Roger Caillois’ Biology of Myth and the Myth of Biology

Abstract

The article focuses on the “mythical” epistemology of Roger Caillois (1913-1987). For the French sociologist, writer and literary critic myth can no longer be confined to the specialist area of a cultural analysis of mythology, but is part of a « diagonal science ». In his work Le mythe et l’homme (1938), he aims to develop a “biological” basis for the theory of myths. He argues that human imagination is dominated by instincts and that natural processes control cultural production. Thus, Le mythe et l'homme combines anthropology with biology. But this heretical combination of different fields of research is not strictly speaking "scientific", but rather creates, even against the intention of its author, a quasi-mythological text itself. Still, my reading of Caillois' biologist mythology proposes to consider this text not as simply pseudo-scientific, but as a hybrid between fiction and science and in this sense as epistemologically productive: It aims to revitalise the realm of aesthetics by drawing on seemingly more objective biological paradigms. But by doing so, Caillois at the same time turns concepts of evolutionary biology upside down and reorganizes them according to aesthetic criteria. I.e., Caillois’ approach to a biology of myth is still an inspiring incentive to further pursue analyses of the links between evolutionary and aesthetic theory.

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