, the myth of the Trickster represents or symbolizes something like a spiritual prehistory of humankind, a stage of evolution when humanity was emerging as such, but had not yet reached its full human development -- which explains, among other things, that it had not yet made a clear distinction between the divine, the human and the animal. Hence, of course, the polymorphous and changing aspect of the Trickster, at time superhuman and at times infrahuman, sometimes as stupid as animals and sometimes as creative as the gods, constantly passing from one level to the other.

My suggestion would be that, in many respects, the Western world of the last four or five decades, and notably in regard to sexuality, has found itself in a kind of anthropological -- or axiological -- chaos not without relevant analogy with the primitive chaos which the native Trickster-myth symbolizes. This presentation is of course too short to allow a discusion of the historical, social and cultural causes of this situation. But it goes by itself, of course, that I use the term chaos in an anthropological -- and even, I would say, religiological -- sense, and not in the derogatory sense used by a number of politicians and moralists to state their perception of contemporary mores... I simply refer to a period which many of us have well known, more or less intimately: the years of the hippies and of Master and Johnson, the «make love not war» decades of this sexual revolution which is indeed a complex phenomenon, including the pill as well as the gay movement, sex shops and swinging couples, Jim Morrison and Madonna.

Not as a sociologist, not as a psychologist, and certainly not as a moralist, but essentially as a religionist, I try to understand what was really at stake there. And I suggest that the model of the Trickster provides us with an original and useful light in that respect.

According to the theorists of what is often called postmodernism, these postwar decades in the West could be characterized by a crumbling of what French thinker Jean-François Lyotard (1979) calls the «great recitals» -- that is, mainly the myths of classical religions, but also the alternatives of secular myths and ideologies such as socialism, or nationalism. This does not mean, of course, that these «great recitals» have completely died or disappeared. But it suggests that they have become less and less able to mobilize, to summon up people, letting a large number of our contemporaries in a kind of mythical chaos and moral vacuum.

And, in that situation, things happened as if sexuality had been invested with a new religious significance, as if it had been conferred a new sacred role. And this, in a way which is not without analogy with the archaic sacred sexuality that existed for centuries notably in the ancient Mediterranean world and Near East until the firm and hostile opposition of Biblical prophets; but, also, not without analogy to the place and significance of sexuality in the Winnebago saga of the Trickster.

To speak in terms close to those of Michel Foucault (1980), one could say that a great sexual preaching has traversed these decades, with its subtle theologians and its more popular voices, carrying a message that could be summarized in this way: "Out of sex, no salvation". That is, no self achievement, no happiness, no deep communication with others, and even no mystical communion with the Other, capital O. Inversely, the liberation of sex, in opposition to all the moral straightjackets that had controlled it and repressed it for centuries, was deeply believed to be the bearer of all hopes, individual and collective, personal and political.

Well, I think that we can indeed recognize here several of the Trickster's features:

his detachable phallus, for one, as if sexuality possessed a kind of autonomy within the whole of human behavior («I don't kow... it's stronger than me... it's not me... it's my pulsions...»);

his disproportioned phallus, too, as if sex laid claim to some creative and even soteriological all-powerfulness -- significantly more important, at least, than any other sphere of our life;

his undetermined, moving and changing aspect, as if all combinations of sexuality had to be explored, from the loftiest to the kinkiest, from the straightest to the wildest ones;

his unconsciousness and irresponsibility, of course, as if it were required to consent to sex spontaneously and totally, without hesitation and without question. (One could probably recall the old joke, here: "Sex is not the answer to everything. Sex is the question. The answer is: yes!")

And, of course, as for the Trickster's mishaps and adventures, all sorts of results and consequences came out of that. Some of them quite annoying, like the Trickster's blunders and bad tricks. And here, for instance, one could think of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases as well as the remarkable confusion of Western civilization concerning sexuality.

Yet some of these results can be seen as much more positive and creative -- and, again, not without analogy with the good and useful actions which were also the results of the Trickster's tricks, even without his knowing. Let us think, for one thing, of the tremendous questioning which the sexual revolution has brought forth after centuries of Christian sexual ascetism and contempt of the flesh. This can be seen as having opened the way to a healthy reappraisal of the place, role and significance of sexuality in our culture as well as in the thought and spirituality of Christianity. This can also be understood as having opportunely recalled that the goal of sexuality is possibly not only to beget new future tax payers, but that it is also one of the major sources of human ecstasy. And that, as such, it may also open to the Infinite.

And... then came the earthquake -- the Big One: AIDS, of course, which caused a tremendous shock both on the practice and of the imaginary of Western sexuality since the begining of the 80s. And then, in its trail, also came the Squirrel which, for the past ten or fifteen years, has havily contributed to put the Trickster's phallus to its proper place, to fix it firmly there, and to gnaw it to less preposterous dimensions...

Indeed, I think that the outbreak of AIDS on the sexual scene of the Western world has, among its most important consequences, widely contributed to displace the contemporary experience of sexuality from the sacred orbit of religious ecstasy to the more down to earth realm of moral questioning.

Things are of course not so simple. There were already plenty of stern moralists at the time of Woodstock and, on the other hand, the fear of aids is far from having coooled off the sexual frenzy of many. Things are not so simple. But this reflection is looking for complex trends, not simple truths. And it seems to me that, for the better and for the worse, one can observe the moral shadow of the Squirrel in our times -- and, after all, it's a far cousin of the woodchuck!

For the worse, in so far as the Squirrel takes the shape of various moral and political backlashes which not only want to gnaw the Trickster's phallus but, indeed, to gobble it completely. And it would be a tragedy, I think, if our times, obsessed by the unavoidable moral challenge we have to face concerning sexuality, failed to learn from the decades when it was carried by sacred frenzy. But also probably for the better too, inasmuch as this leads us into a reflection, both individual and collective, on humanly responsible ways to use a phallus, whatever the gender of its bearer may be.

REFERENCES

Durand, Gilbert. 1969. Les structures anthropologiques de l'imaginaire. Paris: Bordas.

Foucault, Michel. 1980. The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage.

Lyotard, Jean-François. 1979. La condition postmoderne. Paris: Minuit.

Ménard, Guy. 1985. "Du berdache au Berdache : lectures de l'homosexualité dans la culture québécoise", Anthropologie et sociétés (Québec), 9/3, 115-38.

Radin, Paul. 1972. The Trickster. A Study in American Indian Mythology. With Commrentaries by Karl Kerényi and C.G. Jung.New York: Schocken Books.

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