Roland Barthes, Mythologies
Selected and translated from the French by ANNETTE LAVERS
THE NOONDAY PRESS - NEW YORK FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX, 1972
"It seems that this is a difficulty pertaining to our times: there is as yet only one possible choice, and this choice can bear only on two equally extreme methods: either to posit a reality which is entirely permeable to history, and ideologize; or, conversely, to posit a reality which is ultimately impenetrable, irreducible, and, in this case, poetize. In a word, I do not yet see a synthesis between ideology and poetry (by poetry I understand, in a very general way, the search for the inalienable meaning of things).
The fact that we cannot manage to achieve more than an unstable grasp of reality doubtless gives the measure of our present alienation: we constantly drift between the object and its demystification, powerless to render its wholeness. For if we penetrate the object, we liberate it but we destroy it; and if we acknowledge its full weight, we respect it, but we restore it to a state which is still mystified. It would seem that we are condemned for some time yet always to speak excessively about reality. This is probably because ideologism and its opposite are types of behaviour which are still magical, terrorized, blinded and fascinated by the split in the social world. And yet, this is what we must seek: a reconciliation between reality and men, between description and explanation, between object and knowledge."
Roland Barthes, Mythologies
두 가지 똑같이 극단적인 방법이 있다. 역사에 전적으로 투과되는 현실을 상정하고 이데올로기화하는 것이 있다. 또는 반대로 궁극적으로 투과될 수 없고, 환원될 수 없는 현실이 있으며, 이 경우에는 결국 시화하는 것이다. … 우리는 물체와 그것의 탈신비화 사이에서 끊임없이 표류하며, 그 전체를 제대로 표현할 힘이 없다. 우리가 그 물체를 관통하게 되면 우리는 그것을 해방시킬 수 있지만 결국 그것을 파괴한다. 그리고 우리가 그것의 전체 무게를 제대로 인정하려 하면, 우리는 그것을 존중할 수 있긴 하지만 여전히 그것을 신비로운 상태로 복원할 뿐이다.
