Homo Mythos Class Struggle in the Time of Culture Wars

A mythic consciousness is on the rise. The figure of Homo Mythos can be deciphered today as surplus populations emerge as powerful agents, acting in open territory, free from the determinations of capitalism, liberalism, democracy and right-wing populisms. They spawn a notion of the mythic which foregrounds social contradictions and engenders visions of a communist future. Saroj Giri traces the contours of such a paradoxical figure in Bhima Koregaon in India, the celebration of the mythical powers of an army of Untouchables fighting Brahmin rulers in the Battle of Koregaon in 1818. This commemoration led to the widespread arrest and detention of activists by the Modi regime in 2018. Mytho-poetic tales and memories of a brave and independent pre-Buddhist totemic People-of-the-Snake, calledNagvanshis, intertwine with communistic battles of indigenousadivasis against big capital and the modern state. Here is a class struggle which, as Walter Benjamin once imagined, is nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated grandchildren. Homo Mythos anticipates and animates class struggle in the Information Age.