Barthes - Mythologies

 Roland Barthes

1.      Mythologies

a.     Poujadism: “Look at me: I’m like you.”

                                               i.     Discussion on photography of political candidates. 

1.     Photography projects a manner or attitude of a politician.

2.     Replaces the real political problems with the presentation of the politician.

3.     Photography of political candidates becomes an anti-intellectual.

4.     Plans are not transmitted, but the candidates life, which, is a likeness to the voter, but exalted.

5.     The likenesses convey and support and ideology of life.

                                             ii.     The photograph can be morphed to signify whatever the candidate wants t project.

2.     “The Death of the Author.”

a.     Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin.

b.     Literature tends to be focused on the author.

                                               i.     Criticism is that of the man whether success or failure.

                                             ii.     Explanations of the work are sought in the person who produced it.

c.     Once something is narrated as fact, it loses meaning except for the fact.

d.     Once something is narrated, the origin of the idea is lost.

e.     Writing solidifies discourse and the author is lost.

f.      Language substitutes the author.

g.     Linguistically, the author is ever more than the instance writing.

h.     The author is believed in as before or after.

                                               i.     The author nourishes, or feeds the book, from his life experiences.

                                             ii.     The author is thought of as the before the book. 

i.      A line of words does not have singular meaning in reference to the rest of the text.

                                               i.     It is “multi-dimensional” with multiple interpretations from other texts and experiences of the reader.

                                             ii.     The writer can only copy a gesture, it cannot come up with anything original on its own.

                                            iii.     Life never does more than imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred.

j.      A text is made of multiple writings, drawn from any cultures and entering into mutual relations, parody and contestation.  

                                               i.     The author is focused on these things, the reader is not.

3.     “From Work to Text”

a.     Change is occurring to our conception of language through interdisciplinarity that is fusing linguistics, anthropology, Marxism and psychoanalysis. 

b.     The new idea is object is the Text.

c.     Barthes principal propositions based on method, genres, signs, plurality, filiation, reading and pleasure.

                                               i.     Text are not physical things or objects.

1.     A work is an object.  It can be seen.

2.     Text isn’t physical.  It is held in language and the rules of language. 

3.     Text is experienced only in an activity of production.  Text is experienced by the reader.

                                             ii.     Text cannot be classified by genres. 

1.     Texts posing problems of classification are the result of the limitations of experience.   Another reference to the reader.

                                            iii.     The text can be approached in reaction to the sign.

1.     Two modes of signification:

a.     A claim – to a truth – to science.

b.     A secret – to be sought out – to “hermeneutics,” or interpretation.

2.     The work itself is the sign.

a.     The text is the signifier and signified and open to “infinite” interpretations. 

b.     Text is symbolic in nature.

c.     Text is like language as it is structured, but it is also off centered like language.

                                            iv.     The text is plural.

1.     This does not mean multiple meanings.

2.     This means a flood of meanings from codes referencing light, color, temperature, smell, taste, and all of their combinations. 

                                             v.     The work is caught up in process of filiation.

1.     Filiation: A line of descent.  A derivative of a parent or source.

2.     Suggests conformity of the author and their stated intent.

3.     The text is separated from the parent and interpreted separate from the parent.

                                            vi.     The work is normally the object of a consumption.

1.     The quality of a book differentiates a book as ‘cultured’ reading and casual reading are structurally the same.

2.     The text reveals the content through consumptive intent.  How the reader reads the text determines what information is revealed.

3.     The distance between reading and writing must be diminished to best join the reader and the text.

4.     Schools today tend to teach reading well, but not writing conscientiously.

a.     Students are taught expression which is like replacing a repression with a misconception.

b.     It is similar to the person who listens to music but does not know how to play the instruments.

c.     Reducing reading to consumption is the reason for boredom.  The reader is unable to decant the contents.

                                          vii.     The final approach to texts is that of pleasure.

1.     Pleasure is also derived from consumption.

d.     This is not intended to be a theory of texts.

e.     A theory of text can coincide only with a theory of writing.

                                      Works Cited

Barthes, Roland.  “The Death of the Author.”  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 1322-1326. Print.

---.  ‘From Work to Text.”  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 1326-1331. Print.

---.  Mythologies.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 1366-1322. Print.