L’être entre les mondes

Abstract

This article proposes a reconceptualization of the notions of myth and ritual act through the lens of the linguistic-semiotic concepts of modalization and modes of existence. We apprehend the complex relations between “constructivism”, i.e. the possibility of producing possible worlds through speech, and “traditional structuralism”, i.e. the linguistic modalizations inherent in any discourse of the world through the mediation of a conventional system of signification. On the one hand, mythic narratives hold that the whole world is a discursive production; on the other hand, mythological systems have been conceived primarily as “ideologies”, i.e. as systems of values and beliefs. Here, mythology acts as a structural organisation of meaning and thus as an exploitation of the conventional modal forms specific to each cultural system; as per the former, on the contrary, the mythical word offers itself as a possibility of exploration and creation of non-institutional meaning, that is to say, of new possibilities of local and unheard-of modalizations. Thus, every mythic narrative elaborates the possible world of a narrative or ritual practice into which to project oneself and to think, in turn, the world in which one is immersed as a reader or as a participant. Basically, our study is guided by the following question: how does the study of mythic discourse allow us to understand, from an ecological perspective of meaning, the management of modal and modalizing relations between the various worlds we inhabit?

Keywords

• myth
• ritual
• possible world
• epistemic values
• mode of existence
• modality