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Aspects of the Political Myth

Simion Minodora Otilia

lecturer, PhD, Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences, Targu-Jiu

Abstract: The political myth means fable, a distortion or an interpretation objectively challenging the real.It still preserves an explanatory function and a mobilizing role and is also ambivalent. Beyond its ambivalence, beyond its fluidity, there is alogic, a certain kind of logic of the mythical discourse. Myth has been defined in many ways. For some, it is simply a body of false beliefs which greatly influence the way a person thinks and feels about the past and thus the present and future. Whether or not myths are based on past events or on a tissue of artful fabrications, they congeal into emotionally charged images or mental pictures that are accepted as valid; and they achieve an even stronger hold on peoples minds when they are reinforced by song, nostalgia and the media. Thus myth can be viewed as a belief or symbol expressed in dramatic narrative form that lives on in the psyche and culture of a people, often because it is invested with emotional intensity and fulfills the important societal need of binding a populace together. But beyond this minimalist definition, scholarly consensus quickly breaks down. As linguistic philosophers might put it, myth is a systematically ambiguous or essentially contested term. The subject of myth in human history has generated a host of sometimes overlapping, sometimes antagonistic interpretations. Embracing one interpretation or theory ties the analyst to a number of related positions concerning myth and its relationships to truth and social reality. Some philosophers such as Frankfurt, Cassirer and Gunnell, conceive of myth as a prephilosophical and prescientific worldview. Psychologists such as Jung find in myths those archetypes that are simultaneously pancultural phenomena and primeval forms of the mind embedded in the collective unconscious of humankind. Some linguists and anthropologists, including Levi-Strauss, Barthes and Althusser, appeal to a structuralist theory of myth that finds in language or social structures certain universal mythical forms. Then, too, in religion, one finds theologians who have grappled with the mythical grounding of Christian religion, seeking to demythologize Christianity in order to preserve its sacred core, or, according to Jaspers, to preserve religions ultimate by retaining its supraempirical mythical foundation.

A myth is something in which a substantial number of people behave: a common perception of a certain aspect of reality, a shared set of ideas on a specific subject. It is a collection of universally, collectively or commonly (to a specific community) held beliefs, in other words empirical or normative ideas about a certain part of reality (that to which the myth refers).

Some think of myths as the classical legends of ancient Greece and Rome. A myth is a well known story (a collection of beliefs) from the past; but not limited to the past in the sense that it is still of relevance to peoples lives. It has the ability to appear as relevant today as it did when it was first formulated in the near or distant past.

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A myth is not a myth unless it is capable of evoking a certain response or association. As such, it also requires a public capable of responding. A myth is a ritualized body of text, according to the sociologist Hans Blumemberg.1

Because of this, in political life a myth be used as an instrument to unite or divide.2

A myth includes an undeniable element of familiarity, bringing us back to the universal beliefs. Though the beliefs may be common to a large group, what is essential here is the ritual or similar procedures or words through which a myth is expressed.

It is quite clear that the above parts in their own are not sufficient to create a myth. A myth is not just a set of beliefs, collected and repeated over time and evoking a certain reaction; if also is not altogether if at all true. A myth has a degree of independence from reality. A myth is thus perhaps not entirely true, although the core of a myth consists of a set of beliefs designed to seem true and which may have been true in the past. It is a set of beliefs or ideas universally held but not necessarily universally believed to represent reality.

A myth is a set of beliefs which at some stage may be questioned, scrutinized, criticized, challenged. It is, as Blumberg notes, a collective invention. Mller Jensen goes one step further, declaring it to be untrue as a matter of principle.

Then, a myth has a loose relation or is detached from reality. 3 According to Daniel Maguire myths consist of a complex of feelings,

attitudes, symbols, memories and experienced relationships through which reality is refracted, filtered and interpreted.4

They often involve representation of the past, which although they may be based on real events are distortions of the past.5

The American Heritage Dictionary provides a definition of myth as a real or fictional story, recurring theme or character type that appeals to the consciousness of a people by embodying its cultural ideals or by giving expression to deep, commonly felt emotions.6

In Myth and Meaning, Claude Levi Strauss is concerned about the relationship between mythology and history. History is practically entirely based upon written documents while in the case or myths there are obviously no written documents. However, the opposition between mythology and history is not at all a clear cut one. Mythology, he says, is static, we find the same mythical elements combined over and over again, buy they are in a closed system, let us say in contradistinction with history, which is an open system []. The open character of history is secured by the innumerable ways according to which mythical cells, or explanatory cells which were originally mythical, can be arranged and rearranged. 7 The gap which exists in our minds to some extent between mythology and history can probably be breached by studying histories which are conceived as not at all separated from but as a continuation of mythology. 1 Hans BHlumemberg, Work on Myth, Cambridge, Mass:MIT Press, 1985,p.274 2 Gyldendals Leksikon,1987, quoted in Moller Jensen, Myter,p.13 3 Ibid.,p149-155 4 Daniel C. Maguire, Myths in Politics, in M.Skidmore(ed.), World Politics:Essays on Language and Politics,James E. Freel and Associates, 1972, p.81 5 Alan Macmillan, Strategic Culture, University of Wales, Ph.D., diss.,1966,p.56 6 American Heritage Dictionary, 2nd College ed., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1985,p.827 7 Claude Levi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning, Routledge, London, 2001,p.25

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The meaning and function of myth in society may have been best captured by Richard Slotkin(1978): The mythology of a nation is the intelligible mask of that enigma called the national character. Through myths the psychology and world view of our cultural ancestors are transmitted to modern descendents, in such a way and with such power that our perception of contemporary reality and our ability to function in the world are directly, often tragically, affected.Crucial to understanding a nations mythology is Slotkins recognition that myth-making is simultaneously a psychological and a social activity. Otherwise, myth falls prey to the error of reducing mythical narratives and symbols to the status of mere mental pictures or inner states of the individual. Because national myths take on the character of collective representations that reconcile and unite many contradictory aspects of the past, over the course of several generations, they come to form parts of a national identity and a common heritage. The triumph, sometimes the tragedy, of myths is that they evoke an almost religious response on the part of a citizenry. Once achieved, this sacred shroud protects such myths and symbols from critical reexamination even when mounting historical evidence seems to contradict them. Literary symbols, cultural myths and political values are best viewed as common or intersubjective meanings existing within a larger matrix of other meanings and symbols-known as a common literary tradition, national or political culture of ideology- partly constituting the rituals, practices and symbolic actions within these spheres. These intersubjective meanings form the essential background of literary tastes, cultural habits and political actions and they make sense, that is, be interpreted only by being related to the larger whole of which they are a part. Moreover, because these symbols and myths operate within a temporal frame, accumulating and even changing meaning over history, the standpoint of the historian or literary or political inquirer is part of the understanding of these myths and symbols.

The German Brockhaus encyclopaedia, exploring the myth as a vision of the masses which is supposed to trigger political action, pointed out that the myth does not give a scientific explanation but wants to be believed.

Like other myths unconsciously, the political myth consciously, in the form of well aimed propaganda, seeks to give an imaginary exploration of a mission. That which is shown in the image may in the distant past have played a role close to reality, but is now supposed to justify present actions through an imaginary duty to the future and make it invulnerable to criticism. 8 The truth of myths is irrelevant; what is important is that they are perceived to be true and that people are motivated or controlled by them. In his Reflections on Violence, George Sorel dismissed as unimportant the validity of myths; instead he believed that they played a powerful role in motivating and sustaining movements: the Christian myth of the struggle with Satan, the Marxist myth of catastrophic revolution, Greek glory, the myth of the Napoleonic of soldier of immortal deeds, the anarcho syndicalist myth of the General Strike, etc. What was important was that without a myth accepted by masses, one may go on talking of revolts indefinitely, without ever provoking any revolutionary movements. Taking into account the various interpretations of myth in common language, the term itself is shrouded in ambiguity. For anthropologists and for the

8 Brockhaus Enzyklopaedie 17th edition, vol 13, Wiesbaden, Brockhaus Verlage, 1971,p.143

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historians of the sacred, the myth is conceived as a story referring to the past, preserving an explanatory value in the present, explaining and justifying certain adventures of human destiny or forms of social organization. For others, this notion means mystification, illusion, vision or camouflage. Alternating the data of experimental observation and contradicting the rules of logical reasoning, myth interposes between the truth of facts and the exigencies of knowledge. In other peoples view, myth is essentially perceived in its function of creative impetus, as an appeal to movement, to action, as a stimulus to energies of exceptional power. Although all these meanings correspond to some of the main aspects of the political myth, none of them can exhaust or outline its content. The political myth means fable, a distortion or an interpretation objectively challenging the real. However, it still preserves an explanatory function and a mobilizing role: as a vehicle of prophetic dynamism, it has an important role in the origin of crusades and revolutions. In fact, any political mythology is developed in each of these meanings, according to the three dimensions it structures and asserts. The political myths of contemporary societies do not differ from the great sacred myths of the traditional societies. They are characterized by the same essential fluidity and the same vague lines. They overlap, interpenetrate, lose themselves in each other.A subtle and yet powerful network of relations of complementarity maintains relations, spaces of transit and interfaces. They pass from the nostalgia of past golden ages to the expectation and prophesy of their resurrection.Very rarely, it happens the other way round, the situation when the revolutionary Messianisn do not shape the image of the future, borrowing images and references from the past. On the other hand, they soon pass from the denunciation of the malefic conspiracy to the appeal to the saviour, the leader who will redeem them and whose mission will be to expel from the city the destructive forces pretending to extend their dominion. As Raoul Girardet states in his book entitled Myths and Political Mythologies like the religious myth, the political myth is fundamentally polymorphous: we must understand that the same series of raving imges can be spread by seemingly most various myths; we must understand that the same myth is capable of producing multiple echoes and no fewer significances. 9 These significances are not only complementary but often opposing and this dialectics of opposites seems to impose another specific major feature: polymorphous, the myth is also ambivalent. Beyond its ambivalence, beyond its fluidity, there is a logic, a certain kind of logic of the mythical discourse. And it depends neither on contingency nor on arbitrary. Like the images we project in our dreams always move in a close circle as they are subject to laws related to repetitions and associations, the combinatorial mechanisms of collective imagination seem to be restricted to a certain number of formulas. The capacity of renewal of the mythical creativity is, in fact, much more restricted than we might think. If the myth is polymorphous, if it is an ambiguous and unstable reality, it finds its equivalent in the rules which seem to belong to its own measure. This measure is represented by a sequence or a combination of images which are introduced in a system, a syntax in Claude Levi-Strausswords. The mythical story transcribes and conveys its message in a code we can consider unalterable on the whole. It is obvious that such a message can be

9 Raoul Girardet, Mituri si mitologii politice, Institutul European, 1997,p.6

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deciphered only by applying the same grid. There is also a final step we should take, that of interpretation when we will have to deal with the historical background. The appeal to history seems legitimate if we think that more than often, the study of the mythological discourse seems to be subscribed to abstract themes, apart from any reference to circumstance and place. It is obvious that the political turmoil of the last two centuries of European history have always been accompanied by an amazing mythological effervescence: the denunciation of a malefic conspiracy tending to subject the peoples to the dominion of obscure and perverse forces, images of a lost Golden Age whose happiness we should rediscover, of a saving Revolution which would allow humankind to come into the last stage of its history and would ensure the rule of justice, the appeal to the Saviour-restoring order and achieving a new collective greatness. Some of these themes can be met on the background of some of the many doctrinal frameworks of the last centuries, even among those who urgently claim the rigour of demonstration and the scientific character of their postulates. This is undoubtedly the source and the explanation for their seductive powers. Thus, which would have been the historical destiny of a Marxism without its prophetical appeal and its Messianic vision, being reduced to a conceptual system and to a method of analysis? The revolutionary millenarianism, the past-ridden nostalgia, the cult of personality, the malefic obsessions can also be presented. The myth is imposed in all that is characteristic to it, as a coherent and complete belief. Under these circumstances it doesnt claim any legitimacy other than its own assertion, any logic other than that of its own free development.

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