On the Mythology
My favorite part of Mumbo Jumbo so far has been
its mythology, detailed in Chapters 52 and 52. I love how it borrows on several
different mythologies, weaving them together into a completely new thing. Mumbo
Jumbo’s mythos made me reflect on ancient cultural borrowing and proximity in a
new way.
Before reading this book, I’d known that Roman
mythology was basically a rip-off of Greek, but I hadn’t heard much else about
mythologies being similar across cultures. Of course, I’m aware that most of
what happened in Mumbo Jumbo’s mythology doesn’t appear in Egyptian, Greek,
South American, or Judeo-Christian “official” myths, but it still drew
attention to travel and inspiration between nations.
Take the book’s narrative about Dionysus being a
follower of Osiris. While this relationship really happening is about as likely
as the Titanic sinking in the 1920s, it’s still an example of someone from
Greece interacting with someone from Egypt. Or take Osiris going to South
America on world tour. This instance is even less likely because of the
distance between Egypt and South America, but once again, it implies a mixing
of cultures that I’d never really thought about before. The idea that
each mythology didn’t take place in a vacuum, but was shaped by other cultures
and mythologies, is driven home by Ishmael Reed at every opportunity.
This idea helps to push back against the
moral/mythological absolutism inherent in Reed’s Atonism. An Atonist might
argue that only their civilization has things really figured out, or that only
their mythology is right, or that everyone else is comparatively backwards and,
well, uncivilized. But if that’s the case, then how do Atonists explain how
much their culture has mixed, borrowed, and stolen from others? If modern-day
interracial marriage is bad, then how do Atonists explain their “perfect”
ancestors marrying people from other races? If Europe is and always has been
the most civilized continent, then why did civilization start in Africa? Why
did the first Western European mega-empire have to borrow gods from Greece?
Reed forces readers to contend with these questions as we read his integrated
mythology of the world.
Thank you so much for this post. We live in the western world and we often forget that we have a westernized way of teaching history. Why is it that we always start with Greek and Roman civilization as the genius ones when at the same time around the world there were other civilizations that were doing ground breaking work.
ReplyDeleteWhen I used to go to Korea for a month every summer I went to a middle school there and let me tell you I learned a history that is not taught in the U.S. I learned about ancient Asian civilizations, modern day Asian territory claims, Asian trade disputes, etc. I love how Mumbo Jumbo makes us realize that there is a whole world out there that we don't respect enough to learn about.
Another thing these connections to other religions displays is how interconnected many religions are. One reason the Islamic religion stuck so well in India was that it was merely a shift in perspective for the Hindu people there prior to the Islamic introduction. This blending also goes against Atonist ideas of rigid borders between religions, that each can be described with no consideration of any other, which is not correct.
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