The Myth of Mythography

It is a (mythical) truth commonly acknowledged, that an academic in pos­session of a good theory must be in want of an empirical case study. The problem with empirics, however, stems from its position as a source of ‘knowledge’, primary partner of the positivist, and essential weapon in the armoury that is epistemic discourse.

In this respect, the pharmakon of mythography is the undecidable deci­sion. Each decision is both a poisonous violence and a remedy to the greater violence of the non-decision. The necessity of decision, there­fore, necessitates mythography should not be a matter of moving beyond myths, but of continuing to read myth ‘in a certain way’ (Derrida 2005, 364). As such, studying myths is a matter of ethics rather than empirics. But in what way?

A reflexive and thereby ethical (rather than empirical) mythography cannot be content with demythologisation (in a Barthesian sense) or remy- thologisation (in a Ricreurian sense). Derrida (2004, 167, original italics) rejects any ‘philosophical and dialectical mastery of the pharmaka'’. As such, one cannot rely upon hope, reflected in Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s thesis, as appropriation through an expectation of future good.

That which Derrida (2005, 396) refers to as an ethic of play—with ‘being [...] conceived as presence or absence on the basis of the possibil­ity of play and not the other way around’—runs counter to Levi-Strauss’s ‘ethic, nostalgia, and even remorse’ (but also hope) of presence and ori­gins. The ethic of play importantly continues to conceive of being, but as unceasingly suspect and undecidable. The words we use, for example, can be placed under erasure (sous rature), to print both the word and its deletion, so as to indicate their place as both ‘inaccurate yet necessary’ (Spivak 1997, xiv)—inaccurate because the sign is a mask to a structure of difference, but necessary because the sign remains the lesser violence. We may, therefore, speak of myth as both an object of study whilst also acknowledging its underlying and incommensurable tension.

We can further contrast these two ethics through differences between Ricreur’s future-facing horizon of hope and Derrida’s notion of ‘to come’ ( d venir), which remains undecidable and therefore without know­able expectation: ‘it is the unforeseeable, the un-anticipatable, the non- masterable, non-identifiable’ (Derrida 1992, 18; Huskey 2009, 23).

Through the limitlessness of play, suspicion therefore calls for the prac­tice of the ethical mythographer to remain restless (edgy, even) as a form of critical vigilance. Any claim to a ground beyond myth, such as Ricreur’s hopeful search for a second naivete, remains a myth but ignorant to the ‘possibility’ of play. To find incommensurable principles, but also resist deciding upon them as much as possible, the suspicious mythographer should seek to maintain a dialogue—not only between presence/absence, but also ‘absurdity, hope and death’. Dialogue, contra dialectic, is an open-ended practice, balancing both speech and play, which continually evades synthesis and thereby disrupts both logocentrism and its epistemic privilege.

When confronted with absurdity, the answer is not suicide; nor is it to ignore absurdity in life through the ‘suicide of their thought’. ‘The real effort is to stay there’ and carry on that dialogue (Camus 2005, 8)—to continue to read but in that certain way, or ethic, which refuses to remain ignorant of undecidability and mythos.

Conclusions

Embracing the undecidability of mythos has allowed us to appropriate the broad outline proposed by Yanow and reconfigure mythography from a postmodern perspective, arguing that knowledge is myth. This deconstructive intervention is necessary in order to challenge the boundaries of mythog- raphy by putting it ‘on edge’, and opening up new possibilities for research and critical thinking towards even the fundamental structures of difference and signification.

Absurdity is perfectly captured by this conflict between presence and absence, in the ‘confrontation between the human need’ and desire for reason amid ‘the unreasonable silence of the world’ (Camus 2005, 26). But as this analysis has shown, even if it were possible, myths are not to be transcended or escaped but embraced—albeit on their own meta- mythographical terms. Derrida’s famous phrase, ‘there is nothing outside the text’ gains new meaning when based within an intertextuality of myths (Derrida 1997, 158). The mythography of myths is not one of mythless- ness or even the myth of modernity—the myths of objectivity and neutral­ity which were considered so dangerous by Ricreur and Barthes (Ricreur 1967, 5; Coupe 2009, 12). Although these myths are well recognised, mythographers must recognise the positive power of myths as not only constitutive of the world we know but of its very possibility.

Like Derridean deconstruction, premised upon the ethic of play, an ethi­cal mythography is not a method and ‘cannot be transformed into one’ (Derrida 1985, 1-5). But only by logocentric standards does this endeavour become futile. As Camus (2005, 119) concludes, ‘the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart’. It is his awareness of his exis­tence’s absurdity, and as such a reflexive awareness of himself, which turns Sisyphus’ tragedy into a tale of (absurd) heroism, which is the most perti­nent lesson that might be applied to mythography. Then there are no limits.

Notes

1. On different types of myth concepts, see Bliesemann de Guevara (Chap. 2) and Münch (Chap. 3).

2. On Levi-Strauss see in detail Goetze (Chaps. 5 and 7).

3. See also Yanow (foreword) and Münch (Chap. 3).

4. On Horkheimer and Adorno, see Bliesemann de Guevara (Chap. 2).

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