Mythologies (book)

Mythologies ( Mythologies ) is a work by the French post-structuralists kultursemiotisches and semiotician Roland Barthes from the year 1957. A German translation was first published in 1964 by Suhrkamp Verlag.

Content

The expanded concept of myth

The expanded concept of myth, which not only means a many well-known story, but also the unconscious and collective meanings of a society that they " derived from a semiotic process " is attributed in the sciences Barthes. [Note 1]

This enables Barthes in Mythologies, modern and old myths (such as the human condition using the example of the exhibition The Family of Man ) to be analyzed as a form of naturalization and essentialization: "The myth of the human condition is based on a very old mystification that has always existed is to put on the bottom of the history of nature. "the analysis of many everyday examples of the myth in the form of short essays includes Barthes justification for a scientific approach to the analysis of myths and develops the basics here for a critical semiotics.

The myth is a statement

According to the etymology of the word is Barthes states: " the myth is a statement ", or more precisely: " a communication system, a message. (...) We see from this that the myth can not be an object, not a concept or an idea; it is a way of signifying a form. "

For a definition, what is the myth, the different word meanings of myth were irrelevant: "You can meet me last a hundred other meanings of the word myth. I have tried to define things, not words. " Barthes first describes the form and later just " this form of the historical boundaries, the conditions of their use, "in which even " the Company be re-introduced into it " must.

To recognize the myth, it is not necessary to distinguish between the mythical objects " a substantial distinction (...) to want to meet " - because not determine the objects, what the myth is, but the way how the objects will be addressed: " because the myth is a statement, anything can, of which a discourse can be accountable, be myth. The myth is not defined by the object of his message, but by the way, as he expresses it. "

The myth has no content restrictions. Almost anything can with a statement be provided with a myth and thereby appropriated socially: " There are formal limits of myth, but no content ... Every object in the world can from a closed, silent existence to a discussed, for the acquisition by the Company open state pass, because no - natural or non-natural - law forbids to speak of those things. "

The myth as part of society

So things get a meaning and are no longer alone matter, there is a need of society. In addition to the purely material side of things passing through the statement about the things a society use to things added: " A tree is a tree. Certainly! But a tree that is pronounced by Minou Drouet is no longer quite a tree, he is a decorated tree, which is adapted to a specific consumption, which is provided with literary prosperity favors, with rebellions, with pictures, in short, with a social. use which is additional to the pure matter " Only the social response of things makes them objects of myth :" Of course not everything is pronounced the same time. Some objects are prey of the mythical word for a moment, then they disappear, others take their place and get to the myth. "

The myth transforms the "Real " in the "state of the statement". A basic condition for the myth is its temporal and historical certainty, because myths do not arise and does not necessarily arise from what the company introduces as " nature", "Is there necessarily suggestive objects ( ... )? Certainly not: one can think of very ancient myths, but there is no eternal; because only the human history can be the real in the state of statement about going, and it alone determines the difference between life and death of the mythical language. Whether far back or not, mythology can only have an historical basis, because the myth is a story chosen by the statement; from the 'nature' of things he would be able not emerge. "

The myth as a semiological sign

The myth as a message may be in various forms, are transmitted via different media: " Therefore, it can very well be otherwise than orally, it may consist of written material or representations are made. The written discourse, the sport, but also photography, film, reportage, spectacles and advertising, all of which can be carriers of the mythical statement. Its object " and the matter of the object" According to the myth can not " be determined, " inasmuch as any matter can be arbitrarily equipped with meaning. " as an example Barthes calls "the arrow that will be presented and means challenge." This pass is independent of the physical form of the object, " also a statement ".

This generalized conception of language that refers not only to alphabetic characters, Barthes sees through " the history of the writings themselves justified " because " before the invention of the alphabet objects such as the Kipu of the Incas or drawings as the picture writings outright statements had long been ". At this point, Barthes discusses the question of the scientific approach to the analysis of myths, and whether the analysis of myths may be the subject of linguistics: "This is not to say, however, that the mythical statement such as the language needed to be treated. The myth belongs in a science that goes beyond linguistics; he belongs in the semiology. "

The semiological system

A " semiological system " is for Barthes - unlike, say, Ferdinand de Saussure - from three different terms: the Major ( the signifier in Saussure ), the signified ( the signified ) and the sign, "that the associative total of the first two terms is. "

Barthes explains this Dreistelligkeit the example of the Rose: " Just think of a bunch of roses: I let him represent my passion. Is there not just a significant and a significance Tetes, the rose and my passion? Not even that, in truth, there is only the, verleidenschaftlichten ' Roses. But in the area of ​​analysis there are indeed three terms, as these occupied with passion roses can be quite rightly and disassemble in roses and passion. The one just like the other existed before they joined and this third object, the sign made ​​. So little I can separate the roses from the embassy in the field of experience, they carry, so little I can in the area of ​​analysis, the roses the roses equate as a sign than Significant: the Major is empty, the mark is met, there is a sense. "

The myth as a secondary semiological system

The myth consists of a concatenation of semiological systems. A simple system is considered analytically from the Major and the signified, the characters, the characters results in an associative whole itself. The myth already contains the first character of a semiological system, only it acts as Major in the second system: This is the central definition in everyday myths:

" In the myth we find the (...) three-dimensional diagram again: the Major, the signified and the sign. But the myth is so far a particular system, as it is based on a semiological chain which existed before him; he is a secondary semiological system. What system in the first character ( ie associative whole of a concept and an image), is simple Major in the second. (...) Whether it is real or figurative writing, the Myth sees in a totality of signs, a global sign, the terminus of a first semiological chain. And just this terminus is the first term or part of the enlarged system that he built. Everything takes place as if the myth disguised the formal system of first importance by one notch. "

As already mentioned, it is for the myth is not important whether his statement in writing, photographic, artistic, or is expressed in the material form of a building, a plant or a ritual: "We must here recall that the materials of mythical statement (language, photography, painting, poster, rite, object, etc.), as different as they may be initially reduced to the mere function of meaning as soon as the myth it detects. The Myth sees in them and the same raw material. Your unit is that they are all attributed to the simple status of a language. "

Ethical considerations

On the edge of his investigation of the myth, as it were, in a footnote, Barthes formulated his ethical aspects of the myth. After that is the " Interfering in myth precisely that its form is motivated. " If there were such a thing as a " health " of the language, this is founded " by the arbitrariness of the sign ". However, every myth has a motivating form, meaning is transformed in shape, deformed, stripped of his story:

" The Abominable in myth is its resort to a false nature, is the luxury of meaningful shapes, like those objects that decorate its utility by a natural appearances. The will to make the meaning more difficult to guarantee the whole of nature, calls forth a kind of disgust. Myth is too rich, and his motivation is just too much to him, " For this aversion that creates the myth for Barthes, brings he a correspondence from the field of art, which alternates between nature and anti - nature: "This revulsion is the same that I feel in the face of arts that do not want to choose between the nature and anti - nature, and the first as an ideal and the second use as savings. Ethically it is a sign of humility to want to play simultaneously in both areas. "