Guiding Examples: Democratic Myth‐Making in the Work of María Zambrano

Against the background of growing populist and authoritarian movements in the United Staes, Europe, India, and Russia, political myths and their use have become a topic of theoretical contention (Bauman 2017a, 2017b; Reich 2015). Some authors have argued that political myths—for example, narratives of rise and decline or of origins—are a populist tool foreign to the principles of rational liberal democracies (Abizadeh, 2004; Eatwell and Goddwin 2018; Green 2014, 119–130; Müller 2016). But the more radically political myths are positioned in opposition to the good governance of liberal democracy, the more difficult it becomes to explain the resurgence of populism in contemporary politics. An alternative opinion maintains that myths are in fact a necessary part of identity-building. Whether in the context of nation-building and the establishment of strong identities (Hosking and Schöpflin 1997) or as a significant basis for radical forms of social self-assertion (Bottici 2009; Errejón and Mouffe 2015), myths play a fundamental role. Yet, if myth is pervasive and will not cease to exist independently of rational attempts at debunking it, the question of how to evaluate myth becomes all the more important. How is it possible to distinguish between myths that are detrimental to democratic institutions, procedures, and values, and myths that encourage democratic forms of participation, subjectivity, and political action, and that strengthen values like equality and justice? In this article, I seek to combine interpretive and conceptual perspectives in 20th century history in order to propose a normative analysis of political myths. In particular, I argue that in our recent history, there have been two different models of myth-making: fascist myths, on the one hand, and the more recent development of populist myths, on the other. One important distinguishing feature is the way in which these two models organize emotions. In the following, I will first define political myths as a historical phenomenon and then introduce the concept of emotional analogy to distinguish fascist from populist leader myths. With the help of the Spanish philosopher María Zambrano (1904–1991), I will further use this analysis to develop a third, democratic model of myth-making. I suggest to use this model as a heuristic to guide democratic practices in creatively criticizing and (re)working political myths today. As Martha Nussbaum rightly maintained, myth-making is part and parcel of democracy because like any other form of government, democracy relies on emotions that keep it alive (Nussbaum 2013). In a time where myths are being weaponized for authoritarian politics, democratic societies need to harness democratic myths that are capable of organizing and strengthening a democratic emotional core. If such myths are to be effective, political theorists have to study the historically specific ways in which myths have mobilized and channeled emotions for different purposes. Zambrano's discussion is particularly helpful in this respect because it acutely delineates fascist myth-making and insists on democratic alternatives. Furthermore, her work can be seen as an ongoing philosophical and literary actualization of mythical tropes that she reinterpreted in order to safeguard and promote democratic values in the face of fascism. She called those tropes “guides” and employed them with much practical insight to account for the emotional growth, regulative ideals, and political subjectivity that she identified with democratic political change. Zambrano fought on the side of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and witnessed the growth of national Catholicism and fascism in Spain. 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