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Myth and settler colonialism are inextricably bound in the Americas. While the USA is infamously known for its colonizing mythmaking, myth resonates more positively within the rest of the Americas. Myth-making involves empirical data as well as lies, misconceptions and malicious manipulations. It can inspire entire social, political and even economic systems with artful combinations of truth and invention, allowing some groups of people to re-invent their sense of world and self, while forcing others into submission or opposition . These founding myths and their hybrid representations have a long history of supporting white / elite privilege and nationalist agendas, but social movements challenge and re-script them continually. Myths feed on an arsenal of contradictory beliefs and rituals, proliferating most authoritatively when vast transformations and insecurities force people to change their ways. Since it is in settings of uncertainty that myths stabilize a sense of self and world, the Americas with their reiterative histories of migration, revolution, upheaval and national(ist) consolidation offered ideal seedbeds for foundational myth-making.
Minding the ethical flexibility of myths is a major scholarly challenge. North American founding myths about heroic new men (much less women) in an empty land seizing an exceptional chance to re-invent a new and a better humanity promised liberation to some at the price of subjugating others. This course will explore how settler colonial histories of conquest, deracination, bondage and nation building also sparked alternative myths that countered racist and nationalist mythmaking. Demystification, like re-mystification, revitalizes founding myths. Participants are expected to read with joy and to engage in directed research. |
