Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2015
The past to which a society refers in search of clues for self-identification and confirmation for its hopes and aspirations is not an objective reality. It is a myth that can be defined as “a (preferably narrative) reference to the past in order to shed light from there on present and future” (Assmann 1997, p. 78). However, the function of myth is not generally to legitimize the present order or to continue it into the future. It may also work as a counter-principle of the present, contrasting it with a better past and betraying the experience of a fundamental deficiency in present society. Assmann thus distinguishes several functions of the myth collectively termed mythomotoric: It can either serve the present (präsentisch, fundierend) or criticize it (kontrapräsentisch, in its extreme forms revolutionary) (Assmann 1997, pp. 80-86).