Retheorizing Myth 1

Retheorizing Myth 1 Bruce Lincoln I LET ME BEGIN by observing that although I have offered some harsh criticisms of Georges Dumezil, and have come to reject that part of his opus that is caught up in the discourse of'Indo-Europeans,' there is still much in his writings I find worth while.2 In particular, I would emphasize his rigor, his sense of system and struc ture, his respect for the rationality of the materials he studied, and his explication of a complex classificatory logic encoded in mythic narratives. In all these regards his work closely resembles that of Levi-Strauss, which I take to be the best theoret ical discussion of myth to date, notwithstanding its own familiar limitations.3 Tak ing cognizance of these similarities, there were those who sought to treat Dumezil as a harbinger of structuralism, a somewhat tendentious oversimplification to which Dumezil took sharp exception.4 Still, the similarities are real enough and their explanation probably lies less in any direct influence of one man on the other than in the Parisian milieux they shared and the influences to which they were both exposed as students. In particular, I think one can point to a single, extraor- Excerpted from Bruce Lincoln 1999a. 2 I have discussed Dumezil's work on several occasions, including Lincoln 1991: 231-68, Lincoln 1998, and Lincoln 1999b, all with citation of the previous literature. 3 As I see it, Levi-Strauss's existentialist, marxist, and post-structuralist critics all charged him with the same failings, although each voiced this in their own particular idioms. Thus, all took exception to his disengaged formalism and primarily synchronic orientation, both of which drain mythic narratives of their historic context and political agency. See, inter alia, Goldmann 1966, Abel1966, Godelier 1971, Diamond 1971, Lefebvre 1971, Jameson 1972, Bourdieu 1977, and Scholte 1979. 4 The most famous attempt along these lines was made by two of Levi-Strauss's students, Smith and Sperber 1971, which provoked a stinging rebuque, Dumezil 1973:14-15. Relations between Dumezil and Levi-Strauss themselves, who had been colleagues at the Ecole pratique des hautes etudes in 1948-49, never became directly antagonistic and overcame whatever strain they had experienced when Levi-Strauss formally received Dumezil upon his entry into the Academie Fran<;aise (1979). Their remarks on that occasion bear close reading, Dumezil and Levi-Strauss 1979. See further, Dumezil, 1987: 118-21 and Littleton 1982: 267-75. 216 BRUCE LINCOLN dinary sentence in the writings of Mauss and Durkheim, which I take to have been particularly influential on both Dumezil and Levi-Strauss. This is found toward the end of the essay on Primitive Classification coauthored by the masters of the ecole sociologique, where they introduced, but failed to develop the idea that myth may be understood as taxonomy in narrative form. 5 While I would hardly insist that this formulation accounts for all myths, let alone all aspects of myth, I find it terribly suggestive, and I suspect that pursuing its implications led to all that is best in Dumezil and Levi-Strauss alike. What is more, I think it can lead us further still. Like all Durkheimian formulations, it is singularly unattuned to issues of politics and history. To give it a sharper critical edge, I would introduce an orientation more associated with cultural theorists from Antonio Gramsci to Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu.6 Toward that end, I would begin by noting that taxonomy is hardly a neutral process, since the order established among all that is classified (including items treated only by allusion or implication, and above all human groupings) is hierarchic as well as categoric. 7 When a taxonomy is encoded in mythic form, the narrative packages a specific, contingent system of discrimination in a particularly attractive and memorable form and, more importantly, it naturalizes and legitimates it. Myth, then, is not just taxonomy, but ideology in narrative form. II As an example, let me consider the way gender relations are thematized in the Old Irish epic Tain B6 Cualnge ('The Cattle Raid of Cooley').8 The story begins when Ailill and Medb, the king and queen of Connacht, argue over which one of them is nobler and wealthier than the other. Their bantering competition takes place against the fact, well-known to the text's native audience, that Medb is the most powerful of all queens who appear in Irish literature, while Ailill is only one of the many men whom she takes sequentially as her husband. Lying in bed, they com pare their lineages, which add to the complexity of the problem. Medb, it turns out, is the eldest and most excellent of six children, all daughters, born to the high king of Ireland, while Ailill is the youngest of three sons. His father bequeathed the kingdoms of Leinster and Tara to his two elder sons, leaving Ailill to acquire royal 5 Durkheim and Mauss 1963:77-78: 'Every mythology is fundamentally a classification, but one which borrows its principles from religious beliefs, not from scientific ideas.' The French original dates to 1902: Chaque mythologie est, au fond, une classification, mais qui emprunte ses principes a des croyances religieuses, et non pas a des notions scientifiques. Mauss 1974:79. 6 The kinds of work I have in mind are Gramsci 1992-, Barthes 1972, and Bourdieu 1991. 7 I have argued this point more fully in an essay on 'The tyranny of taxonomy,' Lincoln 1989:131- 141. For an elegant demonstration of the arguments advanced in that essay, see Smith 1994. 8 Text in O'Rahilly 1967. RETHEORIZING MYTH 217 status by marrying Medb, who had received Connacht from her father. The story thus juxtaposes a queen whose claim to rulership is of a characteristically 'male' type (i.e. based on patrilineal descent, primogeniture, and personal excellence) with a king whose claim is conversely 'female' (i.e. mediated through marriage). This contrast having been posed, Medb and Ailill make a competitive inventory of their possessions, starting with the least valuable among them (buckets, tubs, pots, and washpails) and building gradually to the most (jewels, gold, and livestock). Item by item, the fortunes of husband and wife match one another precisely until, in the very last instance, Ailill gains a telling advantage that salvages and reasserts male privilege: 'But there was a matchless bull among Ailill's cattle. As a calf it abid ed among Medb's cattle, and its name was Findbennach. But it would not have been an honor for him to have been the property of a woman, so it left and was now among the cattle of the king.' 9 Dismayed, but not yet defeated, Medb thus set out to capture a bull equal or superior to her husband's. This is the magnificent Donn Cualnge ('the Dark Bull of Cooley'), and the epic follows her attempt. Countless battles and deeds of her oism fill the Tdin as Medb's forces try to wrest this beast from the men of Ulster, led by their champion, Cu Chulainn. Finally, warriors by the thousands confront one another in a see-saw battle of unspeakable ferocity, and tension runs high as Medb, having seized the great bull, attempts to make off with it as the furious Cu Chulainn bears down upon her. At this critical moment in the action, the text re ports: 'It is then that a foul flow of blood came over Medb:10 Her menstrual period forces her to withdraw from battle, submit to Cu Chulainn (who declines to kill her, not being a 'slayer of women'), and lose the bull. Fergus, Medb's lover and leader of her troops, then pronounces judgment on the disaster: 'Fitting were the events of this day for those who followed a woman.' 11 The episode of Medb's menses thus resolves the quarrel with which the story began, establishing-once and for all-that Queen Medb is not the equal of King Ailill, and the female is not the equal of the male. Where Freud backed his pro nouncement 'biology is destiny' with a discourse that claimed the authority of sci ence, the Tdin makes the same point in narrative fashion. Its story is organized with fiendish care such that Medb's claims to parity are first made plausible, then thoroughly undone by the gendered nature of her body. End discussion and Q.E.D. 9 Tain B6 Cualnge 71-7 4: Acht boi tarb sainemail ar buaib Ailella ocus ba 16eg b6 do Meidb atacom naic ocus Findbennach ainm. Acht nirbo miad leis beith for bantinchur, acht dochuaid co mboi for buaib in rig. 10 Ibid. 4824-25: Is and drecgais a fual fola for Meidb. 11 Ibid. 4847: Rapa chomadas in Ia sa indiu am i ndiad mna. 218 BRUCE LINCOLN To accomplish its ends, the Tain does not just differentiate the categories of male and female, or the others with which these are brought into association (Ul ster and Connacht, Donn Ctialnge and Finnbenach Ai, etc.). It also ranks these, and misrepresents the ranking it offers as the product of nature and necessity, rath er than a contingent set of human preferences advanced by interested actors, some of whom are responsible for the text. This misrepresentation of culture as nature is an ideological move characteristic of myth, as is the projection of the narrator's ideals, desires, and favored ranking of categories into a fictive prehistory that pur portedly establishes how things are and must be. Other ideological moves frequent in myth include the misrepresentation of a part of some group for the whole, the homologization of unrelated categories (men outrank women, just as Ulster out ranks Connacht and the Donn Ctialnge outranks Finnbenach Ai), and the fictive reconciliation of oppositions and conflicts that are frankly unresolvable in lived experience.

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