I’m not currently working on my dissertation — no writing yet, no research for now — as I am far too occupied with studying for my candidacy exams. But I did come across something today which is plainly related to studies of the everyday. I was reading Roland Barthes’ Mythologies and, though I’ve read it before, I haven’t thought about it for quite awhile. What struck me is just how much Barthes’ work falls in line with other theorists of the everyday. He even returns to Baudelaire, Proust, Mallarmé, Bataille — all modern writers to whom other theorists of the everyday refer.
Mythologies in particular is about how various cultural productions, from texts, to photographs, to advertisements, to everyday myths and narratives, are at their base ideological. Even the most taken-for-granted truths or the most benign or neutral-appearing representations carry the traces of an ideological message. He makes connections between cultural representations and the material conditions of existence; for instance, he suggests that the specific chemical structures of cleaning products directly correlate to the real conditions of the women who use them: “the chemical fluid is an extension of the washerwoman’s movements when she beats the clothes, while powders rather replace those of the housewife pressing and rolling the washing against a sloping board.” In addition, the advertising of those products is intimately connected to the idiosyncracies of class: “Persil Whiteness for instance, bases its prestige on the evidence of a result; it calls into play vanity, a social concern with appearances, by offering for comparison two objects, one of which is whiter than the other.” This particular example also carries the connotations of racial distinction.
What Barthes makes apparent is not just that everyday representations are ideological, but that ideology is most effectively disseminated through coded everyday representations. I can’t help but wonder why Barthes has not made an appearance in the canon of everyday life theory. Especially considering that it is essentially a branch of cultural studies and Barthes could easily be regarded as a forefather of the discipline. Perhaps because it is still a developing field and no one has made it into that corner yet. Or perhaps people in the academy are not particularly interested in Barthes right now (I’ve certainly gotten that impression in general). Or maybe he doesn’t really fit and I just don’t know enough about this particular field to see that yet. I have to say though, if Barthes suddenly makes a splash onto the everyday scene in the next year or two, without my having already made my comments on him, I’m going to kick myself for doubting it.
