Myths What is a myth today? I shall give at the outset a first, very simple answer, which is perfectly consistent with etymology:
myth is a type of speech.Of course, it is not any type : language needs special conditions in order to become myth : we shall see them in a minute. But what must be finally established at the start is that myth is a system of communication, that it is a system of communication, that it is a message. This allows one to perceive that myth cannot possibly be an object, a concept or an idea; it is a mode of significance, a form. Later we shall have to assign to this from historical limits, conditions of use and reintroduce society into it : we must nevertheless first describe it as a form. It can be seen that to purport to discriminate among
mythical objects according to their substance would be entirely illusory : since myth is a type of speech, everything can be a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse. Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which utter this message : there are normal limits to myth, there are no substantial ones. Everything then can be a myth! Yes, I believe this, for the universe is infinitely fertile in suggestions. Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not which forbids talking about things. A tree is a tree. Yes, of course. But a tree is as expressed by Minou Drouet, is no longer quite a tree, it is tree which is decorated, adapted to a certain type of consumption, laden with literary self-indulgence, revolt, images, in short with a type of social which is added to pure matter. Naturally everything is not expressed at the same time. Some objects become the prey of mythical speech for a while, then they disappear, others take their space and attain the status of myth. Are these objects which are inevitably a source of suggestiveness, as Baudelaire suggested about Woman? Certainly not. One can conceive of very ancient myth, but there are no eternal ones, for it is human history which converts reality into speech, and it alone rules the life and death of mythical language. Ancient or not, mythology can only have a historical foundation, for myth is a type of speech chosen by history : it cannot possibly evolve from the “nature of things”.Speech of this kind is a message. It is therefore by no means confined to oral speech. It can consist of modes of writing or of representations : not only written discourse, but also photography, cinema, reporting, sport, shows, publicity, all these can serve as a support to mythical speech. Myth can be defined neither by its object nor by its material, for any material can arbitrarily be endowed with meaning. The arrow which is brought in order to signify a challenge is also a kind of speech. True as far as perception is concerned. Writings and pictures for instance, do not call upon the same consciousness. Even with pictures one can use many kinds of reading : a diagram lends itself to significance more than a drawing, a copy more than an original, and caricature more than a portrait. But this is the point : we are no longer dealing here with a theoretical mode of representation : we are dealing with this particular image, which is given for this particular signification. Mythical speech is made of a material which has already been worked on so as to make it suitable for communication. It is because all the materials of myth (whether pictorial or written) presupposes a signifying consciousness, that one can reason about them while discounting their substance. This is not unimportant : pictures to be sure are more imperative than writing. They impose meaning at one stroke, without analyzing or diluting it. But this is no longer a constructive difference. Pictures become a kind of writing as soon as they are meaningful : like writing, they can form a lexis. We shall therefore take language, discourse, speech, etc. to mean any significant unit or synthesis; whether verbal or visual. A photograph will be a kind of speech for us in the same way as a newspaper article. Even objects will become speech if they mean something. This generic way of conceiving language is in fact, justified by the very history of writing. Long before the invention, of our alphabets, objects or drawings as in pictographs have been accepted as speech. This does not mean that one must treat mythical speech like language; myth in fact belongs to the province of general science, co-extensive with linguistics which is semiology.