'THE HOPKINS MANUSCRIPT', TRICKSTERISM, AND BRAZILIAN FOOTBALL
One of the more enjoyable and apocalyptic books I read during ‘lockdown’ was The Hopkins Manuscript, written by R.C.Sheriff in 1939, which tells the story of Edgar Hopkins, a retired and solitary schoolteacher who lives in Hampshire and breeds prize poultry, and how he deals with the prospect of the moon’s imminent collision with the earth. The first chapters, which are very funny, describe Hopkins’ small-minded snobbery and self-importance as he prepares for the end of the world, but the second part of the book is more sober. To his surprise, Hopkins survives what he calls the ‘cataclysm’ and begins to put together a strategy for a new way of life. Gradually he develops empathy and affection for his fellow human beings, and by the end of the book the reader has developed an unexpected degree of sympathy for a man who was ‘almost tempted to tell John Briggs, the carpenter, that his first name was Edgar’.
I also watched an online interview with Bayo Akomolafe, an unconventional academic, lecturer, and speaker who was born in Nigeria and now lives in India with his wife and child. Especially concerned with ideas about social, cultural, and environmental crises, Akomolafe trained as a clinical psychologist and subsequently spent time with traditional Yoruba healers in West Africa, after which his life changed focus and direction. Choosing to devote himself to the exploration of a ‘magical’ world that doesn’t fit normal Western cultural paradigms, he leads an organisation called ‘The Emergence Network’, described on its website as a ‘trickster activist artist collective’.
Struck by one of his favourite phrases, ‘the times are urgent, let us slow down’ (apparently derived from a Yoruba saying) I read some of Akomolafe’s essays, in which he enjoys inverting the obvious, making unexpected associations, and challenging linear thinking. ‘In order to find our way we must become lost’, he writes, going on to suggest that it may be misguided to search for rational solutions when faced with radical social and environmental crises. He proposes instead a willingness to live in a liminal or ‘in-between’ state of mind in order that new solutions might come into consciousness. Some of his ideas are more focussed; reflecting on the growing number of tourists travelling to countries like Peru, Colombia, and India in order to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies or meditation retreats, he remarks that this kind of escapism wrongly assumes that indigenous peoples are more connected to ‘authentic’ ways of living. Rather, he says, we should develop our own authenticity and inner nature by committing ourselves to finding the spiritual in the everyday. Real spirituality, he adds, can be found in unexpected ways and places: in failure, brokenness, and in ‘sanctuaries of the otherwise’, which are spaces for falling apart, shapeshifting, resting, and embodying new forms.
Akomolafe’s essays, frequently articulated in the language of clinical psychology and critical theory, also borrow from his experience of Yoruba culture and make much of the idea of the ‘trickster’, the archetypal transgressor and rule-breaker. ‘Tricksterism’ is a term that is widely and often loosely used, and as Lewis Hyde reminds us in Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art, a comprehensive account of the subject, ‘most of the travellers, liars, thieves, and shameless personalities of the twentieth century’ are not tricksters. ‘Their disruptions are not subtle enough, or pitched at a high enough level’, he writes. ‘Trickster isn’t a run-of-the-mill liar and thief. When he lies and steals, it isn’t so much to get away with something or get rich as to disturb the established categories of truth and property and, by so doing, open the road to possible new worlds’.
Vestiges of true ‘tricksterism’ were nonetheless evident in the Brazil of my childhood, where popular culture was infused with influences from West Africa that had been brought over by slaves. The most obvious manifestations of Brazilian ‘tricksterism’ were the ‘jeitinho’ and ‘malandragem’, cunning ways of gaining personal advantage in challenging situations. The ‘jeitinho’ was seldom overtly transgressive, although it always involved subtlety and manipulation, but ‘malandragem’ often used illicit or illegal means and strategies, frequently justified by the belief that work and honesty were incapable of getting the ‘malandro’, who was usually poor and underprivileged, what he wanted and deserved. Despite his blatant selfishness there was seldom any intent to cause obvious harm to anyone else.
The skills and imagination of the ‘malandro’ were greatly admired, perhaps especially in football. Garrincha, for instance, the bow-legged ‘bad boy’ of ‘futebol’ and one of the most beloved of Brazilian players, used to take pleasure in dribbling around defenders and then backtracking so he could do it again. His womanising, drinking, and lack of self-discipline were legendary, but these qualities took nothing away from his popularity. On the contrary, he became known as the ‘alegria do povo’ (’the joy of the people’) and ‘anjo de pernas tortas’ (‘angel with crooked legs’). Some of Garrincha’s talents and characteristics are still evident in contemporary Brazilian players, but even at home they are now less than wholeheartedly admired, and in Europe, where the most successful ply their trade, the more flamboyant Brazilian footballers are often considered something of a liability. Many of their tricks are seen as ‘showboating’ or humiliation of the opponent, and any lack of professionalism is barely tolerated.
Nonetheless, the period of Brazilian football that is thought of as its ‘Golden Age’(1958-1970) was infused with the spirit of ‘malandragem’. The Brazilian footballer’s style, the sociologist Gilberto Freyre once explained, was typically opposed to European Apollonian order, full of ‘irrational surprises and Dionysian variations’ and a reflection of ‘mulatismo’, the mix of black and white races. In the 1930s, Brazilian football and ‘samba’ became hugely popular in the cities of Rio and São Paulo, where industrialisation attracted workers from the ‘interior’, many of them descended from former slaves. Football, at first the preserve of well-to-do white people, gradually assimilated black players, who often used steps and moves influenced by ‘samba’ dancing and the martial art of ‘capoeira’, both rooted in African culture, as part of their technique. Feints, tricks, and bending of the rules became part of their game. It is said that referees would often overlook fouls by white players on blacks, but never the other way round, so black players had to develop the skills of avoiding obvious contact with white opponents and of not being caught if they did. ‘Malandragem’ in football was a combination of survivalism, skill, and gamesmanship.
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