INTRODUCTION: Malinowski and Myth

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INTRODUCTION: MALINOWSKI AND ΜΎΤΗ Why Read Malinowski on Myth? NEARLY SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS have passed since Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) first wrote about myth. Can Malinowski still teach us anything important about myth today? Since Mali-nowski's time, much work has been done on the theory of myth by Claude Levi-Strauss, Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and many others. Did Malinowski say anything that these theorists did not say better? Why should we still read Malinowski at all? The best reason for continuing to read Malinowski on myth is simply that many of his insights remain important. These fall into four catego-ries: function and practice, context and meaning, anthropology and psy-choanalysis, and conceptual marking. First, Malinowski articulated as never before, or since, a program of seeing myths as part of the functional, pragmatic, or performed dimen-sion of culture—that is, as part of activities which do certain tasks for particular human communities.1 Second, he created sensitivity for the critical role of context in interpreting the meaning of myths. Myths do not have intrinsic meaning; their meaning is given by their home context of situation. Myths are thus not primarily texts, or isolated pieces of lit-erature; they are texts merged with contexts. Third, Malinowski was a pioneer in applying the lessons of psychoanalysis to the study of culture. At the same time, he usefully attempted to correct the generalizations of psychoanalysis with the cross-cultural researches of ethnology. Fourth, he showed exemplary conceptual self-awareness about the epistemologi-cal status of the category of myth. He knew that to call something a 'myth' is to mark it as special, to separate it off from things considered to be of a different nature. To do so means taking responsibility for the cat-egories of inquiry, and not to imagine that we could excuse our theoret-ical moves by appealing to some objective and given nature of myth. A final reason to read Malinowski on myth is for the sheer interest and pleasure of it. Malinowski was a remarkably catholic thinker whose mind explored many fields and whose ideas enriched just as many. His own original training was done in Poland in physics and mathematics, with a 1 Contemporary practitioners of approaches to culture that emphasize performance, practice, and function number S. J. Tambiah, "The Magical Power of Words," Man 3 (1968). 175-208; Pierre Bourdieu, Outlines of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); and Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986).

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INTRODUCTION: MALINOWSKI AND ΜΎΤΗ Why Read Malinowski on Myth? NEARLY SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS have passed since Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) first wrote about myth. Can Malinowski still teach us anything important about myth today? Since Mali-nowski's time, much work has been done on the theory of myth by Claude Levi-Strauss, Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and many others. Did Malinowski say anything that these theorists did not say better? Why should we still read Malinowski at all? The best reason for continuing to read Malinowski on myth is simply that many of his insights remain important. These fall into four catego-ries: function and practice, context and meaning, anthropology and psy-choanalysis, and conceptual marking. First, Malinowski articulated as never before, or since, a program of seeing myths as part of the functional, pragmatic, or performed dimen-sion of culture—that is, as part of activities which do certain tasks for particular human communities.1 Second, he created sensitivity for the critical role of context in interpreting the meaning of myths. Myths do not have intrinsic meaning; their meaning is given by their home context of situation. Myths are thus not primarily texts, or isolated pieces of lit-erature; they are texts merged with contexts. Third, Malinowski was a pioneer in applying the lessons of psychoanalysis to the study of culture. At the same time, he usefully attempted to correct the generalizations of psychoanalysis with the cross-cultural researches of ethnology. Fourth, he showed exemplary conceptual self-awareness about the epistemologi-cal status of the category of myth. He knew that to call something a 'myth' is to mark it as special, to separate it off from things considered to be of a different nature. To do so means taking responsibility for the cat-egories of inquiry, and not to imagine that we could excuse our theoret-ical moves by appealing to some objective and given nature of myth. A final reason to read Malinowski on myth is for the sheer interest and pleasure of it. Malinowski was a remarkably catholic thinker whose mind explored many fields and whose ideas enriched just as many. His own original training was done in Poland in physics and mathematics, with a 1 Contemporary practitioners of approaches to culture that emphasize performance, practice, and function number S. J. Tambiah, "The Magical Power of Words," Man 3 (1968). 175-208; Pierre Bourdieu, Outlines of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); and Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986).

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