OUR CULTURAL MYTHS
This January, 2017 mythopoetry.com
is introducing guest blogging to
mythopoetry’s myth & culture blogspot.
Many of the guest bloggers this year are affiliated with the arts and are
cultural mythologers (my term for this mode of being in the world) or, as many
guest bloggers like to refer to themselves, cultural mythologists. All, in some way, have an affiliation with PacificA Graduate Institute where they
either teach, taught or did post graduate study.
Given the political shift in the direction the country is headed after the election of 2016, and before knowing myself what the guest bloggers who’ve graciously accepted my invitation to guest blog have to say, I thought it might be interesting to journey with the help of the Internet Wayback Machine, aka, the Internet Archives, and revisit how one of the early internet cultural mythologers, Maggie Macary (mythandculture.com) ponders myth and politics just a few years after 9-11 during the republican era of the George W. Bush presidency.
One thing which struck me as relevant and the reason for beginning with Maggie’s reverie written and published initially in January, 2003 is its opening quote.
The author, the late cultural mythologer, Maggie Macary, Ph.D. is a student doing her doctoral research and the person she is quoting is her doctoral advisor, Dr. Dennis Patrick Slattery. The opening quote to Maggie's "Manifest Destinies" republishing here this Sunday is taken from Dr. Slattery's essay, "Seduced By Peace" first published to one of the earliest of the on line cultural mythology literary magazines, Headline Muse, Dr. Laura Shamas, editor and publisher.
(Slattery, Dennis Patrick. "Seduced by Peace." Headline Muse. 27 January 2003. headlinemuse.com/Culture/seducedbypeace.htm.)
Although Headline Muse, e-magazine is no longer available on line nor are we able to access it through the Wayback Machine's portal, it so happens, Dr. Slattery is a first contributor to the 2017 Guest Blog Series. His upcoming blog ponders mimesis and painting. It will publish this March. Dr Shamas will follow with Aphrodite in an April guest blog.
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Maggie’s blog on cultural myths is also relevant to me for how it will provide my readers with an insight into how thinking mythically and thinking politically hang together and how this matters to holding together or not holding together political tensions. Thinking politically, from mythical thinking’s point of view, archetypally inheres. At the same time, each kind of thinking hangs in its own darkness. In essence, this is Heidegger’s de riss, rift or rift-design. Mythically each of us needs the other’s way of thinking just as each needs her own mythical thinking’s point of view all the way. Politics and myth need each other, each has psychic validity and each as a mode of seeing, apprehends the world—ways of being “in” the world. Politics and myth seem together and yet differently, to paraphrase one of Dr. Macary’s ideas.
The final thought I have as to my purpose for beginning with Dr Macary’s reverie on the myths of our culture is to retrieve and place here conclusions she reaches in her final paragraph. It is my hope we may continue to ponder them going forward.
COME BACK AND VISIT Sunday, January 29, 2017 to read Maggie's 2003 blog, "Manifest Destinies".
©2017 mythopoetry.com All Rights Reserved
Given the political shift in the direction the country is headed after the election of 2016, and before knowing myself what the guest bloggers who’ve graciously accepted my invitation to guest blog have to say, I thought it might be interesting to journey with the help of the Internet Wayback Machine, aka, the Internet Archives, and revisit how one of the early internet cultural mythologers, Maggie Macary (mythandculture.com) ponders myth and politics just a few years after 9-11 during the republican era of the George W. Bush presidency.
One thing which struck me as relevant and the reason for beginning with Maggie’s reverie written and published initially in January, 2003 is its opening quote.
The author, the late cultural mythologer, Maggie Macary, Ph.D. is a student doing her doctoral research and the person she is quoting is her doctoral advisor, Dr. Dennis Patrick Slattery. The opening quote to Maggie's "Manifest Destinies" republishing here this Sunday is taken from Dr. Slattery's essay, "Seduced By Peace" first published to one of the earliest of the on line cultural mythology literary magazines, Headline Muse, Dr. Laura Shamas, editor and publisher.
(Slattery, Dennis Patrick. "Seduced by Peace." Headline Muse. 27 January 2003. headlinemuse.com/Culture/seducedbypeace.htm.)
Although Headline Muse, e-magazine is no longer available on line nor are we able to access it through the Wayback Machine's portal, it so happens, Dr. Slattery is a first contributor to the 2017 Guest Blog Series. His upcoming blog ponders mimesis and painting. It will publish this March. Dr Shamas will follow with Aphrodite in an April guest blog.
*********************************************
Maggie’s blog on cultural myths is also relevant to me for how it will provide my readers with an insight into how thinking mythically and thinking politically hang together and how this matters to holding together or not holding together political tensions. Thinking politically, from mythical thinking’s point of view, archetypally inheres. At the same time, each kind of thinking hangs in its own darkness. In essence, this is Heidegger’s de riss, rift or rift-design. Mythically each of us needs the other’s way of thinking just as each needs her own mythical thinking’s point of view all the way. Politics and myth need each other, each has psychic validity and each as a mode of seeing, apprehends the world—ways of being “in” the world. Politics and myth seem together and yet differently, to paraphrase one of Dr. Macary’s ideas.
The final thought I have as to my purpose for beginning with Dr Macary’s reverie on the myths of our culture is to retrieve and place here conclusions she reaches in her final paragraph. It is my hope we may continue to ponder them going forward.
COME BACK AND VISIT Sunday, January 29, 2017 to read Maggie's 2003 blog, "Manifest Destinies".
©2017 mythopoetry.com All Rights Reserved
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