Mythologies"[Mythologies] illustrates the beautiful generosity of Barthes's progressive interest in the meaning (his word is signification) of practically everything around him, not only the books and paintings of high art, but also the slogans, trivia, toys, food, and popular rituals (cruises, striptease, eating, wrestling matches) of contemporary life ... For Barthes, words and objects have in common the organized capacity to say something; at the same time, since they are signs, words and objects have the bad faith always to appear natural to their consumer, as if what they say is eternal, true, necessary, instead of arbitrary, made, contingent. Mythologies finds Barthes revealing the fashioned systems of ideas that make it possible, for example, for 'Einstein's brain' to stand for, be the myth of, 'a genius so lacking in magic that one speaks about his thought as a functional labor analogous to the mechanical making of sausages.' Each of the little essays in this book wrenches a definition out of a common but constructed object, making the object speak its hidden, but ever-so-present, reservoir of manufactured sense."--Edward W. SaidThe distinguished literary critic and leading exponent of semiology, the science of signs and symbols, seeks to create a mythology of daily life. |
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Page 35
... Culture is allowed on condition that it periodically proclaims the vanity of its ends and the limits of its power ( see also on this subject the ideas of Mr Graham Greene on psychologists and psychiatrists ) ; ideally , culture should ...
... Culture is allowed on condition that it periodically proclaims the vanity of its ends and the limits of its power ( see also on this subject the ideas of Mr Graham Greene on psychologists and psychiatrists ) ; ideally , culture should ...
Page 81
... culture will be opposed to ideologies . Culture is a noble , universal thing , placed outside social choices : culture has no weight . Ideologies , on the other hand , are partisan inventions : so , onto the scales , and out with them ...
... culture will be opposed to ideologies . Culture is a noble , universal thing , placed outside social choices : culture has no weight . Ideologies , on the other hand , are partisan inventions : so , onto the scales , and out with them ...
Page 140
... culture to its inventive core : there also is a bourgeois culture which consists of consumption alone . The whole of France is steeped in this anonymous ideology : our press , our films , our theatre , our pulp literature , our rituals ...
... culture to its inventive core : there also is a bourgeois culture which consists of consumption alone . The whole of France is steeped in this anonymous ideology : our press , our films , our theatre , our pulp literature , our rituals ...
Contents
TRANSLATORS NOTE 794 | 7 |
The Romans in Films | 26 |
The Poor and the Proletariat | 39 |
Copyright | |
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Abbé Pierre alibi ambiguity appears Basque become behaviour Blue Guide bourgeois ideology bourgeois myth bourgeoisie Bouvard and Pécuchet character Citroën concept constituted contradiction contrary criticism culture defined depoliticized discourse Dominici Einstein essence essential eternal everything example existence exorcize face fact film formal French imperiality function gestures gives glacé fruit human idea inasmuch innocent instance intellectual intention jet-man judo Jules Verne kind L'Express language language-object Le Figaro linguistic Literature longer magical margarine Marguerite matter meaning metalanguage Minou Drouet Molière morality motivation mythical speech mythologist mythology name is lion nature Negro Neither-Nor never object obvious once one's Paris-Match passion petit-bourgeois photograph plastic political postulates precisely produce proletarian pure reality reblochon representation Roland Barthes salute semiological system signifier social society speak spectacle Stalin steak striptease style substance Tautology term theatre things tion toys transform true understand Verne whole wine woman word wrestler wrestling writer