barthes - mythologies

the mythologies is one of his earlier works, and in it, much similar to baudrillard (young vs. middle vs. old becoming deradicalized from more left-leaning views into derealization and focus on structure or post-structure and with baudrillard all the way into mytho-theology), he is at his most leftist (although he totally resists this label - he resists political identities, moriarty mentions this as well), he explicitly defines myth as a bourgeoise weapon that empties out meaning by "naturalizing" the concept and simultaniously emptying out reality. in his examination of myth he approaches it by grounding it in paradox (the zizekian "this has actually been something else the whole time") and then delivering its point (the necessary historical and social dynamic nature that led to the production of the myth behind the myth itself). he believes the myth politicized in this way through the use of tautologies (among other things like forceful un-differentiation or re-identification, equating history with essence, culture with nature (an eternal nature where the bourgeoisie dominate social reality and depoliticize their own acts through the myths inherent ideological function) and inhibiting and obscuring the capacity for "human beings" to produce and manage the capacity and nature of the structures they inhabit. in the end of mythologies if you have my particular edition with his explanations youll notice some of his explanations hint at wider trends like the way the "right vs. left" (of the time) make use of myths, the role of the mythologist (analyst) the way you can actually analyze myth (either through it pointing towards its own empty signifier, towards its own fullness, or towards the dynamic and constantly transformative nature of it where the signified is never a fixed construct), towards the ways in which its a political weapon that actually in turn depoliticizes. for further reading there is also moriarty's introduction where he more explicitly lays out some of this stuff, ive selected the important parts of it for further reading. in this commentary you can see an analysis of barthes political project from a psycho-social perspective, also with a bunch of ontological analogies, like the bourgeoise believing in an eternal nature and the privation of history leading to the fixation of the essence of the myth in regards to the concept leading to either a statement of essence or a statement of balance. i think its fair to say that early barthes would like to push against the existence of the myth through the use of a total varied nuance, analytic examination as a way for infinite differentiation, as a way to not collapse categories preventing the creation of the modern social myth specifically. as an example of this, he thinks that the country dweller has a more direct relationship with the world which leads it to be less implicitly mythologized by the bourgeoise, his relationship between language and world is as such "more direct". i guess its less about the existence of the myth to me and more the way it effects language or how many depoliticizing tricks its able to hit you with before you realize. barthes wants to push against them by uncovering them through paradoxes, thats why i mentioned his methodology earlier: showing paradox + exposing the point of it (and its visible in a screenshot from the moriarty text to). so what barthes was really doing was "exposing" the mythology of the world in an apparently pseudo revolutionary (but not really) act, but as he grew in his intellectual career, his future writings are a lot more speculative and less outright. also in the mythologies itself he barely makes his method obvious. its obvious in some writings that hes pissed by corporations, toy factories, commodification of womens labour, french dining experiences etc, but he doesnt whine about anything nor write about it in extremely vulgar or pessimistic language so its difficult to tell half the time whether he even thinks of his objects of analysis as a "bad thing" at all or not because myths are really amusing. but yeah obviously he thinks of it as a political weapon and is trying to explicitly prove to us that the world has been overwhelmingly tautologized, re-identified with itself and lessened in nuance as a result of the current global mythological infrastructure. my favorite writings from it are plastic, detergent and wrestling by far, these are the ones i think about the most. i think wrestling is his best example of a formalization of gestures, it turns the emotions behind the spectacle outward and pushes them to the forefront, like wrestling is actually a simulation of the exposition of justice rather than simple bodily suffering or exhaustion, its far more brutal than boxing but not because of bodily harm but because of the implicit assumptions behind what we consider it to be doing for us vs. what it actually serves to do etc. and look at how it doesnt make sense that we glorify boxing as the brutal sport when the boxers are seemingly invisible half the time etc. the part about wine and frenchness is pretty good too, in the sense that it uses constructed identities and traits and infuzed them supposedly passively into an essence of something, the black frenchman soldier is also maybe an even better example here, what it is pointing towards? is it about the experience of frenchness? in all three mythical possibilities you can always see "past" the myth so to speak (but never "move" past it) and barthes uses all three of his modes to elaborate this. looking at contemporary mythologists (even if they dont think of themselves this way) like sianne ngai, benjamin bratton, de silva, bifo berardi etc, they link myths more indirectly to processes, like the japanese emperor served as the iconography of the kawaii face, due to the cuteness being paralleled to a "squishy weakness" on account of the cute subject when in retrospect to the inability to prevent hiroshima so the way nuclear war interacts with this problem etc, or like vampiric architecture and the lotus as societal symbols affecting the way society functions and fluctuates not even on a cultural but social level through narrative retelling. or even actual mythological reseachers but nowadays theyre all anthropologists instead of theorists, marina warner, moreshin allahyari, philip ball... point here being that his project hardly ended but i think he had an oddly unique relationship with it.