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destructive. While we can agree with Nietzsche that nihilism is a motor of modern history, it is a mistake to see it in purely negative terms. One of the greatest myths about contemporary violence is still connected to rather old psycho-analytical insights concerning fatalism and the egotistical downfall of the deluded man. Freud’s notion of the death drive in many ways is integral to the de-legitimation of the violence we do not like on account of its negation of human existence ( Freud, 1991 ). Of course, it is necessary to understand the psychic life of violence, and to
Myth Ford is a filmmaker of dawn, dusk and night. Even in his brightly lit scenes, shadows intervene. His images are muted, on a shadow-line, depicting subjects from the past in the tones and atmosphere of the past, like old photographs, repetitions of earlier images, of what has been, memory not actuality, and, like memory, immobilised in time. If, in the stories told by Ford, events succeed each other and are consequent upon each other, the whole of the story issues from a frozen, eternal past. It is not only his characters who commune with the dead at a
but one nation ’ (Connor 1984 , 454; emphasis in original). Officially sanctioned national history museums in Germany and Vietnam construct a national past in accordance with post-unification nation-building, one which ‘is more about myth-making than critical evaluation’ (Penny 1995 , 367). The influential theorist of nationalism, Anthony D. Smith ( 1995 , 57), defined myths as ‘bring[ing] together in a single potent vision
If finance and politics both disseminate a myth of the economy that feeds into the notion of it as something akin to a pot of money, then the only place that could challenge this elite vision is the media. Indeed, one of the key roles the media is meant to play in modern democracies is to act as a counterbalance to the elite powers explored in the previous two chapters (big business and the state). In democratic theory there are three overlapping roles the media is supposed to play: 1) to inform the public about the world
-confidence, yet totally unsupported by evidence. It represents, in short, no more than the intuition of scholars from a pluralist and sceptical age. In fact the evidence strongly points the other way. The evidence for the construction, development and utilisation of myths is not to be found in official documents or in the products of the ‘official mind’ of imperialism. It is to be found
1 Myths, methods and minorities New perspectives [On 7 February 1978, Prime Minister James Callaghan] said that it was quite conceivable the outcome of the election would, as he had indicated to Mr Steel, be a close run thing with the Tories being the largest party without an overall majority […] he would resign in those circumstances […] in his judgement Mrs Thatcher would certainly try to remain as Prime Minister for as long as possible, even if only for a fortnight – he would do the same in her shoes.1 This previously classified Labour Government minute
the reasons for their behaviour. Thus, they do not only form a unity through their being opposites but also unite the seeming contrastive modes of allegory and psychology. Shakespeare chooses a well-known myth that, in an Aristotelian sense, is meant to have the general shine forth in the particular, but he gives the characters motives for their actions and thus actualizes the myth. 14 From the beginning of the poem, Shakespeare changes his source
Myths, meat and American Indians 127 6 Myths, meat and American Indians: Angela Carter and Claude Lévi-Strauss Heidi Yeandle I t is not surprising that Angela Carter was interested in Claude Lévi-Strauss’s work. An eminent anthropologist, Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) was fascinated with primitive communities, and dedicated years of research to studying South American Indian tribes. His works challenge the ‘savage’ portrayal of Native American societies, and primitive tribes more broadly, questioning ‘the supposed ineptitude of “primitive people”’ (1962: 1
Modernity, myth, colour and collage: 1 the early films The early stages in a career are problematic. Biographers and other writers seeking to assess the work of creative individuals either pass over the formative years in a subject’s career on their way to discussion of the ‘mature’ work, or scrutinise the early work for signs of burgeoning creativity. Generally, assessments of Jennings’ career fall into the former category, and his early films are either ignored or noted only briefly. According to Kevin Jackson, Jennings’ biographer, Jennings’ early work ‘seems
6 Myth and counter-myth in Second World War British politics Andrew Thorpe Conventional wisdoms, narratives, stories and myths are all of central importance to political parties. Parties require more than just organisation and discipline to keep them united. Even the smallest needs some degree of agreement over its worldview and a sense of a common explanation of how it, and the world, came to be where they are. To sustain a large party capable of taking power, however, is a particularly considerable challenge, and requires, among other things, a powerful and