Term
Myth
used in 63 texts across the archive
“Myth provides a narrative explanation for the vagaries of the imperative exchange that is ritual: the community gives what is prescribed to the central being, who, in return, ensures that the community will have more of the sustenance out of which a portion is returned to the central being.”
In use
“We need not share Girard’s realist etiology to accept the view that myth is an attempt to make plausible the creation of significance in an event through the projection back into the past of a model of human intentionality (“anthropomorphism”). As sign-users, we reenact the origin of the sign that defers violence. Such tales may be detached from their original ritual context.”
“This understanding of myth is not obviously related to the emergence of the Big Man, but the increasingly complexity of intentions attributed to figures on the ritual scene (which, of course, can include animals and the elements) lays the groundwork for making sense of the Big Man’s “usurpation” of the center.”
“One (more) thing the Oedipus myth is about is human survival through love, minimally defined as the deferral of violence.”
“Under a ritual order, when the interlocking imperative exchanges don’t work, myth is generated; with the evacuation of the ritual order, imperative failure leads to hypotheses (hypotheses are really articulations of particular ostensive-imperative-interrogative-declarative sequences).”