Allan Nanva - Mythologies of Late

I heard Roland Barthes name in the 1970s, as a young PhD student, in a bookshop near the university. I was there browsing books on Samuel Becketts drama, my research topic, when the person next to me, also browsing books, mentioned Barthes and recommended three of his books Mythologies, Writing Degree Zero and Image-Music-Text, which I bought and read, followed by whatever else I could find by Barthes and about Barthes. This happened not too long before Barthes was hit by a laundry truck and killed in Paris in 1980.

In a way, he came naturally to me because of my familiarity with Beckett and the Absurd Movement.

Barthes writes his reflections on daily life; the chaos that it is. Jonathan Culler calls him a man of parts, engaged in a range of valuable general enterprises that may not have a common denominator

Culler does acknowledge, however, that this is what makes Barthes stimulating as Barthes does not necessarily write on anything in particular but on everything: culture, politics, fashion, literature, history, advertisement, food, nature. I like Barthes because he reduces the distance between what is and what is intelligible to us, what is real and what we think is real. He wants us to try and see the strangeness in what is familiar, the extraordinary that exists in the ordinary, in order to challenge intelligibility.

Let me give a simple, often referred to, example to show what is meant by challenging intelligibility an anecdote from Barthes Mythologies (1957):

While waiting for a haircut at the barbers, Barthes picks up a magazine to kill time, as I think most of us do in a similar situation. He is fascinated by the picture of a young black soldier on the cover of the magazine, in French military uniform, giving a military salute, his eyes passionately fixed on the national flag.

Generally, we just look at the picture and think nothing more of it, most likely pass on to the next page or pages for more interesting things to see inside the magazine. This is where the challenge comes in.

Barthes wants us to pause and think about the deeper meaning of this image, subliminal as it is that France is a great empire; one that treats all its sons equally and they take pride living under its flag. In this image, the soldiers blackness is neutralised undiscriminated, by his Frenchness; the black soldiers of the French colonies happily and faithfully serve under its flag. This text tries to naturalise oppression by suggesting the innocence of the text its just a soldier saluting the flag, thats all. But it isnt. At a deeper political level, we realise that the image tries to convince its viewer that if France denies people of other countries of their culture, history, identity and resources, it should be of no concern to anyone, the least to those who are honoured by their sense of French-hood, standing proudly under Frances unifying flag which represents nobility, Christianity, bourgeoisie, civilization; that France lends its power and civilisation to those who dont have it (or didnt deserve to have it). Thus, Barthes encourages us to invest our own curiosity in detecting the powerful second level of meaning.