Roland Barthes is a key figure in international intellectual life. He is one of the most important intellectual figures to have emerged in postwar France and his writings continue to have an influence on critical debates today.

When he died in 1981, he left a body of major work but, as many of his friends and his admirers claimed, with still more important work to come. I can't possible hope to do justice to the diversity of his various writings here - I can only point you in the direction of Culler (1983), Moriarty (1991) and Rylance (1994) where you will find good accounts of his career - so I will plunge straightaway into a discussion of Mythologies, which is one of his earliest and most widely-read works. Mythologies is one of Barthes's most popular works because in it we see the intellectual as humourist, satirist, master stylist and debunker of the myths that surround us all in our daily lives.

Mythologies is a text which is not one but plural. It contains fifty-four (only twenty-eight in the Annette Lavers's English translation) short journalistic articles on a variety of subjects. These texts were written between 1954 and 1956 for the left-wing magazine Les Lettres nouvelles and very clearly belong to Barthes's `pÈriode "journalistique"' (Calvet: 1973 p.37). They all have a brio and a punchy topicality typical of good journalism. Indeed, the fifty-four texts are best considered as opportunistic improvisations on relevant and up-to-the-minute issues rather than carefully considered theoretical essays. Because of their very topicality they provide the contemporary reader with a panorama of the events and trends that took place in the France of the 1950s. Although the texts are very much of and about their times, many still have an unsettling contemporary relevance to us today.

Although there are a number of articles about political figures, the majority of the fifty-four texts focus on various manifestations of mass culture, la culture de masse: films, advertizing, newspapers and magazines, photographs, cars, children's toys, popular pastimes and the like. This broke new ground at the time. Barthes showed that it was possible to read the `trivia' of everyday life as full of meanings.

Mythologies, however, includes not just the fifty-four journalistic pieces, but an important theoretical essay entitled `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' (Barthes: 1970 pp.193-247). `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' is a retrospectively imposed theoretical conspectus (an overall view, summary or survey) which is an important theoretical or methodological tract in its own right, but in no way central to an understanding and appreciation of the other texts in Mythologies. The fact that it is positioned after the journalistic articles is significant. This expressed not simply the chronological order in which they were written, but also how Barthes wished us to read the text as a whole. `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' was not intended to be seen as the theory underpinning the practice of the fifty-four articles which were more spontaneous and intuitive. What `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' does, however, is to make more explicit some of the concerns that underpin the fifty-four essays. There is, then, a certain amount of continuity between the two `parts' of Mythologies.

... ce qui m'a toujours prÈoccupÈ [...] c'est le problËme de la signification des objets culturels. (Barthes: 1981 p.64)

Dans la vie quotidienne, j'Èprouve pour tout ce que je vois et entends une sorte de curiositÈ, presque d'affectivitÈ intellectuelle qui est de l'ordre du romanesque. (Barthes: 1981 p.192)

A simple example of Barthes getting under the surface of things is the essay `Iconographie de l'abbÈ Pierre' (Barthes: 1970 pp.54-6). The abbÈ Pierre was a Catholic priest who achieved a certain amount of media attention in the 1950s (and in the 1980s and 1990s too) for his work with the homeless in Paris. What interests Barthes is, perversely, the abbÈ Pierre's clothes and, in particular, his haircut. We would expect such a man to be indifferent to fashion and to consider a certain neutrality or `Ètat zÈro' (Barthes: 1970 p.54) to be desirable. However, far from being neutral or innocent, the abbÈ Pierre's clothes and hairstyle send out all sorts of messages. The abbÈ Pierre's simple working-class `canadienne' and austere hairstyle all connote the qualities of simplicity, religious devotion and self-sacrifice. His clothes and hairstyle make a fashion statement of sorts - as much, if not more, than a Lacoste polo shirt or an Armani suit - and are rich in connotations:

... la neutralitÈ finit par fonctionner comme signe de la neutralitÈ, ... La coupe zÈro, elle affiche tout simplement le franciscanisme; conÁue d'abord nÈgativement pour ne pas contrairier l'apparence de la saintetÈ, bien vite elle passe ++ un mode superlatif de signification, elle dÈguise l'abbÈ en saint FranÁois. (Barthes: 1970 p.54)

Le dÈpart de cette rÈflexion Ètait le plus souvent un sentiment d'impatience devant le `naturel' dont la presse, l'art, le sens commun affublent sans cesse une rÈalitÈ qui, pour Ítre celle dans laquelle nous vivons, n'en est pas moins parfaitement historique: en un mot, je souffrais de voir ++ tout moment confondues dans le rÈcit de notre actualitÈ, Nature et Histoire, et je voulais ressaisir dans l'exposition dÈcorative de ce-qui-va-de-soi, l'abus idÈologique qui, ++ mon sens, s'y trouve cachÈ. (Barthes: 1970 p.9)

Ce que je n'aime pas dans l'Occident, c'est qu'il fabrique des signes et les refuse en mÍme temps. [...] de quel droit parlerais-je au nom de la vÈritÈ? Mais ++ battre en brËche inlassablement la naturalitÈ du signe; Áa oui! (Barthes: 1981 p.95)

La France tout entiËre baigne dans cette idÈologie anonyme: notre presse, notre cinÈma, notre thÈ,tre, notre littÈrature de grand usage, nos cÈrÈmoniaux, notre Justice, notre diplomatie, nos conversations, le temps qu'il fait, le crime que l'on juge, le mariage auquel on s'Èmeut, la cuisine que l'on rÍve, le vÍtement que l'on porte, tout, dans notre vie quotidienne, est tributaire de la reprÈsentation que la bourgeoisie se fait et nous fait des rapports de l'homme et du monde. (Barthes: 1970 p.227)

We inhabit a world, then, of signs which support existing power structures and which purport to be natural. The role of the mythologist, as Barthes sees it, is to expose these signs as the artificial constructs that they are, to reveal their workings and show that what appears to be natural is, in fact, determined by history. This is certainly how Barthes saw the role of the criticism in general in the autobiographical Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes and its relevance to Mythologies is clear:

... l'opÈration critique consiste ++ dÈchiffrer l'embarras des raisons, des alibis, des apparences, bref tout le naturel social, pour rendre manifeste l'Èchange rÈglÈ sur quoi reposent la marche sÈmantique et la vie collective. (Barthes: 1975 p.63)

Le propre des Mythologies n'est pas politique mais idÈologique. Le propre des Mythologies, c'est de prendre systÈmatiquement en bloc une sorte de monstre que j'ai appelÈ la `petite-bourgeoisie' (quitte ++ en faire un mythe) et de taper inlassablement sur ce bloc; la mÈthode est peu scientifique et n'y prÈtendait pas; c'est pourquoi l'ouverture mÈthodologique n'est venue qu'ensuite, par la lecture de Saussure; la thÈorie des Mythologies est l'objet d'une postface (Barthes: 1971 p.96)

Il ne sortait pas de cette idÈe sombre, que la vraie violence, c'est celle du cela-va-de-soi (Barthes: 1975 p.88)

... on peut attaquer le monde et l'alienation idÈologique de notre monde quotidien, ++ bien des niveaux: SystËme de la mode contient aussi une affirmation Èthique sur le monde, la mÍme d'ailleurs que dans des Mythologies, ++ savoir qu' il y a un mal, un mal social, idÈologique, attachÈ aux systËmes de signes qui ne s'avouent pas franchement comme systËmes de signes. Au lieu de reconnaÓtre que la culture est un systËme immotivÈ de significations, la sociÈtÈ bourgeoise donne toujours des signes comme justifiÈs par la nature ou la raison. (Barthes: 1981 p.67)

A dominant power may legitimate itself by promoting beliefs and values congenial to it; naturalizing and universalizing such beliefs so as to render them self-evident and apparently inevitable; denigrating ideas which might challenge it; excluding rival forms of thought, perhaps by some unspoken but systematic logic; and obscuring social reality in ways convenient to itself. Such `mystification', as it is commonly known, frequently takes the form of masking or suppressing social conflicts, from which arises the conception of ideology as an imaginary resolution of real contradictions. (Eagleton: 1991 pp.5-6)

Let me try to clarify these points with an example from Mythologies. In `Le vin et le lait' (Barthes: 1970 pp.74-77) Barthes explores the significance of wine to the French. Wine is clearly an important symbolic substance to the French expressive of conviviality, of virility and, more importantly, of national identity. Nothing could be more expressive of an `essential Frenchness' than a ballon de rouge. The uproar caused at the beginning of Monsieur Coty's presidential term of office by being photographed at home next to a bottle of beer, rather than the obligatory bottle of red, captures this perfectly. Barthes unsettles the mythological associations of wine by making explicit wine's real status as just another commodity produced for profit. He draws attention to wine-makers' exploitation of the Third World, citing Algeria as an example of a poor Muslim country forced to use its land for the cultivation of a product - `le produit d'une expropriation (Barthes: 1970 p.77) - which they are forbidden to drink on religious grounds and which could be better used for cultivating food crops. Barthes makes explicit the connections between wine and the socio-economics of its production. And this is an integral part of his aim as a mythologist: he must expose the artificiality of those signs which disguise their historical and social origins.

Roland Barthes's Mythologies is concerned with a number of important postwar issues (see Les trente glorieuses: France 1945-75 for a general overview of the period). These issues are both specifically French - peculiar to France of a particular historical period - and applicable to postwar developments in other European countries. These issues include:

Le mythe ne nie pas les choses, sa fonction est au contraire d'en parler; simplement, il les purifie, les innocente, les fonde en nature et en ÈternitÈ, il leur donne une clartÈ qui n'est pas celle de l'explication, mais celle du constat ... (Barthes: 1970 p.230)

One of the most approchable essays on France's colonial struggles - with more than a few contemporary resonances today - is `Grammaire africaine' (Barthes: 1970 pp.137-144). As the title suggests `Grammaire africaine' is an article about language, more specifically, about the language used in certain right-wing newspapers and magazines to describe, assess and analyse the conflict taking place in Algeria. What Barthes claimed to find every time he read a newspaper or magazine article on Algeria, was a carefully structured and codified way of talking and writing about Franco-Algerian relations with its own covert presuppositions and interests. Myth - which Barthes described as `une parole dÈpolitisÈe' (Barthes: 1970 p.230) - is at work here and in `Grammaire africaine' Barthes seeks to expose it by insisting on the social and historical `situatedness' of the language used. What `Grammaire africaine' is really about is the way in which a certain imperialist political agenda is smuggled into the reporting of foreign affairs. Barthes exposes the ideologically-loaded nature of the terminology used to describe France's major imperial conflict, identifying the key mendacious signifiers whose primary function is to conceal the realities of the Algerian war.

Those who seek independance from French rule, for example, are variously described as `une bande' or as `hors-la-loi' and their demands are therefore considered illegitimate. Such terms are never used for the colons, the French settlers who are invariably described as a `communautÈ'. The presence of this `communautÈ' is justified by the unique `mission' France is obliged to carry out in the region. The so-called `destin' of Algeria is with French colonizers rather than as an independant nation. In contradiction to the reality of the collapse of France's empire, this `destin' is claimed to be fixed and immutable. The word `guerre' is never used - Algeria was the quintessential guerre sans nom, the undeclared war - only terms like `paix' and `pacification'. More often than not, however, terms like `dÈchirement' which suggest a natural - and therefore not man-made - disaster are used to designate the situation in Algeria.

The whole tone of much of French journalism's reporting of Algeria is marked by an attempt to drown out or disguise the true violence of the war. Language here is not an instrument of communication but of intimidation which seeks to pass off a specific version of events (i.e. that of the French state) as the sole valid interpretation and to marginalize those versions which contradict it:

Le vocabulaire officiel des affaires africaines est, on s'en doute, purement axiomatique. C'est dire qu'il n'a aucune valeur de communication, mais seulement d'intimidation. Il constitue donc une Ècriture, c'est-++-dire un langage chargÈ d'opÈrer une coÔncidence entre les normes et les faits, et de donner ++ un rÈel cynique la caution d'une morale noble. D'une maniËre gÈnÈrale, c'est un langage qui fonctionne essentiellement comme un code, c'est-++-dire que les mots y ont un rapport nul ou contraire ++ leur contenu. C'est une Ècriture que l'on pourrait appeler cosmÈtique parce qu'elle vise ++ recouvrir les faits d'un bruit de langage ... (Barthes: 1970 p.137).

La Doxa (mot qui va revenir souvent), c'est l'Opinion publique, l'Esprit majoritaire, le Consensus petit-bourgeois, la Voix du Naturel, la Violence du PrÈjugÈ ... (Barthes: 1975 p.51)

The sexual politics of the domestic sphere (images of femininity, the role of women etc.) is another of the issues tackled by Barthes. The immediate postwar years throughout the western world were those of a retour au foyer, a reaffirmation of traditional gender roles (see Women in Postwar France: the Domestic Ideal for more details of this). Although the situation of French women during the war was different to that of their English or American sisters in that, in general, French women did not enter the workforce occupying posts once held by men, their experience after the war was very much the same: an overt and covert attempt to push women back into the confines of the home and the roles of mother and housewife. After the liberation, French legislation targeting women was firmly based on women's role as mamans de France. As such, it continued the PÈtainist family policy and efforts to increase the birth rate. Quite apart from the specific legislation favouring women's retour au foyer (e.g. les allocations familiales) there was the ideological pressure coming from the church, the politicians and, above all, from the media.

It is interesting to note that one of the important development in the postwar years was the growing popualrity of weekly and monthly magazines, particularly those aimed at a predominantly female readership like Elle (founded in 1945), Marie-France, Marie-Claire and Femmes d'aujourd'hui. It was publications like these that interested and irritated Barthes (see Barthes: 1981 pp.96-97). He even went so far as to describe Elle as a `vÈritable trÈsor mythologique' (Barthes: 1970 p.128). The essay `Conjugales' (Barthes: 1957 pp.47-50) is particularly interesting here. Barthes writes of the fascination of the popular press for marriages and the ways in which this legitimates a particular social organisation

L'union de Syviane Carpentier, Miss Europe 53 et de son ami d'enfance, l'Èlectricien Michel Warembourg permet de dÈvelopper une image diffÈrente, celle de la chaumiËre heureuse. Gr,ce ++ son titre, Sylviane aurait pu mener la carriËre brillante d'une star, voyager, faire du cinÈma, gagner beaucoup d'argent: sage et modeste, elle a renoncÈ ++ "la gloire ephÈmËre" et, fidËle ++ son passÈ, elle a ÈpousÈ un Èlectricien de Palaisseau. Les jeunes Èpoux nous sont ici prÈsentÈs dans la phase postnuptiale de leur union, en train d'Ètablir les habitudes de leur bonheur et de s'installer dans l'anoymat d'un petit confort: on arrange le deux-piËces-cuisine, on prend le petit dÈjeuner, on va au cinÈma, on fait le marchÈ.[...]
 

L'amour-plus-fort-que-la-gloire relance ici la morale du statu quo social: il n'est pas sage de sortir de sa condition, il est glorieux d'y rentrer. (Barthes: 1970 p.48)

... la morale du Courrier ne postule jamais pour la femme d'autre condition que parasitaire: seul le mariage, en la nommant juridiquement, la fait exister. On retrouve ici la structure mÍme du gynÈcÈe, dÈfini comme une libertÈ close sous le regard extÈrieur de l'homme. (Barthes: 1970 p.127)

For me, cultural studies really begins with the debate about the nature of social and cultural change in postwar Britain. An attempt to address the manifest break-up of traditional culture, especially traditional class cultures, it set about registering the impact of the new forms of affluence and consumer society on the very hierarchical and pyramidal structure of British society. Trying to come to terms with the fluidity and the undermining impact of the mass media and of an emerging mass society on this old European class society, it registered the long-delayed entry of the United Kingdom into the modern world. (Hall: 1990 p.12)

The status of technocratic icons within contemporary society (the CitroÎn DS, the Eiffel Tower etc.) is another theme in Barthes's Mythologies. In the postwar world things become charged with a new value and significance. As consumer durables become more affordable and more and more people are able to acquire such possessions as cars and washing machines. The power and presence of advertizing also becomes more noticible. Important essays include `Saponides et les dÈtergents' (Barthes: 1970 pp.38-40), `La nouvelle CitroÎn' (Barthes: 1970 pp.150-2) and `PublicitÈ et profondeur' (Barthes: 1970 p.82). The principal aim of these essays is to reveal the petite-bourgeoisie as self- congratulatory, enamoured of its material benefits and its so-called technological advances.

In postwar France the car became the very symbol of modernity. This is reflected in a number of films of the period such as Lola (1960), La Belle AmÈricaine (1961) and, more catastrophically, Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend (1967). The automobile industry was central to France's increasing industrialization with Renault's vast modern factory at Billancourt as its most visible reminder. This factory, incidentally, provided the setting for Claire Etcherelli's ...lise ou la vraie vie (1967). In `La nouvelle CitroÎn' (Barthes: 1970 p.150-2) Barthes understands this perfectly and analyses the ways in which the car has become the very icon of France's modernization. He compares the car to a mediaeval cathedral: both are works produced by anonymous artists which enchant the masses.

The are other articles on the importance of advertizing, the `hidden persuaders' (Vance Packard) which was increasing used in postwar France to fuel the consumer boom. Jean-Luc Godard in Une femme mariÈe (1964), Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1966) and Masculin-fÈminin (1966) explores the role of mass-produced images in his films of the 1960s but Barthes is already there before him. Advertizing creates ultimately alienating images of a bourgeois savoir-vivre to which everyone is encouraged to aspire. More than this, however, advertizing is responsible for promoting the `myth' of free choice. In `Saponides et dÈtergents' (Barthes: 1970 pp.38-40) he discusses the different advertising approaches to Omo and Persil. Their advertising promotes two different products with two different properties. In reality, these two products are almost the same and are both manufactured by the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilver.

The atrophy and complacency, mendacity and inertia of French institiutions (the educational system, the judiciary etc.) was something that preoccupied the French as much as the English in the postwar period and especially Barthes. Miscarriages of justice, an educational system that was dogmatic and out-of- touch with its youth, a complacent and arrogant political class.

In `Dominici ou le triomphe de la littÈrature' (Barthes: 1970 pp.50-53) Barthes argues that the language used to condemn Gaston Dominici implies a whole psychology of petit-bourgeois assumptions and linguistic terrorism. He was a simple peasant accused of killing a family of English holiday makers and faced with a legal language he did not understand. In `Le ProcËs Dupriez' (Barthes: 1970 pp.102-105) GÈrard Dupriez, a man who killed his father and mother without motive is condemned to death because the law works on a fixed notion of what constitutes the psychology of human motivation.

Many have claimed, and with good reason, that Mythologies is one of the principal texts of contemporary cultural studies. John Storey has described it as `one of the founding texts of cultural studies' (Storey: 1992 p.77) and Antony Easthope as one of the two books (the other being Raymond Williams's Culture and Society) that `initiate modern cultural studies' (Easthope: 1991 p.140). Barthes is fundamental to contemporary cultural studies because he was amongst the first to take seriously `mass culture' and to apply to it methods of analysis formerly the preserve of `high culture'. What makes Barthes even more interesting was that he did this at a time of rapid social and economic change when cultural practices were undergoing major shifts.

Certainly, Barthes's Mythologies is a text that breaks new ground insofar as it takes as the object of its intellectual inquiry the world of mass culture: cinema, sport, advertizing, the popular press, women's magazines and so on. Barthes was one of the earliest commentators on mass culture, on the modern consumer culture of the postwar era. Barthes expands the definition of intellectual activity in France. He examines a strikingly broad range of subjects and cultural artefacts: wrestling, the circus, shopping, toys, cars, washing powders, food, women's magazines, beauty competitions, photography, popular fiction.

Roland Barthes's Mythologies is a book which plays around in the consumer toyshop. It is a text which plunges into the `image trove' (see Rylance: 1994 pp.63-64) of culture - understood in the most inclusive way possible - to find new objects of intellectual speculation. Mythologies takes great relish in its exploration of cultural artefacts and phenomena. The book enacts a paradox in its imaginative and playful readings of culture in a heavily mythologized world which should have abolished such imaginative play.

On one level, what Barthes seems to be doing in Mythologies destabilizing the boundary between `high culture' and `popular culture'. Barthes accords popular culture a complexity, a density and richness of texture thought to be the sole preserve of high culture. One key example of this is wrestling discussed in the article `Le monde o- l'on catche' (Barthes: 1970 pp.13-24). Wrestling is often thought of as the least intellectual pastime in our culture and is dismissed as vulgar fodder to the uneducated masses. What Barthes does, in a striking and provocative gesture, is claim that wrestling and its audience are in fact every bit as sophisticated as high drama or opera. Wrestling is a modern variant of the classical theatre or of an ancient religious rite in which the spectacle of suffering and humiliation is played out. Like these high cultural forms, wrestling is a formal spectacle informed by fixed codes and conventions and played out in rigorously formalized gestures and movements. It is every bit as codified, conventionalized and choreographed as classical tragedy - the dramatic genre to which Barthes compares wrestling throughout the article. Another important article which adopts a similar approach is `Au Music-Hall' (Barthes: 1970 pp.176-179) about, as the title suggests music hall. In this article Barthes invokes the nineteenth-century poet Charles Baudelaire to describe the formalized beauties of the spectacle.

Although Barthes undertakes a sympathetic appraisal of two cultural practices that one would certainly not describe as belonging to the the world of `high culture', these two articles are exceptions. Moreover, both wrestling and music hall are two manifestations of earlier forms of popular culture rather than modern mass culture. Barthes can grant them the same value as high cultural forms because they belong to and spring from a recognisable tradition. Barthes's analysis of mass culture which forms the basis of most of the book, on the other hand, is characterized by a certain denunciatory rhetoric. Barthes sees modern mass culture as controlled by the ethos of the petite-bourgeosie. The working class have lost their own culture populaire and have bought into a culture - la culture petit-bourgeoise - which is not their own.

The essays collected in Mythologies express both pessimism and nostalgia: pessimism at the state of culture in France which, contrary to what most people think, is threatened by mass culture which seeks to homogenize and efface difference; nostalgia for a pre-lapsarian state (literally, before the fall) when the working class had their own vibrant culture, an authentic culture populaire which proudly asserted its difference from petit-bourgeois norms. Barthes sees culture as somehow fallen under the influence of the petty-bourgeoisie. Take these statements made by Barthes in later interviews and writings:

La populaire? Ici, disparition de toute activitÈ magique ou poÈtique: plus de carnaval, on ne joue plus avec les mots: fin des mÈtaphores, rËgne des stÈrÈotypes imposÈs par la culture petite-bourgeoise. (Barthes: 1973 p.62)

... le prolÈtariat (les producteurs) n'a aucune culture propre: dans les pays dits dÈvelopÈs, son langage est celui de la petite-bourgeoisie, parce que c'est le langage qui lui est offert par les communications de masse (grande presse, radio, tÈlÈvision): la culture de masse est petite-bourgeoise (Barthes: 1984 p.110)

L'un des aspects de la crise de la culture, en France, c'est prÈcisÈment que les FranÁais, dans leur masse, me semble-t-il, ne s'intÈressent pas ++ leur langue. Le go°t de la langue franÁaise a ÈtÈ entiËrement hypothËquÈ par la scolaritÈ bourgeoise; s'intÈresser ++ la langue franÁaise, ++ sa musicalitÈ (...) est devenu par la force des choses une attitude esthÈtisante, mandarinale. Et pourtant, il y a eu des moments o- un certain contact Ètait maintenu entre le `peuple' et la langue, ++ travers la poÈsie populaire, la chanson populaire ou la pression mÍme de la masse pour transformer la langue en dehors des Ècoles-musÈes. On dirait que le contact a disparu; on ne le perÁoit pas aujourd'hui dans la culture `populaire', qui n'est guËre qu'une culture fabriquÈe (par la radio, la tÈlÈvision etc.). (Barthes: 1981 p.177)

... je rÈclame de vivre pleinement la contradiction de mon temps, qui peut faire d'un sarcasme la condition de la vÈritÈ. (Barthes: 1970 p.10)

To conclude this section then, I would claim that although Barthes goes some way in in abolishing what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would later call `la frontiËre sacrÈe' (Bourdieu: 1979 p.7) between `high culture' and `popular culture', granting the latter a complexity once considered the sole preserve of the former, Mythologies nonetheless is informed by a certain hierarchy of cultural value. Mass culture is clearly seen as inferior to both the `high culture' it mimics and the `popular culture' it replaces. This disdain for, and condemnation of, mass culture runs throughout the book.

L'opinion courante n'aime pas le langage des intellectuels. Aussi a-t-il ÈtÈ souvent fichÈ sous l'accusation de jargon intellectualiste. Il se sentait alors l'objet d'une sorte de racisme: on excluait son langage, c'est-++-dire son corps: ´tu ne parles pas comme moi, donc je t'exclus.ª (Barthes: 1975 p.107)

L'intellectuel est traitÈ comme un sourcier pourrait l'Ítre par une peuplade de marchands, d'hommes d'affaires et de lÈgistes: il est celui qui dÈrange des intÈrÍts idÈologiques. L'anti-intellectualisme est un mythe historique, liÈ sans doute ++ l'ascension petite-bourgeoise. Poujade a donnÈ naguËre ++ ce mythe sa forme toute crue (`le poisson pourrit par la tÍte'). (Barthes: 1981 p.186)

`Critique muette et aveugle' (Barthes: 1970 pp.36-7) argues that one common form of anti-intellectualism is to feign incomprehension. The challenge of difficult ideas can be disarmed and their intellectual threat defused. By accusing a writer of being obscure and lacking `le bon sens', one can escape serious argument and, more importantly, avoid having to make explicit one's own ideological position. They seek to avoid serious intellectual debate by appealing to a universal common sense. Barthes, howevers, holds firm to the notion of the intellectual's responsibility to to challenge such dominant - and complacent - modes of thought, as he makes clear in a later text:

Admettons que la t,che historique de l'intellectuel (ou de l'Ècrivain), ce soit aujourd'hui d'entretenir et d'accentuer la dÈcomposition de la conscience bourgeoise. Il faut alors garder ++ l'image toute sa prÈcision; cela veut dire que l'on feint volontairement de rester ++ l'intÈrieur de cette conscience et qu'on va la dÈlabrer, l'affaisser, l'effondrer, sur place, comme on ferait d'un morceau de sucre en l'imbibant d'eau. (Barthes: 1975 p.67)

The decidedly idiosyncratic Marxisms of Sartre and Brecht are as `useful' to him as is Marx himself. Barthes's attitude towards constituted theoretical thought in Mythologies - and elsewhere - could be described as cavalier, in the best sense of the word: he picks up concepts, uses them, and drops them when they have outstayed their welcome. (Leak: 1994 p.38)

But Barthes's Mythologies as a collection of polemical texts taking issue with the taken-for-granted truths of our culture, engage with all important political questions. As a mythologist who finds everywhere, even in the most unlikely places, the hidden myths which help perpetuate the status quo, Barthes in Mythologies cannot but take sides.

In Barthes's view, myth reinforces the ideology of capitalist society. The essence of myth is that it disguises what are in fact bourgeois representations as facts of a universal nature. Myth like ideology is ever-present it is impossible to escape or elude it on a daily level.

Mythologies examines the ways the petty bourgeoisie in twentieth-century France naturalizes and universalizes its own values via specific mecanisms - the press, advertizing, the legal system and the like. Barthes examines the way in which apparently apolitical activities - wrestling, the Tour de France, strip-tease, drinking wine and eating steak and chips - are expressive of certain ideological positions. French culture appears to be natural but is, in fact, deeply historical and political.

The petite bourgeoisie projects a certain state of affairs - a state of affairs in their own interest - as being natural with the aim of naturalizing it, legitimating it by making it appear immutable, unchangeable. Brian Rigby claims that `There is a distinct Marxist strain in Mythologies, and the essays can be seen as an attempt to show how the whole of mass culture is a capitalist mystification of social and cultural reality' (Rigby: 1991 p.177). The essay `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' comes close to being a theory of ideology as a system of representations by which the ruling class reproduces its dominance at the level of daily experience.

On peut donc concevoir une science qui Ètudie la vie des signes au sein de la vie sociale; elle formerait une partie de la psychologie sociale, et par consÈquent de la psychologie gÈnÈrale; nous la nommerons sÈmiologie (du Grec sÈmeÓon, `signe'). Elle nous apprendrait en quoi consistent les signes, quelles lois les rÈgissent. Puisqu'elle n'existe pas encore, on ne peut dire ce qu'elle sera; mais elle a droit ++ l'existence, sa place est dÈterminÈe d'avance. La linguistique n'est qu'une partie de cette science gÈnÈrale, les lois que dÈcouvrira la sÈmiologie seront applicables ++ la linguistique, et celle-ci se trouvera ainsi rattachÈe ++ un domaine bien dÈfini dans l'ensemble des faits humains. (Saussure: 1949 p.33)

... ++ l'obsession politique et morale succËde un petit dÈlire scientifique (Barthes: 1975 p.148)

Passion constante (et illusoire) d'apposer sur tout fait, mÍme le plus menu, non pas la question de l'enfant: pourquoi? mais la question de l'ancien Grec, la question du sens, comme si toutes choses frissonnaient de sens: qu'est-ce que Áa veut dire? Il faut ++ tout prix transformer le fait en idÈe, en description, en interprÈtation, bref lui trouver un autre nom que le sien. (Barthes: 1975 p.154)

Semiology derives from the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure's linguistic theory as elaborated in Cours de linguistique gÈnÈrale, a collection of lectures written between 1906 and 1911 and posthumously published in book form in 1915, was philosophically quite radical because it held that language was conceptual and not, as a whole tradition of western thought had maintained, referential. In particular, Saussure rejected the view that language was essentially a nomenclature for a set of antecedent notions and objects. Language does not `label' or `baptise' already discriminated pre-linguistic categories but actually articulates them. The view of language as nomeclature cannot fully explain the difficulties of foreign language acquisition nor the ways in which the meanings of words change in time. Saussure reversed the perspective that viewed language as the medium by which reality is represented, and stressed instead the constitutive role language played in constructing reality for us. Experience and knowledge, all cognition is mediated by language. Language organizes brute objects, the flux of sound, noise and perception, getting to work on the world and conferring it with meaning and value. Language is always at work in our apprehension of the world. There is no question of passing through language to a realm of language-independant, fully discriminated things.

Central to Saussure's work is the concept of the sign and the relationship between what he terms signifier and signified. Indeed, a sign is, in Saussure's terms, the union of a signifier and a signified which form an indissociable unity like two sides of the same piece of paper. Saussure defined the linguistic sign as composed of a signifier or signifiant and a signified or signifiÈ. The term sign then, is used to designate the associative total of signifier and signified. The signifier is the sound or written image and the signified is the concept it articulates:

... le signe linguistique unit non une chose et un nom, mais un concept et une image acoustique (Saussure: 1949 p.98)

The key text which exemplifies Barthes's early interest in and exploitation of Saussure and Semiology is `Le Mythe aujourd'hui'. `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' is Barthes's retrospectively written method or blueprint for reading myths. In `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' Barthes manipulates and reworks Saussure's theory of the sign and of signification. He is not, however, interested in the linguistic sign per se so much as in the application of linguistics to the non-verbal signs that exist around us in our everyday life. What excites him is the possibility of applying a methodology derived from Saussurean linguistics to the domain of culture defined in its broadest and most inclusive sense.

Barthes's relationship with his intellectual influences - Marx, Brecht, Freud, Lacan etc. - is notoriously idiosyncratic. He rarely adopts ideas wholesale, but tends to alter them to his own purposes, extending their reach and implications. This is certainly true of his appropriation of Saussure's theories. But how does Barthes make use of Saussure's theory of the sign and of signification? Well, let's take Barthes's own example from `Le Mythe aujourd'hui':

... je suis chez le coiffeur, on me tend un numÈro de Paris-Match. Sur la couverture, un jeune nËgre vÍtu d'un uniforme franÁais fait le salut militaire, les yeux levÈs, fixÈs sans doute sur un pli du drapeau tricolore. Cela, c'est le sens de l'image. Mais naÔfs ou pas, je vois bien ce qu'elle me signifie: que la France est un grand Empire, que tous ses fils, sans distinction de couleur, servent fidËlement sous son drapeau, et qu'il n'est de meilleure rÈponse aux dÈtracteurs d'un colonialisme prÈtendu, que le zËle de ce noir ++ servir ses prÈtendus oppresseurs. (Barthes: 1970 p.201)

The central modification to Saussure's theory of the sign in `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' is the articulation of the idea of primary or first-order signification and secondary or second-order signification. This is central to Barthes's intellectual preoccupation in Mythologies because it is at the level of secondary or second-order signification that myth is to be found. In `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' Barthes attempts to define myth by reference to the theory of second-degree sign systems. What myth does is appropriate a first-order sign and use it as a platform for its own signifier which, in turn, will have its own signified, thus forming a new sign. Recurrent images used to describe this process pertain to theft, colonization, violent appropriation and to parasitism:

... le mythe est ... un langage qui ne veut pas mourir: il arrache aux sens dont il s'alimente une survie insidieuse, dÈgradÈe, il provoque en eux un sursis artificiel dans lequel il s'installe ++ l'aise, il en fait des cadavres parlants. (Barthes: 1970 p.219)

His model of second-degree or parasitical sign systems allows for the process of demystification by a process of foregrounding the construction of the sign, of the would-be natural texts of social culture. Myth is to be found at the level of the second-level sign, or at the level of connotation. Barthes makes a distinction between denotation and connotation. Denotation can be described, for the sake of convenience, as the literal meaning. Connotation, on the other hand, is the second-order parasitical meaning. The first-order sign is the realm of denotation; the second-order sign the realm of connotation and, therefore, of myth. To put it crudely then, the important `lesson' of `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' is that objects and events always signify more than themselves, they are always caught up in systems of representation which add meaning to them.

There are a number of very useful web sites which you might want to click on: Daniel Chandler's Semiotics for Beginners is a good place to start and there is also a Media and Communications Studies Site with links to other web sites of relevant interest.

Works by Barthes Cited

Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, 1970)

Roland Barthes, `RÈponses' in Tel Quel, 47 (1971) 89-107

Roland Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte (Paris: Seuil, 1973)

Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes (Paris: Seuil, 1975)

Roland Barthes, Le Grain de la voix: Entretiens 1962-1980 (Paris: Seuil, 1981)

Roland Barthes, Le Bruissement de la langue (Paris: Seuil, 1984)

E. T. Bannet, Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent: Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan (London: Macmillan, 1989)

A. Brown, Roland Barthes: The Figures of Writing (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)

J-L. Calvet, Roland Barthes: un regard politique sur le signe (Paris: Payot, 1973)

J. Culler, Roland Barthes (London: Fontana, 1983)

A. de la Croix, Barthes: pour une Èthique des signes (Brussels: Prisme, 1987)

J.B. Fages, Comprendre Roland Barthes (Paris: Privat, 1979)

A. Lavers, Roland Barthes: Structuralism and After (London: MacMillan, 1982)

A. Leak, Roland Barthes: Mythologies (London: Grant & Cutler, 1994)

M. Moriarty, Roland Barthes (Oxford: Polity, 1991)

S. Nordhal Lund, L'Aventure du signifiant: une lecture de Barthes (Paris: PUF, 1981)

P. Roger, Roland Barthes, roman (Paris: Grasset, 1986)

R. Rylance, Roland Barthes (Brighton: Harvester, 1994)

J. Sturrock (ed.), Structuralism and Since: From LÈvi-Strauss to Derrida (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)

P. Thody, Roland Barthes: A Conservative Estimate (London: MacMillan, 1984) 2nd ed.

S. Ungar, Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire (Lincoln, Nebraska: 1983)

G. Wasserman, Roland Barthes (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981)

M. Wiseman, The Ecstacies of Roland Barthes (London: Routledge, 1989)

Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction: critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Minuit, 1979)

T. Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991)

A. Easthope, Literary into Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1991)

J. Forbes & M. Kelly (eds), French Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)

Stuart Hall, `The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities' in October, 53 (1990) p.11-23

T. Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (London: Methuen, 1977)

C. Jenks, Culture (London: Routledge, 1993)

Brian Rigby, Popular Culture in France: A Study of Cultural Discourse (London: Routledge, 1991)

K. Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (London & Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995)

F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique gÈnÈrale (Paris: Payot, 1949)

John Storey, An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993)

Página creada y actualizada por grupo "mmm".
     Para cualquier cambio, sugerencia,etc. contactar con: fores@uv.es
     © a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
      Universitat de València Press
Creada: 15/09/2000 Última Actualización: 15/06/2001