THE
PROLIFIC MYTH
A common
idea is that a myth is something one analyzes, and that it is something not
really real, but more fiction, albeit a fiction that has a deeper meaning than
stories in general. What few people realize is that we all, individually, are
parts of not just one, but parts of many myths. Equally few realize that these
myths, of which we are so little aware, significantly determine our lives. As
Claude Lévi-Strauss asserts[1], it is not
the task of myth research to clarify how humans think, nor how myths think, but
how myth thinks in humans. To gain perspective on what a myth is and is not - which
is not entirely easy to determine - one can, while trying to determine this,
also consider what humanity would have instead, as a better or worse
substitute, if myths had never existed. Some people argue that myths are
socially necessary, being as they are ( according to Barthes ) “ideological
speech” - and that the criterion of
truth for a myth is its "effectiveness." The effectiveness of a
myth—so the argument goes—would be connected to its general, empirically
validated, positive validation and inspirational power. As everyone knows,
fiction can be both a myth itself and a part of a myth. Fiction can still
examine, in a conscious or unconscious way, the current overarching myth, as
well as myths from earlier eras, or alternatively, myths from humanity’s very
early childhood, when we separated ourselves from beings with, in some
respects, lower levels of consciousness. The myth is peculiar when looked at
more closely; as Lévi-Strauss—the man behind books such as The Savage Mind
and The Jealous Potters—points out, the myth and its parts are such that
no part of a myth is more important than another.[2] Indeed, one
could say of a myth—unlike historical writing—that no part is independently
significant, or that all parts are. Just as it is in a work of art. Through
integrated totality, art operates. But fiction is then—as mentioned—both a
myth, as a historical phenomenon, and a creator of myth in its diverse forms:
literature, visual arts, or film, etc., etc.
Myths are
messages;[3]
they are communication. Myths are not very often created on demand.[4] A
conspiratorially inclined person might believe that this is precisely what they
do. That they are tailored to lead the herd of sheep. No, myths mostly emerge
from other created things, or other signs, concepts or myths.. They often come
as something imposed, as if to seal holes that have opened up, or because
something hangs loosely and flaps in the wind. That this is the case does not
mean that Power cannot benefit from it, and that the powerless cannot suffer
from the effects of the myths sanctioned by power. Myths are not created from
nothing, - no they are never primary - , but they always build on some event or
idea that has matured for a while. After a suitable time period, the
myth thus – second hand predators as they are - emerges. In this, it
resembles mysticism, which, according to a theory presented by G. Scholem,
arises in relation to a religion only after some time has passed, and perhaps
when the religion in question has lost a little of its initial charm. And it is
like the Renaissance, which did not arise fifty years after antiquity, but only
in the 1300s-1400s, when an aura had began to form around what the ancient
people had engaged with, which attracted as one perhaps found one’s own time
rather gloomy[5], and a bit
too overshadowed by Christianity[6]. It would,
of course, not least in the interest of the powerless, be beneficial to try to
clarify what promotes the creation of holes and rifts, and what they are
primarily filled with in terms of mythic material, and what it means when
things hang loosely and flap in the wind, especially when myths are keen to
ensure that this does not happen. What regularities exist in this vast
ideological, trope, and narrative supramechanism of myth production? What is it
that causes, as soon as a sign, a concept, an ideology, a set of beliefs, a conceptual phenomenon is born or made
conscious, that a myth forms in its vicinity, overshadowing it?
Are there,
as Barthes and Baudelaire thought, objects that are fundamentally suggestive,[7] so
that they are almost doomed from their conception to evolve into myths? If so,
why?
Were the works of Kafka and Freud such
objects, - “fundamentally suggestive”? If so, why? If they were, were they only
suggestive in a certain historical context? If so, which context? “Le rapport de la crise et du discours
définit l´œuvre.”[8]
That is why, because people also know this, myth subsequently has been seen equivalent to “lie”, to untruth. At the same time as the myth is seen as something which is not true, it has yet an existence, and since it has obliterated what it is a myth about, it still stands as a kind of description of something real, which, even if people always realize that it may not be true at all, still forms itself as some kind of fact in the actual cultural universe.
Myth is therefore like the well known face of an unknown, thriving in our society and in our minds.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>> cf. www.kajgenell.com
[1] L.-S., Le Cru et la Cuit, p.
20.
[2] As if through some marvel, many
historians of ideas are also renowned musicologists, like, for instance, Adorno, Lévi-Strauss, and Vladimir Jankélevitch, and it is in fact very rare to meet
with absolutely tone-deaf people, like S. Freud, involved in the study of myths.
[3] Barthes, p.193.
[4] Cf. The Huntington myth of “the
clash of civilisations”. Philosophical myths can be regarded as ordered. They
are often ordered by religious leaders, or by failed Philosophy itself, and are often construed, rationalistically, as a material for religious speculation,
involving dubious concepts like “The Absolute”, which has absolutely no meaning
at all. Cf. Spinoza, Lévinas, and Kolakowski.
[5] Scholem,
Den Judiska Mystiken. ( Jewish Mysticism.)
[6] Michael Levey, Early Renaissance.
[7] Barthes, p.194.
[8] Ib.p.199.
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