EVERYDAY MYTHOLOGY: THE SACRIFICE PHENOMENON IN THE NARRATIVES OF FAMILY MEMORY

Abstract

This article studies the narrative interviews of residents of the Lipetsk Region dealing with family memory to see whether they contain any mythological fragments or elements of everyday mythology. Definitions are given of the concept everyday life as the basic form of social existence and the concept family memory as a space covering all spheres of everyday life (household, labour and leisure). The purpose of the article is to find in the narratives of respondents the stories related to the phenomenon of sacrifice and to determine the significance of such stories for family memory. The space of family memory is understood here as an object of narratives that have a certain structure, contain constructive and destructive elements and can be classified depending on the representation of key phenomena in the stories. One such phenomenon is the sacrifice. The author believes the sacrifice to be one of the most important components of the system of social mythology and refers it to the “myth-content phenomena”, which are the manifestations of social mythology in the life of society, myth-containing facts of social life. The presence of a sacrifice figure, a victim, in family stories indicates a penetration of everyday mythology into all main spheres of everyday life. Explicit or latent mentions of the victim in family stories are considered as a kind of attractor and generator of mythological structures, as a specific fragment of the narrative. The existence of the phenomenon of sacrifice in the narratives of family memory makes it possible to develop a typology of stories about family history: such narratives can fall into the category “a story containing mythologized fragments”. In addition, a conclusion is made that stories of individual families are closely related to a broader context: collective and national memory.