In Defence of a Myth
Reflections on a Post-Paganism
In his early work the Post-Modern theorist Jean-FrançoisLyotard co-opted the term ‘Paganism’ to signify a new mode of culture and politics freed from discredited grand narratives and great ideologies, and relocated in ‘local cults’ of micro-narrative seen as strategic belief systems, or forms of signification tailored to particular situations and perspectives. Later Lyotard took this further with his exploration of the Differand, the point of incommensurability, or untranslatability, between competing micro-narratives. He thus embarked on an exploration of artistic modes of ideological cohabitation, where rival discourses could entwine – while preserving their essential difference – free from the repression of any dominant perspective. Thus a radical mode of so called Post-Modernism was born. However in this process Lyotard gradually dropped the use of the term ‘Paganism’, apparently believing it too rooted in archaic Religious discourse, and thus incapable of a neutral encompassing of all micro-narratives as well as potentiating a dangerous drift back into pre-scientific ideology. Such a view has become a tenet of (dis)belief within both the later modes of radical and sophistrial Post Modernism. I would suggest that Lyotard was overly pessimistic in this view and his earlier position was more tenable. In addition I claim his terminology was aptly chosen, and in addition to being a useful general metaphor actually has a particular specificity to contemporary Neo-Paganism, or as I shall later term it Post-Paganism, that can actually be a positive association rather than a negative one. I shall explore this in more detail shortly.
This essay was also particularly inspired by a series of lectures held at Treadwell’s Bookshop in Central London by the controversial philosopher and literary critic Stephen Alexander. In part of his introduction to this series, on the relationship between Neo-Paganism and fascism, ‘Reflections Beneath a Dark Sun’, Alexander expressed a similar though broader critique to Lyotard’s on the failings of a Myth based view of the world. Alexander argued that Neo-Paganism was a subcultural response within an emerging condition of Post Modernity – a hypothetical period in which old meta-narratives supposedly collapse – which hoped to achieve a radical reterritorialisation of the world, and our selves, through myth and magick. He rejected this response claiming that this myth was comprised of archaic, or deluded, paradigms that are no longer compatible with our contemporary experience. Moreover he argued it may lead to a dangerous backsliding to irrational and pre-democratic modes of political culture. Alexander’s reasons are more eclectic than Lyotard’s, though subsequently less coherent, but I believe his critique is basically the same. This popular view appears to be rooted in a well motivated desire for an open and non-committed, free play of life, believed to enable a better grasp the essence of our experience, and is therefore opposed to anything it regards as a mediated and archaic reformulisation of our experience, regardless of how pluralistic the formula may or may not be. In contrast to this I will suggest that while this position is insightful as a critique of religion and ‘old paganism’, it’s dream of a liberated realm of free unmediated experience is dangerous utopian fantasy, and that a realistic alternative can be found in the myths of liberation offered by what I shall dub ‘Post-Paganism’. Before we reach this conclusion however some intellectual debris needs clearing and the actual territory of the matter uncovered.
The first obstacle that needs clearing is the myth of Post Modernity. The belief that a radical break with Modernity has or will occur was a useful fiction in the 1980s, at which time a fossilisation blocking the then dominant streams of Modernism required extensive deconstruction. The myth of Post Modernity was a suitable shock treatment for clearing the residue and freeing a radical current that had become stagnant. The revived flow was thus rightly given the misnomer Post-Modernism in defiance of Modernism’s high priesthood. However Radical Modernism had always been a self-reflexive ‘dialectic’¹ in developmental opposition to itself, as any close study of the avant garde will demonstrate. Post Modernism was thus in effect simply the latest twist in this revolutionary, mobius strip. Such was the torque on this twist however that the death of Modernism was greatly exaggerated. Of course what is undeniable is that the crypto-totalitarian strands of a univocal ‘progressive’ Modernity – including the dystopian nightmares of High Modernism, Utilitarian Humanism, Technocratic Scientism and Authoritarian Marxism, as well as the elitist, liberal conservative forms of ‘Hyper Modernism’, mediated through Late Capitalism – had by the 1980s deviated far from any truly liberatory project of Modernism, which by then was effectively marginalised into countercultural annexes . Such a condition certainly called for the radical reflex historically identified with the Post Modern. Post Modernity was thus an effective instrumental myth, and like all myths was validated not in relation to its veracity but rather its utility.
Alas Post Modernism itself was absorbed into the dominant culture by the turn of the last century, by both accident and intention. Its acceptance of mass pop culture, in reaction to the Modernist elitism, made it a reluctant appendix of the culture industry. A recuperation which saw it’s once fertile cultural criticism become a masturbatory sado-masochism within mainstream liberalism. Modernism’s error in confusing pop culture with mass consciousness and collective desire, instead of seeing it as the constructed spectacle it really was, led the Post Modernists into a spider’s lair where they became entangled in the delusions of conservative, liberal democracy. In the same entanglement liberal Capitalism absorbed the notion of Post Modernity, turning it to its own agenda of marking the ‘end of history’ at the close of the Cold War. Today we witness the nadir of this trend with Neo-Conservatives becoming the most adept Post-Modernists of all, with the hyperreality of 9/11, the Orwellian War on Terror, and the simulacra designated Al Qaeda by the media (as a spectacular front for repressive psychological warfare operations and a disparate nexus of disaffected religious psychopaths, connected and sponsored by the Saudi oil dictatorship) thus becoming the first use virtual reality by the State. The myth of Post Modernism has lost its radical utility.
A major reason for the failure of Post Modernism was its detachment from objective reality and emersion in the social realm, its rejection of depth in favour of appearance. To some extent this was an understandable rejection of the concrete and steel, dogmatic ‘realism’ of fossilised Modernism, the swing of the pendulum simply going too far. But given PoMo’s unstable philosophical foundation in Structuralism this flight from reality was entirely inevitable. The anti-referential problem of Structualist linguistics was not sufficiently addressed by its Post Structuralist critics, who intoxicated by the liberation they initially found in a sliding signification and deconstruction failed to ground their semiotic escapades either materially or psychologically, and thus sowed the seeds of empty simulacra so readily recognised and adopted by the system. This move was another reflexive dialectic within Modernism, but like all such reactions it overshot its equilibrium. Jean Baudrillard was one of the chief catalysts in this Post Modern reaction, though motivated partly by both professional ego and utopian instincts his legacy is ambivalent.
A committed revolutionary in his early years, greatly influenced by Surrealism and the libertine Marxism of its Situationist mode, Baudrillard became disillusioned with Marxian economics, correctly seeing it as essentially embedded in the same mire as Capitalism, and effectively reinforcing a Market economy. His greatest contribution to radical Modernism was probably his rejection of the hegemony of Exchange economics, and development of a foundational theory of the Gift economy, a culture inherent to the earliest pagan societies. Although, perhaps realistically, he focused on its late corrupt form, where hierarchical relations and emerging ideas of reciprocity had distorted the pure Gift into a tool of power and prestige. From this basis he was able to create a far more radical analysis of modern Consumerism and extended this semiotically into a Post Structural analysis of the symbolic and significatory order of consumer goods, based on trophyism and status. Such a view in more prosaic terms has become central to most forms of Post-Paganism.
Unfortunately still within the sway of an over romantic concept of Authenticity and the ‘fully lived life’, rooted in the myth of the possibility of Immanent Presence, as were most of the Situationists, Baudrillard entered into an oppositional relation to Mediation, and all forms of the abstract representation of reality. Alas while he correctly saw contemporary mediated reality as culturally distorted, he wrongly rejected it in total. Influenced by Barthes’ influential Post Structuralist Semiotics, with its revolutionary notion of co-opted signification – in which referential signs became diverted into signifiers for bourgeois culture and prejudice – he thus gradually developed his radical vision of falsified mediation, which he dubbed Hyperreality. Starting as a Situationist critic of the Spectacle, seen as a negative, sensationalist Hyperreality which replaces Authenticity, and distracts the populace, he eventually concluded that the Spectacle had become total and all possible connection with reality had been lost. The same view that drove leading Situationist Guy Debord to suicide. Within Baudrillard’s pessimistic Post Structuralist perspective any link with reality had drifted into insignificance, within an artificial, coherentist network of signs and images, from which emerged a new ersatz reality of empty simulacra. This was an inevitable detachment given the simplistic, ungrounded and superficial nature of Saussure’s linguistic foundation. But Baudrillard saw this as a positive opportunity to demonstrate the hollowness of the media, and the system it supported, and hoped exposing it in his own spectacular style would lead to an eventual mass rejection of Capitalism in favour of new systems of meaning, which would be characterized by the openness and freedom a positive use of Hyperreality entailed. Freed from the ‘prison’ of concrete objectivity he coined the phrase, ‘after the orgy the masked ball’ for his new idealist illusionism. However his analysis itself was empty, and being no longer grounded in any authentic foundation his notion of free form Hyperreality has simply been covertly adopted by cynical Neo-Conservative spin-doctors, concerned with maintaining the ‘necessary illusions’ through any lies necessary. Lies that his own notions of the dangers of Islamism unintentionally fostered.
The error at the root of all this was the Structuralist belief that our cognitive mental structures were shaped by linguistic form, which in turn was a social and cultural product. Thus not only was our conception of nature formed by this but so was our own self awareness and subjectivity. As a result the individual, to the extent they existed at all, was merely a passive product of the social collective. A view attractive to unreformed, residual Marxists and their repressive privileging of the social over the individual. This was further influenced by Foucault’s more interesting insights that power structures shaped us as much as they controlled or suppressed us. The strange attraction of this social determinist perspective I would suggest was largely due to Derrida’s influential demonstration, within a Post Structuralist paradigm, that as the presence of undecidable sentences in a linguistic system seemed to indicate there was no fixed point of connection with a foundational reality – or as the Post-Structuralists termed it no transcendental signified beyond the signification system itself – language had no stabilizing anchor, or fixed standard of meaning. It was thus a free floating, dynamic process, rooted only in repressive social conventions, which when removed could open up a new field of creative play and cultural freedom. Taken literally and combined with the determinist position, this would indicate a social revolution could not only transform culture but perception of reality itself. Derrida himself would no doubt have rejected this as a dogmatic position but it constitutes a powerful ideal. Unfortunately such a position is not only impotent in the face of the objective conditions that delineates our productive perceptions, and lacking in any constructive resistance, it also transforms our concept of society into a prison for the very subject of emancipation, the essential being itself.
The evolution of semantic theory has largely facilitated this. Theories of language and meaning, and therefore of reality arguably exist in three or four basic forms; the naïve pre-modern Representational theory, in which language is regarded as a neutral medium, a mirror to its referents or objects; a modern Descriptive theory, in which language positively mediates and creatively models reality, but can also ‘misdescribe’ it; a post-modern or late modern (Post)Structural theory, in which the medium is ambiguous, and reality becomes questionable and impossible to distinguish from a socially or conceptually constructed model; and possibly, a hyper modern Simulacra theory, where mediation becomes negative and reality ceases to exist altogether. Though arguably the latter only exists in the ivory towers of the Baudrillarians. These are sometimes seen as evolving phases, though in the absence of universally accepted standard of progress they are actually just optional perspectives. A parallel ontology is sometimes applied to these as well, the first is of the intimate object and immediate Being; the second is of the mysterious ‘Things-in-Themselves’ beyond appearance; and the third is of transient process, or Becoming. We can assign the irreferent (sic) Simulacra to the fringe of language for now. Rejecting contestable formal arguments as our criterion for theory selection here, as well as enculturated, personal aesthetics, rational agent is required to fall back on a grounded pragmatism.
Science, despite its acknowledged faults, historically became the ultimate arbitrator in the field of pragmatism. Given the comfortable conditions of our contemporary technological existence it would be disingenuous to deny this reality. The conceptual dominance of Newtonian orthodoxy legitimised the Representational theory, with a gradual shift to Descriptive theory as science diversified. However Einstein’s effective refutation of the absolute referent and the dissolution of coherent objectivity inherent in most interpretations of Quantum Mechanics allowed linguistic theory to drift away from these secure harbours into less stable waters. The complexities of the new worldview however arguably left many theorists floundering in deep waters, seeing them as untenably bottomless. But while an ignorance of (post)modern science is not an acceptable excuse for bad philosophy, Baudrillard can perhaps be taken too seriously in this context, and his fundamental commitment to absurdism may simply identify him as the essential jester in the court of dogmatic reason. Others are less forgivable.
The ‘structural’ view of language has continually gained ground, with now even the once devoutly Realist Descriptivism of the English school often adopting a coherent internalist perspective at the level of cognitive meaning. Grounded in a more positive relation with science however it still retains a fundamental connection with reality and the external referent, no matter how volatile or indeterminate that referent may be. The question of where cognitive psychology, or a background sociology of mind, ends and physics begins, assuming the two are even separable, which some of us doubt, remains undecidable. However what is beyond doubt is that we interact with an at least semi independent objective reality on an everyday basis. A fact evident both in our existential limits and potential for action. While intersubjectivity may account for some of this, there remains a tension between the subjective and objective aspects of reality preventing the reduction of one to the other, as is clearly evident from contemporary studies of phenomenal consciousness. We are in the final analysis unknown subjects well grounded in an objective mystery, the rest is an essential narrative.
The error of early Post Modernism was an intoxication with the narrative and a loss of ground. Some Post Structuralists attempted to escape this error by a regrounding that preserved much of the freedom of their radical semantic perspective, while at the same time maintained a productive grip on objective reality. One way emphasizes the language-user as the true foundation of a semantic symbol system, with the essential ambiguity in any system of meaning, and the importance of interpretation, restoring a degree of autonomy for the individual beyond the limits of cultural and social convention. Similarly by problematising the inner motivations of the language user as outside the scope of structural analysis the subject can be repsychologized as a radical psychic node within a field of objective consciousness, centralizing a bundle of personalized desires and instincts, grounded in and in response to an immanent objective reality as much as a subjective cultural nexus. The speculative work of Deleuze and Guattari is most interesting in this respect. But this alone is not enough.
Significantly much of the ontological background to these positions consists of a metaphysics of process, a ground of Becoming rather than Being, that is historically rooted in the pagan philosophy of Heraclitus, as brought into the modern world by Nietzsche. Yet despite this welcome renewed psychologism it still lacks the radical Individualism of these thinkers, losing it in the chains of social collectivism it has inherited from its Marxist roots. Thus the individual is still suppressed as a reality in the quasi-fascism of its mass mentality. This is not to claim individualism is an atomic state to be privileged over the social, in some radical right inversion, but rather to adopt a non-dual, anti foundationalist position in which the two can neither be easily separated nor reconciled. One in which the embodied individual is the ultimate ground and initiator of society, as much as it is reciprocally programmed and cognitized by its cultural coding.
So where does Paganism fit in this picture? If direct experience of reality is impossible, Mediation becomes crucial to our experience. The ‘Myth of the Given’, an argument denying the possibility of direct sense experience, that informs most English language philosophy today, suggests all our sensory experience is mediated. A view that also seems to be supported by contemporary research in Neuro-Science. Moreover the ontological perspective derived from a possibly global Quantum Physics
2 reveals a shifting, paradoxical reality very different from the world of appearance that we normally experience. According to this view reality does not seem to match our everyday perceptual categories at all, or our logic. Thus at the most basic level reality does indeed seem mediated in some Neo-Kantian sense. Strangely, considering the utility and successes of the Classical worldview this mediation might also be more than just a passive model, which deepens the essential mystery of reality. Whatever the real ontology much of this mediation is probably neurally hardwired and naturally selected. This view is of course familiar to Nietzscheans, who layer on top of it the categorizing effects of language, culture, ideology and early conditioning experiences. In this light, despite its many failings, I think the (post)Structuralist perspective becomes quite plausible in its basic claims on mediation and its effect on our perception of the world. Though it entails a more realist position than many Post Modernists would readily accept. A Realism which while perhaps fluid, strange and ultimately mysterious is none the less substantially based in limiting, probabilistic material determinism.
We now return full cycle to Lyotard’s notion of the ‘Pagan’ micro-narrative. Any grand meta-narrative will certainly be useless and counter productive in the context outlined so far. But narratives are essential for any serious engagement with reality, local strategic discourses with shifting facets of the external world and those who share it with us are clearly the only option. Much like the ancients observed the rites of different deities in changing locations, before the tyrant gods of monotheism colonized the religious terrain. But as we have seen many shy away from the term Paganism due to its religious connotations. I think this is mistaken the term can in fact be applied in many ways including atheistically, for a healthy, hedonistic lifestyle. More universally Pagan could apply to an engagement with reality and the natural world that accepted the need for Myth to mediate this. Myth here also being employed broadly to denote an operant fiction. In a world where logical modes of thought have limited application, and in themselves become mythic, Fictionalism may have a valid place as a complementary mythic modality. This is not to dethrone reason from its proper place, but merely to recognize it doesn’t always apply. Myth based on utility rather than truth need not share the minimalism of common logic, in fact an adequate myth may need to be rich with subjective complexity and so require a more baroque maximalism. Only their basic utility need be subject to a minimalist rationale. This rational underpinning prevents any irrational drift, the myths chosen will be chosen according to the reasoned self interest of the individual believer, along with their social and ethical self responsibility. This is an important difference between modern, chosen belief and archaic imposed or indoctrinated belief, the later against rational, individual interest by definition. A legitimate problem in calling this Paganism may be confusion with the subcultural milieu of Neo-Paganism which has a more specific meaning. For this reason a term like Mythicism may be more apt. Such Mythicism could include all sorts of useful beliefs ranging from a pure Gift Economy to the belief in a Revolutionary ideology, whose veracity might otherwise be challengeable. However I would argue the term Paganism is still valuable as a more specific form of Mythicism.
In a world as materialistic as ours a need develops that could be termed spiritual. I think we need to be very careful with this term however as, an unworldly mysticism or new religion is the last thing the world needs, but a deeply ecologically conscious and grounded, natural spirituality may be just the thing the world needs. Such a pagan spirituality would be based on mythic view of nature with strong utility, and therefore grounded in actual mediated experience rather than the abstract nature mysticism of political expediency that led fascism along its ultimately self destructive path. An important feature of this spirituality would be its commitment to unity in diversity, not as an abstract ideal or ideological principle but rather as a life enhancing fact of nature mediated through a conceptualisable myth. This position would accurately be called Mythic Paganism. What’s more it would be identical to minimal forms of Neo-Paganism. More elaborate forms being personalizations within this framework.
Neo-Paganism seen as an elaboration of Mythic Paganism would be a personal choice and take many forms. This could be an anathema to more ‘traditional’ forms of Paganism of course, as well as the earlier forms of Neo-Paganism, which see themselves as a religion dealing with truths rather than utilities. However I would regard these modes of Paganism as problematic and prone to exactly the kind of degeneration proposed by Stephen Alexander. Such juvenile truth seekers often satisfy their hunger for security with monomanic myths which suppress as much as they are supposed to liberate, creating shadow selves that resonate with the darker aspects of the human collective psyche. To distinguish the positive modes of Mythic Paganism from such negative Neo-Paganisms, I would refer to the progressive or enlightened forms of Neo-Paganism as Post-Paganism, mirroring the reflexive dialectic in Modernism that produced Post Modernism. Bearing in mind progress and enlightenment are also high utility Myths.
In some ways Post-Paganism could be seen as similar to so called Chaos Magic, with its instrumental paradigms and conscious (dis)beliefs. But while this could be a valid sub-modality of Post-Paganism, the later is much broader. Chaos Magic was still rooted in the context of truth, and so tended towards a sceptical pragmatism, and a minimalist, quasi-scientific reductionism. Post-Paganism rooted as it is in mythic utility is quite open to the most complex pragmatic faith in all sorts of supernatural phenomena, entities and magical thinking, as long as these serve the needs of the user.
In conclusion I would argue that far from limiting our experience and increased intimacy with reality, Paganism enhances it, and our myths can be as playful in their game play as any freeform creativity, or as serious as any rational analysis, while at the same time include both within their orbit, should they so desire.
1 The astute contemporary rejection of Hegel’s original concept of the Dialectic, with its inherent transcendental dualism, deterministic grand narrative and naïve cogniscent status, does not effect the basic nature of the process within the immanent plane, its folded opposition to itself and constant (re)configuration. A dynamic, non-linear, molecular encounter of multiple voices in search of their harmony (and dissonance). An existential mystery beyond determination.
2 Once thought of as the Physics of the subatomic realm by most scientists, formerly fringe Decoherentist theories of Quantum Physics suggests it applies at all scales. This has recently received experimental confirmation by the placing into Quantum superposition of atoms, molecules and proteins, with viral organisms being the current area of experiment. Interestingly there is still no sign of any supposed ‘cut off point’.
