February 28th: Roland Barthes's
Mythologies

Backing Up Slightly

I know you all enjoyed your light reading this past week, but we need to back up slightly and cover the following before moving on to Barthes:

Rhetoric as a male-dominated activity

Don't cry for me...Paris

Barthes's Mythologies

Whoa! How about the weather? Don't they say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb? Speaking of lion, what is Barthes talking about when he describes myth and for my name is lion?

Signifier-Signified-Sign (language)

Barthes expands Ferdinand de Saussure's concept to cover myth, but let's get on the same page about what's going on in language.

• Signifier = arbitrarily assigned liguistic representation of the thing (images, the word*)
• Signified = object or mental concept
• Sign = Signifier + Signified (anything that conveys meaning)

*Please note that linguists would most likely challenge "word" being used.

Signifier-Signified-Sign (myth)

As Barthes explains, myth is a second-order semiological system (p. 114-115). The sign in the first-order system becomes the signifier in the second-order system. Let's take a look at Barthes discussion of the soldier.

Barthes on Rhetoric

What can Barthes teach us about rhetoric? He has an example on p. 136, and on p. 150, he identifies what he means by "rhetoric":

"a set of fixed, regulated, insistent figures, according to which the varied forms of the mythical signifier arrange themselves....It is through their rhetoric that bourgeois myths outline the general prospect of this pseudo-physis which defines the dream of the contemporary bourgeois world."

• physis: nature
  From Greek: the material we can sense in the cosmos.
• anti-physis: what we can't sense (but we think we do)
• pseudo-physis: ideologically real

Barthes's Mythologies

Whoa! How about the weather? Don't they say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb? Speaking of lion, what

Alternative Plan

Because we have another class devoted to Barthes, let's try to ground what he might be saying in some familiar ideas...I want to say "concepts," but that's loaded.

Hegemony
See Barthes "The bourgeoisie as a Joint-Stock Company" pp. 137-142.

What's in a face
Mitchell
Gardner

Post Spring Break Reading

I'm giving you next week off, and, when we return on March 14th, we'll discuss Roland Barthes's Elements of Semiology and "The Death of the Author" (On Moodle). Elements of Semiology is sort of textbook like, but I think it will make more sense after having read Mythologies because it will help you fill in the gaps. Remember, you can't expect to get EVERYTHING on a first (or second...or third...) reading. Our authors are going to be getting quite complex in this next half of the semester, so keep at it.

Don't forget your presents for me.