Mythologies
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Book Description
"[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. Said
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6 out of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Pertinant in some ways, arguable in othersSaturday, July 10, 2004
I thought that many of Barthes's themes resound astonishingly well even today.
However, I found myself overly distracted by his underlying premises in many cases, which simply echo the outmoded Marxist/Atheistic materialism so prevelent in the 1950's literary community. One example is how he blames the middle class in France for propaganda that features a patriotic cover on a national magazine and a photograph of a young soldier. In fact, the middle class (or bourgeoisie) is blamed for every societal issue Barthes defines.
When will the literary community understand that the middle class is not the enemy of a free society?? Why does EVERY literary study or contextual analysis need to be based on Marxist theory?? Come on! It's the 21st century after all. Can we please update the scholars with the realities in which we live day to day??
But returning to Mythologies -- I would recommend reading because of how well the topics parallel our common experience. Just beware that many of his conclusions are from an outmoded, unrealistic, and impractical worldview.
5 out of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Wonderful, and worth re-reading.Saturday, November 29, 2003
When I finished this latest re-read of Mythologies I was initially struck by how funny it was. This was something of a big realization for me, stemming from a memory of burning brain cells with a furrowed brow, trying to understand what he was saying and being almost afraid to enjoy it. So there's one of the consolations for growing older for you-- I'm getting confident enough to really enjoy Barthes.
I'm not saying that I fully understand him yet. I'm not sure that I ever will. I think that "Myth Today"(the book's final and most central essay) still remains fairly firmly out of reach. But it's true that each time I re-read Barthes, I get something more out of it-- I manage to scale heights that I didn't think I would ever get to the last time around.
Isn't it the mark of a brilliant book that it grows with you?
Particularly recommended this time are the essays "Soap Powders and Detergents" and "Operation Margarine".
19 out of 39 people found the following review helpful:
Behind the AmusementThursday, December 12, 2002
Ths book was written by an ardent Maoist in the heady days in which all of Parisian intellectual circles were Maoist. It is now a top read by anyone who comes into contact with the Maoist Literature Association (known as the MLA). Cultural Studies is an extension of Mao's Cultural Revolution.
As with Mao, the idea was to change the meaning of virtually everything, taking the mandarin intellectual class, and moving them to the fringes of society, and taking the marginal farmers and moving them into the universities. In a similar way, Barthes takes marginal cultural activity such as professional wrestling, and moves it to the center of cultural discourse, while he takes Shakespeare, and the canon, and moves it to Manchuria.
It's a heady experiment. In China, the result led to a staggered economy, massive famines, and the death of the entire intellectual class. In the west, it has mostly remained a literary curiosity, but one with a curious history.
Barthes often praised the Maoists, and even travelled to China with other members of Tel Quel (Philippe Sollers and Julia Kristeva were fellow travellers, and they learned Chinese in order to translate Mao's poems into French). This book must be read in tandem with Simone de Beauvoir's book The Long March (about Mao's Revolution) and Julia Kristeva's Chinese Women, in order to give it a historical and intellectual context.
10 out of 17 people found the following review helpful:
The CuspWednesday, August 14, 2002
I was an Arther Anderson Drop-Out Accountant going to Architecture school. I fell in love with a Radical Feminist Marxist Critic and Theorist. I asked "Where do I start?" She said nothing, pulled Mythologies off her shelf and gave it to me. Forward it led to Foucault and Derrida, Backward to Marx, Hegel, Locke and Hobbes.
It politely said "The Powerful Make Forms - The Forms Have Meaning - What Do They Make? Why Do They Make It? How Do They Make It?"
and architecture stopped being about 2x4's
Still my favorite is The New Citroen......
22 out of 25 people found the following review helpful:
Myth and Narratives AliveWednesday, May 23, 2001
As scholars of folklore and mythology were looking at their own past as well as currently to explore the narratives of the past and of "primative" peoples, Roland Barthes was looking at the world around him in France in the 1950s to the early 1970s. Why are human beings drawn to folktales, fairy tales, mythic figures? Barthes discovers that this draw surrounds us everyday, used both commerically and unconsciously from the personas of professional wrestlers (who resemble those seen on American television today) to our discussions of public figures. Mythology, Barthes argues, is a vital and living part of our society but it is also one used without real understanding because it is so deeply ingrained in the human mind and heart. The essays are light so that the non-specialist can enjoy but deep enough that the scholar can see and understand the theory underneath.