How to Do Things with Myths - A Performative Theory of Myths and How We Got There - Ivan Strenski
About Henri Hubert: Durkheim’s Mythologist
How to Do Things with Myths - A Performative Theory of Myths and How We Got There - Ivan Strenski
Ivan Strenski [+]
University of California Riverside (retired)
Author of 15 books and more than 100 academic articles on religion and political issues
like gift, sacrifice, freedom of religion/religious freedom, religious nationalism, French
Catholic integralism, post-revolutionary French Jewry, divine right of kings, Ivan Strenski
is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California,
Riverside. His most recent books are Muslims, Islams, and Occidental Anxieties:
Conversations about Islamophobia (2022), a history of the study of religion from the
Renaissance to the present-day, Understanding Theories of Religion (2014) and Why Politics Can’t Be Freed from Religion: Radical Interrogations of Religion, Power and Politics (2009), Arabic translation (2016).
Description
The Durkheimian theory of myth is primarily the work of Henri Hubert, one of Durkheim’s closest collaborators. This chapter 4 also serves as a biographical essay on Hubert, featuring make his performative forays into myth. Hubert diligently contributed numerous short articles for the Année sociologique on myth. He also trained scholars who produced important studies of myth, such as Stefan Czarnowski’s 1919 study of the myths and cults about Saint Patrick. There, Czarnowski used St Patrick to inspire his own Poland’s struggles for independence.