Mythomotor skills

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In religious and cultural studies, mytho-motor skills refer to the effect of a myth (narrative) understood as “ collective action-guiding” . The German Egyptologist and cultural scientist Jan Assmann took the term from myth research and deepened it in his theory of cultural memory . The name mythomoteur was coined in 1958 by the Spanish historian Ramon D'Abadal i de Vinyals (1888-1970).

According to Assmann, the mytho-motor skills of collective memory can have two socio-political directions:

  • founding: it confirms and justifies the current social conditions as meaningful, willed by God, necessary and unalterable
  • counter-present: it questions the existing conditions, conjures up a better past and calls for change

Referring to the French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), Assmann differentiates the mythomotor effect of a remembered and passed on myth as a cold or hot option for social interaction with the past in question:

  • In cold societies , any social change should be prevented by the influence of present memories
  • In hot societies, the vision that works in a myth is supposed to accelerate the change to a new, changed society

Both the intended acceleration and the suppression of social development require, as it were, the targeted shaping of collective memory through and as a mythical narrative (see also historical myth , historical politics ).

The principle of myth motor skills is becoming increasingly important in the context of the interdisciplinary topic of cultures of remembrance , because it tries to explain the mechanisms of community building as well as their long-term behavior in religious, political and economic contexts. In recent times, the findings of this research have been introduced into politics and business practice with the aim of influencing the action of communities. The so-called mythomotor positioning of politicians, products or entire companies should influence the choice, investment or purchase decision of corresponding target groups and specifically shape their memories of the “ brand ” formed from mythomotor communication (see also brand research ).

See also

  • Communicative memory (according to Assmann: oral transmission of personal experiences, covers around 80 years)
  • Identity politics (used by dominant groups to maintain, by dominated groups to change states)
  • Political myth (historical-political narrative with collective meaning and identity-creating potential)
  • Invented tradition (historical fiction: constructed tradition projected back into a past)

literature

  • Jan Assmann : Early forms of political mytho-motor skills. Fundamental, counter-present and revolutionary myths. In: Dietrich Harth , Jan Assmann (Ed.): Revolution and Myth. Fischer, Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3-596-10964-7 , pp. 39-61 ( PDF file; 9.4 MB; 23 pages on uni-heidelberg.de).
  • Jan Assmann: The cultural memory . Memory and Political Identity in Early Advanced Cultures. 7th edition. Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-56844-2 , especially pp. 78–86: Mythomotorik der Speicher (first published in 1992; page views in the Google book search).
  • Matthias Braunwarth: Memory of the Present. Signature of a religious-cultural memory. Approach to a theology of relation and relativization (= Tübingen Perspectives on Pastoral Theology and Religious Education. Volume 16). Lit, Münster u. a. 2002, ISBN 3-8258-5912-6 , pp. 124–129: Chapter 4.3 Mythomotorik - or on the form and function of the reference to the past (doctoral thesis 2001 University of Freiburg; partial view in the Google book search).
  • Claude Lévi-Strauss : The wild way of thinking . 9th edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-518-27614-X (French 1962: La pensée sauvage ).
  • Yuval Noah Harari : A Brief History of Humanity. Translation from English by Jürgen Neubauer. DVA, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-421-04595-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Jan Assmann : The cultural memory . Memory and Political Identity in Early Advanced Cultures. 7th edition. Beck, Munich 2013, p. 80 (first published in 1992; side view in the Google book search): "The term» mythomoteur «was coined by Ramon D'Abadal i de Vinyals in 1958 and taken up by J. Armstrong in 1983 and AD Smith in 1986." Note: Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals (1888–1970) was a Catalan historian, politician and journalist; John Alexander Armstrong (1922-2010) was an American professor of political science; Anthony D. Smith (* 1939) is a British ethnographer and professor of nationalism and ethnicity .