Page 78 - Decoding Culture

ENTER STR C TURALISM 71
U
somewhat extravagantly that 'mythical thought always progresses
from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution' - and
the expressive or emotional dimension of culture as it is experi­
enced by individuals is all but unthinkable within this framework.
So much so that, in the wake of this kind of formalism, it was to be
some years before a structuralist-inspired cultural studies found
terms in which to address questions about the expressive plea­
sures afforded by texts.
Y e t the charge of over-formalism should not be laid entirely at
Levi-Strauss' door. The other major figure who influenced the char­
acter of early structuralism as it was perceived by cultural studies,
Roland Barthes, although significantly less austere in his formalist
commitments, also did much to promote a formally inclined mode
of semiological analysis. Unlike Levi-Strauss, however, Barthes'
thinking proved more fluid over time, a feature of his work which
can be stimulating and frustrating in equal measure. It leads Culler
(1990: 9-23) to view him as a 'man of parts', and so he was, con­
stantly pursuing a plurality of interests and several times revising
his principal theoretical commitments. Here I shall be concerned
primarily with Barthes the systematic semiologist, since it is this
aspect of his work which most significantly affected early cultural
studies. Roughly speaking, this phase comes to an end in 1973
with the publication of S / Z (Barthes, 1990) and is dominated by his
writings of the 1950s and 1960s. As this early work was made avail­
able to an English-speaking readership, it contributed to a
distinctive cultural studies vision of the semiological enterprise.
As with Levi-Strauss, Barthes' debt to Saussure is both apparent
and professed. He begins his 1964 systematization of semiology
(Barthes, 1973) with a reference to Saussure's Cours, and by the
end of his 'Introduction' he has already invoked three of the classic
Saussurian distinctions. 'They serve as organizing principles for
his study. However, also like Levi-Strauss, he develops his own

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