Page 172 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

The Donkey 147

ability to accomplish a feat that is within royal competence and duty:
one naturally expects from a king a particular ability to build marvellous
cities. The king implicitly assumes and states the same when he quite
appropriately challenges the donkey who covets his position to display
a king’s ability. This is precisely what the donkey shows.
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A Gadī Vadar is no less a builder than a king. But the discursive
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strategy of Vdr-24 displays a totally different intentionality. It lays a
claim, on the strength of a building competence, to surpass the king.
The narrative stages the servant against the master, and projects the
superiority and excellence of the servant over his master. The challenge
is overt and the master defeated. The real competence and consequent
right to authority and power are with the servile worker. Privately, the
king cannot but take notice of this and keep to his word. The donkey
is given the princess and enters a palace.
But the master is shrewd enough not to make it public. No-one
in the kingdom should ever recognize the definitive superiority of a
subordinate. The powerful servant is exiled in a savage region where
there is no human being to hear about and recognize his ascendancy.
A king assigned to solitary residence in a palace built in the jungle is
no more a king: without recognition by human subordinates, there is
neither king nor power. Without exercise of power, there is neither
rule nor kingdom.
Eventually, the master of our story has won a double victory over
his slave. He has added to his credit and glory a brass and copper
city built up by his slave—a performance that actually eludes his own
capacity and is blatant evidence of his weakness. He has rid himself
of the worthy and right pretender to the throne. The control over the
slave is complete: by appropriation of the performance and by denial
of the status—competence to rule—due to that capacity.

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The Vadars and the Kingdom
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Gadī Vadars see themselves as builders of cities and kingdoms. Let
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us focus again on this self-perception and another claim to recogni-
tion. The donkey’s tremendous deeds demonstrates his professional
excellence and grants him an inalienable supremacy. In the donkey’s
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performance the Gadī Vadars stage and project their extraordinary oc-
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cupational self-confidence, and a persuasion of their strength and un-
paralleled skill. In the present story they significantly make a point
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