Transcript Slide 1

Myth-making
and the
Logic of Myth
Figures from the Sami mythology on a shaman’s drum
Serhat Uyurkulak
Sep 30, 2013.
Mythos, Epos, and Logos
Mythos: Story(-telling), tale, moral tale, legend, fable;
word that is recited or heard.
Epos: Words (statements) recited according to a certain order
and meter. Metered and ordered story-telling is
gods’ gift to humankind.
Mythos: content of the recited word/story
Epos: the artful form this content takes/plot
Due to this proximity, the Myth and the Epic have often been
used interchangeably. Epics work with myths; mythic materials;
mythologies.
The Epic of Gilgamesh takes as its subject the mythified
adventures and heroism of Uruk’s king.
Its world is the mythic world of Sumerians; the experiences
depicted reveal the mythic world-views of Mesopotamia.
Logos: The revelation/recitation of Truth through words.
An order of laws in human bodies and souls, in nature
and in cosmos.
One must discover the logos (set of laws common to all
entities) and express it by means of words; must not invent
or create these laws-Truth
Myth-makers and epic story-tellers are the ancient poets;
artists; (imaginative-creative) writers; inventors of Truth
Homer and Hesiod from the 8th C. BCE are the two great
myth-collectors, -makers, and epic writers
Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad are also catalogues of the Greek
gods and demi-gods; of their function in the creation of
cosmos, earth, and their role in major historical events
Hesiod’s Theogony is about the very creation of gods
themselves; it gives the family trees of gods. His Works and Days
refers to mythology to explain some of the existential questions
of humankind.
The Epic of Gilgamesh too is concerned with gods and how they
have effected the creation of the universe and humankind
In Sumerian and Akkadian mythology and mythic world-view:
•Divine beings pre-exist matter. Personified supernatural
powers are key to creation. Matter is secondary.
(According to one Sumerian legend, the earth and the heavens
had been created as a single unit and then were divided by Enlil.
In another version, the heavens and the primitive form of earth
get coupled to create the rest of the world.)
Myths: Foundations and origins of things and humans
NATURE, STRUCTURE, and the WORKING of Creation
•The mythic world-view is Anthropomorphic and Animistic
Anthropomorphism sees the nonhuman as human;
attributes human characteristics to objects or animals
(Humbaba the monster having emotions, speaking.
Gods imagined as humans, having human ambitions.)
Animism interprets inanimate objects as living; attributes
will and spirit to them.
(Monuments; temples; totems have spirits of their own.
Even the Cedar Forest in Gilgamesh functions as an enchanted
space.)
•In the mythic world-view, there is a continuum between
the conscious and the unconscious experiences, revelations,
discoveries, etc.
In Gilgamesh, the dreams serve as an interface between the
conscious daily life and the otherworldly fears, unconscious
desires, and the future. They are real in their effects.
•In the mythic world, the identity logic may not work –
one thing can be another thing at the same time. A may equal B,
B may also turn to be C…
Gilgamesh is God and not-God; he is man and not-man
simultaneously. (Jesus Christ?)
Philosophical Revolution of the 6th C. BCE
Poets and myths are questioned; they lose their power to explain
the Arche (fundamental principle, first element, beginning)
Physio-logoi (natural scientists) and philosophers;
the ancient physicists, mathematicians, geologists, astronomers,
and historians replace the myth-makers
Thales of Miletus: 624-546 BCE (For many, founder of Western
philosophy; water is the primary matter)
Pythagoras: 585-497 BCE (Mathematician;
founder of a religious movement; transmigration of souls;
Arithmos [numbers] as the foundation of Being)
Heraclitus: 540-475 BCE (Philosopher of change and unity of
opposites as the forces making the universe)
Herodotus: 485-425 BCE (Author of The Histories;
founder of scientific, rational historiography; Historia means
logical reasoning or inquiry; no longer the stories of gods)
Plato: 428-348 BCE (Founder of the Academia in Athens;
influenced by Pythagoras; philosopher of Ideas as arche
and their secondary appearances – us and our world)
These men of LOGOS reject the stories of gods and creation
imagined by MYTHOS and expressed by EPOS.
For them, these myths are irrational popular stories about
the universe, nature, and humankind.
The 18th C. Enlightenment critique of myth, theology, and
religious dogma dates back to the Philosophical Revolution.
‘Myth’ taken as fairytale; a body of lies; incredible stories
impossible to observe, repeat, prove or disprove.
This pejorative definition still with us?
Detached objectivity of reason vs. Affective charge of mythic mind
Technological domination of nature vs. Mythic relation to it
as a power to reckon with
Empiricist rationalism vs. Mythic symbolism and ritualism
Rational equality of quantities vs. Mythic diversity of qualities
The thinking, knowing, closed Self vs. Mythic openness to
unknown (super-)natural forces in and outside the Self
Is the mythical world-view sheer ignorance; obscurantism;
plain and simple stupidity? – NO.
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer,
“The Concept of Enlightenment” (1944)
“Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance
of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from
fear and installing them as masters.”
-- Fear of the unknown and being masters by pulling it into
the realm of the known and knowable as best as possible.
“Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to
mythology.”
-- Myth attempts to create a narrative, an explanation,
a loose theory of almost everything existing, and of their
reason for being.
MYTH is a particular way of making sense of the world.
It produces a certain body of knowledge and systems with which
to record and represent an immense array of natural and
historical phenomena.
Mythic world-view as enlightenment generally seeks to
immerse in, identify with, or fully become the unknown
and fearful forces in nature. (If outright domination is not
possible. Gilgamesh – Humbaba)
This mythic “becoming the unknown” or praising the unknown
is a mode of knowing it (making it much less fearful).
The long enlightenment ever since the Greeks seeks to externalize
or exterminate what we fear; to make it our negative term – Other.
Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that the opposition between
MYTHOS and LOGOS might be a fake one.
Myth is already logos, and enlightenment creates its own
myths (national, historical, political myths supported by
rational ‘facts and figures’).
Narrative, story-telling or myth-making could be a property
of reasoning.
Reasoning could be a property of story-telling; production of
symbolic structures.
Mythos and logos; two modes of rational inquiry
and representation?
Implications of Göbeklitepe
Discovered by the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt in 1994
“The World’s First Temple: Built 12.000 Years Ago”
(from the official website)
T-shaped limestone pillars erected in circular forms.
Each stone is perfectly cut and shaped. Each pillar weighs 16 tons.
Stones transported in a world with no writing, tools, pots, metal, etc.
First known structure more complex than a simple hut. (NGM)
“To Schmidt, the T-shaped
pillars are stylized human
beings….The stones face the
center of the circle….a
representation, perhaps, of
a religious ritual. As for the
prancing, leaping animals on
the figures, he noted that they
are mostly deadly creatures:
stinging scorpions, charging
boars, ferocious lions. The
figures represented by the
pillars may be guarded by them,
or appeasing them, or
incorporating them as totems.”
(Charles C. Mann, NGM)
The pilgrims visiting the site were
nomadic hunter-gatherers.
There is no sign of habitation around
the temple.
No sign of agriculture. Thousands of
gazelle bones, wild barley and wheat
seeds concentrated in one place.
(Food brought from faraway places
and consumed during construction
and ceremonies)
The Old Testament – 500 BCE
Stonehenge – 2200 BCE
The Great Pyramid of Giza – 2450 BCE
Sumeria – 4000 BCE
Göbeklitepe – 10,000 BCE
“Within minutes of getting there,
Schmidt says, he realized that he
was looking at a place where
scores or even hundreds of people
had worked in millennia past.”
(Charles C. Mann, NGM)
Initially laboring in huge numbers
not to produce goods, to cultivate
the land, or to do exchange…
They work to produce the very
communal feeling; the symbol,
myth, around which collectivity is
imagined and structured in the
first place.
Maybe agriculture and settlement followed the mythic gathering
and organization around a story, a representation…
Should the findings in Göbeklitepe change the established,
materialist explanations of the rise of civilization?
Is the narrative of the Neolithic Revolution discredited?
(agricultural revolution – earliest settled communities –
multiplication of population – new order, hierarchy and law –
myth and religion byproduct of complex social organization)
Not necessarily:
Symbols, images, stories, myths (the production of them) are
part and parcel of our species life/being.
We are narrativizing, symbolizing, story-telling, myth-making
animals.
Art, story-telling, myth-making, religious imaginaries are various
modes of representation essential to human mind.
Symbolizing or formulating relations, origins, results, and
prospects is a human need – no less material or real than
the need for shelter or food.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (The Dawn of Man)
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
What is the process by which Kubrick imagines (human) civilization
has come into existence?
What is the role of myth or symbol in this sequence?
How important is the role of ‘ontological scarcity’ in the forming of collectivity?
…suddenly, the black monolith. (A Space Odyssey)