A clear opposition is thus drawn in these approaches: between the diachrony of a discourse overseeing the shape of current speech and the synchronyanchored system analogous to language – for myth is “different language” (Lévi-Strauss 1990: 645). Being “a kind of logical tool” (Lévi-Strauss 1963: 216), myth orders the existing cultural reality by mediating between its oppositions and recoding between its different spheres. Of course, in the case of discourse and myth, it would not be a question of the parole/langue (message/code) alternative, but rather a different accentuation of the relationship between the two: the myth of mountaineering starts from ontological experience to shape the code of the ethos, the discourse treats the ethos as a distant reference point, dispersing the individualised experience in successive narratives [9].
Thus, secondly, the function of the subject in shaping discourse and myth changes. In the structuralist interpretation, myths are independent of the subject; they think among themselves and “within” people, without their knowledge (Lévi-Strauss 2010: 19). Meanwhile, discourse is characterised by the “hyperactivity” of the speaking subject (Foucault 2000: 36): the will to truth motivates the subject to produce knowledge whose rules of speaking and thinking the subject has adopted in advance. It is not just a matter of subjugating the individual, but also of making him or her a “blind spot” of discourse (an anthropological dream). Therefore, the discourse is often governed by a poetics of confession, appealing to the “depth” of the individual experience, which is also present in contemporary mountaineering narratives. Meanwhile, although a myth must always be uttered by a specific narrator, it is only the transmission between successive versions that reveals the fundamental significance of the structure understood as a network of connections and transformations of cultural categories; interestingly, however, in view of further considerations, Lévi-Strauss does not wish to emphasise in this way the difference between collectively created myths and the literary works of a single author, for in his view it is a difference not of substance but of degree (1990: 626–627).
[9] In the case of fashion, Roland Barthes makes a more decisive cut: written clothing “is a systematised set of signs and rules: ‘Language in its pure state’”; photographed clothing is a “semisystemic” state, “fixed speech”; it is only in worn clothing that the classical distinction between Language and Speaking can be found (2009: 14–15). It is worth noting that “photographed clothing” is very close to “mountaineering discourse” not only through its relationship to speaking, but also because of the aforementioned great importance of photographic representation in shaping its relationship to experience.