2 The beginning of this reflection was most often a feeling of impatience regarding the “natural” in which art, the press, and common sense unceasingly dress up a reality that, for all that we live in it, is nevertheless part of history. In a word, it made me suffer to see Nature and History confounded in our everyday discourse. I wanted to get a grasp of the ideological abuse that is, in my view, hidden in the decorative exposition of what-can-be-taken-for-granted. Barthes, Mythologies

3 “Myth” - Roland Barthes Summary of the Lecture: –Semiotics: Language and “Myth” –Class and Culture –Closure, Naturalization, Exnomination

4 Semiotics: Language and “Myth” (Barthes) Roland Barthes ( ) Semiotics (Semiology) Double Articulation

5 Semiotics (Semiology) The study of signification

6 Double Articulation (Barthes) LANGUAGE MYTH

7 “Myth” - Roland Barthes Summary: –Semiotics: Language and “Myth” –Class and Culture –Closure, Naturalization, Exnomination

8 Class and Culture Medieval estates and cultures Modern classes Petty-bourgeois culture The Death of Working-Class Culture?

9 Medieval estates and cultures Courtly culture Burgher culture Peasant culture = main locus of folklore

10 The bourgeoisie –true or haute bourgeoisie= main locus of “high” culture –petty (petite) bourgeoisie= main locus of the “middle-brow” part of popular culture relatively socially insecure, desirous of “respectability” The working class (proletariat) –main locus of a disappearing working-class culture The Lumpenproletariat (“bum proletariat”) Modern classes

11 Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois bourgeois culture (high culture - critical, restrained, cynical) petty-bourgeois culture (complacent, feel- good, has values, “normal”) –the marginalization of the working class after World War II

12 Petty-bourgeois culture Became dominant as the middle classes expanded, especially after World War II It is the “naturalized” culture that Barthes attacks According to Barthes it makes bourgeois domination possible by making alternatives unthinkable It is part of popular culture (more specifically: “middle-brow culture”)

13 The demise of the working class and its culture working-class culture (oppositional, ribald, carnivalesque) Barthes: petty-bourgeois culture imposed on the working class: embourgeoisement makes working-class resistance to capitalism difficult

14 “Main-stream” popular culture = petty- bourgeois culture –Sit-coms –Martha Stewart Petty-bourgeois culture today

15 “Myth” - Roland Barthes Summary: –Semiotics: Language and “Myth” –Class and Culture –Closure, Naturalization, Exnomination

16 Closure, Naturalization, Exnomination (Barthes) Petty-Bourgeois Myth as Mystification History (Culture) Mystified as Nature The Bourgeoisie Exnominated

19 Barthes, Elements of Semiology ”… my denunciation of the self-proclaimed petit-bourgeois myths... semiology -- the close analysis of the process of meaning by which the bourgeoisie converts its historical class-culture into a universal nature.”

20 Example of a Myth: Einstein’s Brain Simple (all knowledge reduced to a formula) Infinite (the formula is the secret of all knowledge)