Pre-print version of Blanco-Gracia (2018).

Assange vs Zuckerberg: symbolic construction of

contemporary cultural heroes. Accepted for publication in Organization Studies, available

online early: https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840618789203

In 2010, Wikileaks Director Julian Assange and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg competed, with

other personalities as well, . Although the readers voted

for Assange (Friedman, 2010), the editor chose Zuckerberg, a decision that provoked controversy

both in traditional and social media (Andrejevic, 2014). One of the reasons for the controversy was

the fact that Zuckerberg (tenth position) was way behind Assange and others, like Erdogan (second

position), Lady Gaga (third position), Obama (sixth position) or Steve Jobs (seventh position) in the

popular vote. As the editor expressed when explaining his decision:

-up this year, Julian Assange and the Tea Party, Mark Zuckerberg

doesn't have a whole lot of veneration for traditional authority. In a sense, Zuckerberg and

Assange are two sides of the same coin. Both express a desire for openness and transparency.

While Assange attacks big institutions and governments through involuntary transparency

with the goal of disempowering them, Zuckerberg enables individuals to voluntarily share

information with the idea of empowering them. Assange sees the world as filled with real

and imagined enemies; Zuckerberg sees the world as filled with potential friends. Both have

a certain disdain for privacy: in Assange's case because he feels it allows malevolence to

flourish; in Zuckerberg's case because he sees it as a cultural anachronism, an impediment to

(Stengel, 2010, p. 43).

In the organizational theory field, one journal editor made a call for papers asking: "Wikileaks or

Facebook, Assange or Zuckerberg; who is the cultural hero and icon of the new digital commons

and symbol of free spirit leading us towards a future explosion of creative collaboration?" (

Are Saying, Is Give Theoretical Pluralism A Chance, 2012). This debate regarding Assange versus

Zuckerberg poses an interesting question to leadership studies: how is it that these two persons with

1
nearly opposite personality traits, organizations and leadership styles ended up being in such close

running for Time's Person of the Year and potential cultural heroes more or less on the same terms?

In order to address that question, this paper analyzes the symbolic construction of leadership at the

societal level and relates it to the symbolic construction of epochal leadership theories themselves.

Through the analysis of their Wikipedia biographies, it unveils how epochal imaginaries influence

the shaping of cultural leaders. Because of a lack of relevant methodology in leadership studies

which could analyze these aspects, this paper introduces a novel approach that engages with

empirical materials through the analysis of myths that inspire epochal narratives. Western societies

have transitioned from a world of steam machines and industrial factories to a world of services and

digital networks. The mesh of symbolic images and narratives that sustain the sensemaking of these

two worlds are radically different, and that affects the way organizations, and the relationships that

form them, are shaped. Theories that were developed in order to understand organizations in the

past might, therefore, lack the tools to analyze the reality of leadership in the present day.

Since the times of Plato and Aristotle, critical reasoning has regarded myths as naive explanations

of reality which prevented thinkers from initiating a proper inquiry.

widely used as a synonym for a lie or falsity, researchers have convincingly argued that the strict

separation of the rational discourse of modern philosophy and science on one side, and the poetic

intuition of ancient myths on the other, can hardly be made. Because of their persistence in

individual and collective imaginaries, myths have been used as analytical tools to understand

political systems (Wilmer & Zukauskaite, 2010), management styles (Bowles, 1993; Handy, 2011),

behavioral patterns (Bolen, 2014a, 2014b) and even the selection of themes that guide scientific

inquiry (Holton, 1978, 1998).

2
The paper develops as follows. First it presents the mythanalysis of French anthropologist and

sociologist Gilbert Durand as a useful methodology for understanding the influence of myths in

epochal narratives. Then the structural analysis of Prometheus, the most influential myth in the

, , ,

tools for understanding the symbolic construction of leaders in epochal terms. Thirdly, it makes the

case for the selection of the Wikipedia biographies of Julian Assange and Mark Zuckerberg as

empirical material to unveil the mythic background of current cultural leaders and proceeds to their

mythanalysis. Finally, it draws some conclusions on the potential contributions of mythanalysis to

leadership studies.

Thinking through myths

An interdisciplinary work of linguists, psychologists, archaeologists, ethnologists, and historians

that spans through the 20th century demonstrated why myths are productive analytical tools for

understanding societies (Bouchard, 2017; Durand, 1996b). If old myths are relevant today it is not

because they are inherited ideas but because they are "inherited possibilities of ideas" (Jung, 2014, p.

66), that is, patterns of sensemaking that operate in our unconscious minds and are universally

shared, as comparative mythology shows (Eliade, 1998; Long, 1983).

As Lévi-Strauss (1983) argued, myth is not a particular use of language, but a meta-language that

underlies narratives and discourses. While reasoning is based on a demonstrative logic, myth is

based on an intuitive logic that tries to persuade through a redundancy of symbolic scenes/situations

that unveil meaning as a sort of epiphany (Durand, 1996b). "You cannot refute a myth because as

soon as you treat it as refutable, you do not treat it as a myth but as a hypothesis or history"

(MacIntyre, 2006, p. 463)). From the perspective of symbolic hermeneutics, symbols raise a

particular kind of knowledge, a symbolic knowledge, that interacts with both normative and

3
hypothetical-deductive knowledge although it is not defined as either of those types. (Cassirer, 1972;

Lanceros, 1997 Cognitive psychology supports the idea that symbolic images make possible a

[that] (Barsalou, Barbey, Simmons, &

Santos, 2005, p. 15); a kind of knowledge that is unconsciously acquired and used, and contributes

to any cognitive activity including the scientific one.

Societal relevance of specific myths change over time. Given the material conditions certain myths

are taken to be more important than others: "an epoch - or at least 'a moment' in the epoch is

obsessed (Mauron, 1988) explicitly or implicitly by one (or some) myths that reflect in a

paradigmatic way its aspirations, desires, fears, terrors" (Durand, 1996d, p. 235).

The mythanalysis of Gilbert Durand

The most comprehensive methodology for understanding how myths operate is the mythanalysis of

Gilbert Durand. Potential interest of Durand's work for the management field has already been

suggested (Grimand, 2009; Grzybovski, Amâncio, & Paço-Cunha, 2007; Paula-Carvalho, 1992;

Tannery, 2009), but there are only a few and relatively recent examples of its use (See Robert-

Demontrond & -Toulouse, 2011; Blanco-Gracia, 2014; Guelfand, 2015), and its actual rich

possibilities have not yet been explored. Due to space restrictions, I am presenting a simplified, yet

operative version .

According to Durand, societies are complex systems that reach cohesion and stability by balancing

three protocols of symbolic representation: the heroic, the mystic, and the dramatic (See figure 1).

The "heroic" tends to separate the hierarchy elements in the representation; therefore it valorizes

what stands higher or is brighter over all other things, and gives importance to the trope of antithesis

and dualism (i.e., up/down, light/darkness, clean/dirty, reason/emotion, etc.). The "mystic" protocol

4
mixes and confounds the elements of representation, so it prefers symbols of darkness, containers,

etc. and makes use of the trope of antiphrasis,

masquerading u (Durand, 1999, p. 187). The dramatic

protocol connects and links elements in the representation, in a way that even if they are

contradictory, they can still co-exist (a both/and logic that the dualistic either/or heroic logic cannot

accept). Preferred symbols are the ones that relate things through cyclical time (the moon, the wheel,

seeds) or synthesis of opposites (as the androgynous), and they make use of dialectics and paradox.

Figure 1: The three protocols of symbolic images representation (Durand, 1999)

Heroic Dramatic Mystic

Distinguish and separate Link and synthetize Mix and confound

The symbolic images that can be found in any myth are always articulated by one of these three

protocolsi. The three protocols are rooted, , in the main unconscious

gestures of the body (hence their universality). For instance, the main schemes operating under the

heroic verticalization of the body, and the manual and visual

division. In his monumental work "The Anthropological Structures of Imaginary", Durand explains

with great detail and abundant examples how these protocols of representation work in different

cultures and epochs. It is out of the scope of this article to describe them in depth, but it should

suffice to keep in mind that they are based on the actions of cutting/separating (heroic),

mixing/confounding (mystic), and linking/connecting (dramatic). To see examples of these

5
protocols of symbolic representation, I present below the structural analysis of the myth of

Prometheus (heroic), and the myth of Hermes (dramatic).

Regarding the symbolic systems that sustain societies or organizations, there is always one myth

that prevails and two others that compensate the predominant one. Durand pointed out two authors

that understood this very well. The first is Nietzsche, who showed how the birth of Athenian

tragedy is rooted in the conflict between Dionysus and Apollo (Nietzsche, 1999). The second is

Weber, who took from John Stuart Mill the concept of polytheism to explain the paradoxical fact

that the frugal ethics of Protestantism founded capitalist consumerism (Weber, 2001). When a ruling

myth is not counterbalanced, societies collapse or suffer a violent crisis. Durand, a decorated hero

of the French resistance, related the unbalanced societal force of the god Wotan in Germany with

the rising of the Nazi regime. We can intuitively understand that no human system (be it a clan, a

firm, or a whole society) in which everything is isolated, or fused, or connected, is viable (Thom,

1980).

The dynamism of these three protocols of symbolization explains societal changes and the cyclical

view of authors such as Hegel, Marx, Spengler and, especially, Sorokin. The relevance of particular

myths changes over time because once a myth rules the societal imagination, it is translated into

rational programs and ideologies, thus losing its symbolic function and making room for other

myths to take over. The following myth usually proposes a new protocol of representation that

captures the imagination of the discontented populace of the rational ruling program and serves

again as a matrix of meaning for the reconciliation of new cultural contradictions. In other words,

when a myth begins to become a rational program, losing its ambiguity and contradiction, it cannot

serve its purpose any further, and therefore a new myth has to take its place. Durand's mythanalysis

identifies the myths that are working to organize the "deep grammar" of the symbolic images that

6
bring cohesion and institutionalization to human groups and societies in a given epoch (Sánchez-

Capdequí, 1997).

The first step of the mythanalysis requires defining the scope, which can range from a single picture

to all the cultural contents of an epoch, and must be sufficient for the objective of the mythanalysis.

Of course, the larger the scope the less achievable is an exhaustive analysis of materials. Therefore,

in some cases a selection of "meaningful exemplars" is unavoidable and it becomes itself a matter

of interpretation (Durand, 1996d). According to the experience of Durand and followers, a

collection that allows identifying between five and ten redundant "themes" will be sufficient.

Then it requires identifying redundancies of "themes", which Durand call mythemes following

Levi-Strauss (each scene/situation that could be considered as the minimum meaningful narrative

unit in which a myth can be broken down). Durand never presented a procedure on how to complete

this identification, but using examples in different fields demonstrates how this is done. Roughly,

the procedure consists in identifying the protocols of imagination that organize the symbolic images

(heroic, mystic, or dramatic), which will narrow the possibilities of interpretation, and, then, group

the mythemes into bundles that recall mythemes of the "ideal versions" of myths. A good starting

point for grouping them is to take into account the epithets (surnames or poetic nicknames) by

which the main character of the myth is known.

The "ideal version" (we will see two examples below) is built by selecting only the core group of

mythemes that allow identifying all the versions of the myth, in the sense that they share with the

ideal myth at least 80% of these bundles of mythemes. As Durand explains, no version of the myth

is the right or the original one, nor presents all the collections of mythemes. In this way, he blocks

scholars from using versions of myths that can be found in dictionaries of myths, in which all the

mythemes of all the different versions of the myth are condensed.

7
Finally, mythanalysis is completed by comparing the divergences of the presence of the mythemes

, and by searching for explanatory correlations

in culture and social changes (Durand, 1979, 1996d).

Durand's mythanalysis differs substantially from the most common use of myths as an analytical

tool in leadership and organizational theory in general, which is a Jungian based approach. Jungians

focus their interest not on myths themselves but on the main archetypes that may be found in them.

Archetypes are understood as primordial images shared in the collective unconscious of humankind

" (Bowles, 1990, p. 406).

For instance, the hero, the virgin, the mother or the trickster are archetypes that present particular

psychological traits that can be compared with those of the leaders to be analyzed. But as Durand

notes, , his

terminology of symbols is one of the most confusing and fluctuating. This way, archetypes, symbols,

(Durand, 2003, p. 61). The problem of using archetypes

as an analytical tool for leadership studies, then, is twofold. Firstly, the definition of "archetype" is

vague, which complicates its consistent use as a comparison across different research works.

Conversely, mythanalysis' heroic/mystic/dramatic code of interpretation makes all mythanalysis

comparable, reusable and capable of being validated. Secondly, it does not focus on the

psychological or psychoanalytical explanations of leadership styles and their symbolic construction.

This way, it makes room for a methodological pluralism that escapes from a monocausal kind of

reasoning. As in any hermeneutical approach, potential conflicts of interpretations between different

approaches open a process of validation that does not exist in empirical verification:

not verification. Validation is an argumentative discipline comparable to the juridical procedures of

(Ricoeur, 1991, p. 159)

8
To illustrate how myths give meaning and sensemaking through different protocols of

representation, and how "ideal myths" look, the rest of this section is devoted to the structural

analysis of the myths of Prometheus (Durand, 1996c) and Hermes (Durand, 1979). First I present

the succession of mythemes as the myth can be narrated, and then a table in which mythemes are

sorted in columns, in such a way that the structure of the myth is unveiled.

The myth of Prometheus

Prometheus was a son of the Titan Iapetus (one of the six elder Gods that ruled the world before the

Olympians Gods did), and brother of Atlas, the Titan that led the Titanomachy War for ten years

against Zeus. Other sources, however, say that Prometheus was a Titan himself. His son Deucalion

linked humankind with the Titans by marrying Pyrrah, the first human born from a human woman

and not made of clay. Prometheus was also the twin of Epimetheus, ,

, who was in charge of populating the earth with animals. Since Epimetheus did not

create enough animals, resulting in humankind not having enough food, Prometheus tricked Zeus

during a sacrifice at Mekone, in which the division of sacrificial offers between gods and humans

had to be settled. Prometheus had the first pile of meat covered by the ox's stomach, and the second

pile of bones covered by some shiny fat. He then asked Zeus to choose one of the two. Zeus picked

the pile of bones, only then realizing Prometheus's trick and humans received the pile with the meat.

As a punishment Zeus took fire away form humankind: "Let them eat their flesh raw", he cried

furiously. Prometheus then stole the fire, which he hid in a hollow fennel-stalk, and brought it back

to humans. As a response to all of these offenses, Zeus asked the god Haephestos to create Pandora,

the first woman, who was as beautiful as she was mischievous. In the meantime, satyrs gave

Prometheus a jar (of evils according to Hesiod, but of goods according to Macedonius), and he

entrusted it to Epimetheus, while warning him not to accept any present from the Olympian gods.

But Zeus offered Pandora as a gift to Epimetheus, who finally accepted her. Pandora later thought

9
that the jar was a wedding present and opened it, liberating all evils (or letting go of all good forever,

depending on the version of the myth).

Zeus also directly punished Prometheus; he chained him to a stake on Mount Kaukasos, where an

eagle born from Echidna ate his liver every day, before it was eternally regenerated every night.

Prior to the start of his punishment, Prometheus had suggested that his son Deucalion build a ship

and fill it with provisions, so he and his wife Pyrrha were the only ones who survived when Zeus

tried to end the humankind with a flood. Prometheus was eventually liberated when the Greek hero

Heracles slayed the eagle that was torturing him.

Divine pardon was given when Prometheus warned Zeus not to marry the nymph Thetis. He shared

with Zeus something that Thetis : there was a prophecy stating that the

son of Thetis' husband would dethrone his father. Since Zeus was afraid that his son could dethrone

him, as he had done to his own father, he arranged a marriage for Thetis with the human hero Peleus.

The end of the myth is a happy one for Prometheus: Heracles accidentally wounded the centaur

Chiron with a poisoned arrow. To escape from eternal pain and to reward Prometheus' sacrifice, the

noble centaur bargained with Zeus and transferred his immortality to Prometheus.

Table 1 presents Durand's structural analysis of the myth of Prometheus as suggested by Lévi-

Strauss (1983): if you want to tell the myth, you must read the mythemes horizontally (sequentially

numbered), but if you want to understand the myth, then you have to read it vertically, as columns

of the themes that configure "lessons" which together expose the human dilemma. The first three

groups of mythemes are related to the Titanic nature of Prometheus, and the Titan's fight against the

Olympians, in which the cruel punishment for the rightful rebellion of Prometheus is framed. The

second (father of mankind) is a single group of mythemes exploring his philanthropy. The third

bundle of mythemes (Freedom, and immortality) is related to his triumphant liberation.

As pointed out above, Prometheus is the myth that scholars find most useful in understanding the

modern era. Its ambition of complete freedom through the technological dominion of the earth, and

10
 Table 1: Structural analysis of the myth of Prometheus (from Durand, 1996a)

General Structures
Titanomachy dualism (War of Titans against Olympians) Philanthropy Prometheus unchained

Titanic Nature Rightful Rebellion Punishments Father of mankind Freedom Immortality

1.1. Son of the Titan
Iapetus, brother of Atlas
and Menoetius
1.2. According to 1.3. Father of Deucalion, husband
Aeschylus, Prometheus is a of Pyrrha (daughter of
Titan himself 2. Brother of Epimetheus, Epimetheus), the first man
,
3.1. Tricks Zeus during the 3.2. Zeus takes fire from
sacrifice at Mekone mankind
4. Gives to mankind the meat of
the sacrifice of Mekone

5.2. 5.3. Zeus sends Pandora to 5.1. Gives (somehow) the jar of
Zeus mankind goods that Pandora will open

6. Steals fire
Diachrony

7. Gives fire to mankind

8. Prometheus in chains, bit
by the eagle of Echidna 9. Advises Deucalion to build an
arch to save his life from the great
10. The great flood flood

11. Heracles slays the

eagle
12. Heracles wounds
Chiron the Centaur 13. Chiron exchanges
his immortality for the
death of Prometheus

14. Prometheus warns Zeus about the menace of marrying Thetis, which finally marries human hero Peleus
15. Happy ending!
Zeus elevates
Prometheus to
Immortal

11
also the cost (or punishment) that carries access to such technical-operational knowledge (Gehmann,

2004; Spretnak, 1999). His epithets are "foresighted" (in opposition to his "dumb" brother

Epithemus) and "bound" or "chained". As a myth in the heroic logic, its mythemes reflect actions

(the division of meat in sacrifices, rebellion against Zeus, killing of the eagle, etc.) and objects (cuts

of flesh, sword, peak of the eagle) of separation and antithesis (Olympians vs Titans, Nature vs

Technology, Raw vs Cooked, Light vs Darkness, and so on). The symbolic image of fire expands

the Enlightenment project of positivism and materialism that was attributed to other gods like

Apollo and Helios in previous centuries. In any case, humankind is dependent on this kind of

paternalistic hero and his applied knowledge to achieve complete emancipation from the Gods.

The myth of Hermes

Hermes was the bastard son of the immortal Zeus and the mortal Nymph Maia, daughter of Atlas

and nephew of Prometheus. Among his descents are the thief Antelikos (grandfather of Odysseus

and instructor of Heracles), and Hermaphroditus (synthesis and harmony of masculine and

feminine). Hermes was a prodigy that escaped from his cradle right after he was born. During his

first day of life, he stole Apollo's cattle and hid the herd in a mountain. He later found a turtle and

made a lyre by drawing strings across its shell, which he gave to Apollo in exchange for his pardon.

Seeing how happy Apollo was with the lyre, he cut some reeds and made them into a syrinx, and

traded it for the golden caduceus that Apollo used for herding cattle.

Hermes became Zeus' herald and served him in many ways. He astutely liberated Ares when he was

imprisoned in a bronze urn by two giants, and also skillfully helped Zeus to free the mortal priestess

Io from the monster Argus. When the monster Typhon cut Zeus' tendons and locked him up, Hermes

stole the sinews and tied them back so that Zeus could regain his strength. The list of heroic deeds

he accomplished for Zeus is indeed, long; he acted as a go-between of Zeus and Alcmena (the

encounter that gave birth to Heracles), and he was

12
the ram of the Golden Fleece that served as a sacrificial replacement for the children of the nymph

Nephele. (This Golden Fleece is the same one that later triggers the quest of Jason and the

Argonauts). He also helped Zeus and Paris in the dispute with the goddesses Hera, Aphrodite and

Athena over a golden apple that the Goddess Eris threw with the enigmatic words "to the fairest".

As a result, Hermes is awarded Helene as his wife, who will later become the impetus of the Trojan

War. (Zeus will ask at some point Hermes, as the Iliad tells, to escort King Priam of Troy). Another

Dionysus from the rage of his wife, Hera.

Hermes also acts as intermediary, guide, or helper in many other myths. He gifts Heracles the sword

that will kill Hydra (the nine-headed monster), and will later descend with him to hell. He will be

involved in the origin of Perseus' adventures and will provide the helmet that made Perseus

invisible. He is also the god that gave Odysseus a moly plant that protected him from the goddess

of sorcery, Circe, and helps Odysseus escape from the goddess-nymph Calypso. Finally, he guides

Orestes from Delphi to Athens and will be granted the name of Nychios, father of cunning, after his

assistance in that particular quest.

Table 2 shows the sequence of Hermes mythemes ordered in columns that capture his three main

lt on the different epithets of the god (Durand, 1979).

; he has never had the dignity and magnificence of the other gods that he serves. While

sometimes a big, strong and straightforward hero such as Heracles is required in order to achieve

some things, other times a little and agile trickster will be the one needed for the job. The source of

his power is eternal youth as well as mental and physical agility. Hermes is also a mediator, his

most characteristic trait (commonly described as the messenger of the gods), able to relate (even

associate) the opposites in many ways: by intermediation, theft (not robbery, which implies violence

instead of trickery), bartering of goods or harmonization. Finally, Hermes is an initiator of journeys

that take souls to other realms: the underground, the civilization, etc. As a dramatic myth, his

13
 Table 2: Structural analysis of the myth of Hermes (from Durand, 1979)
General Structures
The power of the minute The Mediator The Conductor of Souls
Qualities
Eternal child The Agile The Intermediary The Exchange The Thief The Harmony The Guide The Initiator The Civilizer

1.1. Bastard of Zeus

2. Prodigy Child and a Mortal Great Nephew
(thief, inventor) 3. Stealing of

4. Invents the lyre

5. Exchange of
6.1. Invents the lyre for 6.2. Invents the
the syrinx syrinx
7.1,8.1. Invents 7.2, 8.2, 9.2, 10.
11. Astutely 9.1. Exchange of the lyre of Apollo Contributes with
liberates Ares 12 Intermediary in the syrinx for 13. lyre, syrinx,
the liberation of Io tendons from barter, commerce
caduceus Typhon
tendons
15. Helps and hides baby Dionysus, bastard of Zeus and a
17. Gifts the
Diachrony

16. Zeus and sword that will

Alcmena Go- kill the Hydra
Between 18. Gifts the
helmet that will
19. Initiator of the make Perseus
20. Intermediary of adventure of invisible
Zeus in the giving of Perseus
the Golden Fleece 22. Father of the 21. Initiator of the
thief Antelikos endeavor of the
(grandfather of 23. With Hercules Argonauts
Odysseus and in the descent into
24. Intermediary of instructor of the hells
Zeus between the Hercules) 25. Indirect
28. Helps three goddesses and 26, Guide of Priam initiator of the 27. Gifts the holy
Odysseus escape Paris (The Illyad, XIV) Trojan War plant to
from Calypso and Odysseus
Circe 29. Father of Hermaphroditus, synthesis and harmony of the two natures
30.2 Nychios, (association with Cabirus cult in Thebes and Samothrace). Father of the Lares, 30.1. Guide of
father of cunning divinities of the crossroads) Orestes from
Delphi to Athens

14
mythemes reflect actions (guide, exchange, lead, steal, etc.) and objects (the caduceus that holds

opposites, musical instruments that create harmony, tendons that connect bones, etc.) related to the

verbs link and connect.

Hermes is the god that scholars found as being the most influential in our current era, and

conversely, "the one who would feel most at home in our wired world" (Davis, 2015, p. 5). The

most important and comprehensive work in that sense is the one of Michel Serres, who devoted five

volumes to exploring Hermes in the present culture, technology and science (Serres, 1969). Jung,

, and

on postmodern thinking in general (Neville, 1992).

The epochal symbolic construction of leadership

The myth of Prometheus served as the symbolic framework for the construction of the theory of

leadership born in the modern era, the scientific management of engineers such as Taylor and Fayol.

The promised freedom of the Titan is conquered by achieving a world as an artifact, that is, "made

by man" with all the technological possibilities offered by fire (Gehmann, 2003b). The engineer is

the "foresighted" person that can anticipate what technologies can do and how they have to be used

in order to build the free world around us. The heroic protocol of representation (separation/cut) is

fully needed for that; it can be easily traced in the manic quest for time and inputs cutting, and in

the division of labor, all for the sake of a titanic rise of capital and wealth. Leadership is achieved

by fragmentizing processes in discrete tasks and times, to be performed by individuals sitting

isolated in cubicles, offices, or the invisible walls of the assembly line. The last heroic leader might

be Bill Gates, depicted as a bound Prometheus, for the Prometheus mythemes resonate in the titanic

fight of Microsoft against IBM-Zeus, bringing a new Operating System- .

15
Because of this generous gesture, -

(Donlan, 2001, p. 55).

But the heroic vision of a rational and highly performative individual that has

(Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich, 1985) is

put into question. The heroic highly centralized and hierarchical organizations in which they used to

reign are also questioned (Hamel & Breen, 2007; Krantz, 1990). In the present knowledge economy,

leaders should enable instead of align, (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009) and accept ambiguity and

paradoxes (Alvesson & Spicer, 2010). Leadership theory has shifted from an individual perspective

based on hard skills and personal traits to a more person-centered and system/network awareness

orientation that accepts perspectives from charismatic-transformational leaders, complexity leaders,

shared-collective-distributed leaders, servant leaders or spiritual leaders (Avolio, Walumbwa, &

Weber, 2009). Nevertheless, all this rhetoric of rupture with the Industrial Era and the plethora of

new leadership theories deserves a critical review, because it may be that it is only masking the

traditional, already known, , emotions and

(Holmberg, 2005).

The epochal impact of the myth of Hermes in organizations is also supported by some empirical

work. In their analysis of thirty interviews published in HBR between 1989 and 1998, Hatch,

Kostera and Kozminski (2004) compared CEOs profiles with the traits of Greek gods, to find that

the highest rate (more than one-third) showed traits of Hermes (See Table 3). In order to further

support the empirical-observable impact of Hermes, we may add the overwhelming explosion of

organizational profiles that incarnate key mythemes of Hermes' mediation. The list is long:

consultants, facilitators, mentors, coaches, management (self-help) gurus, brokers, and customer

relationship operators that Frederick Taylor never considered. (Ernst &

Chrobot-Mason, 2010) that should replace the bottlenecks in our organizational networks (Cross &

16
Thomas, 2008) are supposed to give up on approaches such as BPR (Business Process Re-engineer)

to embrace Agile, Lean and Design Thinking methodologies, which resonates profoundly with the

mythemes of the eternal youth of Hermes. Is not the turtle shell with strings, instead of an actual

lyre, the kind of prototype or Minimum Viable Product that Design Thinking and Lean management

promote?

Table 3: (own elaboration, from Hatch, Kostera and (2004)

% CEOs who
The Gods Their virtues
portrayed them
Hermes Communication, exchange, wit,
innovation and risk-taking 11 37%
Athena Rationality, strategic thinking,
control of emotions 6 20%
Demeter Care, locality, growth, renewal
(maternalism) 5 17%
Zeus Global vision and supreme power
(paternalism) 3 10%
Ares Aggression, competition, desire
to win 3 10%
Hephaestus Craft, exactness, concern for the
product 3 10%
Apollo Art, creativity, prophecy 2 7%
Heracles Bravery, perseverance,
entrepreneurship 2 7%
Persephone Contradiction, duality 1 3%
Hades Generosity and severity 1 3%

The Assange vs Zuckerberg controversy under the light of Hermes

During the societal emergence of a myth, some historical personalities incarnate (and often catalyze)

the ruling myth of an era (Durand, 1979, 1996b). By incarnating a myth Durand means that the

biographical events of these personalities, as they are known and told at the societal level, are

structured in the same way as the ones of the myth, in such a way that that person becomes the

representative of that era. For instance, several authors explored to what extent Napoleon incarnated

17
Prometheus (Blumenberg, 1988; Tulard, 1983), the dominant myth of Modernity (Gehmann, 2003a).

As Durand notes, the appearance of such personalities marks the point in which the ambiguous

symbolic dimension of the myth is finally conceptualized and translated into univocal discourses

(ideologies, utopias and programmatic theories and pedagogies) (Durand, 1996b).

Today, the figure of Hermes is in the spotlight underpinning leaders that have often been depicted as

tricksters, from entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs (Belk & Tumbat, 2005) to politicians such as Barack

Obama (Simonson, 2010) or Donald Trump (Dreher, 2016; Forlenza, 2016). While the study of

Hatch and her colleagues shows that the most present traits in contemporary CEO's are the ones of

Hermes, the question remains: among all these Hermesian leaders, how is it that a particular leader

can become a cultural one? If the thesis of Gilbert Durand is right, then the matrix of events in

which the mainstream narratives of this leader are built must closely follow the mythemes of

Hermes. And it is in this precise context where we have to situate the emergence of Assange and

Zuckerberg as contemporary cultural heroes competing f 2010.

In a poignant way, the two figures were dichotomized in the controversy that followed. A perfect

illustration of it may be the pictorial meme spread throughout the blogosphere and social networks

after Time Magaz

(Calderone, 2010). In this meme, a picture of both personalities is confronted, making a similar yet

a very different statement: money,

(Zuckerberg) , and

(Assange). Yet a comparative analysis of the symbolic construction of their figures

would unveil that despite the fact that they were presented as opposites, they both incarnate the

myth of Hermes: the power of the minute (as the nerd at Harvard or the solitary computer hacker),

the mediator (especially in their qualities of tricksters/thieves for getting the information by

br ), and the guide of souls (as leaders

or initiators to new realms of information ecologies).

18
The objective of this article is to test the hypothesis that if Assange and Zuckerberg are the

candidates for becoming the cultural leaders of an epoch it is because they incarnate the ruling myth

of that epoch, in the same way that Napoleon did of his. To do so, we have to perform the

mythanalysis of their biographical facts that reached the mainstream audience and to compare them

with the myth of Hermes. That is, to take their "ideal biographies" as a new version of the myth of

Hermes, and check - - if at least 80%

of the groups of mythemes are shared between their biographical accounts and the ones of the ideal

myth of Hermes. In order to not make the mythanalysis too complex, I focus it on Assange and

Zuckerberg emergence as cultural leaders competing for Time Magazine Person of the Year.

Once I set the scope of the analysis, I faced the decision of choosing a sufficient collection of

biographical texts that would reflect the known events that built their public profile. After collecting

a set of materials, I realized that the Wikipedia entries ( , 2013; ,

2013) were a compilation of the most repeated information I found in the rest of the texts. This is

because, I learned later, the policy on the biographies of living persons ( , 2017) for the

Wikipedia contributors forces them to work in the same way as an ideal myth is built after a

collection of versions. Conveniently, the same core rules for content are applied: neutral point of

view (inclusion of different perspectives), verifiability (which explains certain consistency between

different versions) and no original research (that is, not contributing with facts or theories that

cannot be found in any other place). Additionally, the decision of utilizing their Wikipedia entries

adds transparency to the exercise of classification of mythemes, since readers can all access the

same source and check that the procedure was not a matter of "cherry picking" biographical

anecdotes from different sources to make their biographies similar to the one of Hermes. All the

chosen biographical events are of significance and therefore well covered in the most popular books

published on the creation of Facebook (Beahm, 2012; Kirkpatrick, 2011) and Wikileaks

(Domscheit-Berg, 2011; Leigh & Harding, 2011)

19
Wikipedia articles do not present a strict chronological presentation of events and stories, so the

criteria followed was to treat the different sections of the Wikipedia article as mythemes, and not to

split similar events and stories that were presented under the same section into different mythemes.

I also ignored recorded events that happened after the controversy, for they obviously did not

contribute to their emergence as leaders . The other

technical aspect is that all the mythemes that were introduced in the analysis presented redundancy.

As we said before, myth tries to persuade through a redundancy of symbols and mythemes. In this

way, some mythemes of the biographies were not taken as relevant because of the lack of

redundancy, and as such could not contribute to the mythanalysis. Let us remember the critical

mission of redundancy of mythemes: "

if one may say so, through the repetition process" (Lévi-Strauss, 1983, p. 226) Finally, as Durand

reminds, all mythanalysis is an exercise in interpretation, so the exercise is not final and can be

open to more explanatory interpretations. With this in mind, I classified the mythemes of Assange

and the mythemes of Zuckerberg in the columns of the structural analysis of the myth of Hermes

(see Table 4 and Table 5). The resemblances between the three tables (the "ideal myth" of Hermes,

) are noticeable.

If we pay attention first to the initial sequence of the mythemes of Assange, we will realize how

. In both cases, there is a reference to

their thief ascendants, (the Titan Prometheus in the case of Hermes, a Taiwanese pirate in the case

of Assange). The intermediary trait, which in the case of Hermes is his condition of being half

human and half god and in the case of Assange is the reminder that his name is an Anglicization of

that of his ascendant pirate (Ah Sang), is incarnating a curious bridge between East and West. After

that, we will find the first difference between Assange and Hermes. The mytheme number two in

Hermes' ideal myth, the one that depicts him as a "Prodigy Child" is also the second in Assange's

table, but the rest of the column is empty; that is, there is no redundancy of this idea. Instead, we

can observe that the initiator trait of Assange (in the eighth column of the table) is stressed not only

20
 Table 4: Mythemes of Hermes in Julian Assange Wikipedia article (own elaboration)

General Structures
The power of the minute The Mediator The psychagogue
Qualities
Puer Aeternus The Agile The Intermediary The Exchange The Thief The Harmony The Guide The Initiator The Civilizer
1.1.His name 1.2. Descendent
(Assange) is an of a Taiwanese
2. Hacker as Anglicization of a Pirate
teenager Cantonese name 3. Founder of the
(Ah Sang)
4.2. Nickname 4.3 Helps Victoria
The Nortel Case: Police Child
charged with 31 5. Forms activist Exploitation Unit
counts of hacking untruthful)
and related crimes Inquiry Into Child
6.1 Co-inventor 6.2 The when he was 23 6.3.General public 7. Involved in the
of the Rubberhose can encrypt like starting of one of
Rubberhose allows the private Governmental 8.2. Founder of the first public
deniable exchange of Agencies Wikileaks internet service
encryption Editor In Chief messages for the providers in
system general public 9.1. Government- Australia. Writes
DIachrony

Citizens 9.2 Publication of free software

information documents that
11. Interpol balanced unveil to the
10. Nomadic warrant issued. general public the
lifestyle. hidden side of 12. Release of US
Pentagon officials pursuit, several diplomatic cables,
try to determine assassination, organizations a factor sparking 13. Several
espionage the Tunisian recognitions and
whereabouts prosecution Revolution awards for his
contribution to
14. Allegations of peace, human
sexual assault: rights,
15. Escape from 16. Assange says condom-less sex transparency, etc.
British police he is influenced while woman
refuging in the by market 17. Announces the
Ecuadorian libertarianism intention of
Embassy in launching
London Wikileaks
political party

21
 Table 5: Mythemes of Hermes in Mark Zuckerberg Wikipedia article (own elaboration)

General Structures
The power of the minute The mediator The Conductor of Souls
Qualities
Puer Aeternus The Agile The Intermediary The Exchange The Thief The Harmony The Guide The Initiator The Civilizer
1. 1. Prodigy 1.2. Reputation of
child according to
his father. Early 3. Codes
software 4. Launches
programmer.
Wins several
prizes in science without
and classical permission
studies in high
school 5.1. Launches 5.3. Brings people 5.4. Launches
accusation of to a new space of
6.1. Exchange of stealing ideas 6.2. The openness
information, importance of information flow
8. Organizes friendship. Ethics 7. Turns down
Hackathons etc. 8bis. Reported to of having and Reaches 500 offers for
think himself as a sharing 9. Tops Vanity million users corporate and
refuses to look for
DIachrony

break things [..] to more add income,

10. Launches p2p make them better people of the 11. Launches caring about
platform Facebook
Platform which is
12. Ad system joined by 800,000
13. Named by Beacon under developers 14. Film maker
the MIT as one of scrutiny for Sorokin calls him
the top 35 privacy concerns.
innovators under ConnectIU and
the age of 35 Saverin lawsuits 15. Donates to
Diaspora. Signs

16. Learns Chinese,

parents in China, and 17.1. Leads the 17. 2 Launches

marries her. (China launch FWD.us FWD.us for an
is the biggest immigration
community where reform, better
Facebook is not education, etc.
present)

22
earlier in the story of Assange,

Hermes. This is certainly consistent with the enormous transcendence of the figure of the

entrepreneur in the present time and may explain why some of those biographical events that could

be presented under the trait of the guide are instead imagined under the trait of the initiator. The rest

of the mythemes are mirrored in a significant way between the two versions, although we can see

that the redundancy of the mythemes of Assange as a thief is relatively stronger than in the case of

Hermes, while the intermediary trait is weaker.

in the columns of the

synchronic reading of the myth of Hermes. In this case, the column of the Eternal Child is more

populated than in the case of Assange. Except for the trait of the thief, which shows relatively more

redundancies than in the myth of Hermes (as we saw, as well, in the case of Assange),

. Yet a qualitative

reading shows that while in the case of Assange most of the mythemes are a result of his core

activity, in the case of Zuckerberg we found clarifications like that the only source for the trait of

. In that sense, it would be hard to find members

of consolidated and renowned hacker communities that would consider Zuckerberg a hacker; the

appearance of this word in the Wikipedia article is based on his self-description as such, and the

. In the same way, his civilizator

profile comes mostly from his later individual philanthropic activity than from the effects of

Facebook. These facts open the door to a critical reading of narratives about them, but they do not

imply, nevertheless, that Zuckerberg does not believe he is a hacker or a civilizator, nor even that he

is not a hacker or a civilizator; a complete mythanalysis of Zuckerberg, and not just his public

reception, should be performed in order to clarify that. The narratives merely show how luring the

myth of Hermes is nowadays, and how it

23
mythemes, even with all the differences. Because it is undeniable that in current times of

transformation, Assange and Zuckerberg are inspiring different collectives and giving space with

WikiLeaks and Facebook to a different set of relationships. In that sense, they are facilitating the

. When Time Magazine chose as

(as the content creator of the World Wide Web) in 2006

(Arab Spring, Indignados, Occupy, etc.) in 2011, it chose the social operators of the myth

of Hermes.

Assange and Zuckerberg are often confronted because they appear to be opposites: one runs a non-

profit that requires donations while the other runs a public company that makes big profits; one is a

happily married man while the other is single and involved in sexual scandals; etc. What can be

observed by performing the mythoanalysis of their Wikipedia articles is that myths, far from being

eternal and fixed structures, are symbolic matrixes in which the human imagination regenerates and

rebuilds new narratives. They may cover very close semantic fields, but they can support very

different values and perspectives, and serve very different social, political and economic causes. At

the time of publication of this manuscript, Assange and Zuckerberg have both been part of the

scandal related to the subversion of electoral processes; eight years after being praised for their

contributions to the uprisings against authoritarian governments during the Arab Spring. Stengel

words, for that matter, may look prophetic: -up this year, Julian Assange

and the Tea Party, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have a whole lot of vene

(Stengel, 2010, p. 43). Surely, Assange and Zuckerberg are experiencing the limits imposed by

traditional (Promethean) institutions (e.g. liberal democracies, corporations, media and markets),

and the sign of their legacy is questioned (Brevini, Hintz, & McCurdy, 2013; Taplin, 2017).

24
Conclusions

Let me summarize the conclusions in the three main ideas illustrated by my mythanalysis. The first

key idea is that we will hardly understand the symbolic construction of leadership in epochal terms

if we do not pay attention to their mythic dimension. Myth is a meta-language that boosts not only

narratives and discourses whether we approach this in the semiotic (Barthes, 1973) or the

hermeneutic (Durand, 1979; Wunenburger, 2002) way

or less as Lyotard (1984) understood them. The current emergence of the myth of Hermes promotes

new types of leaders and social actors that are already reaching, individually or collectively, the

. , seen as negative roles, that defied the

ideologies and institutions promoted by excessively rationalized myths ar , seen as

positive roles, rationalizing their dramatic myth in aspirations, technologies and institutions. This

paper contributes to leadership studies by analyzing the emergence of two contemporary cultural

leaders in epochal terms, showing that scholars can benefit from myths and their explanatory (and

in some extent predictive)

into relative salience within the canon [ ] Myths and culture live in a codetermining dialec

(Gray, 1996, p. 203). There was a day in which Napoleon became Prometheus, and Prometheus

became Napoleon (Blumenberg, 1988).

mythemes of solar myths were so strong that in 1827 a satiric pamphlet that exposed them, entitled

. The Non- , became a huge success (Evans & Pérès,

1905). We can contemplate a portrait of Napoleon, with his hand placed over his liver as if he is

recovering from a wound inflicted by the peck of an eagle, and we may doubt that we will ever find

a contemporary personality that shows that kind of outstanding symbolic resonances with the myth

of Hermes. Only time will tell. Nevertheless, the similarities of the Wikipedia biographies of

Assange and Zuckerberg with the myth of Hermes are quite significant. The abundant presence of

the same mythemic lessons is a powerful symbolic redundancy that shapes our imaginaries, and as a

25
result, the symbolic construction of our ideologies and leaders in very ambivalent terms. The same

approach I used to analyze the Assange-Zuckerberg Times cover controversy could probably be

used to explain why the life of Steve Jobs has been the subject of two major Hollywood biopics,

and the life of Bill Gates has been the subject of none, or why Satya Nadella replaced Steve Ballmer

as CEO of Microsoft. Any potential candidate for being the personality that someday will be spotted

as the most emblematic of our era, like Steve Jobs or Tim Berners-Lee, would merit consideration

for a mythanalysis. Yet, the approach here presented has to be limited to a global epochal trend in

Western societies. Local analysis, even in those cultures brutalized by Western colonization,

requires taking into account local mythologies. Another limitation is that the scope of the

mythanalysis has been restricted

Year Award. A diachronic mythanalysis, that is, a mythanalysis that takes into account the

development and evolution of the mythical background

(Durand, 1996b) would add a kind of complexity that would not be possible to develop

properly in the length of an article.

The second idea is that to focus on mythemes and not only archetypes may be advisable when using

myths as an analytical tool in leadership studies. In the first place, a particular archetype can be

present in different myths at the same time, and one myth can present more than one archetype. For

instance, the archetype of the trickster is present in Prometheus and Hermes (Prometheus tricks

Zeus, Hermes tricks Apollo).

, a particular group of mythemes is privileged over others in each epochal

emergence. The same happens with different versions of the myth; hence the need to build the

"ideal myth". For instance, , he is a trickster. Two centuries later,

in the Prometheus Bound myth of Aeschylus he is no longer the trickster archetype, but the rebel

archetype (Dougherty, 2006). Certainly Prometheus committed an important theft, but Hermes also

stole others several times (redundancy) which made him, and not Prometheus, the protector of

thieves. Durand's rule that 80% of the columns of the table of the ideal version must be shared in

26
order to be a version of the myth avoids possible confusions in identifying myths through

archetypesii.

Additionally, by looking for epochal emphasis or absences of certain groups of mythemes, or the

concrete symbolic images and semantics that appear on them, we can understand what are the

nuances of the archetype (or the myth, for that matter) that have been stressed in a given era. For

instance, the feminine side of the androgynous dimension of Hermes is absent in the biographies of

Assange and Zuckerberg. This is because Hermes is building its societal hypercommunication,

financialization, acceleration and liquidification development (Neville, 1994) riding over the legacy

of Prometheus, one of the most masculine (if not misogynistic) myths. Conversely, Hermes showed

his ability to harmonize genders in other epochs in which its emergence as societal myth was

compensating a ruling heroic masculine myth like Prometheus iii (see Durand (1996a) for an

overview, and the work of Bonardel (1993) for a deep mythyanalysis on that matter). Each epochal

emergence of Hermes crystallizes in some concrete socio-material conditions that affect and are

affected by the myth.

Finally, the third idea is that mythanalysis, by being able to analyze the symbolic pre-linguistic

dimension of any cultural aspect of the organization, can help Organizational Discourse Analysis

addressing its "unwillingness to engage with phenomena beyond discourse" (Phillips & Oswick,

2012, p. 30). There are good examples of mythanalysis of non-textual and non-speech contents

supporting discourse analysis in other disciplines such as Communication Studies (Jiménez, 2013)

or Pedagogy (Martínez-Núñez & Muñoz-Zamora, 2015. For an extensive example of how

mythanalysis fruitfully pairs with discourse analysis, see the recent work of Pierre Ecuvillon (2015)

on the political leadership of Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen in France.

27
i Durand (1999) found convergences of this classification with other works, as in the Roger Bastide
(1955) research on afro-Brazilian cultures, in which some years before Durand found three similar
principles through a completely different approach (the principle of cut, the principle of
participation, and the principle of correspondence) . Another remarkable parallelism is the one with
(1957) three cultural systems (Ideational, Sensate, Idealistic). In the field of
management theory, the three perspectives of culture of Joan Martin (1992) (Differentiation,
Integration, Fragmentation) correspond quite accurately to the trivalent logic found by Durand;
- (Martin, 1992, p.
190).
ii As a reviewer noted, Prometheus does not appear in Table 3. But a quick reading of some
"heroic" myths by Hatch and her colleagues shows that the
mythemes of Prometheus are certainly present, but were probably missed beca
lensed approach. It is interesting to notice that in those interviews the (Titanic) rebellion of those
CEOs was against the (Olympian) Japanese industry that, according to them, was surpassing the
American one in many ways.
iii I want to thank to another anonymous reviewer for pointing at the absence of resonance with
mythemes of masculine-feminine harmonization such as the ones of Hermaphroditus or the
caduceus in the biographies of Assange and Zuckerberg.

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