The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  In Western culture today, ambiguity, hoaxing, liminality, antistructure, and the paranormal are all to be avoided, overcome, or shunned. They destabilize the rational world. They have not been given the theoretical attention they deserve. There are subtle taboos surrounding them, and that is a clue to their nature.

  Part 5

  Overview

  We have seen that the trickster is associated with a confusing and exotic array of data, concepts, and implications. His purview includes ritual clowns who eat excrement, the collapse of cultures, side effects of strongly functioning psychic ability, magic tricks, and many others. Several readers of early drafts of this book found it difficult to perceive an overall theme; the ideas seemed scattered, even incoherent. This is indeed how the trickster appears in our current rationalistic paradigms.

  It is the task of scholarship to interpret and reconcile the trickster with a logical, scientific worldview. The ideas must be at least partially distilled and translated in order for the implications to be grasped and the meaning comprehended. Any attempt will necessarily be incomplete, but that does not mean that we should abandon the effort.

  An effective philosophical perspective should provide some frame of reference. We need to have some structure in which to think, perceive, analyze, some known or accepted base from which to start, a foundation. This is a bit problematic, because the trickster laughs at the idea that such is even possible in an absolute sense.

  We will make some extended explorations into what appear to be four unrelated topics: first, reflexivity and its logical paradoxes; second, the limits of ESP and PK as considered from the findings of laboratory-based parapsychology; third, primitive thought, primarily explicated in regard to totemism; fourth, literary theory, particularly the deconstructionist and post-structuralist varieties. The central issues are abstract.

  The basic issue is the rational versus the irrational. The rational typically refers to the use of reason, but I will use a slightly more restricted definition, specifically reasoning with rigorous adherence to Aristotelian logic.

  Reflexivity is important because it poses paradoxes for logic. It reveals limits of rationality. It is a topic that is subtly avoided.

  Several approaches to logic exist, but that of mathematician George Spencer-Brown is fruitful. His book Laws of Form (1969) opens by drawing a boundary, dividing an area into two pieces, and then exploring the consequences of crossing that boundary. His is an extremely simple procedure that is basically mathematical, and logic can be derived directly from it. Boundary drawing is so rudimentary that it is usually overlooked, but it has deep consequences. Spencer-Brown noted that the simple act of drawing distinctions is fundamental to structures “underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical and biological science.”1 He didn’t elaborate upon this statement, but he recognized the power of his formulation.

  Making a distinction, differentiating one thing from another, carves out an item or event from a larger, more amorphous background. That process gives an identity. In making a distinction, some representation is required, whether simply mental, or more concretely as with gesture, speech, artistic portrayal, or writing. For instance, naming both makes a distinction and creates a representation. Naming, classification, and abstraction are processes of boundary drawing; they are required for thought. They lie at the root of information, communication, and even notions of self and objective reality.

  Classification and making distinctions are social processes. Early humans used totemism as an important classification scheme. It structured innumerable societies, and it was linked to magic. It didn’t appear logical to many twentieth-century scholars, and they considered it irrational. Yet it survived for thousands of years. Magic is still frequently disparaged, but parapsychology’s data indicate that it actually works.

  The muddled academic discussions about totemism and magic were important precursors to structuralism and deconstructionism. Structuralism helped explicate the order and communications of societies. It provided a link between anthropology, on the one hand, and literary theory, on the other. Deconstructionism was structuralism’s successor. It has been applied mostly to texts; it emphasized ambiguity and challenged fundamental assumptions. Like totemism and magic, it was denounced as irrational.

  Binary opposition was important in primitive classification, and it has been introduced already. It was a key concept in structuralism.

  Oppositions are distinctions. In liminal conditions, oppositions and statuses are blurred or inverted.

  Magic, the paranormal, and the supernatural are intimately tied to issues of boundaries, distinctions, and foundations. The phenomena violate boundaries, blur distinctions, and overturn foundations. Conversely, when boundaries are violated, or distinctions are blurred, or

  foundations overturned, the supernatural erupts into the world. This is why the phenomena are so difficult to deal with within a rationalistic worldview.

  CHAPTER 20

  Reflexivity and the Trickster

  The result and the sense of the fraud is … not that it simulates, but that it masks, the genuine phenomena.

  Kurt Godel, referring to the paranormal

  Reflexivity is one of the most abstract concepts presented in this book, and it is a frequent source of paradox and confusion. The concept is not difficult, but it often seems so, and because of that, few have recognized its generality. Common patterns can be seen in diverse areas when one understands properties of reflexive operations. Mathematical logic, literary theory, ethnomethodology, meditation, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and postmodernism carry examples of reflexivity, and they show some surprising commonalities.

  The ideas of reflexivity, mirroring, reflection, self-reference, and projection are interrelated. Though some of these terms are often used interchangeably, it can be helpful to make distinctions. Self-reference is the source of a number of paradoxes. One of the best known is: “This statement is false” (Epimenides’ paradox); the sentence refers to itself, and, if it is false, then it’s true. On the surface, this seems trivial or even silly, but the consequences are profound. This paradox confuses subject and object; it explodes that distinction. Reflection is a slightly different idea; when one is reflective, one is aware of oneself. Being reflexive is a further step—one is aware of one’s awareness. Reflexivity is the turning of some function or process back upon itself, as in using awareness to learn about awareness or using logic to study logic.

  At first glance, reflexivity appears innocuous, but as it is pondered, scholars often become vaguely apprehensive. When restricted to mathematical logic or literary theory, the feelings are typically muted, but when consideration moves to concrete matters, researchers often encounter manifestations that are more ominous and then turn away.

  Sociologists have offered some of the most intriguing comments. Bruno Latour warns that “Given the pressure of a scientific career, reflexivity is equivalent to suicide.” Hugh Mehan and Houston Wood note that: “The reflexivity of reflexivity lies behind Garfinkel’s … statement that … Ethnomethodology is only ‘for whoever has the nervous system to withstand it … for whoever can take it’.” Sociologists have recognized reflexivity to be dangerous, a way to make trouble, something to be avoided, and Malcolm Ashmore’s book The Reflexive Thesis (1989) contains a substantial listing of quotes supporting this point. He also listed some of the names for the problem of reflexivity: “the abyss, the spectre, the infinite regress; paradox, aporia, antinomy.” These evoke the numinous.

  Barbara Babcock, the preeminent theorist of the trickster, has written a number of papers dealing with reflexivity; in fact it was the topic of her doctoral dissertation. She noted that it is not a new idea, and numerous variants have been presented in many contexts. She points out that: “Reflexivity is a problematic concept, a paradoxical concept, and as Wittgenstein says, ‘a concept with blurred edges’.” It necessarily leads to some ambiguity. Babcock is one of the very few who has understood its connection to liminality. The �
�blurred edges” she cites is only one brief allusion, and she has significantly developed other facets of the issue.

  Manifestations of reflexivity frequently have some paranormal or mystical aspect in the milieu. It may emerge as something of a side issue or seem totally unrelated, but this frequent association indicates a fundamental connection. The lives of the people involved sometimes show this. As such, there will be an extended discussion of one person in whom reflexivity, paradox and the paranormal converge, namely Martin Gardner.

  Although reflexivity has at times been topical in intellectual culture, almost nothing has been written on it in regard to parapsychology. The current ways of thinking in that field do not easily lend themselves to considering reflexivity or seeing its importance. Yet telepathy blurs the distinction between self and other (subject and object) and raises the question: “Who’s thoughts am I thinking?” (a paranoiac query). Our society promotes rationality and leads us to view ourselves as discrete, independent entities. Psi challenges that idea by subverting the distinction between subject and object. Psi is intrinsically paradoxical, and paradox models are needed in conceptualizing psi phenomena; reflexive models provide them.

  Sociology

  Reflexivity is difficult to study directly. A more fruitful approach is to investigate its consequences by examining the social and intellectual environments where it is confronted. A few sociologists advised this tack, and Malcolm Ashmore quotes Steven Yearley saying “What I think is interesting about reflexivity is the way people evade the implications of the paradox, and I think it’s other people’s evasion that is interesting and instructive rather than that we should create an experience out of facing the anxiety itself. So why I seem to run down reflexivity is because with these paradoxes my feeling is that the best thing to do is not to confront them.” Ashmore also quotes Trevor Pinch warning him that reflexivity “presents peculiar ‘political’ problems since the audience for your work will be the people you study. Be warned—you are bound to make an enemy of everyone!” This counsel is useful; however, I do not intend to fully follow Yearley and Pinch. I expect to antagonize people. I will accept Yearley’s advice to notice where reflexivity erupts, and observe how it is handled, alluded to, and avoided.

  The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and ethnomethodology are two branches of sociology that have considered reflexivity at some length. The germane writings from those fields are especially valuable because they deal with reflexivity in real-world situations and not just in terms of abstract logic or in literary texts. This has enormous repercussions, including how ethnomethodology is conducted today.

  Ethnomethodology

  Ethnomethodology was founded by Harold Garfinkel, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles. In its early years in the 1960s, ethnomethodology was quite radical, and many sociologists disavowed it. Since then, it has been tamed; its fundamental challenges have been largely repressed by sociology’s collective memory, and ethnomethodology is now incorporated into the establishment, with introductory college texts devoting at least some space to it. Its roots can be traced to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Though ethnomethodology shows little overlap with semiotics or structuralism in its intellectual predecessors or in its personnel, there are remarkable similarities in the salient issues.

  Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967) is one of the classic works of the field. It is egregiously written. In fact, anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace commented that “In some passages, normal English grammar is almost completely abandoned” and “Where one expects clear technical exposition, one finds instead the creative ambiguity of a prophet exhorting his followers and confounding the heathen.” He suggests that it should be “read not as technical prose but inspirational literature.” Fortunately, The Reality of Ethnomethodology (1975) by Hugh Mehan and Houston Wood is much more accessible, and it provides a sophisticated discussion with many concrete examples. Their book addresses a multitude of issues including reflexivity and paranoia.

  Ethnomethodologists took as their subject matter the interactions of everyday social life and how people make sense of them. That sounds innocuous enough, but ethnomethodologists probed foundations. They recognized that for orderly common activity, people must share a large body of assumptions, meanings, and expectations, though these are not consciously recognized. In order to make them explicit (i.e., bring them to conscious awareness), breaching experiments were invented, and those involved violating, in some way, typical patterns of behavior. For instance students might be given an assignment to return home and act as though they were boarders (e.g., being very polite, using formal address, and not showing undue familiarity), and later record their reactions and those of their family. These exercises often caused parents and siblings to become angry and upset.

  Garfinkel was explicit about his aims. He said “Procedurally it is my preference to start with familiar scenes and ask what can be done to make trouble.” He stated that it was his intention to provoke “bewilderment, consternation, and confusion; to produce the socially structured affects of anxiety, shame, guilt, and indignation; and to produce disorganized interaction should tell us something about how the structures of everyday activities are ordinarily and routinely produced and maintained.” These breaching experiments have commonalities with anti-structure and the trickster; they all violate the boundaries that frame experience.

  Another ethnomethodology exercise was to have students record a brief, everyday conversation (maybe only 5 or ten sentences long) and prepare a transcription of it on the left-hand half of a sheet of paper. On the right half of the sheet, they would proceed to explain it, and in doing so they often came to realize that the conversation was nearly unintelligible to outsiders. Their explanations were typically much longer than the original conversation. The next step was to have them explain the explanation. The students would soon recognize that this could become an infinite process, demonstrating the impossibility of specifying all aspects required for complete understanding. This could be applied to any communication, and as Mehan and Wood put it: “all symbolic forms (rules, linguistic utterances, gestures, actions) carry a fringe of incompleteness.”

  These kinds of experiments and demonstrations led ethnomethodologists to explore issues of abstraction, reflexivity, and participation (i.e., becoming part of the phenomenon). I will describe some of them, but the reader should be aware that today summaries of ethnomethodology often give them little or no notice. The topics proved too subversive. In fact several recent reviews note that analysis of conversations is now the major part of ethnomethodology. That keeps it safe by restricting it to text so that it cannot wreak havoc in the outer world.

  Ethnomethodology applied to sociology (i.e., reflexively) was not always flattering or welcome, especially when the incompleteness of sociology’s assumptions was pointed out. These challenges irritated other sociologists. Mehan and Wood report: “Ethnomethodology investigates everyday life. Social science colleagues sometimes ask me to tell them about ethnomethodology. I have developed presentations using videotapes of everyday scenes. I find that sociologists have had little experience at such observations. This incompetence is remarkable … They have no interest in the scenes themselves. It is only when they are discussing abstracted concepts that they feel secure. I am often made to feel as if I have breached some deep taboo by even suggesting that the problem of social order is related to everyday interactions.”

  Mehan and Wood note that “because alone among the sciences it treats meaning itself as a phenomenon, ethnomethodology exhibits several novel characteristics.” Meaning is a concern shared by literary theory, and as I will explain later, it is one that scientists avoid.

  Ethnomethodologists pointed out that one is part of that which one observes, i.e., one participates in processes of observation. The issue of participation has some intriguing connections. At least since Levy Bruhl’s How Natives Think (1910) it has been associated with the nonra
tional. Mehan and Wood mentioned an article by Edmund Leach reviewing an anthology containing several papers critical of contemporary practices in anthropology. In that review, Leach spent some space discussing the issue of participation, one that ethnographers necessarily face. He commented: “But God forbid that we should propose the search for mystical experience as a proper substitute for the pretensions of objectivity. I have no wish to muddle up my scholarly concerns with the ethics of a Franciscan friar.” As he typically does, Leach strikes at the heart of the matter with sparkling, unexpected comparisons. The references to mystical experience and a Franciscan friar are altogether appropriate. Mysticism subverts subjective and objective, and friars are permanently liminal persons. Reflexivity entails participation and raises the issue of the irrational.

  Mehan and Wood say that their theoretical perspective “within ethnomethodology commits me to the study of concrete scenes and to the recognition that I am always a part of those scenes. Social science is committed to avoiding both of those involvements.”15 They are correct, but few social scientists wish to acknowledge the consequences. The abstraction and distancing found in all science endow a certain status and privilege from which to judge and comment on others. In order to maintain that position, scientists must not get too “dirty,” too closely associated with their objects of study. Ethnomethodologists understand that they necessarily participate in the phenomena they observe. Mehan and Wood comment that “Ethnomethodology can be seen as an activity of destratification.” This destratification is a leveling of status, and that is also associated with liminal conditions (a.k.a., anti-structure). Thus social leveling via participation and reflexivity has been recognized by theorists from entirely separate disciplines, demonstrating its validity. As I will show shortly, this same issue of status leveling irrupts in the sociology of scientific knowledge.