The geographical study of myths

In archaic societies, myths gave significance to collective life. Their building relied on the peculiarities of the means of communication in societies that ignored the written word: this absence was responsible for (1) a special form of duration, time immemorial, (2) the special role of the people who had an access to it, and (3) possibilities of decentring based on immanence. The purpose of the paper is to show that all societies produce narratives similar to myths in order to provide general interpretations of their social structures and dynamics, and collective or individual destiny. They rely on specific time categories and ways of decentring that give intellectual power to some social categories: the invention of writing allowed for revelation, which created a major break in history, gave a central role to prophets and introduced transcendence. In ancient Greece, the use of the written word for the construction of new forms of law was conducive to the rise of metaphysics, the emergence of philosophers, and the appearance of another form of transcendency. Modern societies refused to rely on revelation, but used short narratives on the origin of mankind and its organisation to structure time, either individual or collective, and build a new type of immanence; social scientists were, consciously or unconsciously, responsible for this change. Modern communication introduces new turning points in history (the transition from modernity to postmodernity for instance), is responsible for the appearance of middlemen the newsmen and provides a wide access to 'genuine' sources of scientific information and to 'alternative' interpretations of the world. These examples show that all systems of thought have to be explored in a geographic perspective.