Przyczynek do studium nad determinantami mitów politycznych w regionie Afryki Subsaharyjskiej

Abstract

The political space of sub-Saharan Africa in terms of the sphere of myths, symbols and rituals that fill it is extremely vivid. In the perspective of contemporary civilization changes, media have a special power to create new myths. They are communicators that give form to collective elation and experiences. In the face of media dominance over the public sphere, the contemporary political scene of sub-Saharan Africa develops a catalog of symbols, ritual proceedings, desirable and accepted by local societies. Nowadays in sub-Saharan Africa, as in other parts of the world, many of the forms of social consciousness that have been mystified have gained the status of political myths, including the myth of “politics as the sphere of rational choices”, “developing society”, “democratic state”, “good leader”, “peace”, “friendship”, “the enemy”, “new era”. Until recently, in the region's communities, customs and rituals from the sphere of interest in cultural anthropology regulated almost all aspects of the functioning of social groups. Currently, they are no longer a cultural whole, but a set of images manipulated according to needs. The new sphere of myths is a model for the behavior and collective thinking of societies. Replacing political discourse, it is a tool in the pursuit of power, the essence of which is the domination over collective consciousness.