Page 162 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

The Donkey 137

and settle personal scores. To oppose the gods amounts to holding in
check their ascendancy on earth by encroaching on this prerogative.
No wonder, therefore, that the confrontation assumes the dimensions
of a generalized conflict in heaven where all gods are bound to unite
against the usurper who challenges their authority altogether, and then
on earth where the challenge of extinction of life is to be effectively
faced through restoring the original order.
To attack the gods’ supremacy on earth amounts to breaking a given
disposition of power that establishes an order of a subordinate rela-
tion between divine and human beings. The revolt intends to break
that order, inaugurating a situation of frightening crisis. The gods
are bound to react. It has often been noted that a myth usually starts
with a situation of disorder or disequilibrium, the imbalance being in
fact an anomaly brought in an established order of rapport. The myth
then goes on displaying a process of restoration of the right order of
relation. Vdr-17 regularly ends up with the decisive reassertion of the
gods’ ascendancy on earth, that is to say the re-establishment of the re-
gular world order by gods themselves, their guardian. A simple face to
-
face with Megharaj proves immediately effective.

Conclusion: Whither?

Re-contextualization
Three issues may be raised in our present context. The first one is of
a philosophical nature, the second one anthropological and the third
one sociological.
When the narrator is mainly concerned with the donkey within a
given context of power relations, our focus shifts towards the whole
discourse as a single phrase. This phrase implicitly takes for granted
and overtly intends to demonstrate that the existing hierarchic dis-
pensation of power relations prevailing between all possible beings on
earth and heaven is absolute. Neither gods nor terrestrial agents can
alter it. The discourse means to enforce and legitimize that order in a
context where there is an ideological consensus about its validity and
an unflinching acceptance of its rightness. The cloud pours rain as soon
as it faces the sun; the donkey does not even think of challenging an
undeserved punishment. The order reigns supreme for each actant and
instantaneously rules over their stray action, once needed.