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[[https://www.moma.org/collection/works/849|{{:potteries_thinkbelt_2.jpg?direct|External Link}}]] | [[https://www.moma.org/collection/works/849|{{:potteries_thinkbelt_2.jpg?direct|External Link}}]] | ||
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+ | {{ :cedric_price_-_thinkbelt.pdf|Cedric Price on The Potteries Thinkbelt}} | ||
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+ | 1957 PREFACE TO {{ :roland-barthes-mythologies.pdf|**MYTHOLOGIES**}}, ROLAND BARTHES | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | The following essays were written one each month for about two | ||
+ | years, from 1954 to 1956, on topics suggested by current events. I | ||
+ | was at the time trying to reflect regularly on some myths of French | ||
+ | daily life. The media which prompted these reflections may well | ||
+ | appear heterogeneous (a newspaper article, a photograph in a | ||
+ | weekly, a film, a show, an exhibition), and their subject-matter | ||
+ | very arbitrary: I was of course guided by my own current interests. | ||
+ | The starting point of these reflections was usually a feeling of | ||
+ | impatience at the sight of the 'naturalness' with which newspapers, | ||
+ | art and common sense constantly dress up a reality which, even | ||
+ | though it is the one we live in, is undoubtedly determined by | ||
+ | history. In short, in the account given of our contemporary | ||
+ | circumstances, I resented seeing Nature and History confused at | ||
+ | every turn, and I wanted to track down, in the decorative display of | ||
+ | what-goes-without-saying, the ideological abuse which, in my | ||
+ | view, is hidden there. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Right from the start, the notion of myth seemed to me to explain | ||
+ | these examples of the falsely obvious. At that time, I still used the | ||
+ | word 'myth' in its traditional sense. But I was already certain of a | ||
+ | fact from which I later tried to draw all the consequences: myth is | ||
+ | a language. So that while concerning myself with phenomena | ||
+ | apparently most unlike literature (a wrestling-match, an elaborate | ||
+ | dish, a plastics exhibition), I did not feel I was leaving the field of | ||
+ | this general semiology of our bourgeois world, the literary aspect | ||
+ | of which I had begun to study in earlier essays. It was only, | ||
+ | however, after having explored a number of current social | ||
+ | phenomena that I attempted to define contemporary myth in | ||
+ | methodical fashion; I have naturally placed this particular essay at | ||
+ | the end of the book, since all it does is systematize topics discussed | ||
+ | previously. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Having been written month by month, these essays do not pretend | ||
+ | to show any organic development: the link between them is rather | ||
+ | one of insistence and repetition. For while I don't know whether, as | ||
+ | the saying goes, 'things which are repeated are pleasing', * my | ||
+ | belief is that they are significant. And what I sought throughout | ||
+ | this book were significant features. Is this a significance which I | ||
+ | read into them? In other words, is there a mythology of the | ||
+ | mythologist? No doubt, and the reader will easily see where I | ||
+ | stand. But to tell the truth, I don't think that this is quite the right | ||
+ | way of stating the problem. 'Demystification' - to use a word which | ||
+ | is beginning to show signs of wear - is not an Olympian operation. | ||
+ | What I mean is that I cannot countenance the traditional belief | ||
+ | which postulates a natural dichotomy between the objectivity of | ||
+ | the scientist and the subjectivity of the writer, as if the former were | ||
+ | endowed with a 'freedom' and the latter with a 'vocation' equally | ||
+ | suitable for spiriting away or sublimating the actual limitations of | ||
+ | their situation. What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction | ||
+ | of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth. | ||
+ | 1957 - R. B. | ||
+ | |||
+ | * 'Bis repetita placent': a paraphrase, used in French, of Horace's | ||
+ | saying 'Haec decies repetita placebit' (Ars Poetica). |