Barthes subordinated political critique to structural-linguistic semiological demonstration

Evidence

In a much-cited sequence, for example, Barthes offers, as a seemingly random instance of the workings of ”mythology,” a powerful deconstruction of the cultural promulgation of imperialist ideology: ”and here is now another example [of the structure of signification in ”myth”]: I am at the barber’s, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors” (116). … While analysis of racism, imperialism, and class inequality is central to the practice of postmodern cultural studies criticism in its readings of popular culture, for Barthes in this sixties text it is a central but quasi-repressed, only obliquely acknowledged agenda. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 248

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Barthes’s war on the bourgeois targeted cultural studies’ own populist constituency. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 216; Critiques conducted within political discourse reinforce the system they claim to scrutinize — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 446; Semiotic analysis can surface latent or repressed cultural content (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Critiques conducted within political discourse reinforce the system they claim to scrutinize #corroborates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 446
• Semiotic analysis can surface latent or repressed cultural content #corroborates (0.70)