The
second section of Roland Barthes' "Mythologies", titled "Myth
Today", is a theoretical discussion of Barthes' program for myth analysis
which is demonstrated in the first section of Mythologies. What Barthes terms
as "myth" is in fact the manner in which a culture signifies and
grants meaning to the world around it. According to Barthes, anything can be a
myth, and he follows this approach throughout the examples in Mythologies.
Barthes'
concept of myth seems similar or at least draws on the concept of ideology
as formulated by Marx in The
German Ideology. Ideology according to Barthes' version in "Myth
Today" is not entirely concealed and is subject for scrutiny through its
cultural manifestations. These manifestations, mythologies according to
Barthes, present themselves as being "natural" and are therefore
transparent. What Barthes is after in his analysis of mythologies is to reveal
the ideological nature of culture's underling myth.
At
the beginning of "Myth Today" Barthes defines myth a speech. Myth is
speech in that that it is part of a system of communication in which it bears
meaning. By this definition Barthes expands on Levi-Strauss'
perception of myth to include every symbol which conveys meaning (be it a
spoken or written text, and image, a design etc. and even human actions such as
sunbathing). For Barthes every cultural product had meaning, and this meaning
is conditioned by ideology, i.e. myth, and therefore any cultural product can
be the subject of mythological analysis and review.
According
to Barthes, myth is a form of signification. However myth is different from
ordinary speech and language. Barthes follows de-Saussure's
discussion regarding the nature
of the linguistic sign and he characterizes myth a second class of
signification. What was the sign in the first order of language (for example
the signifier "cigarette" and the signified of an object made of
paper and tobacco) turns into a signifier in the second order (signifying lung
cancer). In other words, myth for Barthes is a realm of second class
signification which could be seen as a cultural association, to distinguish
from denotation. Barthes, in his Rhetoric
of the Image, elaborated on the difference between denotation of the signand its connotation and its use in cultural analysis.
See also: Roland Barthes - The Death of the Author
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