Barthes and bourgeois mythology

Barthes' Mythologies rather charmingly exposes bourgeois society and the myths that frame it. Using a structural or semiotic approach, Barthes is able to dissect and analyze a variety of things (essentially any aspect of popular culture) and find how they function within a mythological framework (and how they effect society or how society uses them).

Barthes' rhetorical approach is centered on oppositions (especially in language), which we see particularly in Soap-powders and Detergents. Barthes shows us how different types of soaps are sold by way of what they signify, for example:

"Chlorinated fluids, for instance, have always been experienced as a sort of liquid fire, the action of which must be carefully estimated, otherwise the object itself would be affected, 'burnt'. The implicit legend of this type of product rests on the idea of a violent, abrasive modification of matter: the connotations are of chemical or mutilating type: the product 'kills' the dirt. Powders, on the contrary, are separating agents: their ideal role is to liberate the object from its circumstantial imperfection: dirt is 'forced out' and no longer killed..." (My own italics)

Soaps, here, have been polarized to their extremes, one as a violent modifying agent, the other as liberating. The relationship of signifier and signified here is important; the chlorinated fluid is the signifier, the violent destruction of dirt is signified (what the soap means). Likewise, the powder is the signifier, and the nonviolent exiling or expulsion of the dirt is signified.

Barthes was certainly being purposefully humorous in his deep analysis of soaps, but then again, he can be no humorous than the fact that such an analysis is possible (and works!) We as consumers are sold things, not necessarily for what they are, but because of their implicit meaning, the invisible mythologies that are literally packaged with (and as) the product itself. Delicate material requires delicate powder to free it from the enmeshed dirt, the tougher grime must be violently removed by a tougher soap. The irony of the oppositions is that in the end, they are of the same source, "A euphoria, incidentally, which must not make us forget that there is one plane on which Persil and Omo are one and the same: the plane of the Anglo-Dutch trust Unilever." Barthes saves his best move for last, and the punch line delivers very effectively. Of course, one must come to expect effective rhetorical gestures from a critic mostly concerned with structures, signs, and rhetoric.

Wine and Milk, similarly, is centered on an opposition:

Bachelard was probably right in seeing water as the opposite of wine: mythically, this is true; sociologically, today at least, less so; economic and historical circumstances have given this part to mil. The latter is now the true anti-wine; and not only because of M. Mendes-France's popularizing efforts (which had a purposefully mythological look as when he used to drink milk during his speeches in the Chamber, as Popeye eats spinach), but also because in the basic mophology of substances milk is the opposite of fire by all the denseness of its molecules, by the creamy, and therefore soothing, nature of its spreading."

Wine and milk are opposites, like different soaps, both rhetorically and mythologically. But Barthes isn't really concerned with milk, rather, he focuses on wine. Wine is no longer signified, but becomes signifier for something else, namely Frenchness, something healthy and high-minded (as opposed to an alcohol like whiskey). But just as in his soap essay, Barthes finishes the wine piece with the sharpest piece of commentary, "And the characteristic of our current alienation is precisely that wine cannot be an unalloyedly blissful substance, except if we wrongfully forget that it is also the product of an expropriation." By the end of the two essays, we know (or should know) that the mythologies surrounding these aspects of domestic culture are exactly innocent, but rather serve as active agents for the bourgeoisie in forming and enforcing values or some other end, making the humor in the essays rather dark in its implications.

islam / europe

Mark Steyn's article "The Future Belongs to Islam" is one of those reactionary responses to Islamic globalization that we've come to expect from conservative pundits, even Canadian pundits. As the title of his article implies, the future of Europe (and probably the rest of the Western world) belongs to a growing Islamic, um, youth. One gets the sense that at the various points where Steyn directly inserts his smugness to say "youth," he really wants to say "threat." Steyn's rhetorical argument rests on the idea that a rapidly changing demographic in Europe, from old European natives to young Muslim immigrants, and this new demographic is reflected in the French riots and various forms of unrest. What is interesting about Steyn's article, however, is that he doesn't seem to be fighting against anything. Generally, conservative pundits try to preserve or conserve or react against a new wave of something (politics, immigrants, etc.), but the battle seems over for Steyn. Demographics will change in different ways in different place, yes, but the influx of Muslim immigrants is unstoppable, and the consequences are irreversable.

Steyn's style (to call it that) is surprisingly informal and conversational in tone, for example:

Actually, I don't think everything's about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 per cent of everything's about demography. Take that media characterization of those French rioters: "youths." What's the salient point about youths? They're youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It's not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back with your walker across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man's game.

There is an element of sarcasm here with the quip about the octogenarian, and the short, rough sentences like "They're youthful," and "Civil disobedience is a young man's game." This is like a tired, angry, old man saying "I've had enough with you kids and your baggy pants." But what is Steyn's point? We know Europe is changing forever, and that a Europe of countries filled with white, bourgeois nationalists is dead. The new Europe is a blend, the old Europe making way for an Islamafied Europe. Steyn's article, then, seems to be functioning as a warning of what is to come (and not of what can be prevented). Indeed, his article ends with the quote,

"Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."

Stephen Holmes' article is also about Islam in Europe, but with a much more liberal-minded (but no less annoying) perspective. The tone is different from the Steyn article in that, if it serves as a warning at all, the message is moral and the problem itself is still on the horizon (whereas for Steyn it seems all hope is lost). Steyn seems to be implying that the Muslim immigrants are forcing the old Europeans out of their places, but Holmes seems to be saying that Europe needs to accomodate: the momentum is held on opposite sides (Islam or Europe) for the writers.

Style-wise, Holmes' article seems to be more in line with we'd expect from a politcal journalist, i. e. long-ish paragraphs, suspensive sentences, and hypotaxis. Steyn's article tries to appeal to a more basic, "common sense" perspective to the issue, thus not probing very deeply or inquisitively into his topic. Holmes, on the other hand, has passages like this:

Perhaps the most important difference between Hirsi Ali and Buruma lies in the latter's belief, following the French political scientist Olivier Roy, that the only way forward is for Islam to be fully accepted as a European religion. Buruma is noncommittal about the claim of some moderate members of the Dutch Muslim community that "only properly organized religion will stop young men from downloading extremism from the Internet," but he wants to avoid making Islam itself responsible for the disappointments of Muslim integration in Europe, because the majority of Europe's Muslims are not going to follow Hirsi Ali into outright atheism. This is what leads Buruma to conclude: "Attacking religion cannot be the answer, for the real threat to a mixed society will come when the mainstream of non-revolutionary Muslims has lost all hope of feeling at home."

Here, we have a pretty classic example of the "thesis - evidence - conclusion" paragraph structure, one which reads with a logical progression from point to point, including quotes, etc. We don't really see this with Steyn, but with Steyn, we don't need to be convinced that a real person wrote the article, but with Holmes, we may need some convincing that the article wasn't produced by a card-board suit.

It seems to me that the differences in style and political persuasion go hand-in-hand. Holmes, the "liberal," is giving his reader a "view" (as opposed to an argument), one which doesn't necessarily come to any real conclusion, but nonetheless, expects its reader to be educated enough to come to their own conclusion on a complex, morally grey area. Steyn, the "conservative," gives us his argument in a very argumentative, confrontational, but also conversational way. He's not giving us complex arguments complete with thesis, evidence, etc. Rather, he is asserting his points and then defending them, relying on a more visceral, "gut-instinct" reaction from the reader, as does so much conservative commentary. In short, the liberal article tries to focus in on two sides of a complex issue, ask some questions, leave most unanswered, and let the reader decided, based on their own intelligence, what is really happening and what should be happening. The conservative article, however, is a reaction to what has and still is happening. He takes a side, stays there, and expects us to either follow him or reject him (although it seems to not matter considering the battle is already lost).

james' Paste

James' Paste is one of those old timey bourgeois prose narratives that concerns itself with middle-class white people dealing with money and/or other valuable or sentimental objects. We encounter the same kind of story with D H Lawrence's Rocking Horse Winner, where the issue was luck and money and the young boy's Oedipal struggle to acquire wealth for his mother. In James' story, the object in question is the pearl necklace, and whether or not it is "paste" (fake pearls). This type of story would be familiar to anybody who has already read Nathaniel Hawthorne, especially how certain objects are given value not as things in themselves but as what they might mean or what they mean metaphysically. For example,

The pearls had quite taken their place as a revelation. She might have received them for nothing - admit that; but she couldn't have kept them so long and so unprofitably hidden, couldn't have enjoyed them only in secret, for nothing; and she had mixed them, in her reliquary, with false things... (96)

The pearls are almost an abstraction, and through Charlotte's relationship with the pearls, we can better see her realationship with other people (via pearls). This, of course, is the psychological aspect of James' writing so characteristically ascribed to him. The pearls don't mean anything, necessarily, as objects, but as something which effects characters psyches. The psychological states of the characters are shown not necessarily in the dialogue, but in the gaps in the dialogue, as if what is elliptical or parenthetical or even totally absent is more important than what really is said. Throughout the story, a character's speech is cut off, either by the other character or by themselves, but if one quickly glosses the story, one will find many lines ending with "-", with the rest of the line intuited or already understood by the receiver of the speech. In this way James is able to portray the complex psychological states of his characters under the superficial surface of apprehensive dialogue and questionable motives. And as it turns out, the pearls, which are of real value, end up going to the only person who actually knew what their worth was; Mrs Guy.

Montaigne

Emerson is probably Montaigne's best critic when he rightly says, "Cut these words, and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive." Montaigne's writing really is alive, because it is about life itself. Montaigne comes in that great tradition of secularized wisdom writing, a group including Freud, Nietzsche, Proust, Emerson, etc. His topic is life, and more specifically himself, even if his essays have titles like "Upon Some Verses of Virgil." He talks about Virgil, but Virgil is only important insofar as Montaigne is able to extract himself from Virgil (and other writing), for instance, "

The more respectful, more timorous, more coy, and secret love of the Spaniards and Italians pleases me. I know not who of old wished his throat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he swallowed: it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous pleasure, especially in such natures as mine that have the fault of being too prompt. To stay its flight and delay it with preambles; all things- a glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favor and recompense between them. Were it not an excellent piece of thrift in him who could dine on the steam of the roast? `Tis a passion that mixes with very little solid essence, far more vanity and feverish raving; and we should serve and pay it accordingly. Let us teach the ladies to set a better value and esteem upon themselves, to amuse and fool us: we give the last charge at the first onset; the French impetuosity will still show itself; by spinning out their favors, and exposing them in small parcels, even miserable old age itself will find some little share of reward, according to its worth and merit. He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins nothing unless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no pleasure in the chase but in the quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more steps and degrees there are, so much higher and more honorable is the uppermost seat; we should take a pleasure in being conducted to it, as in magnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasant galleries, and many windings.

This seems to me to be perfect experiential criticism, the kind we'll later see in Ruskin and Pater. But who really cares what Virgil said (in context of Montaigne)? One could have no context for this quote and still find in it insights which are near-universal, and this is Montaigne's strength; he is able to isolate the most basic human qualities from nearly any source (Virgil in this case) and give us his splendid commentary. His prose is very much high-style, but is never political and never deceptive. Montaigne is not advancing some aim, he is simply finding, discovering, and exploring himself (and us too).

A classic Montaigne sentence is (from this passage), "He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins nothing unless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no pleasure in the chase but in the quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more steps and degrees there are, so much higher and more honorable is the uppermost seat; we should take a pleasure in being conducted to it, as in magnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasant galleries, and many windings. "

One could not be blamed for hearing a voice similar to Marx's, especially with the front-loaded, noun heavy style, and the impression that we are being spoken to from a pulpit, but Montaigne's pulpit is decidedly educational rather than political or religious, and the sight is the human and not the church. Montaigne teaches us ethics and style while marvelously leading us through "porticoes and passages, long and pleasant galleries, and many windings." These porticoes and passages and windings are just like Montaigne's writing itself. There is no over-determined structure, rather, he is writing as he feels it, and is able to translate his thought to prose beautifully. His writing is in this sense mimetic, the form is totally compatible with his content, free from boundaries and open to possibility (wherever Montaigne decides to take it).

My personal favorite aspect of Montaigne's writing is that by the end of the essay, we will have learned worlds more about Montaigne than whatever it was he was writing about, as exemplified from his great last passage:

I say that males and females are cast in the same mold, and that, education and usage excepted, the difference is not great. Plato indifferently invites both the one and the other to the society of all studies, exercises, and vocations, both military and civil, in his commonwealth; and the philosopher Antisthenes rejected all distinction between their virtue and ours. It is much more easy to accuse one sex than to excuse the other; `tis according to the saying "The Pot and the Kettle."

Was this not an essay about Virgil? But where is Virgil at the end? He is nowhere, and Montaigne is everywhere, and we are better off for it. This last passage could've been about Shakespeare, or really any writer, but Montaigne is able to use any material he finds useful and give us his wisdom, which for us becomes a kind of received wisdom, a secular revelation or epiphany of sorts, what Pater would call a "privileged moment."

marx/hemingway

Marx's writing is constructed in such a manner as to rewrite history in a radically polemical manner, setting class opposites as brutalized oppositions - bourgeoisie vs proletariat, capitalist vs socialist, good vs bad, rich vs poor, etc. Constructing history as a dialectical system of binaries\opposites, Marx is able to exploit injustice, reminding us always, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." We as readers are brought into this very struggle, as each and everyone of us is apart of a particular class and situation. Marx is so effective because he appeals to the victim in each of us, the wronged "little guy" being exploited by the evil big-wig capitalist or oppressor. His rhetoric is built in this manner, as a call to the masses to get up and act, and Marx is very much an exhorter, especially in the ever famous, "Workers of the world, unite!" Marx is anything but subtle, but in this manner, Orwell would probably approve. Marx's rhetoric is grand itself, but his explicit message is never concealed; we know Marx's aims and his writing is genuinely transparent, much in the same way as Marx's polar opposite Ayn Rand.

In a jarring change of focus, I go to Hemingway's very short story, "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn." A story with only 6 words is necessarily somewhat of a novelty out of sheer brevity, but it does seem to work like any other Hemingway short story. What could the possible context be? We the readers are left to brood on this grim situation, obviously where a baby is absent (died? never born? given away?) but with the shoes still there. In fact, this story is hard to talk about precisely because of its brevity. Is there beginning, middle end? No, because we have to imagine the structure. The immense void (of meaning) surrounding the story is what gives it its meaning, like an iceberg with only a small portion visible to the eye but a huge portion totally concealed. We imagine what the rest of the iceberg is like based on how we take in the visible portion of the iceberg, and so it is with Hemingway's brief story. What is so intriguing is that Hemingway seems to be showing us his secrets of writing, laying bare his fundamental stylistic mechanics, without us necessarily being able to say precisely what it is he's doing with any accuracy. In this manner, Hemingway, while appearing transparent, is ultimately, in forced contrast with Marx, is opaque. Hemingway is very much relying upon pathos in his story as opposed to whatever it is Marx is doing, which also seems to me a crucial distinction between political and imaginative writing; fiction has the unique ability (and responsibility) to lie, but Marx and others like him either have to be genuine (telling the "truth") or at least act like they are.

anderson

Sherwood Anderson's Winesberg, Ohio is rather strange in that it is comprised of such brief short stories but is really a loosely structured novel. We see something close to this with Hemingway's "Nick Adams" stories or Joyce's Dubliners, but Hemingway and Joyce are altogether different from Anderson, especially concerning prose style.

"The Book of the Grotesque" and "Paper Pills" both read something like an odd mixture of Poe and HP Lovecraft, where everyone in the world (or at least in the community at hand) is somehow evil or bad or crippled (physically or mentally) or "grotesque" in some way. Winesberg sounds more like hell than a midwestern community, although Ohio has always been closer to hell than the midwest. Notably, we don't get real or fully developed characters at all, only small clips. Even in the "Nick Adams" stories we actually know Nick Adams a little better after each story, but not in Anderson's case.

The stories are being told to us, almost like campfire stories (one can imagine a sinister voice and a flash-light for facial illumination). Also notable is the running style narrative voice, the theatrical yet "spontaneous" performance / account of the story: "He was like a pregnant woman, only that the thing inside him was not a baby but a youth. No, it wasn't a youth, it was a woman, young, and wearing a coat of mail like a knight. It is absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the fluttering of his heart." This is a rather odd passage, something we may expect from a demented Twilight Zone episode or a Robert Browning poem. Further down, we get a whole rant on truth and truths and their large variety and how people stick to one truth against all other truths, etc. These truths make people grotesque, or rather, these truths make them particular to Sherwood Anderson. But what are these truths (also mentioned in "Paper Pills")? We don't really know, they're only some vague concept Anderson has thrown at us, akin to a symbol in French Symbolist poetry or some weird moral from a Poe tale. Indeed, we probably finish one of these stories with far more questions than answers, at least I have. What happens to these people? Why? Does the story length change throughout the book? Do the characters keep coming back? Unfortunately, as is the case with a short selection, we can't find out, although based on the selections given, I'm not sure I'll be investigation Anderson any further.

Faulkner - Dry September

Perhaps the most obvious, yet most successfully executed aspect of Faulkner's short story is the perspective, or more accurately, the shifting or fluid perspective. The problem with a static perspective is that the reader only sees one side of the story (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but certain situations are more complex and multi-dimensional than can be conveyed through only one character or perspective, etc. Faulkner, a preternaturally strong writer, is able to exploit this "problem" of perspective and gives us instead an array of views, much like in his novel "As I Lay Dying", especially the early sequence of scenes with sound of the saw being heard by various characters at various physical locations, each perceiving their environment in crucially different ways. In this we may also recognize Melville's "Moby Dick", with Ishmael as the main perspective for much of the story, later fading into anonymity and giving way to the voices of most other members of the Pequod.

Faulkner's story is dealing with the largest social burden of the American South, which is to say, black and white relations. A story like this could only be told through various perspectives, so the reader sees how the situation effects different groups of people in various levels of society, and perhaps more importantly, so the reader isn't able to come to any real conclusions. The only two people in the story who really know what happened are Will Mayes and Aunt Minnie, and by the end of the story, one will be dead, thus silencing that half of the truth forever. But Faulkner wouldn't let us have the truth anyway, even if Mayes wasn't killed. The two most significant roles (Mayes, Minnie) are also the most silent; we never get to hear what they have to say. Faulkner is getting at something big here, which is that people don't have to know the facts in order to come to drastic conclusions. A man dies for something he may or may have not done, which is Faulkner's grim portrayal of mob-justice, and we would do well to look ourselves in the mirror.

What seems to me the most interesting aspect of the story, however, is the barber character. In the barber we have the prototype for Atticus Finch, the white southerner who is generally righteous in his intentions but all the same a victim of the racist, white, conservative socio-political structure. The barber and Atticus Finch are certainly to be admired in at least some regard, if for nothing else than for standing up to their racist compatriots. Doubtless the south is a different place now, and probably always had well-meaning whites with no real disdain for blacks and no accusatory sentiments, but this is one of the sad points of both Faulkner's and Lee's stories; the individual, no matter how right or well-meaning, generally doesn't stand a chance against a group with hate and not truth or reason at its core. Ultimately, it is the mob's perspective that proves overpowering not only for poor Mayes but also for the hapless barber.

Stylistically speaking, we have a stereotypical narrative voice, or what I would call a "story teller". For instance, if one looks at the beginning of every section in the story, the scene is always being set before any character action takes place, e. g. "The barber went swiftly...", "As she dressed...", etc. Faulkner's word choice, much like some of his earlier novels, seems to come from the desire to make the reader physically uncomfortable, almost as if they were in a dusty, hot, heavy southern environment. We have "...bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days...", "The air was flat and dead. It had a metallic taste at the base of the tongue," etc. Anybody who has spent time in the south at this time of year knows precisely what this metallic taste in the mouth is and how the air has a weight to it, but a dead weight. There is almost a natural violence that can be felt in the air, and by making us literally feel this sensation, Faulkner all the more effectively orients the reader in his story. We cannot know what happened between Minnie and Will, but we know what it felt like whenever it happened, whatever happened, if anything happened at all.