In the continuing effort to tweak my blog posts to suit my narrow interests, I’m starting a section where I briefly summarize a text or article of which I’ve read a part but would like to read more. I’m starting with Chiara Bottici’s A Philosophy of Political Myth.

Why read more?

Bottici takes on a challenge in political science by exploring the distinction between myths and other aspects of language (symbols, stories, etc.) In my field of public policy there are numerous conceptual terms out there that roughly correspond to myths, narratives and symbols — causal stories, generative frames, narratives, etc. I actually wrote a comps question about this years ago and hope to someday dust it off and build on it (dream on, me!). Two passages in the sample chapter of Bottici’s book that provide, if not conceptual clarity, then food for thought. One is defining myth as linked to a purpose, or a specific explanation of how the world works. In this view, myths are used to make sense of the world.

In order to work as a myth, a narrative must always answer a need for significance (Bedeutsamkeit). If it cannot do so, it simply ceases to be a myth (Blumenberg 1985).

She then goes on to counterpose this instrumental view of myth with a view informed by Wittgenstein’s view of language (of which I admit I’m entirely ignorant).

Following Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, it may be said that to interrogate myths from the standpoint of their true or false account means to assume too limited a view of what human language and meanings are about: human beings are ceremonious animals, who, with their language, perform innumerable actions that are not based on any hypothesis about the constitution of the world (Wittgenstein 1979).

It seems as if much of our work accepts the former definition of myth rather than the latter. But at what price? Do we run the risk of reifying myths and attaching a convenient language to them when in actuality they are experienced differentially by those who adopt them (and in ways that social scientists really can’t do much with). Are the myths adopted after 9-11 less about trying to explain how the world works and more an elaborate performance intended to reduce anxiety? How does that change the way we study frames? narratives?

I need to read more.