Landing The Flight of the Gander

    Joseph Campbell is rightly credited as being the mythologist to popularize mythology for Western culture. Flying from his Roman Catholic upbringing to the 12^th and 13^th century fairytales and legends to the vast mythologies of Hinduism and the Far East, Campbell’s capabilities of gathering and assimilating myths of varying history and culture has changed the way academia, and even the general public, approach the very word “myth”, let alone those stories that are categorized as “myth”. Yet, the mythical undercurrents of Campbell’s comparative approach to mythology found in The Flight of the Gander guide and often blind his existential, universalistic, and modernist tendencies of mythologizing. Most notably, Campbell’s affinity with Eastern mythologies creates a mythic, which is to say quite real, wall between he and the myth of his youth: Roman Catholic Christianity.

            As I engage with Campbell’s representation of Christianity, I acknowledge that I am part of a long tradition of Christian apologists. While I make no apology for the psychical and physiological abuse that plagues Christian history, I unapologetically abhor the misrepresentation of Christianity that Campbell presents in The Flight of the Gander.  Rather than actually getting entangled with the primary myths found within Judeo-Christianity, Campbell only takes up issues—and these issues revolve around interpreters whose socio-historical contexts differ greatly from mid-20^th century America—that conveniently corroborate his polemic of repudiating Christianity.  That is to say, Campbell only presents examples from the Judeo-Christian tradition that are in obvious contradiction to modern science and Eastern ideation. It is troubling, as a student of mythology, to see a mythologist as reputable as Campbell not attempt to re-mythologize a mythos that is part of his mythical personhood.

            Fleeing his Christian upbringing like a prodigal son, Campbell refuses to re-vision the Christian mythos in light modern cultural shifts. I, like the older son who stayed behind to work for dad, watch as Campbell mocks his Christian background; though, unlike the brother in the Biblical prodigal son story, I long for my brother to return home. I share Campbell’s disdain for the ignorant arrogance that marks Christian history, however I refuse to surrender to the rise of science. Rather, in company with the likes of CG Jung, I choose to regroup, to re-mythologize how the Christian myth can function in light of philosophical and scientific shifts. Jung is certainly not above criticism (hence the new “Post-Jungian” movement), however his attempt of finding use for the Christian mythos is part of what it means to be culturally adapting. Campbell, while calling forth the need for symbolic interpretation (98, 185), only criticizes and mocks interpretations of the Christian mythos.

 Campbell notes that archaic societies believed their deities to be actual entities whose powers could be invoked (24). Campbell then goes on to argue that the symbolic expression found in myths is due to the cultural milieu that these myths were born in.  Therefore, so his logic goes, since our age is a product of the scientific revolution the cosmological and philosophical paradigms of mythology should be based on scientific “facts” rather that mythological expression (102, 152). Robert Segal notes in his contribution to Myth and Method that science has replaced the function of cosmological mythology (82), however the replacement of scientific cosmological structuring does not necessitate an expulsion of mythic expression; rather, it calls for a regrouping of how these myths function, how they can still speak of the cosmos and even of and to the psyche. As mythologists, it would do well to recall that the slippery dichotomies of “fact” and “fiction”, “literal” and “metaphorical”—even those that are posed as “scientific”—have been shown to be fuzzier than once conceived. To this breadown we are indebted to literary theory, deconstruction, quantum mechanics, string theory, and the newly hypothesized M-theory. Campbell’s insistence, then, that science be the authority of all that is “knowable” or “relatively unknown” (152) is left in a mythical-modernistic-past as our age is post-modern.

Postmodernism is marked by that buzzword coined and popularized by Jacques Derrida: differance. Campbell argues time and again for individualism, the buzzword of the 1940-1970’s so closely intertwined with existential philosophy. However, Campbell works under this idiosyncratic philosophy as though, if one were “true to themselves”, they would obviously leave the Christian fold. However, in light of differance and the sociological work of Slavoj Zizek, it is increasingly difficult to see where the individual ends and society begins, and vice versa. Each entity—be it human or literature or “object”—is uniquely different and this vast amount and degree of difference is what makes up the individual, society—the story of humanity.  Campbell’s unwillingness to engage with Christian myths, to cover its underlying currents, and re-construct himself from this foundation is part of the Christian tradition. Campbell never escapes Christianity, if only in that he reacts to it; if Christianity were obsolete for Campbell, this reaction would be superfluous. Therefore, it seems as though part of Campbell’s affinity with the East is not only a divorce from his childhood religion, but is in fact a refusal to admit to a mythical worldview that shaped him early in life. Jungians might call this the repression of one’s shadow.

The shadow of Campbell’s past is literalistic interpretations of the Christian mythos; however, Campbell does not explore how this shadow could be re-visioned in light of his contemporaneous cultural outlook. Campbell’s avoidance of engaging with the myths of Judeo-Christianity cheapens his exploitation of past interpretations. In fact, his insistence that mythical expressions are culturally determined is paradoxical to his bird’s-eye-view that denigrates those who have gone before him, those who had different cultural influences. The works of Marcus Borg, John Crossan, NT Wright, and Jean Luc-Marion—writings contemporary with and after Campbell—are presenting Christianity in its historical contexts, drawing conclusions that mock Campbell’s mocking of theologians’ interpreting the “vehicle” as the “tenor” (53). Of course, if Campbell was to consider historical contexts, he would have to put the Judeo-Christian myth—and interpreters—in appropriate historical contexts, and universalizing mythic characteristics is essentially ahistorical work.

To “dehistoricize” mythology is explicitly argued for in The Flight of the Gander (185). However, by insisting on the historical context of the myth’s presentation, one is then capable of understanding what gave shape to the myth’s structure, plot, subtleties, expressions, and teachings. Furthermore, by negating history, interpretation becomes a thoroughly idiosyncratic, mythical reading and it allows for present-existential desires/needs to supplant the existential context of the myth’s telling. Any hypothetical “original” message is, of course, fictional; however, reconstructing the myth’s socio-historical context enables the reader-now to better understand the message-then. Inattention to historical contexts taints Campbell’s presentation, and blinds him to his own socio-historical biases and this thematically follows with a blindness for the historical situations behind the Christian interpreters he so arrogantly (and paradoxically) denigrates.

   As an adherent to the Christian worldview, by noting that the Christ-myth informs me of who I am, where I am in the world-age, and how I am to function in that world-age, I acknowledge that this mythos makes up “me” as much as I contribute to the continuance of the myth. By adhering to this particular mythos, I acknowledge my participation in the Christian community; part of engaging in this community is to re-mythologize the Christian mythos in a way that is true to the myth’s central concepts and is simultaneously conducive with contemporary philosophical and psychological worldviews. That is, I agree with Campbell that the Christian authorities need questioned; however, they don’t need damned. To take an eye for an eye makes the world go blind, and Campbell exhibits this damning process by damning those Christian interpreters who have done their fair share of damning. The rise of individualism, which Campbell argues for (130-5), cannot replace the innate human need for initiation, integration, and engagement with a community—something that might be present in other writings but is absent in The Flight of the Gander. Campbell divorces himself from his past, though he participates with those he condemns by performing the same actions…a true paradoxical comedy.

Comparing the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell to his own cultural matrix reveals a human shaped by his own cultural matrix: existential (i.e.—Nietzschean), modernistic, ahistorical, and universalistic. Campbell never takes the flight of the gander, though he does flee from his Christian past. In the dawn of a post-9/11 world, it is greatly needed to gander at religions; damning one religious worldview in favor of another—even if that religion be “science”—usually causes towers to crumble. Coalescing religions together mocks their diversity. Religions and their mythical stories unite, inspire, tell adherents who they are and where they are heading as individuals in a community. Universalizing this diversity as though it speaks of one cosmic myth undermines the identity myths create by adhering to them. It is this differing, this differance, that is to be dealt with if a myth is to be true to its followers, and its self. I follow Campbell to his logical conclusion: if science has replaced the cosmologies and philosophies of mythology, then postmodernism has replaced the likes of Campbell. And, this criticism will be replaced, too. The flight of the gander is not the flight of the individual, rather it is the social flight that has feet to land and wings to fly. The individual makes up the mass, and the mass is made up of individuals—all parts of a while gander where the differences harmoniously function in flight and in landing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Campbell, Joseph. The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension, Selected Essays 1944-1968. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2002.

 

Segal, Robert, A. “Does Myth Have a Future?” Myth and Method. Ed. Laurie L. Patton and Wendy Doniger. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1996.