MITOANALIZA JAKO SZTUKA SZEROKIEGO WIDZENIA. PRZYCZYNKI DO STUDIÓW NAD WYOBRAŹNIĄ PONOWOCZESNĄ
MYTH ANALYSIS AS THE ART OF SEEING THE BIG PICTURE: REMARKS ON POSTMODERN IMAGINATION STUDIES

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the possibility of applying Gilbert Durand’s concept of the creative imagination and, in particular, the interrelated methods for the analysis of cultural texts (myth criticism and analysis) to the study of texts and artefacts created in the “postmodern moment” of Western culture. Questioning both the traditional systems of connotation developed in Western culture as well as those constructed in opposition to it as part of the Enlightenment project of modernity, the postmodernist worldview is still grounded in the imaginary. The effect of the “imaginational reaction” on the current state of Western civilization can be either a deepening of the present stagnation or an injection of new, invigorating impulses. The “paradoxical” figure of the New Traditional Man and the concept of the New Anthropological Spirit suggest possibilities for emerging from the impasse that has been affecting the humanities, if the makers and scholars of culture would be willing to recognize the necessity of the existence of an “antagonistic tension between dichotomous and non-dichotomous structures of the imaginary.” The ability to “see the big picture” thus appears to be tantamount to accepting the mythanalitical perspective in cultural studies, as postulated by Durand.

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