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The beginning of this reflection was most often a feeling of impatience regarding the “natural” in which art, the press, and common sense unceasingly dress up a reality that, for all that we live in it, is nevertheless part of history. In a word, it made me suffer to see Nature and History confounded in our everyday discourse. I wanted to get a grasp of the ideological abuse that is, in my view, hidden in the decorative exposition of what-can-be-taken-for-granted.

Barthes, Mythologies

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“Myth” - Roland Barthes

• Summary of the Lecture:– Semiotics: Language and “Myth”– Class and Culture– Closure, Naturalization, Exnomination

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Semiotics: Language and “Myth” (Barthes)

• Roland Barthes (1915-1980)

• Semiotics (Semiology)

• Double Articulation

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Semiotics (Semiology)The study of signification

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Double Articulation(Barthes)

LANGUAGE

MYTH

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“Myth” - Roland Barthes

• Summary:– Semiotics: Language and “Myth”– Class and Culture– Closure, Naturalization, Exnomination

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Class and Culture

• Medieval estates and cultures

• Modern classes

• Petty-bourgeois culture

• The Death of Working-Class Culture?

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Medieval estates and cultures

• Courtly culture

• Burgher culture

• Peasant culture = main locus of folklore

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• The bourgeoisie– true or haute bourgeoisie= main locus of “high”

culture– petty (petite) bourgeoisie= main locus of the

“middle-brow” part of popular culture• relatively socially insecure, desirous of “respectability”

• The working class (proletariat) – main locus of a disappearing working-class culture

• The Lumpenproletariat (“bum proletariat”)

Modern classes

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Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois

• bourgeois culture (high culture - critical, restrained, cynical)

• petty-bourgeois culture (complacent, feel-good, has values, “normal”)– the marginalization of the working class after

World War II

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Petty-bourgeois culture

• Became dominant as the middle classes expanded, especially after World War II

• It is the “naturalized” culture that Barthes attacks

• According to Barthes it makes bourgeois domination possible by making alternatives unthinkable

• It is part of popular culture (more specifically: “middle-brow culture”)

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The demise of the working class and its culture

• working-class culture (oppositional, ribald, carnivalesque)

• Barthes: petty-bourgeois culture imposed on the working class:

• embourgeoisement

• makes working-class resistance to capitalism difficult

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• “Main-stream” popular culture = petty-bourgeois culture– Sit-coms– Martha Stewart

Petty-bourgeois culture today

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“Myth” - Roland Barthes

• Summary:– Semiotics: Language and “Myth”– Class and Culture– Closure, Naturalization, Exnomination

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Closure, Naturalization, Exnomination (Barthes)

• Petty-Bourgeois Myth as Mystification

• History (Culture) Mystified as Nature

• The Bourgeoisie Exnominated

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Barthes, Elements of Semiology

• ”… my denunciation of the self-proclaimed petit-bourgeois myths... semiology -- the close analysis of the process of meaning by which the bourgeoisie converts its historical class-culture into a universal nature.”

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Example of a

Myth: Einstein’s

Brain• Simple (all

knowledge reduced to a formula)

• Infinite (the formula is the secret of all knowledge)