Introduction
Roland Barthes is a key figure in international intellectual life. He is
one of the most important intellectual figures to have emerged in postwar
France and his writings continue to have an influence on critical debates
today.
When he died in 1981 he left a body of major work but, as many of his
friends and his admirers claimed, with still more important work to come.
I can't possible hope to do justice to the diversity of his various writings
- I can only point you in the direction of Culler (1983), Moriarty (1991)
and Rylance (1994) where you will find good accounts of his career - so
I will plunge straightaway into a discussion of Mythologies which
is one of his earliest and most widely-read works. Mythologies is
one of Barthes's most popular works because in it we see the intellectual
as humourist, satirist, master stylist and debunker of the myths that surround
us all in our daily lives.
What is Mythologies About?
Mythologies is a text which is not one but plural. It contains fifty-four
(only twenty-eight in the Annette Lavers's English translation) short journalistic
articles on a variety of subjects. These texts were written between 1954
and 1956 for the left-wing magazine Les Lettres nouvelles and very
clearly belong to Barthes's `période "journalistique"' (Calvet:
1973 p.37). They all have a brio and a punchy topicality typical of good
journalism. Indeed, the fifty-four texts are best considered as opportunistic
improvisations on relevant and up-to-the-minute issues rather than carefully
considered theoretical essays. Because of their very topicality they provide
the contemporary reader with a panorama of the events and trends that took
place in the France of the 1950's. Although the texts are very much of
and about their times, many still have an unsettling contemporary relevance
to us today.
Although there are a number of articles about political figures, the
majority of the fifty-four texts focus on various manifestations of mass
culture, la culture de masse: films, advertizing, newspapers and
magazines, photographs, cars, children's toys, popular pastimes and the
like. This broke new ground at the time. Barthes showed that it was possible
to read the `trivia' of everyday life as somehow full of all sorts of important
meanings.
Mythologies however, includes not just the fifty-four journalistic
pieces but an important theoretical essay entitled `Le Mythe aujourd'hui'
(Barthes: 1970 pp.193-247). `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' is a retrospectively
imposed theoretical conspectus (an overall view, summary or survey) - an
important theoretical or methodological tract - but in no way central to
an understanding and appreciation of Barthes's other texts. The fact that
it is positioned after the journalistic articles is significant. This expressed
not simply the chronological order in which they were written but also
how Barthes wished us to read the text as a whole. `Le Mythe aujourd'hui'
was not intended to be seen as the theory underpinning the practice
of the fifty-four articles which were far more spontaneous and intuitive.
What `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' does, however, is to make more explicit some
of the concerns that underpin the fifty-four essays. There is, then, a
certain amount of continuity between the two `parts' of Mythologies.
Interrogating the Obvious
... ce qui m'a toujours préoccupé [...] c'est
le problème de la signification des objets culturels. (Barthes:
1981 p.64)
Dans la vie quotidienne, j'éprouve pour tout ce que je vois et
entends une sorte de curiosité, presque d'affectivité intellectuelle
qui est de l'ordre du romanesque. (Barthes: 1981 p.192)
Barthes often claimed to be fascinated by the meanings of the things that
surround us in our everyday lives. If there is a certain amount of thematic
continuity between the two `parts' of Mythologies then it is here,
in their shared interrogation of the meanings of the cultural artefacts
and practices that surround us. Barthes often claimed that he wanted to
challenge the `innocence' and `naturalness' of cultural texts and practices
which were capable of producing all sorts of supplementary meanings - or
connotations to use Barthes's preferred term - or, rather, of having these
meanings read into them. Although objects, gestures and practices have
a certain utilitarian function, they are not resistant to the imposition
of meaning. There is no such thing, to take but one example, as a car which
is a purely functional object devoid of connotations and resistant to the
imposition of meaning. A BMW and a Citroën 2CV share the same functional
utility, they do essentially the same job but connote different things
about their owners: thrusting, upwardly-mobile executive versus ecologically
sound, right-on trendy. We can speak of cars then, as signs expressive
of a number of connotations. It is these sorts of secondary meanings or
connotations that Barthes is interested in uncovering in Mythologies.
Barthes wants to stop taking things for granted, wants to bracket or suspend
consideration of their function, and concentrate rather on what they mean
and how they function as signs. In many respects what Barthes is doing
is interrogating the obvious, taking a closer look at that which gets taken
for granted, making explicit what remains implicit.
A simple example of Barthes getting under the surface of things is the
essay `Iconographie de l'abbé Pierre' (Barthes: 1970 pp.54-6). The
abbé Pierre was a Catholic priest who achieved a certain amount
of media attention in the 1950's (and in the 1980's and 1990's too) for
his work with the homeless in Paris. What interests Barthes is, perversely,
the abbé Pierre's clothes and, in particular, his haircut. We would
expect such a man to be indifferent to fashion and to consider a certain
neutrality or `état zéro' (Barthes: 1970 p.54) to be desirable.
However, far from being neutral or innocent, the abbé Pierre's clothes
and hairstyle send out all sorts of messages. The abbé Pierre's
simple working-class `canadienne' and austere hairstyle all connote the
qualities of simplicity, religious devotion and self-sacrifice. His clothes
and hairstyle make a fashion statement of sorts - as much, if not more,
than a Lacoste polo shirt or an Armani suit - and are rich in connotations:
... la neutralité finit par fonctionner comme signe
de la neutralité, ... La coupe zéro, elle affiche tout simplement
le franciscanisme; conçue d'abord négativement pour ne pas
contrairier l'apparence de la sainteté, bien vite elle passe à
un mode superlatif de signification, elle déguise l'abbé
en saint François. (Barthes: 1970 p.54)
Barthes is not claiming that the abbé Pierre cynically manipulated
his public image but is making the point, rather, that nothing can be exempted
from meaning (see Barthes: 1975 p.90). Every single object or gesture is
susceptible to the imposition of meaning, nothing is resistant to this
process. This is especially the case when, like the abbé Pierre,
one is subjected to the attention of the media. Barthes takes his argument
further however. The media's stress on the abbé Pierre's devotion
and good works - symbolized by his haircut! - diverts attention from any
form of investigation of the causes of homelessness and poverty. Media
representations of the abbé Pierre, claims Barthes, sanctify charity
and mask out all references to the socio-economic causes of homelessless
and urban poverty. What emerges in `Iconographie de l'abbé Pierre'
is a strategy that is repeated throughout Mythologies: Barthes begins
by making explicit the meanings of apparently neutral objects and then
moves on to consider the social and historical conditions they obscure.
Mass Culture, Myth and the Mythologist
Le départ de cette réflexion était le
plus souvent un sentiment d'impatience devant le `naturel' dont la presse,
l'art, le sens commun affublent sans cesse une réalité qui,
pour être celle dans laquelle nous vivons, n'en est pas moins parfaitement
historique: en un mot, je souffrais de voir à tout moment confondues
dans le récit de notre actualité, Nature et Histoire,
et je voulais ressaisir dans l'exposition décorative de ce-qui-va-de-soi,
l'abus idéologique qui, à mon sens, s'y trouve caché.
(Barthes: 1957 p.9)
Ce que je n'aime pas dans l'Occident, c'est qu'il fabrique des signes
et les refuse en même temps. [...] de quel droit parlerais-je au
nom de la vérité? Mais à battre en brèche inlassablement
la naturalité du signe; ça oui! (Barthes: 1981 p.95)
Mythologies is, superficially at least, a rather puzzling title
for a book concerned with the meanings of the signs that surround us in
our everyday lives. A myth, after all, is a story about superhuman beings
of an earlier age, of ancient Eygpt, Greece or Rome. But the word `myth'
can also mean a ficticious, unproven or illusory thing. This is closer
to the sense that Barthes explores in Mythologies. Barthes is concerned
to analyse the `myths' circulating in contemporary western society, the
false representations and erroneous beliefs current in the France of the
postwar period. Mythologies is a work about the myths that circulate
in everyday life which construct a world for us and our place in it:
La France tout entière baigne sans cette idéologie
anonyme: notre presse, notre cinéma, notre théâtre,
notre littérature de grand usage, nos cérémoniaux,
notre Justice, notre diplomatie, nos conversations, le temps qu'il fait,
le crime que l'on juge, le mariage auquel on s'émeut, la cuisine
que l'on rêve, le vêtement que l'on porte, tout, dans notre
vie quotidienne, est tributaire de la représentation que la bourgeoisie
se fait et nous fait des rapports de l'homme et du monde. (Barthes:
1970 p.227)
What joins the journalistic articles and the theoretical essay is the conviction
that what we accept as being `natural' is in fact an illusory reality constructed
in order to mask the real structures of power obtaining in society. Mythologies
- both the journalistic articles and the theoretical essay - is a study
of the ways in which mass culture - a mass culture which Barthes sees as
controlled by la petite bourgeoisie constructs this mythological
reality and encourages conformity to its own values. This position informs
the various texts that make up Mythologies.
We inhabit a world, then, of signs which support existing power structures
and which purport to be natural. The role of the mythologist, as Barthes
sees it, is to expose these signs as the artificial constructs that they,
to reveal their workings and show that what appears to be natural is, in
fact, determined by history. This is certainly how Barthes saw the role
of the criticism in general in the autobiographical Roland Barthes par
Roland Barthes and its relevance to Mythologies is clear:
... l'opération critique consiste à déchiffrer
l'embarras des raisons, des alibis, des apparences, bref tout le naturel
social, pour rendre manifeste l'échange réglé sur
quoi reposent la marche sémantique et la vie collective. (Barthes:
1975 p.63)
Myth and Ideology
Le propre des Mythologies n'est pas politique mais idéologique.
Le propre des Mythologies, c'est de prendre systématiquement
en bloc une sorte de monstre que j'ai appelé la `petite-bourgeoisie'
(quitte à en faire un mythe) et de taper inlassablement sur ce bloc;
la méthode est peu scientifique et n'y prétendait pas; c'est
pourquoi l'ouverture méthodologique n'est venue qu'ensuite, par
la lecture de Saussure; la théorie des Mythologies est l'objet
d'une postface (Barthes: 1971 p.96)
Il ne sortait pas de cette idée sombre, que la vraie violence,
c'est celle du cela-va-de-soi (Barthes: 1975 p.88)
... on peut attaquer le monde et l'alienation idéologique de
notre monde quotidien, à bien des niveaux: Système de
la mode contient aussi une affirmation éthique sur le monde,
la même d'ailleurs que dans des Mythologies, à savoir
qu' il y a un mal, un mal social, idéologique, attaché aux
systèmes de signes qui ne s'avouent pas franchement comme systèmes
de signes. Au lieu de reconnaître que la culture est un système
immotivé de significations, la société bourgeoise
donne toujours des signes comme justifiés par la nature ou la raison.
(Barthes: 1981 p.67)
It is possible to argue that `myth', as Barthes uses it in Mythologies,
functions as a synonym of `ideology' (for a more detailed discussion of
this complex issue see Brown: 1994 pp.24-38). As a theoretical construct
`ideology' is notoriously hard to define. However, one of the most pervasive
definitions of the term holds that it refers to the body of beliefs and
representations that sustain and legitimate current power relationships.
Ideology promotes the values and interests of dominant groups within society.
I quite like the explanation Terry Eagleton comes up with in his book Ideology:
An Introduction:
A dominant power may legitimate itself by promoting
beliefs and values congenial to it; naturalizing and universalizing
such beliefs so as to render them self-evident and apparently inevitable;
denigrating ideas which might challenge it; excluding rival
forms of thought, perhaps by some unspoken but systematic logic; and obscuring
social reality in ways convenient to itself. Such `mystification', as it
is commonly known, frequently takes the form of masking or suppressing
social conflicts, from which arises the conception of ideology as an imaginary
resolution of real contradictions. (Eagleton: 1991 pp.5-6)
This particular definition of the workings of ideology is particularly
relevant to Mythologies. Common to both Eagleton's definition of
ideology and Barthes's understanding of myth is the notion of a socially
constructed reality which is passed of as `natural'. The opinions and values
of a historically and socially specific class are held up as `universal
truths'. Attempts to challenge this naturalization and universalization
of a socially constructed reality (what Barthes calls le cela-va-de-soi)
are dismissed for lacking `bon sens' and therefore excluded from serious
consideration. The real power relations in society (between classes, between
coloniser and colonised, between men and women etc.) are obscured, reference
to all tensions and difficulties blocked out, glossed over, their political
threat defused.
Let me try to clarify these points with an example from Mythologies.
In `Le vin et le lait' (Barthes: 1970 pp.74-77) Barthes explores the significance
of wine to the French. Wine is clearly an important symbolic substance
to the French expressive of conviviality, of virility and, more importantly,
of national identity. Nothing could be more expressive of an `essential
Frenchness' than a ballon de rouge. The uproar caused at the beginning
of Monsieur Coty's presidential term of office by being photographed at
home next to a bottle of beer rather than the obligatory bottle of red
captures this perfectly. Barthes unsettles the mythological associations
of wine by making explicit wine's real status as just another commodity
produced for profit. He draws attention to wine-makers' exploitation of
the Third World, citing Algeria as an example of a poor Muslim country
forced to use its land for the cultivation of a product - `le produit d'une
expropriation (Barthes: 1970 p.77) - which they are forbidden to drink
on religious grounds and which could be better used for cultivating food
crops. Barthes makes explicit the connections between wine and the socio-economics
of its production. And this is an integral part of his aim as a mythologist:
he must expose the artificiality of those signs which disguise their historical
and social origins.
Mythologies: A Postwar Text
Roland Barthes's Mythologies is concerned with a number of important
postwar issues. These issues are both specifically French - peculiar to
France of a particular historical period - and applicable to postwar developments
in other European countries. These issues include:
[France's Imperial Crises] [The
Sexual Politics of the Domestic] [Changing
Patterns of Cultural Consumption] [Technocratic
Icons of Modernization] [Institutional Inertia]
France's Imperial Crises
Le mythe ne nie pas les choses, sa fonction est au contraire
d'en parler; simplement, il les purifie, les innocente, les fonde en nature
et en éternité, il leur donne une clarté qui n'est
pas celle de l'explication, mais celle du constat ... (Barthes: 1970 p.230)
The period immediately following the Second World War were the years of
decolonisation in which the former colonial powers were divested of their
former territories. France, as the main imperial power after Great Britain,
was inevitably deeply embroiled in these processes (mainly in Indochina
and North Africa). France, at the time Barthes was writing Mythologies,
was in the midst of a bloody and bitter colonial war: la guerre d'Algérie.
Barthes's Mythologies is a book which responds to decolonisation
and is all about Frenchness and French identity. There are references,
for example, to right-wing politicians who whipped up racist feelings like
Poujade and Le Pen in such articles as `Quelques paroles de M. Poujade'
(Barthes: 1970 p.85-7) and `Poujade et les intellectuels' (Barthes: 1970
p.182-90). `Bichon chez les nègres' (Barthes: 1970 p.64-67) is another
important text about racism.
One of the most approchable essays on France's colonial struggles -
with more than a few contemporary resonances today - is `Grammaire africaine'
(Barthes: 1970 p.137-144). As the title suggests `Grammaire africaine'
is an article about language, more specifically, about the language used
in certain right-wing newspapers and magazines to describe, assess and
analyse the conflict taking place in Algeria. What Barthes claimed to find
every time he read a newspaper or magazine article on Algeria, was a carefully
structured and codified way of talking and writing about Franco-Algerian
relations with its own covert presuppositions and interests. Myth - which
Barthes described as `une parole dépolitisée' (Barthes: 1970
p.230) - is at work here and in `Grammaire africaine' Barthes seeks to
expose it by insisting on the social and historical `situatedness' of the
language used. What `Grammaire africaine' is really about is the way in
which a certain imperialist political agenda is smuggled into the reporting
of foreign affairs. Barthes exposes the ideologically loaded nature of
the terminology used to describe France's major imperial conflict, identifing
the key mendacious signifiers whose primary function is to conceal the
realities of the Algerian war.
Those who seek independance from French rule, for example, are variously
described as `une bande' or as `hors-la-loi' and their demands are therefore
considered illegitimate. Such terms are never used for the colons,
the French settlers who are invariably described as a `communauté'.
The presence of this `communauté' is justified by the unique `mission'
France is obliged to carry out in the region. The so-called `destin' of
Algeria is with French colonizers rather than as an independant nation.
In contradiction to the reality of the collapse of France's empire, this
`destin' is claimed to be fixed and immutable. The word `guerre' is never
used - Algeria was the quintessential guerre sans nom, the undeclared
war - only terms like `paix' and `pacification'. More often than not however,
terms like `déchirement' which suggest a natural - and therefore
not man-made - disaster are used to designate the situation in Algeria.
The whole tone of much of French journalism's reporting of Algeria is
marked by an attempt to drown out or disguise the true violence of the
war. Language here is not an instrument of communication but of intimidation
which seeks to pass off a specific version of events (i.e. the French state's)
as the sole valid interpretation and to marginalize those versions which
contradict it:
Le vocabulaire officiel des affaires africaines est, on s'en
doute, purement axiomatique. C'est dire qu'il n'a aucune valeur de communication,
mais seulement d'intimidation. Il constitue donc une écriture,
c'est-à-dire un langage chargé d'opérer une coïncidence
entre les normes et les faits, et de donner à un réel cynique
la caution d'une morale noble. D'une manière générale,
c'est un langage qui fonctionne essentiellement comme un code, c'est-à-dire
que les mots y ont un rapport nul ou contraire à leur contenu. C'est
une écriture que l'on pourrait appeler cosmétique parce qu'elle
vise à recouvrir les faits d'un bruit de langage ... (Barthes: 1970
p.137).
Another important article of relevance to Barthes's critique of French
journalism's (mis)representation of politics in Algeria is `La Critique
Ni-Ni' (Barthes: 1970 p.144-46). It neatly takes apart those journalists
who have perfected the art of taking sides whilst appearing to be neutral
and merely expressing the voice of common sense. Common sense, suggests
Barthes, deeply ideological. Rather than expressing natural, self-evident
truths, it expresses the world-order and outlook of a historically specific
social class. In his later writings Barthes replaces the term `bon sens'
or `sens commun' with the term doxa which he uses to designate those
ideas and values that claim their origins in common sense:
La Doxa (mot qui va revenir souvent), c'est l'Opinion
publique, l'Esprit majoritaire, le Consensus petit-bourgeois, la Voix du
Naturel, la Violence du Préjugé ... (Barthes: 1975 p.51)
The Sexual Politics of the Domestic
The sexual politics of the domestic sphere (images of femininity, the role
of women etc.) is another of the issues tackled by Barthes. The immediate
postwar years throughout the western world were those of a retour au
foyer, a reaffirmation of traditional gender roles. Although the situation
of French women during the war was different to that of their English or
American sisters in that, in general, French women did not enter the workforce
occupying posts once held by men, their experience after the war was very
much the same: an overt and covert attempt to push women back into the
confines of the home and the roles of mother and housewife. After the liberation,
French legislation targeting women was firmly based on women's role as
mamans de France. As such, it continued the Pétainist family
policy and efforts to increase the birth rate. Quite apart from the specific
legislation favouring women's retour au foyer (e.g. les allocations
familiales) there was the ideological pressure coming from the church,
the politicians and, above all, from the media.
It is interesting to note that one of the important development in the
postwar years was the growing popualrity of weekly and monthly magazines,
particularly those aimed at a predominantly female readership like Elle
(founded in 1945), Marie-France, Marie-Claire and Femmes
d'aujourd'hui. It was publications like these that interested and irritated
Barthes (see Barthes: 1981 pp.96-97). He even went so far as to describe
Elle as a `véritable trésor mythologique' (Barthes:
1970 p.128). The essay `Conjugales' (Barthes: 1957 p.47-50) is particularly
interesting here. Barthes writes of the fascination of the popular press
for marriages and the ways in which this legitimates a particular social
organisation
L'union de Syviane Carpentier, Miss Europe 53 et de son ami
d'enfance, l'électricien Michel Warembourg permet de développer
une image différente, celle de la chaumière heureuse. Grâce
à son titre, Sylviane aurait pu mener la carrière brillante
d'une star, voyager, faire du cinéma, gagner beaucoup d'argent:
sage et modeste, elle a renoncé à "la gloire ephémère"
et, fidèle à son passé, elle a épousé
un électricien de Palaisseau. Les jeunes époux nous sont
ici présentés dans la phase postnuptiale de leur union, en
train d'établir les habitudes de leur bonheur et de s'installer
dans l'anoymat d'un petit confort: on arrange le deux-pièces-cuisine,
on prend le petit déjeuner, on va au cinéma, on fait le marché.[...]
-
L'amour-plus-fort-que-la-gloire relance ici la morale du statu quo social:
il n'est pas sage de sortir de sa condition, il est glorieux d'y rentrer.
(Barthes: 1970 p.48)
The article `Jouets' (Barthes: 1970 pp.58-60), although not explicitly
about the sexual politics of the domestic, is concerned woth the ways in
which toys encourage children to adopt pre-determined gender and class
positions. Children are encouraged to become owners rather than creative
users of toys which appear to be `productive' but which, Barthes claims,
encourage passivity. `Romans et enfants' (Barthes: 1907 p.56-8) is an interesting
essay on gender stereotyping, this time focussing on women writers. Women
writers are seen as acceptable but they must pay a heavy price for their
creativiy by neglecting their `biological destiny'. `Celle qui voit clair'
(Barthes: 1957 p.125-8) is an article on the agony columns in women's magazines.
The advice dispensed in these columns constructs a female condition - women,
unlike men are defined by their close relation to the heart - which it
claims to be eternal. No references are ever made to women's real social
and economic conditions as their realm is the home and the heart. The notion
- or myth - of woman promulgated in le courrier du coeur is that
women have no other role than that defined by men:
... la morale du Courrier ne postule jamais pour la femme d'autre
condition que parasitaire: seul le mariage, en la nommant juridiquement,
la fait exister. On retrouve ici la structure même du gynécée,
défini comme une liberté close sous le regard extérieur
de l'homme. (Barthes: 1970 p.127)
The Changing Culture of the Working Class
For me, cultural studies really begins with the debate about
the nature of social and cultural change in postwar Britain. An attempt
to address the manifest break-up of traditional culture, especially traditional
class cultures, it set about registering the impact of the new forms of
affluence and consumer society on the very hierarchical and pyramidal structure
of British society. Trying to come to terms with the fluidity and the undermining
impact of the mass media and of an emerging mass society on this old European
class society, it registered the long-delayed entry of the United Kingdom
into the modern world. (Hall: 1990 p.12)
The thirty years between libération and the first crise
pétrolière popularly known as les trente glorieuses
were years of unbroken prosperity and consistent economic growth. The changing
cultural conditions of a working-class made more prosperous - and more
petit-bourgeois according to Barthes - due to the higher standards of living
of the postwar period. This, remember, is the era of the so-called `affluent
worker' with more disposable income than ever before. What did this `affluent
worker' buy and what were his/her cultural habits? Essentially, what Barthes
is writing about is the transition from a genuine popular culture deep-rooted
in ordinary working-class people's ways of life to mass culture which Barthes
sees as a petit-bourgeois phenomenon imposed upon a newly affluent working
class. Indeed, one could go further and claim that this is the claim of
the book: the death of an authentic popular culture at the hands of petit-bourgeois
mass culture.
Technocratic Icons
The status of technocratic icons within contemporary society (the Citroën
DS, the Eiffel Tower etc.) is another theme in Barthes's Mythologies.
In the postwar world things become charged with a new value and significance.
As consumer durables become more affordable and more and more people are
able to acquire such articles as cars and washing machines. The power and
presence of advertizing also becomes more noticible. Important essays include
`Saponides et les détergents' (Barthes: 1970 p.38-40), `La nouvelle
Citroën' (Barthes: 1970 p.150-2) and `Publicité et profondeur'
(Barthes: 1970 p.82). The principal aim of these essays is to reveal the
petite-bourgeoisie as self- congratulatory, enamoured of its material benefits
and its so-called technological advances.
In postwar France the car became the very symbol of modernity. This
is reflected in a number of films of the period such as Lola (1960),
La Belle Américaine (1961) and, more catastrophically, Jean-Luc
Godard's Weekend (1967). The automobile industry was central to
France's increasing industrialization with Renault's vast modern factory
at Billancourt as its most visible reminder. This factory, incidentally,
provided the setting for Claire Etcherelli's Élise ou la vraie
vie (1967). In `La nouvelle Citroën' (Barthes: 1970 p.150-2) Barthes
understands this perfectly and analyses the ways ib which the car has become
the very icon of France's modernization. He compares the car to a mediaeval
cathedral: both are works produced by anonymous artists which enchant the
masses.
The are other articles on the importance of advertizing, the `hidden
persuaders' (Vance Packard) which was increasing used in postwar France
to fuel the consumer boom. Jean-Luc Godard in Une femme mariée
(1964), Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1966) and Masculin-féminin
(1966) explores the role of mass-produced images in his films of the 1960's
but Barthes is already there before him. Advertizing creates ultimately
alienating images of a bourgeois savoir-vivre to which everyone
is encouraged to aspire. More than however, advertizing is responsible
for promoting the `myth' of free choice. In `Saponides et détergents'
(Barthes: 1970 pp.38-40) he discusses the different advertising approaches
to Omo and Persil. Their advertising promotes two different products with
two different properties. In reality, these two products are almost the
same and are both manufactured by the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilver.
Institutional Inertia
The atrophy and complacency, mendacity and inertia of French institiutions
(the educational system, the judiciary etc.) was something that preoccupied
the French as much as the English in the postwar period and especially
Barthes. Miscarriages of justice, an educational system that was dogmatic
and out-of- touch with its youth, a complacent and arrogant political class.
In `Dominici ou le triomphe de la littérature' (Barthes: 1970
pp.50-53) Barthes argues that the language used to condemn Gaston Dominici
implies a whole psychology of petit-bourgeois assumptions and linguistic
terrorism. He was a simple peasant accused of killing a family of English
holiday makers and faced with a legal language he did not understand. In
`Le Procès Dupriez' (Barthes: 1970 pp.102-105) Gérard Dupriez,
a man who killed his father and mother without motive is condemned to death
because the law works on a fixed notion of what constitutes the psychology
of human motivation.
The Intellectual and Mass Culture
Many have claimed, and with good reason, that Mythologies is one
of the principal texts of contemporary cultural studies. John Storey has
described it as `one of the founding texts of cultural studies' (Storey:
1992 p.77) and Antony Easthope as one of the two books (the other being
Raymond Williams's Culture and Society) that `initiate modern cultural
studies' (Easthope: 1991 p.140). Barthes is fundamental to contemporary
cultural studies because he was amongst the first to take seriously `mass
culture' and to apply to it methods of analysis formerly the preserve of
`high culture'. What makes Barthes even more interesting was that he did
this at a time of rapid social and economic change when cultural practices
were undergoing major shifts.
Certainly, Barthes's Mythologies is a text that breaks new ground
insofar as it takes as the object of its intellectual inquiry the world
of mass culture: cinema, sport, advertizing, the popular press, women's
magazines as so one. Barthes was one of the earliest commentators on mass
culture, on the modern consumer culture of the postwar era. Barthes expands
the definition of intellectual activity in France. He examines a strikingly
broad range of subjects and cultural artefacts: wrestling, the circus,
shopping, toys, cars, washing powders, food, women's magazines, beauty
competitions, photography, popular fiction.
Roland Barthes's Mythologies is a book which plays around in
the consumer toyshop. It is a text which plunges into the `image trove'
(see Rylance: 1994 pp.63-64) of culture - understood in the most inclusive
way possible - to find new objects of intellectual speculation. Mythologies
takes great relish in its exploration of cultural artefacts and phenomena.
The book enacts a paradox in its imaginative and playful readings of culture
in a heavily mythologized world which should have abolished such imaginative
play.
On one level, what Barthes seems to be doing in Mythologies destabilizing
the boundry between `high culture' and `popular culture'. Barthes accords
popular culture a complexity, a density and richness of texture thought
to be the sole preserve of high culture. One key example of this is wrestling
discussed in the article `Le monde où l'on catche' (Barthes: 1970
pp.13-24). Wrestling is often thought of as the least intellectual pastime
in our culture and is dismissed as vulgar fodder to the uneducated masses.
What Barthes does, in a striking and provocative gesture, is claim that
wrestling and its audience are in fact every bit as sophisticated as high
drama or opera. Wrestling is a modern variant of the classical theatre
or of an ancient religious rite in which the spectacle of suffering and
humiliation is played out. Like these high cultural forms, wrestling is
a formal spectacle informed by fixed codes and conventions and played out
in rigorously formalized gestures and movements. It is every bit as codified,
conventionalized and choreographed as classical tragedy - the dramatic
genre to which Barthes compares wrestling throughout the article. Another
important article which adopts a similar approach is `Au Music-Hall' (Barthes:
1970 pp.176-179) about, as the title suggests music hall. In this article
Barthes invokes the nineteenth-century poet Charles Baudelaire to describe
the formalized beauties of the spectacle.
Although Barthes undertakes a sympathetic appraisal of two cultural
practices that one would certainly not describe as belonging to the the
world of `high culture', these two articles are exceptions. Moreover, both
wrestling and music hall are two manifestations of earlier forms of popular
culture rather than modern mass culture. Barthes can grant them the same
value as high cultural forms because they belong to and spring from a recognisable
tradition. Barthes's analysis of mass culture which forms the basis of
most of the book, on the other hand, is characterized by a certain denunciatory
rhetoric. Barthes sees modern mass culture as controlled by the ethos of
the characterizes the petite-bourgeosie. The working class have lost their
own culture populaire and have bought into a culture - la culture
petit-bourgeoise - which is not their own.
The essays collected in Mythologies express both pessimism and
nostalgia: pessimism at the state of culture in France which, contrary
to what most people think, is threatened by mass culture which seeks to
homogenize and efface difference; nostalgia for a pre-lapsarian state (literally,
before the fall) when the working class had their own vibrant culture,
an authentic culture populaire which proudly asserted its difference
from petit-bourgeois norms. Barthes sees culture as somehow fallen under
the influence of the petty-bourgeoisie. Take these statements made by Barthes
in later interviews and writings:
La populaire? Ici, disparition de toute activité magique
ou poétique: plus de carnaval, on ne joue plus avec les mots: fin
des métaphores, règne des stéréotypes imposés
par la culture petite-bourgeoise. (Barthes: 1973 p.62)
... le prolétariat (les producteurs) n'a aucune culture propre:
dans les pays dits dévelopés, son langage est celui de la
petite-bourgeoisie, parce que c'est le langage qui lui est offert par les
communications de masse (grande presse, radio, télévision):
la culture de masse est petite-bourgeoise (Barthes: 1984 p.110)
L'un des aspects de la crise de la culture, en France, c'est précisément
que les Français, dans leur masse, me semble-t-il, ne s'intéressent
pas à leur langue. Le goût de la langue française a
été entièrement hypothèqué par la scolarité
bourgeoise; s'intéresser à la langue française, à
sa musicalité (...) est devenu par la force des choses une attitude
esthétisante, mandarinale. Et pourtant, il y a eu des moments où
un certain contact était maintenu entre le `peuple' et la langue,
à travers la poésie populaire, la chanson populaire ou la
pression même de la masse pour transformer la langue en dehors des
écoles-musées. On dirait que le contact a disparu; on ne
le perçoit pas aujourd'hui dans la culture `populaire', qui n'est
guère qu'une culture fabriquée (par la radio, la télévision
etc.). (Barthes: 1981 p.177)
Contrary to the accepted opinion of France as the powerhouse of European
culture, Barthes sees France as a deeply philistine country with little
understanding or appreciation of the complexities of intellectual and cultural
life. Mythologies is a very entrenched and self-defensive collection
of texts and may be read as an apology or defence of intellectuals against
the incursion of the barbarity of mass culture. Andrew Leak's description
of the attitude adopted by Barthes in Mythologies as a `posture
of isolation and singularity' (Leak: 1994 p.9) is a good one. Barthes expresses
a self-consciously intellectual contempt for mass-culture. According to
Barthes the intellectual has to retain distance from the mass, must become
what Claude Duneton calls a `rieur' and maintain a sarcastic or ironic
distance from mass culture. This conviction is apparent at the very beginning
of Mythologies:
... je réclame de vivre pleinement la contradiction
de mon temps, qui peut faire d'un sarcasme la condition de la vérité.
(Barthes: 1970 p.10)
Although may may be right in claiming that mass culture is a degraded,
inferior replacement to popular culture - although this is clearly debatable
- he doesn't acknowledge that the consumers of mass culture may well be
able to resist its messages. In short, Barthes produces a patronizing portrait
of the consumer as a passive recipient, a void, an empty vessel waiting
to be filled, to be told what to think and how to act. Indeed, one of the
criticisms that can - and has - been made of the work of `early' Barthes
(i.e. of the 1950's and early 1960's) is that he is too text-oriented and
does not concern himself with how texts are received and consumed. Barthes's
account of a working class uncritically consuming an alien - and alienating
- culture seems to belong to a familar tradition of intellectual contempt
for both that culture and its audience.
To conclude this section then, I would claim that although Barthes goes
some way in in abolishing what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would
later call `la frontière sacrée' (Bourdieu: 1979 p.7) between
`high culture' and `popular culture', granting the latter a complexity
once considered the sole preserve of the former, Mythologies nonetheless
is informed by a certain hierarchy of cultural value. Mass culture is clearly
seen as inferior to both the `high culture' it mimics and the `popular
culture' it replaces. This disdain for, and condemnation of mass culture
runs throughout the book.
Mass Culture and The Intellectual
L'opinion courante n'aime pas le langage des intellectuels.
Aussi a-t-il été souvent fiché sous l'accusation de
jargon intellectualiste. Il se sentait alors l'objet d'une sorte de racisme:
on excluait son langage, c'est-à-dire son corps: «tu ne parles
pas comme moi, donc je t'exclus.» (Barthes: 1975 p.107)
In Mythologies mass culture is seen to have an altogether harmful
effect on French political and cultural life, homogenizing difference and
encouraging uniformity to petit-bourgeois social norms. But this mass culture
is also seen to be hostile to any questionning or intellectual inquiry.
This explains in part the often defensive and entrenched position Barthes
adopts in his discussion of representations of the intellectual within
mass culture. In a piece written for Le Monde in 1974 on the status
of the intellectual in France, Barthes made the claim that:
L'intellectuel est traité comme un sourcier pourrait
l'être par une peuplade de marchands, d'hommes d'affaires et de légistes:
il est celui qui dérange des intérêts idéologiques.
L'anti-intellectualisme est un mythe historique, lié sans doute
à l'ascension petite-bourgeoise. Poujade a donné naguère
à ce mythe sa forme toute crue (`le poisson pourrit par la tête').
(Barthes: 1981 p.186)
Poujade's claim that a dead fish starts to rot from the head down is indicative
of petit-bourgeois distrust of intellectuals, a distrust that Barthes appears
to come across again and again in his readings of mass culture. In a number
of the texts like `L'écrivain en vacances' (Barthes: 1970 pp.) discuss
this. `L'écrivain en vacances' about the portrayal by a right-wing
newspaper (Le Figaro) of well-known writers on holiday.`La Critique
Ni-Ni' (Barthes: 1970 p.) is an interesting essay to read in the light
of Barthes's preoccupation with the marginalization of the intellectual
in French society by the popular press.
`Critique muette et aveugle' (Barthes: 1970 pp.36-7) attempts to disarm
intellectuals by claiming imcomprehension. refusal to engage with ideas
that may be considered challenging by feigning incomprehension. By accusing
a writer of being obscure and lacking `le bon sens' one can escape serious
argument. Part of the hostility to intellectuals that Barthes encounters
in much of the press is that the myths they peddle are deliberatly unintellectual.
They seek to avoid serious intellectual debate by appealing to a universal
common sense.
Admettons que la tâche historique de l'intellectuel (ou
de l'écrivain), ce soit aujourd'hui d'entretenir et d'accentuer
la décomposition de la conscience bourgeoise. Il faut alors garder
à l'image toute sa précision; cela veut dire que l'on feint
volontairement de rester à l'intérieur de cette conscience
et qu'on va la délabrer, l'affaisser, l'effondrer, sur place, comme
on ferait d'un morceau de sucre en l'imbibant d'eau. (Barthes: 1975 p.67)
The Politics of Mythologies
The decidedly idiosyncratic Marxisms of Sartre and Brecht are
as `useful' to him as is Marx himself. Barthes's attitude towards constituted
theoretical thought in Mythologies - and elsewhere - could be described
as cavalier, in the best sense of the word: he picks up concepts, uses
them, and drops them when they have outstayed their welcome. (Leak: 1994
p.38)
The question of Barthes's politics has long been a problem to Barthes's
critics. He is notoriously difficult to pin down - he prides himself on
being irrepérable - on the matter of political allegiances
past and present. He began and, arguably, ended his intellectual career
as a `man of the left' but he was never a member of the Parti communiste
français (PCF) unlike so many other writers and intellectuals in
the postwar period.
But Barthes's Mythologies as a collection of polemical texts
taking issue with the taken-for-granted truths of our culture, engage with
all important political questions. As a mythologist who finds everywhere,
even in the most unlikely places, the hidden myths which help perpetuate
the status quo, Barthes in Mythologies cannot but take sides.
In Barthes's view myth reinforces the ideology of capitalist society.
The essence of myth is that it disguises what are in fact bourgeois representations
as facts of a universal nature. Myth like ideology is ever-present it is
impossible to escape or elude it on a daily level.
Mythologies examines the ways the petty bourgeoisie in twentieth-century
France naturalizes and universalizes its own values via specific material
mecanisms - the press, advertizing, the legal system and the like. Barthes
examines the way in which apparently unpolitical activities - wrestling,
the Tour de France, strip-tease, drinking wine and eating steak and chips
- are all expressive fo certain ideological positions. French culture appears
to be natural but is in fact deeply historical and political.
The petite bourgeoisie projects a certain state of affairs -
a state of affairs in their own interest - as being natural with the aim
of naturalizing it, legitimating it by making it appear immutable, unchangeable.
Brian Rigby claims that `There is a distinct Marxist strain in Mythologies,
and the essays can be seen as an attempt to show how the whole of mass
culture is a capitalist mystification of social and cultural reality' (Rigby:
1991 p.177). The essay `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' comes close to being a theory
of ideology as a system of representations by which the ruling class reproduces
its dominance at the level of daily experience.
Barthes and Semiology
On peut donc concevoir une science qui étudie la
vie des signes au sein de la vie sociale; elle formerait une partie
de la psychologie sociale, et par conséquent de la psychologie générale;
nous la nommerons sémiologie (du Grec sémeîon,
`signe'). Elle nous apprendrait en quoi consistent les signes, quelles
lois les régissent. Puisqu'elle n'existe pas encore, on ne peut
dire ce qu'elle sera; mais elle a droit à l'existence, sa place
est déterminée d'avance. La linguistique n'est qu'une partie
de cette science générale, les lois que découvrira
la sémiologie seront applicables à la linguistique, et celle-ci
se trouvera ainsi rattachée à un domaine bien défini
dans l'ensemble des faits humains. (Saussure: 1949 p.33)
... à l'obsession politique et morale succède un petit
délire scientifique (Barthes: 1975 p.148)
Passion constante (et illusoire) d'apposer sur tout fait, même
le plus menu, non pas la question de l'enfant: pourquoi? mais la question
de l'ancien Grec, la question du sens, comme si toutes choses frissonnaient
de sens: qu'est-ce que ça veut dire? Il faut à tout prix
transformer le fait en idée, en description, en interprétation,
bref lui trouver un autre nom que le sien. (Barthes: 1975 p.154)
Barthes is particularly interested, not so much in what things mean, but
in how things mean. One of the reasons Barthes is a famous and well-known
intellectual figure is his skill in finding, manipulating and exploiting
theories and concepts of how things come to mean well before anyone else.
As an intellectual, Barthes is associated with a number of intellectual
trends (e.g. structuralism and post-structuralism) in postwar intellectual
life. However, at the time of Mythologies, Barthes main interest
was in semiology, the `science of signs'.
Semiology derives from the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.
Saussure's linguistic theory as elaborated in Cours de linguistique
générale, a collection of lectures written between 1906
and 1911 and posthumously published in book form in 1915, was philosophically
quite radical because it held that language was conceptual and not,
as a whole tradition of western thought had maintained, referential.
In particular, Saussure rejected the view that language was essentially
a nomenclature for a set of antecedent notions and objects. Language does
not `label' or `baptise' already discriminated pre-linguistic categories
but actually articulates them. The view of language as nomeclature cannot
fully explain the difficulties of foreign language acquisition nor the
ways in which the meanings of words change in time. Saussure reversed the
perspective that viewed language as the medium by which reality is represented,
and stressed instead the constitutive role language played in constructing
reality for us. Experience and knowledge, all cognition is mediated by
language. Language organizes brute objects, the flux of sound, noise and
perception, getting to work on the world and conferring it with meaning
and value. Language is always at work in our apprehension of the world.
There is no question of passing through language to a realm of language-independant,
fully discriminated things.
Central to Saussure's work is the concept of the sign and the relationship
between what he terms signifier and signified. Indeed, a sign is, in Saussure's
terms, the union of a signifier and a signified which form an indissociable
unity like two sides of the same piece of paper. Saussure defined the linguistic
sign as composed of a signifier or signifiant and a signified or
signifié. The term sign then, is used to designate the associative
total of signifier and signified. The signifier is the sound or written
image and the signified is the concept it articulates:
... le signe linguistique unit non une chose et un nom, mais
un concept et une image acoustique (Saussure: 1949 p.98)
For example, /cat/ is the signifier of the signified «cat».
Saussure claimed that the connection between signifier and signified was
entirely arbitrary - `Le lien unissant le signifiant au signifié
est arbitraire' (Saussure: 1949 p.100), that there was no intrinsic link
between sound-image and concept. However, the lingiustic sign was, as well
as arbirtrary, was a relational or differential entity. The signifier produces
meaning by virtue of its position, (similarity or difference) within a
network of other signifiers. According to Saussure words do not express
or represent but signify in relation to a matrix of other linguistic signs.
To return to my earlier example, the signifier `cat' signifies the concept
of a domestic feline quadruped only by virtue of its position (similiarity
or difference) within the relational system of other signifiers. In defining
the linguistic sign in this way Saussure broke with a philosophical tradition
which conceived of language as having a strightforward relationship with
the extralinguistic world.
The key text which exemplifies Barthes's early interest in and exploitation
of Saussure and Semiology is `Le Mythe aujourd'hui'. `Le Mythe aujourd'hui'
is Barthes's retrospectively written method or blueprint for reading myths.
In `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' Barthes manipulates and reworks Saussure's theory
of the sign and of signification. He is not, however, interested in the
linguistic sign per se so much as in the application of linguistics
to the non-verbal signs that exist around us in our everyday life. What
excites him is the possibility of applying a methodology derived from Saussurean
linguistics to the domain of culture defined in its broadest and most inclusive
sense.
Barthes's relationship with his intellectual influences - Marx, Brecht,
Freud, Lacan etc. - is notoriously idiosyncratic. He rarely adopts ideas
wholesale, but tends to alter them to his own purposes, extending their
reach and implications. This is certainly true of his appropriation of
Saussure's theories. But how does Barthes make use of Saussure's theory
of the sign and of signification? Well, let's take Barthes's own example
from `Le Mythe aujourd'hui':
... je suis chez le coiffeur, on me tend un numéro de
Paris-Match. Sur la couverture, un jeune nègre vêtu
d'un uniforme français fait le salut militaire, les yeux levés,
fixés sans doute sur un pli du drapeau tricolore. Cela, c'est le
sens de l'image. Mais naïfs ou pas, je vois bien ce qu'elle me signifie:
que la France est un grand Empire, que tous ses fils, sans distinction
de couleur, servent fidèlement sous son drapeau, et qu'il n'est
de meilleure réponse aux détracteurs d'un colonialisme prétendu,
que le zèle de ce noir à servir ses prétendus oppresseurs.
(Barthes: 1957 p.201)
Barthes then, is at the barber's and is handed a copy of Paris-Match.
On the front cover he sees a photograph of a black soldier saluting the
French flag and he instantly recognises the myth the photograph is seeking
to peddle. However, Barthes provides a methological justification for this
essentially intuitive `reading' of the photograph, a methodology derived
from Saussure's theory of the sign. Barthes sees the figuration of the
photograph, that is to say, the arrangement of black dots on a white background
as constituting the signifier and the concept of the black soldier saluting
the tricolour as constituting the signified. Together, they form the sign.
However, Barthes takes this reading one step further and argues that there
is a second level of signification grafted on to the first sign. This first
sign becomes a second-level signifier for a new sign whose signified is
French imperiality, i.e. the idea that France's empire treats all its subjects
equally.
The central modification to Saussure's theory of the sign in `Le Mythe
aujourd'hui' is the articulation of the idea of primary or first-order
signification and secondary or second-order signification. This is central
to Barthes's intellectual preoccupation in Mythologies because it
is at the level of secondary or second-order signification that myth is
to be found. In `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' Barthes attempts to define myth
by reference to the theory of second-degree sign systems. What myth does
is appropriate a first-order sign and use it as a platform for its own
signifier which, in turn, will have its own signified, thus forming a new
sign. Recurrent images used to describe this process pertain to theft/larceny,
colonization, violent appropriation and to parasitism:
... le mythe est ... un langage qui ne veut pas mourir: il
arrache aux sens dont il s'alimente une survie insidieuse, dégradée,
il provoque en eux un sursis artificiel dans lequel il s'installe à
l'aise, il en fait des cadavres parlants. (Barthes: 1957 p.219)
This is a central and particularly powerful image of myth as an alien creature
inhabiting human form and profiting from its appearance of innocence and
naturalness to do its evil business. Like a parasite needs its host or
the B-movie style alien invader needs its zombie-like Earthling, myth needs
is first-order sign for survival. It needs the first-order sign as its
alibi: I wasn't being ideological, myth might claim, I was somewhere
else doing something innocent.
His model of second-degree or parasitical sign systems allows for the
process of demystification by a process of foregrounding the construction
of the sign, of the would-be natural texts of social culture. Myth is to
be found at the level of the second-level sign, or at the level of connotation.
Barthes makes a distinction between denotation and connotation.
Denotation can be described, for the sake of convenience, as the literal
meaning. Connotation, on the other hand, is the second-order parasitical
meaning, the symbolic or mythical meaning. The first-order sign is the
realm of denotation; the second-order sign the realm of connotation and
therefore of myth. To put it crudely then, the imporatant `lesson' of `Le
Mythe aujourd'hui' is that objects and events always signify more than
themselves, they are always caught up in systems of representation which
add meaning to them.
There are a number of very useful web sites which you might want to
click on: Daniel Chandler's Semiotics
for Beginners is a good place to start and there is also a Media
and Communications Studies Site with links to other web sites of relevant
interest.
Further Reading
Works by Barthes Cited
-
Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, 1970)
-
Roland Barthes, `Réponses' in Tel Quel, 47 (1971) 89-107
-
Roland Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte (Paris: Seuil, 1973)
-
Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes (Paris: Seuil,
1975)
-
Roland Barthes, Le Grain de la voix: Entretiens 1962-1980 (Paris:
Seuil, 1981)
-
Roland Barthes, Le Bruissement de la langue (Paris: Seuil, 1984)
Works on Barthes
-
E. T. Bannet, Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent: Barthes, Derrida,
Foucault, Lacan (London: Macmillan, 1989)
-
A. Brown, Roland Barthes: The Figures of Writing (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1992)
-
J-L. Calvet, Roland Barthes: un regard politique sur le signe (Paris:
Payot, 1973)
-
J. Culler, Roland Barthes (London: Fontana, 1983)
-
A. de la Croix, Barthes: pour une éthique des signes (Brussels:
Prisme, 1987)
-
J.B. Fages, Comprendre Roland Barthes (Paris: Privat, 1979)
-
A. Lavers, Roland Barthes: Structuralism and After (London: MacMillan,
1982)
-
A. Leak, Roland Barthes: Mythologies (London: Grant & Cutler,
1994)
-
M. Moriarty, Roland Barthes (Oxford: Polity, 1991)
-
S. Nordhal Lund, L'Aventure du signifiant: une lecture de Barthes
(Paris: PUF, 1981)
-
P. Roger, Roland Barthes, roman (Paris: Grasset, 1986)
-
R. Rylance, Roland Barthes (Brighton: Harvester, 1994)
-
J. Sturrock (ed.), Structuralism and Since: From Lévi-Strauss
to Derrida (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)
-
P. Thody, Roland Barthes: A Conservative Estimate (London: MacMillan,
1984) 2nd ed.
-
S. Ungar, Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire (Lincoln, Nebraska:
1983)
-
G. Wasserman, Roland Barthes (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981)
-
M. Wiseman, The Ecstacies of Roland Barthes (London: Routledge,
1989)
Works of Related Interest
-
Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction: critique sociale du jugement (Paris:
Minuit, 1979)
-
T. Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991)
-
A. Easthope, Literary into Cultural Studies (London: Routledge,
1991)
-
J. Forbes & M. Kelly (eds), French Cultural Studies: An Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)
-
Stuart Hall, `The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities'
in October, 53 (1990) p.11-23
-
T. Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (London: Methuen, 1977)
-
C. Jenks, Culture (London: Routledge, 1993)
-
Brian Rigby, Popular Culture in France: A Study of Cultural Discourse
(London: Routledge, 1991)
-
K. Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering
of French Culture (London & Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995)
-
F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (Paris:
Payot, 1949)
-
John Storey, An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture
(London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993)
http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/comm.html
Concept: Tony McNeill, Text: Tony McNeill, Artwork: Carole Baker
The University of Sunderland, GB, Last Update 15-Apr-96