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Barthes developed the concept of myth at an early stage of his intellectual journey. Unlike in Gramsci’s writings, where many of the conceptual elaborations are scattered throughout his work and deeply rooted in the concrete historical circumstances

analysed, in the last section of Mythologies (1957) Barthes provides a succinct chapter in which he addresses the notion of myth. In that chapter, Barthes explains in great detail how myth comes into being by making reference to notions and terms typically employed in semiological analysis. However, the aim of this subsection is not to venture into the intricacy of these terms. Rather, the subsection will attempt to provide a brief and accessible insight into Barthes’ concept of myth, by outlining how the notion was initially developed, its key features and by illustrating it with the example of myth in bourgeois society, which bears great relevance for the current investigation.

In the preface to Mythologies (1957), Barthes explains how he first came to develop the notion of myth.

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 […] is undoubtedly determined by history. […] 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 (2009: xix).

Thus, Barthes developed his notion of myth, defining it as ‘a type of speech’ (2009: 131) - but not just any type of speech. In order to become myth, language needs to meet some conditions. It should be noted from the outset however that this is not to be intended in terms of the means through which myth is uttered. As will be seen in greater detail in the last subsection of the chapter, according to Barthes, myth can in fact be conveyed by a great variety of materials (ibid.: 132).

not linked to any kind of intrinsic quality of the object in question. As long as it is conveyed by a discourse, everything can attain the status of myth (2009: 131). Indeed, what defines myth is the social usage attributed to the object in question. In that sense, myth has an historical foundation; it is historically contingent (ibid.: 132). And it is precisely this key feature of myth that the myth-reader cannot grasp, for the very principle of myth is that ‘it transforms history into nature’ (Barthes, 2009: 154). In other words, ‘what the world supplies to myth is an historical reality, defined […] by the way in which men have produced or used it; and what myth gives in return is a natural image of this reality’ (ibid.: 169, emphasis in the original).

In order to illustrate the principle whereby myth transforms history into nature, Barthes makes recourse to the example of myth in bourgeois society. This example is particularly useful for the current investigation, since it further shows how Gramsci’s and Barthes’ analyses are closely linked, as they are both motivated by the desire to expose the mystifications that underpin capitalist society.

Barthes identifies myth in bourgeois society as depoliticised speech (2009: 169). According to him, what defines bourgeois ideology is precisely the abandonment of the name ‘bourgeois’ (ibid.). His argument revolves around the pervasiveness of bourgeois norms and their ensuing naturalisation. As bourgeois ideology penetrates intermediate classes, a process enacted through the dissemination of norms via various means, such as the press, rituals and consumption to cite only a few, the bourgeoisie universalises its vocabulary and thus undergoes a process of ex-nomination:

Everything, in everyday life, is dependent on the representations which the bourgeoisie has and makes us have of the relations between man and the world […] [P]racticed on a national scale, bourgeois norms are experienced as the evident laws of a natural order – the further the bourgeois class propagates its

representations, the more naturalized they become […] By spreading its representations […] the bourgeoisie countenances the illusory lack of differentiation of the social classes (Barthes, 2009: 166- 167, emphasis in the original).

In other words, rather than appearing as something historically contingent, bourgeois norms appear as universal and natural, for they are purposefully conveyed in people’s everyday life through a variety of channels. In turn, the consequences of this naturalisation are wide-ranging: the naturalisation stands in the way of the subordinate classes acknowledging the ideological character of bourgeois norms. Rather, these norms appear as unchangeable, thus leading to an ‘impoverishment of consciousness’ (ibid., 2009: 167) of these classes, which translates into their inability to appraise their social condition. Barthes concludes:

The flight from the name ‘bourgeois’ is not therefore an illusory, accidental, secondary, natural or insignificant phenomenon: it is the bourgeois ideology itself, the process through which the bourgeoisie transforms the reality of the world into an image of the world, History into Nature. And this image has a remarkable feature: it is upside down. The status of the bourgeoisie is particular, historical: man as represented by it is universal, eternal (ibid.: 168).

When looking at the way in which Barthes defines myth in bourgeois society, the similarities between his approach and Gramsci’s are easily seen. First, as Barthes claims that myth has an historical foundation, he points out the importance of historicity, which is also key in Gramsci’s work. Second, Barthes highlights how myth is received uncritically by subordinate classes, as he states that they cannot acknowledge the ideological character of bourgeois norms, due to the fact that these norms mask the historical character of social relations, making them appear as natural and unchangeable. The similarities between this feature of myth and the notion of common sense are

are not accidental, which echoes the notion of a hegemonic project found in Gramsci. Finally, Barthes also makes reference to everyday life, a notion that is not explicitly referred to by Gramsci, but which can be associated to his concept of common sense; in fact, common sense comes into being as ideas and values are conveyed at the level of civil society, which implies that actors are frequently exposed to them.