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2/25/04

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Modernism at its peak, or High Modernism, is characterized by a distrust and deconstruction of old myths, old meta-narratives, the stories and assumptions about ourselves and our civilization that either no longer fit or fit all too well into oppressive and destructive systems.

Postmodernism, arguably a mere extension of this same Modern skepticism, in essence pretends to throw out the baby, the bath water, the bath, and questions the existence of the bathroom itself, not to mention the need for bathing. More than just extreme skepticism, however, Postmodernism critiques itself as the same sort of “grand theory” that it condemns. It is often seen, therefore, as theory against theory, or, more drastically, nihilism.

One writer theorizes that sports originated with, literally, a pissing contest.

More convincing are various descriptions of rituals, including a particular study of fertility-rites performed by women, that were, in essence, competitive games. Still more common and seemingly universal are the competitions held after a good battle. Victorious warriors still surging with adrenaline compete with each other, probably using the heads or other parts of their rivals as balls and so on.

"[the] tribal storyteller, goes on permuting jaguars and toucans until there comes a moment when one of his innocent little stories explodes into a terrible revelation: a myth, which demands to be recited in secret and in a sacred place.”-Italo Calvino

"When books and writing come into being, [that is, the actual historical event of their invention, the transition from oral to literate civilization], humanity is already divided into a civilized world -- that part of humanity which was first to reach the neolithic age -- and a so-called savage world, which has not progressed beyond the paleolithic age and in which the neolithic group is no longer able to recognize its ancestors. In the civilized world, people think that things have always been what they now are, that for instance there have always been masters and slaves. When written literature comes into being, it already bears the burden of the duty to confirm and consecrate the established order of things, a burden from which it slowly frees itself in the course of a process that takes thousands of years, by becoming a private event where poets and prose writers are able to express the very oppressions they labor beneath, to bring them into full consciousness and to transmit this consciousness to the culture and thought of a whole society..... He adds, importantly, that "literature achieves this only when it can at last afford to indulge in a playful attitude, a combinatorial game that may at a certain stage take on preconscious content and finally give it voice...."

Art, apsychophysioanthropological approach=Making Special--Ellen Dissenayake

We constantly give over our world-making powers, just as we have given over the world-making, or ontogenetic, powers of our language.

A myth is a “special,” a sacred, fable.

Calvino's description of the "occurence" of a myth, that is, the sudden emergence of a "terrible revelation," suggests a remarkable process of the unknown emerging from out of the known.

Artists are professional seekers of these chance occurrences.Art history is the story of those chance operations that might constitute the mythology of the entire culture.Or, put another way, Art history is the story of those chance occurrences which preserve the existing systems of power and privilege within a culture.

Or, put another way, Art History may be the story of how individuals have struggled through their creative tasks to express something outside of existing systems, and potentially something revolutionary.

As Abrams mentioned, myths and art not only consecrate what exists, not only create and sustain our explanations for how the world works, but by the very fact of containing cultural ideals and symbols, introduce the possibility of slippage...

... the chance play of fables and myths can teach lessons that cannot be otherwise spoken of, can create cracks and fissures in reality, can introduce possibilities not fully conceived even in the mind of the bard or shaman or artist who does the telling.

“The psychic break is the answer to the common activist campfire question: “How did you get radicalized?” It is what happens when the reality we are spoon-fed no longer feels good... At different times, mass segments of society can experience a psychic break simultaneously.”-smartmeme.com

Part of the cultural reinforcement of the current system lies in mass communications. State propaganda, the corporate media, consumer advertising and other narratives don’t control how people think. They control what people think about. The challenge of future direct action is thus not to change people’s minds but rather the conditions that make thinking possible. French critic and philosopher Michel Foucault puts it thus, “The problem is not changing people’s consciousness but the political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth.” -ibid

Author: The Evergreen State College

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