Founding Myth Research Articles

"El Primer Grito de Independencia" en los ensayos históricos de Francisco Gavidia: la invención de un mito fundacional de la "nación salvadoreña"

In 1911, the centenary festivities of the political movements that took place in the Municipality of San Salvador in 1811 were celebrated with great sumptuousness. The commemorations-celebrations of 1911 were part of a set of rites, symbols, anniversaries, monuments, places of civic memory that the Salvadoran State needed to invent in order to instill feelings towards the country in the population. To achieve this, it was also necessary to create a history based on historical facts that would become a canon and give support to nationalist inventions. To pursue this, in 1912 the President of the Republic Manuel Enrique Araujo commissioned three intellectuals to write an official history. Francisco Gavidia was asked to write about the independence of El Salvador. The result of that request was the publication of the book Modern History of El Salvador. In this book, Gavidia included two chapters on what was called “First Cry of Independence.” Thus, the movements of 1811 became one of the founding myths of the Salvadoran nation. Along with the date —November 5—, the myth of the hero / father of the country José Matías Delgado was created. The third link in the myth was the bell tower of the La Merced Church. In this way, the story to create a “cradle of the country” was resolved. Along with Gavidia, other intellectuals completed that company. This work intends to analyze the context of the invention of “The First Cry of Independence”. Realidad, Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, No. 164, 2024: 39-88.

Entre la idea universal y el profeta inconsciente: las modernidades literarias de Francisco Gavidia y Rubén Darío

This article examines the foundational myth of the literature of El Salvador that presents Francisco Gavidia as the founder of Spanish-American modernism, when he offers his friend, the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío, the secret to translate Alexandrine verse into Spanish. In this way, the aforementioned myth reduces literary modernity to the discovery and adoption of a metrical form, whose originality is shown to be doubtful. The author argues that it is much more revealing to contrast the two authors’ conception of literary modernity. These differences become more visible when exploring the trajectory and relationship of Gavidia and Darío during the latter two stays in El Salvador, between 1882 and 1883 and between 1889 and 1890. Realidad, Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, No. 164, 2024: 137-162.

Rancière reading Plato: Myth against sociology

This article examines how Rancière contrasts Plato’s philosophy with sociology, specifically that of Bourdieu and Passeron. In The Philosopher and His Poor, Plato is among those who exclude the majority not only from political power but also from thought and discourse. However, Rancière uses the Republic’s founding myth of inequality to identify the arbitrary basis behind the circular reasoning that justifies thought’s legitimate and illegitimate use based on alleged nature. Can Platonic myth constitute what Rancière terms a ‘discursive act’, which triggers political conflict, that is, the debate on equality as first presupposition? This study of Rancière’s Platonic reference examines the conditions under which philosophical myth can challenge sociology. The emancipatory use of myth involves reconfiguring our concepts of science and society and any notion of nature while scholarly discourse is hinged on processes of social othering that align it with the repressive order of social hierarchy. The comparison between Plato and Bourdieu, as analyzed through Rancière’s critique, reveals a fundamental divergence in their approach to societal structures. According to Rancière, all explanations tend to naturalize, whereas the only correct approach is to emphasize the total absence of any foundation for hierarchy. This problem has epistemological implications: how can we construct a discourse that does not reproduce the exceptionality of authorized speech? On this condition, one can catch a glimpse of the collective and temporal extent of Rancière’s resolute commitment to equality. Taking seriously a definition of the social as a series of perceptual rearrangements allows us to question the anti-institutional limit of Rancière’s thinking.

DYNAMICS OF THE MERITOCRACY TRAP AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

In this study, Daniel Markovitz's book titled "The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite," published by Penguin Press, is thoroughly evaluated in the context of the dynamics of the meritocracy trap and the two distinct phases it contains. The first phase corresponds to a period when the education system and the labor market were open to everyone. During this phase, human capital could be equally invested in through education. However, from the 1970s onwards, the spread of automation due to technological transformations eliminated this advantage for the middle class, either displacing middle and low-skilled workers from the labor market or condemning them to lower wages. While the middle class was replaced by automation, the elite class began to own the high-skilled and consequently high-yielding jobs created by automation. In this transformation, the education systems once again revealed their elitist structure, creating a new elite educational option only accessible to wealthy families, strongly linked to elite jobs in the labor market. The study also discusses the potential of artificial intelligence technologies to move these dynamics into a third phase. The proliferation of artificial intelligence technologies has dynamics similar to those that moved the meritocratic system into the second phase, greatly strengthening automation. Therefore, this study discusses how artificial intelligence technologies can be used not merely to strengthen automation but to focus on employment and enhance the skills of particularly middle and low-skilled workers in workplaces, complementing human labor and increasing overall productivity.

Revisiting Gubbio: Settlement Patterns and Ritual from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Roman Era

The Gubbio Revisited project, initiated to reinterpret the archaeological evidence collected during the 1980s Gubbio Project, primarily by a conversion from a paper to a digital record, has revealed significant insights into the evolving settlement patterns and religious expression in the Gubbio valley in Central Italy. This reanalysis of the survey evidence underscores the rhythms of settlement and ritual practice from the Neolithic through the Bronze and Iron Ages, into Roman times. Key excavations in the 1980s at Monte Ingino, Monte Ansciano, San Marco Romano, and San Marco Neolitico added details not only of settlement activity but also of embedded ritual, evidenced by material culture including pottery, faunal remains, and votive offerings. The foundation myth of indigenous religious practices, even amidst Roman influence, is documented through the Iguvine Tables alongside the introduction of new cults, showcasing a blend of local and imperial religiosity, a common feature in the Roman world. This research enriches the understanding of Gubbio’s historical and cultural landscape, emphasizing the demographic rhythms of the valley alongside the integral role of ritual in its societal evolution.

Those Infinite, Multiform Stories without Fixity: Myth and History, a Very Long Engagement

This paper deals with the problematic relationship between ancient historiography and mythology, or mythological stories as historical sources for historical research. Although Greek historiography had, in a sense, already been confronted with the problem of mythological intrusions into the substance of methodologically well-developed historical procedures (as early as the 5th century BC), Roman historiography continued for a long time to critically investigate and purify the stories of the foundation myths. This paper presents a detailed analysis of some methodologically relevant passages that reveal the attitudes of individual Greek and Roman historiographers towards myth as a (non-)source. At the same time, it questions the attitude of (early) Roman historiography towards myth by examining the philosophical treatise of the 2nd/3rd century philosopher Sextus Empiricus.

Representing Religion in North and South Korea: Seventy-Five Years of the Semiotics of Stamp Design

As government documents, postage stamps are a rich source of information about a government’s policies on a wide range of subjects. In this article, a comparative semiotic analysis of the first seventy-five years of North and South Korean stamps is used to illustrate the similarities and differences in their attitudes towards ‘religion’ and religious practice. A corpus of stamps on a ‘religious’ theme was created for stamps issued by both governments from which a series of themes and motifs was noted. The semiotic analysis of the themes and motifs showed that while on South Korean stamps Buddhist motifs constituted the majority of stamps commemorating cultural history, there were few references to the commemoration of Buddhism itself. The reverse was found to be true for Christianity. Although Christianity was not shown to be a major expression of Korean culture, Christianity itself was commemorated extensively. On North Korean stamps, folklore and Christian motifs predominated as projections of cultural history, but the Christian motifs referred only to foreign cultures, not Korean culture. Motifs relating to the foundation myth of Tan’gun were common to both North and South Korea. However, in the South, motifs from the myth referred to the nation, while in the North they referred to the ruling family.

Losing the West, Finding Western Worlds

Abstract “Losing the West, Finding Western Worlds” explores how recent critical work in Western American studies breaks apart the region’s foundational myths and invites readers and reviewers to revise understandings of this popular, enduring, and protean genre. Reflecting on four studies that interrogate Western American fiction, film, and comic books (two monographs by British scholars Mark Asquith and Neil Campbell; a study of the Black Western by film historian Mia Mask; and a collection of essays edited by Christopher Conway and Antoinette Sol on varieties of comic book westerns produced around the world), the essay considers how this diverse cohort of scholars pursues a common imperative to unlearn “the West” and sets new directions for literary and cultural studies of the region. Through rereadings of the work of writers and actors who fracture and reassemble the heroic settler narrative from the perspective of outsiders, these critics contend, the West can emerge as a place whose stories offer more complete understandings of the past, whose heroes illuminate the political challenges of the present, and whose writers provide the right words for imagining a better future.

“Make way poet, jaywalking”: Play and irony in Arun Kolatkar’s work

ABSTRACT While Arun Kolatkar’s modernist and experimental modes have received critical attention, his application of irony remains under-researched. This article argues that his playful and ironic registers are a form of experimental modernism, employed to address socio-historical phenomena in South Asia. The self-aware irony in Kolatkar’s early work anticipates the use of personae in his later works. His poetry assumes the postcolonial stance of empowering the tyrannized. He ironizes from the perspective of the feminine and non-human to assess foundational myths and 20th-century events in India. As an ironist, Kolatkar acknowledges the speaker’s authoritative position in the text and strives to diminish hierarchies between the ironist and subject. Through textual analysis of the poet’s works, this article demonstrates that the purpose of Kolatkar’s critique and his attention to landscape is to challenge divisive and conservative ideologies that perpetuate conflict and to foreground the resilience of individuals in South Asia.

Politicizzare la cura per curare la democrazia

“Taking care” involves a politics of relationships. Care has both a subjective and a relational dimension: starting from subjectivity, everyone opens up to vulnerability, dependence, fragility. Care is above all a practical path of spillage from the self and return to the self, enriched by the experience of the other. This paper proposes a reflection that starts from the founding myth of the essentiality of care and crosses the feminist critique of essentialism and the dialectical tension between mysticism and de-valuation. Focusing on the analysis provided by the so-called second school of ethics of care, it wants to reflect on the current possibility of making care a political paradigm for change and democratization of relationships and society.

War, States, and International Order: Alberico Gentili and the Foundational Myth of the Laws of War, written by Claire Vergerio

War, States, and International Order: Alberico Gentili and the Foundational Myth of the Laws of War, written by Claire Vergerio

National identity in Italian westerns and post-westerns

Since Schatz defined the western genre as America’s foundation ritual, several film critics have emphasized the role of the western as a foundational fiction. Interestingly enough, just like American westerns deal with American identity and its foundational myth, one can find westerns and post-westerns made in other countries that are also concerned with these countries’ national identities. This article analyses how spaghetti westerns set in the United States deal metaphorically with Italian identity and foundational myths, and how post-western films set in Italy approach similar topics more directly. The article considers several films, by directors like Pietro Germi, Sergio Sollima, Florestano Vancini or Pasquale Squitieri, from the perspective of transnational post-westerns in order to scrutinize the way they deal with the difficulties of integration of the North and the South of Italy and present different perspectives on the Italian foundational myth of Risorgimento.

Violent abduction of Yemenite Jewish children in Israel: A historical study on the intergenerational dynamics of oppression and resistance

In the founding years of the State of Israel, numerous Jewish children who immigrated to Israel with their parents from Arab countries, especially Yemen, were removed and disappeared. Some of these children were adopted by people in Europe and the USA, while others remained missing. The article reconstructs the efforts to clarify the fate of these children. The disappearance of the children is analysed in the context of the Zionist founding myth and the colonial genesis of the State of Israel and interpreted as an early form of bio-politics with racist connotations. Particular attention is paid to the traumatic consequences of this practice for the people affected and the psycho-structure of Israeli society. Finally, the question is posed as to how today’s young generation of descendants of immigrants is coming to terms with the history of their ancestors and what consequences this could have for the future identity of Israeli society and its positioning between ‘Occident’ and ‘Orient’.

REGIONAL AND CENTRAL DIMENSION OF STATE POLICY OF MEMORY IN THE LATE SOVIET PERIOD

The two major late-Soviet memorial policy projects, “Hero Cities” and “Golden Ring”, had many differences as well as points of intersection in terms of their emergence and development. Each of them appealed to a specific sample of regions, and the struggle for inclusion in the projects was fought at the union, republican, and regional levels. Both were “showcase” destinations for domestic and foreign tourism. E.M. Boltunova and G.S. Yegorova’s monograph “Territory and History: Late Soviet Projects Hero Cities and Golden Ring” makes a significant contribution to the study of two memorial projects of late Soviet society, which provided for it more than new places of memory and tourist routes: they formed alternative foundation myths that competed with the underlying Soviet narrative. The novelty of the monograph is the task of finding points of intersection in the history of seemingly completely unrelated projects: E.M. Boltunova and G.S. Yegorova’s work is about how society and power searched for and created new national meanings and reference points. The cities marked with the title of “Hero Cities” began to be gradually correlated in public historical memory with the territories of the most important battles of the Great Patriotic War, while a number of cities and regions that “fell out” of this project found themselves outside the program of state memorialization of the war 1941-1945. The issue of composition and boundaries also became one of the key aspects of the Golden Ring route development. Representatives of each region tried to justify as convincingly as possible the necessity to pay attention to this or that city or district when implementing the project, as the inclusion of a city in the route would allow the corresponding region to get additional resources for development. The authors of the monograph dwell in detail on the mutual influence of the projects at the level of narratives and visual components, as well as on the self-positioning of the territories included in the projects and their perception.

War, States, and International Order. Alberico Gentili and the Foundational Myth of the Laws of War, written by Claire Vergerio

War, States, and International Order. Alberico Gentili and the Foundational Myth of the Laws of War, written by Claire Vergerio

Becoming Dál Riata: A Critical Evaluation of the Emergence of an Early Medieval Insular Polity

Much valuable work has been done in recent decades on deconstructing and reconstructing the foundation myth and subsequent history of the Dál Riata. The story of the western portion of northern Britain being settled by three sons of Erc from the northern coast of Ireland at some point around ad 500 can no longer be taken at face value, but the different strands within it are very informative in relation to the contexts of their production, transmission and reception. After discussing the emergence of the Dál Riata and their constituent lineages, or cenéla, in the surviving sources, this article explores two particular narrative strands linking the Dál Riata to the Dál Fiatach, the dominant lineage within the contemporary overkingdom of Ulaid in north-east Ireland. Hinted at in the Irish annals, this narrative has been overlain or displaced by other information found in the same high- and late-medieval manuscripts as well as the more well-known traditions. However, these data may themselves be equally fictive, but they at least demonstrate the complexities involved in building group identity and anchoring it in tradition.

The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union: The Dialectics of Rupture and Continuity

Historians, politicians, and other mnemonic actors are actively debating the question about what characterises the relationship between the Romanov Empire and the Soviet Union, i. e. continuity or rupture. The Soviet regime of the interwar period emphasised discontinuity, both in domestic policy and in the international arena. Whenever references to the Romanov Empire appeared in international treaties of the Soviets of that time, it was only in the context of a renunciation of that legacy. However, on the eve of World War II, the Soviet authorities clearly outlined the Soviet state’s claims to its status as a successor state of the Russian Empire, declaring its right to the territories of the Baltic states, Bessarabia, and the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus that had once been part of the Romanov empire, or were claimed by Russia in WWI, such as Galicia and Bukovina. In the USSR, starting in the second half of the 1930s, the image of the Russian Empire as a “prison of peoples” faded into the background, replaced by the arguments about “objective progressiveness” in annexing certain territories and ethnic groups into the empire. However, the role of the October Revolution as the founding myth of the Soviet society persisted until the Soviet Union’s implosion and left no doubt that the rupture was crucially important for the Soviet authorities. During Boris Yeltsin’s presidency in the 1990s, Russia was trying to shape a new narrative of a young nation, which was starting its history from 1991, but the attempt quite predictably failed. After becoming president, Vladimir Putin almost immediately switched to the narrative of “a thousand-year-old state”, proclaiming the legacy of both the Romanov Empire and the Soviet Union part of national history. The article discusses various historiographic approaches to the issue of rupture and continuity between the Romanov empire and the USSR and concludes that one can speak of a radical rupture between the Russian Empire and Soviet Russia (and later, the Soviet Union), since the Soviet project rejected the key components of the late Russian imperial project. At the same time, we can also argue that the imperial nature of the polity itself survived albeit transformed, not just during the 1917–1922 revolutionary crisis but also during the crisis of the 1990s.

Inventing Ancestors and Limited Empiricism in Chosŏn Korea: A Case of the Kigye Yu Lineage

AbstractThis paper investigates how the members of the Kigye Yu lineage imagined and invented their ancestral roots during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) and how such a pursuit of ancestral origins led to subsequent developments in genealogical records. As early as the fifteenth century, Chosŏn elites began to show interests in genealogy that included identifying remote ancestors from ancient times for various political, social, and cultural reasons. From the seventeenth century, the transformation of kinship organization in line with the Confucian ideal of patriliny and elites’ competition for power and prestige intensified genealogical consciousness. Elites became heavily invested in searching for ancestral origins in the form of their lineages’ founders and their tombs. While claiming to rely on documentary and physical evidence, elites often deviated from their professed empiricism and adopted evidence from dubious sources such as oral testimonies and geomancy to rationalize invented ancestral roots. Such pliable approaches, often observed in other early modern cultures such as late imperial China and Europe, opened a floodgate of lineages glorifying their ancestry by pushing their origins back even to mythical founders of ancient Korean and Chinese kingdoms, and adorning their lineages with invented heroes. At the same time, loopholes and blank spots in genealogies enabled quasi- and nonelites to become a member of prominent lineages by grafting their names onto their family trees.

Christianization of Akpéma and Kondona Initiation Rites and Their Desecration by the Catholic Church in the Prefecture of Kozah in Northern Togo

The objective of this research is to examine the impact of the celebration of akpéma and kondona rites in church on their sacredness. The survey covered 80 people, including 25 catholic priests and 55 guarantors of Kabyè habits and customs, through to purposive sampling. Direct observation, individual interview and documentary research are the data collection techniques used. The data collected was subject to content analysis. The results indicate that upon entering the church, the akpéma and kondona rites were remodeled, losing everything that founded their sacredness: the eponymous ancestor, the sacred place, the mythical time, the founding myths, the bloody sacrifices, the person of the celebrant (cojo) and his verbal words. However, some new landmarks allow us to note an attempt at their resacralization by the church.

Nietzsche and Freud: God's death between mourning and melancholy

In A Gaia science Nietzsche attributes two senses to the death of God: first as murder, then as the emergence of a new dawn, the harbinger of new hope. In the case of murder and not simply death, one can ask whether the act denounced by him could be thought of in the perspective of the murder of the primeval Father, the founding myth elaborated by Freud; as dawn and openness to new hopes, seems to imply a work of mourning to be consummated with the transvaluation of morals. This article undertakes a reflection on these two perspectives in order to put philosophy and psychoanalysis in dialogue. Under the hypothesis that the death of God is the repetition of the murder of the Primordial Father, the problematic of mourning and melancholy as possible destinations of Nietzsche’s project.