CRITICAL SOCIAL RESEARCH

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© Lee Harvey 1990, 2011, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2023, 2024

Page updated 8 January, 2024

Citation reference: Harvey, L., [1990] 2011, Critical Social Research, available at qualityresearchinternational.com/csr, last updated 8 January, 2024, originally published in London by Unwin Hyman, all rights revert to author.

A novel of twists and surpises

5.4 Myth
Laying bear myths also requires an analysis of ideology and the examination of its practical manifestations. Myths should not be confused with ideology. Myths are plausible 'consensual connotations' (Heck, 1980). Their plausibility and legitimacy is dependent upon the ideological support system. Identifying myths requires not merely asserting their presence but establishing it. This too is a dialectical process. The consensual connotation or stereotype is transformed into the analytic category of myth once the specific activity or process is related to the totality by reference to its ideological legitimation. The stereotype (of the compliant Asian worker) becomes myth once ideological presuppositions (racism) are revealed through concrete practices (work touts, insecure work). The myth then becomes the focus for the deconstruction of what is really going on (the exploitative processes of hegemonic racist capitalism).

The establishment of myth is developed in enormous detail in Wright's study. Reflecting the work of structuralist anthropologists like Lévi-Strauss he uncovered basic myths to which the myriad forms of the Western cinematic film could be reduced. Unlike structural anthropologists he saw myths as communications about appropriate behaviour. Revealing four versions of the Western myth was not the end in itself, nor indeed could the classification have emerged inductively from the analysis of fifty-four films. On the contrary, the identification of four varieties was only possible because, in the process of deconstructing and reconstructing the Western plots, they were related to the social totality in which they occurred. The classical Western structure, for example, provided insights into the nature of market economy, and dialectically, only worked as a myth and was therefore identifiable as such, in that totalistic context.

So contradiction and myth have both provided focuses for the deconstructive-reconstructive process of dialectical analysis. They give the critical analyst a handle to grasp in the complex process of shuttling back and forth between abstraction, essence, totality, ideology, history, structure and praxis. However, it must be emphasised that contradiction and myth should not be conceived of as something lying around waiting to be picked up. They must be seen as fundamentally dialectical constructs in themselves. Contradictions and myths must be established empirically not conjured out of the researcher's presuppositions.

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