Meta-worldbuilding because I’m not presenting a project of mine as a “what” but rather asking the “why” and “how.” My questions for you comrades:

  • Can there be a leftist mythology?
  • Should there be?
  • What would it be like?

For the record and some context, I just mean how something like The Lord of the Rings can birth a new genre in itself (modern fantasy) by symbolizing an ideology, and which itself becomes a symbol eg. how fascists use references to LOTR. Or how scifi, superhero stories are new myths which become reality or at least a language for it (“Elon Musk is real life Iron Man” or “literally 1984”).

I am exploring thinking about leftist thought as a new form of mythology or religion (in a good or useful way), as a way to write fantasy alternatives to the lib/fash Eurocentric bs out there. But I am kinda unsure if there is a point now.

I was listening to this podcast by PlasticPills which compares the “mythologies” (basically systems of symbols of ideology) of the right vs left. They were pessimistic, saying that yeah the right can go on creating mythologies and do fascism basically, but the left is too busy, you know, surviving to do this. In any case, leftist mythology might be useless materially. The only real myth, or rather anti-myth is the Revolution itself, since it is a symbol of meaning for the left but one that actually performs material change. Yet it’s apophatic: just talking about the Revolution is liberalism, and after it’s done, it’s revisionism from then on. Only the act of revolution is truly a material and meaningful act. (All according to the podcast, talking about the book Mythologies by Roland Barthes)

The other podcast I’ve been listening to is Damien Walter’s Science Fiction, kinda lib but I can appreciate his intention to find a new modern myth in scifi. He is also dismissive of socialist projects as just an inverse of fascistic myth-making as reaction to modernity – that we want to recreate everything as post-modern instead of preserve the pre-modern. Idk I disagree with this specifically but I still follow his search for a “metamodern” mythology

  • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    Micheal Moorcock, noted british ancom fantasy author that really fucking hates tolkien, basically invented the whole “law/chaos” mythos that’s now used in things like warhammer and D&D. his fantasy works abandon most of the euro tropes in favor of dimension hopping, oppressors/oppressed and stagnant imperial powers being overtaken by dynamic decentralized ones.

    I’ve been meaning to go back and re-read some of his works now that I know he’s a comrade.