Roland Barthes
| Roland Barthes | |
|---|---|
| |
| Roland Barthes, French literary theorist and semiotician | |
| Tradition | Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Semiotics, Literary theory |
| Influenced by | Ferdinand de Saussure, Karl Marx, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida |
| Lifespan | 1915–1980 |
| Notable ideas | Mythologies; death of the author; readerly vs. writerly texts; semiotics of culture and media |
| Occupation | Literary theorist, Philosopher, Semiotician |
| Influenced | Umberto Eco, Julia Kristeva, Jean Baudrillard, Cultural studies, Media theory |
| Wikidata | Q179109 |
Roland Barthes (1915–1980) was a French literary theorist, critic, and cultural commentator whose work profoundly shaped how we think about language, literature, and media. Over the course of his career, he applied insights from structural linguistics to everyday culture, arguing that everything from advertisements and news photos to classic novels are “texts” to be read for hidden meanings. His famous 1957 collection Mythologies demonstrated how ordinary objects and images carry ideological messages. Later he challenged traditional notions of authorship in the essay “The Death of the Author,” an idea that helped usher in post-structuralism. Barthes’s writing ranged from dense academic analysis to playful, poetic reflections on photography and love. He remains a central figure in media and cultural studies, literary theory, and semiotics.
Early Life and Education
Barthes was born in 1915 in coastal Normandy, the son of a French naval officer who died in World War I. He was raised by his mother, aunt, and grandmother in southwest France and later Paris. As a boy he enjoyed drawing and literature but suffered frequent illnesses, including tuberculosis, which kept him out of military service and led to long periods in sanatoria. In 1939 he earned a degree in classical literature from the Sorbonne, and in 1941 he received a postgraduate diploma in philology (the study of literary language) with a thesis on Greek tragedy.
Mythologies and Cultural Critique
Barthes came to prominence with Mythologies (1957), a collection of essays in which he treated everyday cultural objects as signs carrying hidden meaning. Drawing on ideas from structural linguistics, he argued that modern “myths” are created when simple things gain a second layer of meaning. At the first level a sign has a literal meaning (its “denotation”); at the second level it conveys a cultural message or value (its “connotation” or “mythical” meaning). For example, an advertisement for soap or a sleek car might literally show cleanliness or modern design, but Barthes showed that these images also connote class, power, and national identity. In Mythologies he famously analyzes a Paris Match photo of a Black soldier saluting the French flag: the picture literally shows loyalty, but Barthes notes how it covertly celebrates French imperial ideals. Another essay examines a wrestling match not as a sport but as a morality play of good versus evil. Through such examples, Barthes revealed how seemingly natural aspects of culture actually reinforce bourgeois values.
He continued this approach in later books and essays on subjects as varied as fashion (see The Fashion System, 1967) and national symbols such as the Eiffel Tower, treating them as modern myths that carry social and political meaning.
Before Mythologies, Barthes’s first book Writing Degree Zero (1953) argued that literary style is never free-form but is always shaped by existing language conventions. He introduced the idea that writers create meaning not by pure originality, but by choosing particular “languages” and even by temporarily suspending them (a kind of neutral style) to produce creative effects.
Structuralism and Semiotics
In the late 1950s and 1960s Barthes applied a “structuralist” approach to literature and culture. Building on linguistic models, he treated narratives and cultural systems as composed of underlying rules or codes. For instance, in Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative (a widely cited essay) he breaks down stories into basic units (“functions” and “actions”) much like a language is broken into words and grammar. This method treats a novel or folk tale as a system of signs, allowing a critic to map how a story’s meaning arises from its structure. Barthes also produced a more formal guide to semiotics in Elements of Semiology (published in 1964), outlining how to identify signifiers (form), signified concepts, and their relationships. In these works he emphasized that any system of symbols – whether a myth, language, or media – follows patterns that can be systematically decoded.
He extended this analysis to cultural fields: in The Fashion System (1967) Barthes showed how fashion magazines treat clothing like a language of their own, assigning words and images to garments in ways that reinforce taste and class distinctions.
From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism
By the late 1960s Barthes had pushed past the formal structures of texts to explore what happens when they are liberated from an author’s intent. In his influential essay “The Death of the Author” (1967) he argued that a literary work should not be seen as having one true meaning dictated by the writer. Instead, once a text is written it belongs to the reader, who can interpret it in many ways. Barthes’s famous phrase — often paraphrased as “the birth of the reader” — suggested that readers themselves create meaning. This idea helped ignite the shift to post-structuralism, emphasizing that meanings are unstable and multiple. Barthes illustrated related points in S/Z (1970), a close-reading of a novella by Balzac. In S/Z he distinguishes “readerly” texts (straightforward narratives) from “writerly” texts (which defy easy understanding and force the reader to actively construct meaning). He also contrasted the comfortable pleasure of simply reading with the ecstatic “jouissance” of grappling with a difficult, open-ended text. These later works marked a turn from dissecting hidden ideology toward celebrating subjective, personal responses to culture.
Photography, Media, and Later Works
In his final years Barthes turned more directly to images and popular media. He famously wrote Camera Lucida (published posthumously in 1981) as a meditation on photography. In it he introduces the notions of studium (the cultural, analytical interest in a photo) and punctum (the personally piercing detail that “pricks” the viewer). The book mixes technical theory with a deeply personal account—his deceased mother’s photographs were the emotional core of the text. Barthes also explored non-Western cultures in works like Empire of Signs (1970), a series of travel essays on Japan, where he admired how signs could exist without one dominating center of meaning. Throughout the 1970s he wrote in a loose, aphoristic style in books such as Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975) and A Lover’s Discourse (1977), reflecting on identity, love, and reading. Even his essays on popular art—such as praise for Pop Art’s emphasis on surface and gesture—echoed his earlier interests in myths, authority, and the power of images.
Method and Philosophy
Underlying all of Barthes’s work is a conviction that meaning comes from signs, not from some transparent truth behind them. Influenced by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, Barthes insisted that words, images, and even sounds are signifiers whose meanings (signifieds) depend on cultural codes. Moreover, he held that neither perceiver nor text has a single privileged perspective: language, history, and ideology are always mediating what we see. In Elements of Semiology and other writings he explicitly rejected the idea of a neutral or objective language: there is no “God’s-eye view” of reality, since even concepts like “truth” or “health” are shaped by the sign systems around them. In practice, his method involved close reading: examining the “codes” of a text or image (the associations it calls up) to show how meanings are constructed. Over time Barthes became acutely aware that his own analyses were part of that process: demystifying a cultural myth might simply create another one. This led him to explore more subjective and playful writing styles later on. In general, Barthes’s approach marries structural rigor (systematically decoding signs) with an awareness of its limits and the creative power of the reader or viewer.
Influence and Reception
By the 1970s Barthes had become a major figure in European intellectual life. His theories influenced a wide range of fields: in literary studies, his ideas about texts and authors helped spawn post-structuralism and new ways of doing criticism. In cultural and media studies, he is credited as a pioneer of semiotic analysis; modern courses in advertising, film, and media often teach “Barthesian” methods of decoding images. Social scientists and anthropologists drew on his concept of myth to analyze anything from politics to sports. Even the art world felt his impact: artists from the 1970s Pictures Generation (like Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine) took inspiration from his call to question originality and context.
Barthes’s influence was international. He lectured in the United States and Japan, and many of his works were translated into English by the late 1960s and 1970s. He held prestigious positions in France – for example, in 1977 he became the first professor of literary semiology at the Collège de France – underscoring the respect he commanded. Colleagues like Susan Sontag helped popularize his essays abroad. While some of his writing (for example, his later personal works) became popular among general readers, his more abstract ideas also permeated universities worldwide. In brief, Barthes’s name became almost synonymous with semiotic and structuralist criticism in the last half of the 20th century.
Critiques and Debates
Barthes’s innovations were controversial. Early on he ignited a famous feud with conservative critic Raymond Picard, who accused the “new criticism” of gibberish and intellectual provocation. Barthes defended himself in Criticism and Truth (1966), but such conflicts continued. Many traditional scholars simply found his style too undisciplined. His essays were once dismissed as deliberately obscure and self-indulgent—an accusation Barthes reportedly wore “with pride,” seeing obstruction of easy answers as part of his point. Critics also picked on particular arguments. For example, a Voltaire specialist sharply rebuked Barthes for a 1964 essay on Voltaire, saying he had completely misunderstood the figure. And China expert Simon Leys famously mocked Barthes’s travelogue of Maoist China, lauding it as a virtuoso exercise in “saying nothing at great length.”
More theoretically, Barthes was entangled in the wider tug-of-war between structuralism and its critics. Fellow theorist Jacques Derrida argued that any search for stable underlying structures was doomed by the instability of language itself. (Derrida’s idea of the absence of a fixed “transcendental signifier” meant that anything Barthes treated as a system of meaning might collapse into endless play.) Marxist critics sometimes faulted Barthes for attacking bourgeois myths but not directly advocating social change. On the other side, some conservative commentators saw him as undermining both authorial craft and common sense. In short, Barthes’s work was hotly debated: supporters hailed his insights into ideology and text, while opponents saw pitfalls in giving every reader free rein or in viewing all culture as a coded system.
Legacy
Today Roland Barthes is considered one of the founding thinkers of modern cultural critique. His terms (signifier, signified, myth, studium/punctum, “the death of the author”) are now part of the basic vocabulary of literary and media theory. He helped show that critical analysis could extend beyond fine arts and literature to all realms of culture. For example, modern media literacy education often echoes Barthes’s approach: students are encouraged to question the “naturalness” of advertising messages and to decode the social values embedded in news images.
In academia, his works are still widely taught. Seminars on semiotics open with Barthes’s examples, and debates he inspired (about authorship, textual openness, or ideology) remain central to theory. Some might argue that structuralism itself has fallen out of fashion, but Barthes had already evolved beyond it by the end of his life. In fact, the post-structuralist and subjective turn that he helped pioneer continues to shape fields like literary criticism, film theory, philosophy of language, cultural studies, anthropology, and even design theory. Scholars today still cite Barthes when discussing the layered meanings of images or questioning who “owns” a text. His blend of rigorous analysis with a clear, often poetic style set a model for accessible criticism.
Outside scholarship, Barthes’s name occasionally pops up in popular culture (for instance, movie characters quoting his lines or novels referencing the “seventh function of language,” a playful fiction). His idea of treating everyday life as full of meaningful signs paved the way for the kind of media critique that appears in mainstream books and documentaries. In short, Barthes’s legacy is that of a bridge-builder: he took ideas from linguistics and sociology, merged them with literary flair, and helped an entire generation look at culture through a more questioning lens.
Selected Works
- Writing Degree Zero (1953) – Barthes's first book, exploring how literary style is shaped by social conventions. He defines the concept of “neutral” writing and shows that no style is truly free from ideology.
- Mythologies (1957) – A landmark collection of essays analyzing everyday objects, images, and practices (from wrestling to advertisements to food) as cultural myths or second-order signs.
- Elements of Semiology (1964) – A systematic guide to semiotics (the study of signs), elaborating Barthes's theories of signifier/signified and how language (broadly defined) creates meaning.
- Critical Essays (1964) – A collection of earlier journal pieces on literature and society, including his debate with traditional criticism.
- Criticism and Truth (1966) – Barthes's reply to opponents of his earlier work. He defended structural analysis and argued that no critic has a privileged viewpoint by which to judge literature.
- On Racine (1963) and The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies (1964) – Essays showing early applications of structuralism to classic literature and cultural symbols.
- S/Z (1970) – A detailed, line-by-line reading of Balzac's novella Sarrasine. Barthes uses it to distinguish “readerly” versus “writerly” texts and to explore the constructive role of the reader.
- Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975) – An autobiographical, fragmentary reflection. It marked a shift to a more personal and novelistic style, though still exploring themes like photography and selfhood.
- The Pleasure of the Text (1975) – A collection of essays on literature, in which Barthes discusses the difference between a text that offers simple pleasure and one that gives more intense jouissance.
- A Lover’s Discourse (1977) – A personal meditation on love and desire, presented as fragments on the language and psychology of a lover.
- Camera Lucida (1980) – Barthes’s final book, on photography. He analyzes what photographs mean and introduces the ideas of punctum and studium, while reflecting on photographs of his late mother.
Conclusion
Roland Barthes lived at the crossroads of structuralism and post-structuralism, bringing linguistic insight to the study of culture. His analysis of myth showed that even the most mundane images carry ideological weight, and his insistence on the active role of the reader challenged centuries of literary tradition. While some of his specific methods have been debated, his core insight endures: that culture is a network of signs invites us to be more critical and creative readers of the world. Barthes’s legacy endures in any field that asks us to decode symbols, whether in media, politics, or art. By revealing the hidden messages in everyday life, Barthes helped shape the modern project of making meaning more visible and less taken for granted.