Roland barthes: myth On The right COM 470-1 Arianna Bussoletti

Roland Barthes School of Structuralism, Semiotics, Post-structuralism Degree in classical letters and in grammar and philology at the University of Paris Studies lexicology and sociology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Writes bi-monthly essays for Les Lettres Nouvelles, later collected in Mythologies Will to expose how bourgeois society asserted its values through specific cultural materials Expansion of Sasussure’s theories: meanings develop beyond linguistics and become myths Roland Barthes (Cherbourg, 1915 – Paris, 1980)

Myth A myth is a set of stratified singular meanings which sum means something different and new. Myth is a semiological system Myth is a second order semiological chain: a sign in the first system becomes a signifier in the second, which we refer to as signification The reader of myths thinks that signifier and signified have a natural relationship, not a constructed one  myth gives natural signification to intention (pseudo-physis is created) The process is identified with that of bourgeois ideology Sound + Meaning = Ring  Ring + Meaning = Engagement Ring = Signification = Myth

Myth on the right Myth gives natural justification to contingency and history  things seems to mean something by themselves Myth hides historical intention so it is depoliticized speech Only speech to act upon the world is non-mythical language political language is operational myth is a meta-language The right is traditionally conservative and myth wants to preserve through deformation  myth is on the right There are rhetorical forms of bourgeois myth according to which the signifiers’ forms attach themselves and that help the signifier to adapt to different contexts Pseudo-physis (naturalized historicity) of the bourgeois world is created

inoculation Admitting the accidental evil of bourgeois to conceal its principal evil small inoculation of acknowledged evil against risking a generalized subversion Operation Margarine: “A little ‘confessed’ evil saves one from acknowledging a lot of hidden evil.” Margarine’s evil is smaller than its good, even though the evil of bourgeois, the society that created margarine, is greater than margarine’s good

Privation of history Myth gives naturalization to history. History as an explanation evaporates and we are left with a reality that, if not historically bounded and determined, must be a result of a natural order and eternity  nothing is produced, nothing is chosen. Man is not responsible for anything

identification Bourgeois people ae unable of imagining the Other. They either ignore him or transform themselves into him. For instance, in trials, bourgeois relates to a deviant individual as a version of the self which has gone astray. The actual person, their motives, and meanings are written out  otherness is reduced to sameness because the only way to judge is to do so with a like against like measure

tautology “Theater is Theater.” We don’t need any explanation, like a parent who is tired of a child’s “why” and responds with a “because”. Tautology testifies to a distrust of language, which it deems failing  any refusal of language (system of meaning) is a death, so tautology creates a dead world

Neither-norism Stating two opposites and balancing them, reducing them to analogues, weighing them and finally discarding them both (“I want neither this nor that”) because choosing is embarrassing. This kind of equilibrium immobilizes values and makes them meaningless  you no longer need to choose, only to endorse

Quantification of quality Reducing quality to quantity to economize intelligence  bourgeois theater is presented as a form of artistry that can’t be reduced to scientific explanations. However, its effects are quantified: the luxuriousness of the seats, the price of the tickets, the tears of an actor to which the price of the tickets is owed…

Statement of fact Myths tend towards proverbs, which reflect universalism and the assumption that the hierarchy of the world is natural and inalterable  bourgeois proverbs are aphorisms and metaphors funded on common sense and belong to the realm of metalanguage

MYTH AS A LIMITATION “Every day and everywhere, man is stopped by myths, referred by them to this motionless prototype which lives in his place, stifles him in the manner of a huge internal parasite and assigns to his activity the narrow limits within which he is allowed to suffer without upsetting the world: bourgeois pseudo-physics is in the fullest sense a prohibition for man against inventing himself” The final purpose of myth is to immobilize the world The bourgeois’ pseudo-physis sets limits, roles and boundaries for men to live within and all the explanations they need. There is no need to transform anything

The mythologist Man in a bourgeois society lives into the pseudo-physis, the mythologist must acknowledge his alienation  political act The mythologist must express himself through a metalanguage because he doesn’t act anything  paradox of talking about things (metalanguage) to unveil how things really are (objective language) The mythologist cuts himself off from all mythical consumers, which could also be the entire community  estrangement, only sarcasm is left to him

ENDING NOTES Synthesis between ideology (the realm of ideas and metalanguage) and poetry (the search for the inalienable meaning of things) is advocated The signifier is not empty (≠ language) but has two aspects (form + meaning). Full signifiers can be distorted because they mean something by themselves Myth is value, not truth, so there is no factual reality to tell you where myth really lies and what is truly real. You either look at what lies beneath (nature, form) or at the meaning (metalanguage, pseudo-physis) Myth is a perpetual alibi at the same time ‘here’ and ‘there’: myth’s meaning comes from both the signifier’s form and meaning Reconciliation is impossible

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