Corso di laurea magistrale in
Comunicazione e Culture dei media

Scope of the course is enabling students to acquire a critical attitude towards those communicative structures that characterize myth. These are far from being alien to the modern world: on the contrary, they cross in various form both shared mental models and the political discourse. Particular attention will be paid to the presence of myth crosses within different discursive domains - from the language that expresses religious belief to the language of politics, from ordinary language to the language of advertising.

Students will be introduced to a method that allow them to understand the complexity of the relationship both between the discourse of modernity and the discourse peculiar to traditions that are alien to modern culture, and between different cultural traditions in general.

Being myth essential for the construction of both individual and collective identity, students will be offered the opportunity to acquire a critical stance towards the way in which the religious sphere and the political one are intertwined within those discursive domains the function of which is to make identitarian structures stable.

Furthermore, students are supposed to become familiar with research methodologies that encompass both philosophy and the humanities.

First, after the course students are supposed to analyse critically the way in which rhetoric of foundation work, in other words the way in which the discourse that confer meaning to associated life arise and spread among a given social context.

Second, students will become acquainted with the difference between philosophy and humanities as regards the method used to analyse the mythical discourse the intelligibility of which rests totally on the categories applied by the scholar in order to single it out as an object of inquiry.

Third, students will be provided with methods of discourse analysis that are strictly related with their future professional career.

Lectures (for a total of 36 hours, that is 6 CFU). Each lecture will be structured so a to allow a permanent interaction between the teacher and the students. This interaction aims at both improving students’ dialogical competence, and fostering their capability in elaborating critically the contents offered during the course.

During the oral exam students will be tested as regards their capability both in understanding and reproducing the contents of the course, and in connecting the core issues presented during the course with the broader complex of what they have learnt during the course of study.

The teacher will be on hand to answer questions and clarify doubts eventually raised by the subjects dealt with during the course.

“Myth between philosophy and humanities”

The course will expose the relationship between the different approaches to the question of myth offered on the one hand by philosophy and, on the other, by the humanities during the Twentieth century. First, the foundational significance of myth will be taken into consideration in order to clarify the relationship between the mythical discourse and the political one, assuming that precisely this relationship has the function to establish the meaning of collective life. Second, the course will draw attention to the way in which the argumentative structure of philosophy has posed myth in a domain that does not coincide with that of rationality.

Required textes for the oral examination

G. Leghissa – E. Manera (a cura di), Filosofie del mito nel Novecento, Carocci, Roma 2015

H. Blumenberg, Elaborazioni del mito, Il Mulino, Bologna , pp. 1-364

R. Barthes, Miti d’oggi, Einaudi, Torino 2005

W. Burkert, La creazione del sacro, Adelphi

D. Sabbatucci, La prospettiva storico-religiosa, Seam

If requested, agreement upon a different syllabus is possible.

Acquaintance with both the history of modern philosophy and the theory of culture is advised.