Abstract

The essay argues that political myth becomes obsolescent in present times, when political action is substituted by agency and by mass-media communication. The Author suggests that two different political myths seems to subsist today: on the one hand, the myth of rationality and progress, on the other hand that of enthusiasm and fervor. However, the historical opposition between interests and passions which underlies these myths - and was already overcome by Sorel on the field of political action, and by Bourdieu within the aesthetical dimension - is not anymore able to describe present times. Rather, in a context characterized by the perfect equivalence and indifference of the contents of communication - where sensology takes the place of ideology - and political action - as it was conceived by Arendt - is substituted by a desubjectivated and irresponsible agency, there can be no space anymore for the emergence of a «political myth».