TCS teams up with Temporality Research Cluster to host mythology event in Edinburgh

C 13, 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh |  17:30-19:30 (roughly)
Friday 10th November

Exciting news! On Friday November 10th the Society will join the Temporality Research Cluster at the University of Edinburgh to host a scholarly symposium. Two leading scholars in contemporary mythologies will present their work and debate the situation of key myths in current culture with three School of Art PhD candidates: Sandy Sigala, Michael Trainor and Haiyu Yuan.

The discussion, chaired by TCS President Dr. Louise Milne, will see long-time TCS friend Jan Kozak (Charles University, Prague) exchange views from Will Linn (Hussian College, Los Angeles, USA).

To wet your palate, here is a wee blurb from Jan:

We usually think about mythology as neatly belonging to other eras or other cultures. It is always “they” who have or had mythology, never us. If we call something “myths” in our own society, it is typically just a synonym for “popular error” or some kind of folklore narrative. We have always safe distance from myth. In this paper I claim that mythology that works is always hard to spot, only mythologies that went out of fashion, or are culturally foreign, are easily discernible as myths. However, our society is not a historical exception, we have myths too and they are core players in the cultural war of our contemporary “post-factual” society.

I will sketch the landscape of contemporary secular mythology – from fictional myths of pop culture, through political myths, national myths, environmental myths to conspiracy theories. I will show that the border between religious myths (either connected to established religions, or to alternative spirituality) and secular myths is for the most part artificial and that the landscape is one continuum. My main thesis is very practical: without recognising social myths as true myths we cannot deal with them properly – the mainstream approach of e.g. “debunking” conspiracy theories misses the point completely and is demonstrably ineffective.

If you’d like to join us in room C 13 of the Edinburgh College of Art Main Building (West Court), head over to Eventbrite and reserve yourself a ticket. The event is free, but donations to the Society are always welcome! Note: unfortunately this is a live event only, it is not streamed. An audio recording will be made available for members on the TCS website.