Appel de conférences pour le colloque annuel de l’IFTR, « The Stories We Tell. Myths, Myth Making and Performance », Accra, Ghana, 24-28 juillet 2023.

« Whatever way we define myth we cannot elide the fact of its varied, shifting contexts and contours of meaning, especially in its ‘close but vexed relationship,’ not just with ‘belief, identity, the nature of being and the sacred,’ as Gentile puts it, but also ‘with truth and falsehood’. Esi Sutherland Addy, in discussing definitions of myth, concludes instructively that, ‘recognizing the ethereal quality of myth as metaphor’ and ‘form would be much more useful to the scholarly enterprise than narrow definitions’, which in any case are inadequate when applied to varying social and historical contexts. Perceptions and definitions of myth may differ because of national, cultural and institutional politics, and many other influential contexts. Is it possible to find areas of synthesis on a global level that speak to our collective humanity, or must we keep the idea of myth to a wholly contested concept? What is it about myths that seek to exclude or differentiate between races and people? If, as Percy Cohen suggests, myth anchors the present in the past, how might prophesy – as ‘a sort of myth in reverse’ – aid in creating new myths for a desired future? »

Date limite de soumission : 31 janvier 2023.

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