Danish cartoons

As many of you probably are aware, the central author that I'm treating in my dissertation is Ernst Cassirer. He was a fascinating man; though principally a philosopher, he was also well versed in history, art, literature, science, many languages, etc. In that respect he may have been the last true Renaissance man. One of his fields of interest, and this is what I'd like to deal with today, was mythology. Specifically, I'd like to deal with his enquiries into the phenomenological basis of myth, because I think that it provides a useful tool for understanding the outrage that Muslims felt in response to Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. So let's get into it.

The kernel of mythology is this: pars pro toto, or, "the part for the whole." Whereas in our usual way of thinking, the part might suggest the whole to us or act as an indicator towards the whole, mythical thinking actually treats the part as the whole itself. That is to say, whereas we treat a few drops of rain as just part of the storm, mythical thinking actually treats these drops as having the whole storm contained within them. This might help us to understand voodoo rituals, of which Cassirer's work is full of colourful examples: for instance, in some cultures it is believed that one can murder a man by stabbing a knife into the man's shadow. The shadow is not a representation of the man; the shadow, as a part, actually stands for the whole man, and therefore one who has power over the shadow has power over the man himself, in this instance the power to kill. (Reading this example of shadow murder the first time, I could think of nothing other than the opening of Peter Pan, when Wendy is sewing Peter's shadow back to him.) Another example: some tribes forbid women and children from washing their hands while the men are out on the hunt, which becomes easily understandable when we realize that to make the tribe's hands slippery during the hunt would allow the prey to slip through their fingers. The part of the tribe back home stands for the tribe as a whole, so if those at home wet their hands, then the prey will slip through the slippery fingers of the hunting party.

The next part of the argument is about the inclusion of words in myth, or, word magic. We can have mythical power over something by dominating any part of its being; what part that is holds no relevance, and extends as far as the names of things. While we commonly now distinguish between the thing itself and the name by which we call that thing, such a division is not yet present in mythical consciousness. This is why to mythical consciousness it is so important to pronounce rites in just the proper way. If we do not pronounce the rite properly, we will not invoke the proper power of the god, and will therefore not accomplish the goal we wish to bring about. Worse still, the god may take the mispronunciation of the name (or the misperformance of a dance; remember, language is not strictly distinguished from substance or action here) as a sleight, and therefore bring terrible wrath upon us. In some cultures, a sick man will change his name in order to trick Death into thinking that he is someone else. For examples of the mythical power of the word in our own culture, one need only think of the book of Genesis. God says, "Let there be light," (Genesis 1:3). God creates the beasts and has man name them; He gives man dominion over them. The naming and the domination are not unrelated facts, if one takes Cassirer's theory to heart.

Of course, the most important word associated with anyone or any thing is the name: the name is therefore a central way to call upon a god, and the name has power over the god. In Egyptian mythology, we hear the tale of Isis, who tricks Ra into divulging his name to her, and she thereby has dominion over him and all the gods under him. The Grimm Brothers found a similar tale in Germany, the tale of Rumpelstilzchen, who will spin straw into gold for the miller's daughter (thereby saving her life) only if she can find out his name. In the book of Exodus, God does not divulge his name to Moses at the burning bush. "If the people ask who sent you, tell them 'I am' sent you." God is pure being ("I am"), he has no definite name, as any such definitive character in name would be a delimitation of His power. Furthermore, if such a name he had, to give it to Moses would be to open himself up to subservience. (I've heard through the grapevine that if one reads about the ten plagues that befall Egypt in Exodus, this can actually be read as a mythical battle between the one God of the Hebrews and the ten most important gods of Egyptian mythology at the time.) In the times of the Roman Empire, slaves were not allowed names because they had no power. Their name needed to remain empty.

A physical part can stand for a whole, any linguistic part (such as a name) can as well, and, most importantly here, so can an image. For example, the Pythagoreans would straighten their bedding immediately upon getting up, in order to prevent that their image left in the sheets might be used against them. Tattoos in primitive cultures are not merely decorations, they're incantations and links to magical powers. And in Islam we find an injunction against producing images of the prophet Muhammad. We can now understand this injunction probably better than we did before: any such image would hold power over Muhammad, who is held to be the last and most important prophet sent by God. For someone of lesser dignity, such as ourselves, to hold power over someone so important in the eyes of God would be a travesty. Perhaps this allows us to understand the outrage in the Muslim world in response to the Danish cartoons. These cartoons were not controverting an empty law, a law for its own sake; when we start to understand the structure of myth, this Islamic law starts to make a lot of sense, and we can begin to understand why there would be such a law. (There is also a general ban on pictorial representation and icons in Islamic religion, not limited only to those of Muhammad, but I see this not as a contradiction to my interpretation here, but rather as a confirmation thereof.)

One last thing before I sign off: one of the reactions to these cartoons in the Muslim world was to produce another set of cartoons that were basically meant to tug at the sensitivities of Western world. For example, one cartoon depicted Hitler in bed with Ann Frank, smoking a postcoital cigarette while he says to her, "THAT will give you something to write about in your diary." Obviously, the idea there was just to be hurtful, but it certainly isn't a response in kind to the Danish cartoons. To produce an image of Muhammad is not just offensive, it isn't just a cultural faux-pas of making light of a travesty in someone's past: it's blasphemy, it's for the profane to claim power over the holy. A response in kind would have been some claim to power over God. Perhaps a bumper sticker like: "Jesus is just a migrant worker who picks my oranges." (Actually, there are probably many such workers named "Jesus.") Or if they really wanted to get a reaction, perhaps an attack on the real God of the West: "Money is my bitch."

Anyway, I hope that this discussion has been somewhat lucid, at least a little bit interesting, and with luck not too inflammatory. Thanks for reading, I look forward to your comments.



P.S: If you're interested in the full details of Cassirer's account, check out Language and Myth, a short and accessible read on the subject. For those who are more ambitious, have a look at The Philosophy of Symbolic forms, vol. II: Mythical Thought. And Cassirer's last book before his death, The Myth of the State, is a fantastic read treating the mythical and philosophical ingredients put together by the Nazi party to bring the German people under their influence, though his discussion of the phenomenology of myth is much more limited in that text.

P.P.S: Once more, a plug for Philopolis Guelph, which is a festival that offers activities where we explore philosophical ideas in a practical context, just as I've tried to do here. There are still spots up for grabs if you're interested in presenting, or just come out and join in the discussion. Submission deadline is August 26; event itself is October 12–14.