vs. Myth
vs. Myth
Author(s): Călin-Andrei MihăilescuSubject(s): Anthropology
Published by: Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai
Keywords: myth; language; truth; virus; Franz Kafka; Claude Lévi-Strauss; Hans Blumenberg; Mircea Eliade; Roland Barthes; Roberto Calasso; Ariadne; Prometheus.
Summary/Abstract: Myth is neither story nor a twisting of truth; myth is the virus of the other. As such, it viruses culture: it both makes it possible by transforming fear into anxiety, and attempts to overwhelm it, by rationalizing anxiety as mythical fear and elation. Polemics, rather than dialectics, can face the cunning of myth, for polemics flows against the virus of the myth, and a culture that does not fight this virus is not worth the name.
Journal: Caietele Echinox
- Issue Year: 2007
- Issue No: 12
- Page Range: 27-33
- Page Count: 6
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF