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THEORIES OF MYTH*
PERCY S. COHEN
* The Malinowski Memorial Lecture, delivered at the London School of Economics and
Political Science on 8 May, I969.
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3 3 8 PERCY S. COHEN
* * * * *
Classifying theo
presuppose that t
more component
themselves. Furt
concerned only w
valuable.
There are seven m
of explanation an
development of
symbolic stateme
an end in itself,
that which treat
in terms of its f
that which stress
that which treats
linked with ritua
The first type, w
to be known as
thinking which,
intellectual curio
is much irony in
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THEORIES OF MYTH 3 39
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3 40 PERCY S. COHEN
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THEORIES OF MYTH 34I
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3 42 PERCY S. COHEN
According to Burridge and according to his informants, these are the main
meanings of the symbols. 'Bamboo-stick' evokes bamboo slivers used for cir-
cumcision. The term 'shelter' evokes club-house, which, in turn, links with cir-
cumcision. Then we have the surviving orphans who, Burridge speculates, must
commit incest to restart the community. We are told that 'rain' symbolises semen,
and the storm represents attributes of maleness; that 'light' is associated with moral
responsibility, also linked with circumcision, while darkness is associated with
blindness, unawareness and communal exclusion. Now it should be emphasised
that Burridge presents these associations and symbolisations as coming from his
informants, but that he does not himself use them for psycho-analytic inter-
pretation: in other words, there seems to have been no danger in his reading things
into the mythical symbols because of a Freudian bias. Yet the myth makes classical,
Freudian sense. The brother and sister are excluded from the shelter for being
orphans, unwashed and smelly; as a result they are later to commit incest. Here is a
simple reversal; the orphans are smelly because they are incestuous. To exclude
them is, in effect, a denial of incestuous possibilities. But tacitly, the myth ack-
nowledges the incestuous wish by rewarding the orphans, or by permitting them
to destroy the villagers; alternatively, the myth may imply a recognition that the
smelly, orphaned pair represents the repressed unconscious, for which the commun-
ity must be punished by extinction. The denial of incestuous wishes is a cardinal
element of moral responsibility, and the moral responsibility of men is related to
membership in the club-house and to circumcision; the latter may also, symboli-
cally, represent token punishment for incestuous wishes; and dirtiness and im-
morality are made unconscious equivalents.
This brief, perhaps superficial, interpretation raises many questions and leaves
many unanswered. But it is my guess that pursuing this line complements and does
not substitute for or weaken other interpretations.
The second possibility for psycho-analysis is to assert that myths exist to ensure
that certain day-dreams are collectively recognised. The argument here could be
that achieving such subliminal recognition could, in some way, support the moral
rules, which are always at stake, especially by communicating the ambivalences
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THEORIES OF MYTH 3 43
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344 PERCY S. COHEN
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THEORIES OF MYTH 3 45
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3 46 PERCY S. COHEN
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THEORIES OF MYTH 3 47
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3 48 PERCY S. COHEN
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THEORIES OF MYTH 3 4 9
Thus, in some myths, man is opposed to jaguar in the following way: one eats
cooked food, the other raw; man does not eat jaguar, jaguar eats man. But if man
did eatjaguar, there would still be opposition between them; very strong opposition,
one would have thought. A similar arbitrariness can be observed in the analysis of
the Oedipus myth, to which I referred earlier.
Apart from this, I have a strong objection to the whole dialectical mystique
which permeates the work of Levi-Strauss and so many other contemporary
intellectuals. One wishes that they would finally decide whether the dialectic is a
law of psychological process, whether it is a universal law of all process, or
whether it is simply a word which conveniently tricks the reader or listener into
believing that true 'logic' (or pseudo-logic) also reveals empirical truth. If Levi-
Strauss were saying that people experience unease in reconciling different ideas
to one another, and that this unease is expressed in myth, then he would be
saying about the cognitive structure and manifest content of myths what psycho-
analysis is saying about the unconscious mechanisms of dream formation and the
meanings of dream-symbols. But when he insists on a more exact formulation
of this, by applying the unwieldy scientism of communications theory, wedded
to Hegelian dialectics, I, for one, can see nothing but difficulties. For when
is an opposition genuine, and when is it arbitrarily conceived? Opposites are
characteristics at polar ends of a continuum, which latter may be a series of only
two items. In certain contexts, nature is the opposite of culture; and in all contexts
cooked and raw are opposites, though Levi-Strauss also suggests that the concept
of the rotting or the rotten might be introduced to complicate this particular
polarity. But in a traffic situation, it is red and green that are opposites, though it
mightjust as well have been red and blue; for the binary discrimination is between
red and non-red, and either green or blue would fit.
In fact, Levi-Strauss's method does not require the theoretical assumption that
myth exists in order to mediate genuine contradictions. All that is needed are two
weaker assumptions: first, that there is unease in reconciling different ideas, atti-
tudes, etc.; and second, that this is expressed dramatically in terms of opposition.
Thus, this aspect of myth can be seen as a recurrent narrative device, rather than as
a reflection of 'dialectical' thought.
The emphasis on myth as an abstract mode of thought leads Levi-Strauss to
treat the narrative aspect of it as secondary, if not irrelevant. Perhaps one of his
motives is to destroy the picture of the savage as a story-telling simpleton. But
substituting the dialectician is not the only alternative.
* * * * *
In my view, the
rative is an orde
creation of a mom
or what Levi-Str
myth, is not irr
but the fact that
beginning, a mom
argue, one of the
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3 50 PERCY S. COHEN
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THEORIES-OF MYTH 3 5 I
world, not just man, is imbued with moral significance: if claims are made to
territories, and the borders of these are defined in terms of rivers and mountains,
then these too become morally significant. It has also not escaped attention that the
style as well as the symbolism of the story of Genesis lends itself so well to its
several purposes. For not only does it make blatant use of much Freudian sym-
bolism, but also of the most glaring binary oppositions, beginning with heaven and
earth, and ending with the head of the serpent and the heel of man, taking in, on its
way, many more, both concrete and abstract (see Leach I96I).
Thus, clearly, all myth performs a number of functions simultaneously. One has
here something which is common in traditional societies, an example of what one
might call the principle of functional economy. By this, I mean the tendency to
load an institution or cultural item with functions and significances, so much so
that one function tends to influence the other, and each appears to have pride of
place in accounting for the existence and characteristics of the phenomenon. For
whatever reasons myths were originally invented, they were subsequently used as a
vehicle for communicating or just expressing a number of things for which they
may never have been intended. Let us say that myths were originally explanations
of the origins or transformations of things or, as I would prefer to put it, let us say
that they were originally devices for blocking off explanation. If they were valued
as such, then their place in the cognitive scheme would make them eligible as
means of legitimating social practices. But their power to do both of these would
be enhanced by their use of symbolism which galvanised the deepest commitments
and feelings of reverence and sacredness, and by use of style, which presents a
dramatic tension between opposed objects or forces which is somehow resolved.
But there is no need to start from any one point or aspect of myth. For one thing,
it is a fruitless task; for another, it makes little or no difference to our under-
standing the questions: Why do men make myths? Why do these contain the
significances which they do? Why do men make so much of the sharing of myths?
What is it in myths which appeals to men so strongly that it enables them to treat
them as sacred? I think that the answer to all of these questions is that because myths
perform several linked functions, and because they contain levels of meaning
which achieve an intuitively experienced correspondence, because myths are
narratives with a time-anchored structure, because they deal simultaneously with
the socially and psychologically significant, because they make use of what is
perceived and available and link it to the primordial sense of a deeper level of
reality, they have had the power which we rightly attribute to them in some socie-
ties. Thus, the Oedipus myth may be interpreted in terms of at least three sets of
universal themes: autochthony, incest and descent, as analysed by Levi-Strauss;
parricide, incest and fantasy, as in Freud; and, of course, the theme of succession to
positions of power and authority, one which has not been mentioned at all in
commentaries on this and similar myths. That these three themes interlock is clear:
and the interlocking is no accident.
It is also when the different functions of myth become detached from one
another, as occurs with the process of structural and cultural differentiation, that
myth loses some of its power and is either replaced or complemented by other
systems of belief One such form is prophecy. If myth anchors the present in the
past, then prophecy anchors it in the future. Prophecy is a sort of myth in reverse.
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3 52 PERCY S. COHEN
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THEORIES OF MYTH 3 5 3
* * * * *
If I have dwelt in
on the character
honour Malinowski as the founder of modern ethnographical method without
honouring him also as a theorist of society and culture.
NOTES
Some of the ideas in this lecture were first presented under the title 'Modern myths' in
Clare, the magazine of the students of the London School of Economics, in Spring I966. I am
particularly grateful for the comments made on these and other ideas developed in the lecture
by my colleagues, Professor Ernest Gellner and Professor Donald MacRae. I owe the greatest
debt to my wife, Ruth Cohen, who helped substantially in a number of ways, especially in
matters of style, presentation and construction.
I By this I mean that to err is to fail in an attempt to do something correctly. Myths are
not errors, since they are not failed attempts to make correct empirical statements.
2 The kinds I have in mind are apocalyptic prophecies of the Old Testament, the beliefs
associated with cargo cults and messianic movements.
3 As Donald MacRae has stated, it is mistaken to hold that one set of beliefs is dislodged by
another for lack of 'mental space'.
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