Myth Today

Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
Cherbourg (Normandy)-Paris,
France (1915-1980)
Literary Criticism.
Death of the Author.
Structuralism/Post-structuralism.
Lived with his mother until her death.
Run over by a laundry van.
1957.

Two parts: Mythologies
and Myth Today.

Mythologies: Originally
published as bi-monthly
essays for the magazine
Les Lettres Nouvelle.
What is myth?
Myth is a type of speech.
Myth is form.
Everything can become a myth.
There are no eternal myths.
Myth is not defined by its material, but its
material presupposes signifying.
The material of Myth
Any significant unit, whether verbal or visual.
Incan quipu

Saussures Wonderful and Lovely
Semiological System
Barthes Diagram
Second Order System
Signified
Signifier
Sign
Meaning
Concept
Signifier
First Level (Language) Second Level (Metalanguage)
Signified
Form
Signification
Concept
Meaning: A
young black man
in French
uniform.

Form: French
imperialism.
Metalanguage
Form (signifier):
Is empty of value.

It distances itself from
meaning.

(A signified can have
several signifiers)
[Mythical] Concept
(signified):
Determined, historical
and intentional.
It is a certain knowledge
of reality.
Neologisms are
inevitable.
Signification
The signification is the myth.

It is a relation of deformation.

The concept deforms, but does not abolish the
meaning.

Motivation of Signification
The mythical signification is never arbitrary.

Motivation is not natural (it is historical).

Myth is a pure ideographic system.
Reading and deciphering myth
1. Focus on an empty signifier (simple system: the black
man is a symbol of French imperiality).

2. Focus on a full signifier (distortion of the mythologist: the
black man is an alibi of French imperiality).

3. Focus on the mythical signifier (ambiguous signification:
the black man is the very presence of French imperiality).
Naturalization
Myth transforms history into nature.

driven to having either to unveil or to
liquidate the concept, it will naturalize
it.
Naturalization
A myth is imperfectible and unquestionable.

In the mythical system, causality is artificial, but
it is experienced as innocent speech (its
intentions are naturalized).
Myth as stolen language
Myth is a language robbery (it transforms
meaning into form).

Mathematical language: ultra-signification.
Poetic language: infra-signification.
The Bourgeoisie
Synchronic study of contemporary myths (our
society is the privileged field of mythical
significations).
The bourgeoisie is the class which does not
want to be named.
The further the bourgeois class propagates its
representations, the more naturalized they
become.
Myth is depoliticized speech
Myth transforms anty-physis (the unnatural)
into pseudo-physis (the seemingly natural)
Things lose the memory that they once were
made.

Myth does not deny things, its function is to talk
about them.
Myth is depoliticized speech
There are strong and weak myths.

The relationship with myth is not based on
truth, but on use.
Revolutionary Myth
When a man speaks to transform reality,
metalanguage becomes language-object and
myth is impossible.

Revolution announces itself and therefore
abolishes myth.
Myth, left and right
Left

When revolution becomes
left, it adapts a mask and
generates myth.
It is only an incidental myth.
(The oppressed has only
one language).
Right

The oppressor has a rich
language which aims at
masking and conserving the
world.
The Mythologist
The mythologists is alienated from myth
consumers.

The mythologist lives in a theoretical sociality.

The mythologist is condemned to
metalanguage (ideologism)
This is what we must seek: a reconciliation
between reality and men, between description
and explanation, between object and
knowledge.