126 I Criticism in the twentieth century
exposures of cultural formations through what he called a 'genealogical' uncovering of
Structuralism and the breakup of Modernist mythopoeia
Frye's seasonal scheme of literary myth, in so far as it invoked an anthropological
conception, drew on a superannuated model, but it drew most directly on traditional
generic structures in European literary tradition. As with some of the Modernist literary
myth-makers, Frazer provided him with a convenient corroboration rather than a ne-
cessary basis. The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss developed, notably in The
Savage Mind (1962), a quite different conception of myth. His title challenged Levy-
Bruhl's model of the primitive mind as working through pre-analytic, holistic sympa-
thies, as he argued instead its highly abstract organization of the world through symbols
such as totem animals. The creation of such abstract systems often depended on funda-
mental binarisms, as can be seen in the title of his The Raw and the Cooked (1964). The
belief in such deep structures underlying the social customs of non-European cultures
provided a model for thinking about European cultural forms, including imaginative
literature. The resulting literary theoretical movement known as structuralism shared
with Frye the ambition of being an objective mode of interpretation, and, irrespective of
its specific readings, it brought something of a mid-century anthropological relativity to
bear on the reading of literary texts. But since works of literature are both manifestations
of a culture and specific interventions within it, the anthropological standpoint, like
Frye's mythic scheme, may be illuminating without providing truly critical insight.
Moreover, despite the intended contrast with Levy-Bruhl, Levi-Strauss still valorized
the primitive, and this attracted the radical critique of Jacques Derrida, who associated
him, in Of Grammatology (1967), with a line of thought coming down from Rousseau.
The 'primitive' in a chronological evolutionary sense tends to depend upon, and re-
inforce, an assumed primordiality in a permanent philosophical sense-as if the primi-
tive reveals the essentially human. Derrida, by contrast, prised open the assumptions of a
substantive human essence that he saw in such arguments. His deconstructive readings
not only oppose the systematicity of structuralism; they expose the significant projec-
tions, elisions, or contradictions within nearly all cultural formations.
Although deconstruction is far from the earlier anthropological conceptions of myth,
it is in many ways a recovery of Modernist literary mythopoeia as a mode of critical self-
consciousness: myth in a mode of self-awareness. It has adopted Joyce as a literary
patron, and it participates in the extensive, late twentieth-century revival of Nietzsche.
Heidegger's philosophy devoted to the recovery of Being had sought to go beyond
Nietzsche's proclaimed end of metaphysics, his exposure of it as a human projection.
But deconstructive thought is, rather, the fulfilment of important aspects of Nietzsche as
diagnostician. Nietzsche, like Freud, who shared his interest in primitive origins and
survivals, became newly significant in the late twentieth century, not as a source of
doctrine but as a pioneer of cultural unmasking. Deconstruction generally emphasizes
what Paul Ricoeur called the 'hermeneutics of suspicion', a practice of interpretation
already predetermined to discredit its object. This is strongly influenced by Nietzsche's
Anthropology, myth, and modern criticism I 127
their origins. But such analyses in Nietzsche are assimilated to an explicitly affirmative,
historically active stance, and in Derrida too an affirmative motive guides the play of
suspicion. In his later study of The Politics of Friendship (1994), for example, the initial
deconstruction of the term 'friend' leads to the possibility of a new world politics based
on the notion of the friend. In this respect, he parallels late twentieth-century anthro-
pological thinkers, such as Clifford Geertz and James Clifford, who have continued to
endorse anthropological practice while agonizing over the standpoint of the cultural
observer. Such radical anxiety from within creative or disciplinary practice characterizes
both literature and criticism at the end of the century, and is often focused in the
perennial ambivalence of myth.
From the post-colonial retrospect of the late twentieth century, Modernist literary
mythopeia was highly Eurocentric in its assumption of universality. In its historical
context, however, it had a mainly progressive implication, in invoking a universal
humanity behind the warring nationalisms and class divisions of European history.
Moreover, its consciousness of sustaining a world was an acknowledgement of the
relativity of all beliefs, including those whose dominance made them seem most natural.
Heidegger saw anthropology itself, irrespective of specific beliefs and theories, as the
essentially modern discipline, because it transformed world into world-view. 6 This con-
sciousness of its own status was likewise intrinsic to Modernist mythopoeia, and under-
wrote its sense of responsibility. But this awareness, as for example in Yeats's 'Easter
1916', was often quite subliminal, and functioned as the necessary condition against
which, as well as on which, the final affirmation is made. In contrast, the subsequent use
of myth in myth criticism tended relatively to banalize it, and remove its critical edge. As
it became a received idea, its self-critical dynamic dwindled to an inert assumption. But
awareness of cultural relativity was recovered, and became the primary emphasis, in the
latter part of the century. More urgently conscious of differing world readerships, writers
and critics alike became above all more questioning about the ownership and ideology of
myth.
Myth and the marvellous
The shift over the course of the twentieth century has been political rather than meta-
physical, and it involves keeping myth at arm's length even, or most importantly, when
it is being most seriously invoked. A significant index of this can be seen in the wide-
spread recovery of fantasy and the marvellous in fiction. Modernist mythopoeia could
significantly underwrite an effectively realist world, as in Joyce or Lawrence. Indeed, a
strong reality quotient in the representation is vital to the philosophical claims of such
mythopoeia. It is a way of understanding familiar reality, or it is nothing. The
great mythopoeic fiction of Joyce, Lawrence, Proust, and Mann was in many respects a