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Paper short abstract

The essay is an attempt in analysing Eden Robinson’s prose as a modern variant of the Sasquatch/Yeti myth (Lévi-Strauss) in order to specify the shifts of perspective (Viveiros de Castro) between culture and nature, human and nonhuman as a starting point of storytelling rooted in cultural tradition.

Paper long abstract

Born in British Columbia, a member of Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations, Eden Robinson, the author of Monkey Beach, Son of a Trickster and the essay The Sasquatch at Home, consequently develops a vision of “modern storytelling” partly rooted in traditional myths. One of such myths is that of sasquatch/b’gwus. Belonging to a broad corpus of various Yeti-like creature stories to be found almost anywhere in the world, Robinson’s concept of Sasquatch manifests the same structural tendency to mediate relations between the human and the animal, science and common knowledge, culture and nature and between separate cultures. Robinson uses some typical traits of the creature, making it a kind of trickster, a go-between of worlds, contexts and narrations. Theoretical concepts developed by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, can be applied to analysing how Robinson’s narrative shifts cosmological perspectives and how the “unusual encounters” with the being out of culture/nature become something more than transgression. Therefore, sasquatch can be perceived not only as a mute monster, but also as a specific “logical tool” (as understood by Claude Lévi-Strauss). Creating the process of storytelling and actualizing our perspective on cultural tradition, sasquatch might even be considered a guardian of a local cultural tradition.