분류   논문

학술지구분   등재

논문제목   신화로 그리는 마음의 지도

저자   이창익

참여구분   HK연구인력

저자수   1

학술지명   종교문화비평 통권20호

발행처   종교문화비평학회

게재일   2011.09.30

신화로 그리는 마음의 지도

이창익(원광대학교 마음인문학연구소 HK연구교수)

Mythology and Mind Mapping

Abstract

Structuralism circumscribes all things between their beginnings and their ends, and traces their lines of development within such a limit. Structuralism is directed exclusively towards teleology of all things. But teleology described by structuralism is not only temporal but also spatial, and therefore it is concerned with how things originate, grow, and die in time and space.
Furthermore, we must not forget that so many temporal or spatial maps drawn by structuralism can be used to make larger maps, and so on. We can access the shape of mind only by seeing into a network of plural mind mappings, which are gradually systematized by images of things merged into the human senses. Mind is an gaze operating between birth and death of images of things.
Similarly, structural study of myths shows how myths are generated, transformed, reversed, and brought to an end. A myth grows by being transformed, and this series of myths are organized into a mythological system no yet outlined, but beyond knowledge. And the direction of transformation is decided according to where mind would flow. Therefore, a series of mythological transformations indicate that they might be memories imprinted in things according as mind in itself appears, grows, and disappears. Mind is always translates into images by way of things. In result, mythology is a poetry written by images, or a musical piece making things into musical notes. But human mind identified with a mythological system is not individual but collective and anonymous.
According to Claude Lévi-Strauss, Individual mind is only an illusion. He insists that such all notions as subject, self, human being, and humanism derive from an old mysticism, which also creates the main notions of contemporary thought, like Being, the unconscious, and mind. Mystical subjects absorb the exterior phenomena and turn them into innermost substances. In mysticism even God and gods are converted into ambiguous, undifferentiated, and mental reality. Lévi-Strauss puts emphasis on the relation of subject and object, not subject or object alone. It is because mind as such is situated on the interface between subject and object. Lévi-Strauss deprives mind of subjectivity, listening to an anonymous voice uttered by mythology.
Myths are maps of mind which mind depicts with things. In the end, as myths emerge, evolve, and submerge, so too mind emerges from material infra-structure, contests with matter, defeats matter, and submerges into matter.

Key Words : Claude Lévi-Strauss, structuralism, mythology, mind, myth, totemism, sacrifice