Communication narratives:

Mitogenic persistence

Abstract

This article questions mythogenic persistence in contemporary communication narratives and the ways to investigate it. In order to achieve so, it presents sermo mythicus as the fundamental narrative that guides the human experience in all times and cultures. It questions the symbolic efficacy of myth transpositions in the media, situating it in the context of the imaginary, relating it to schèmes, archetypes and symbolic images. Subsequently, it describes the mutations necessary for a given
sermo mythicus to survive in instances of social consciousness. It postulates that the same process of usury and degradation suffered by the myth gives rise to mistakes that lead the studies of the imaginary to devalue the sermo mythicus. It concludes that the symbolic remains alive even in the impoverished images of mythical narratives stiffened in social consciousness and that the role of the so-called Communications mythologist is to uncover the repressed meanings of myth. This work is
affiliated to the General Theory of the Imaginary, mainly through G. Durand and J.-J. Wunenburger.