Page 152 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

MYTH

meanings of language alone but are also the consequence of the proliferation and
diversification of social relationships, contexts and sites of interaction (albeit
constituted in and through discourse). The proliferation and diversification of
contexts and sites of interaction prevent easy identification of particular subjects 129
with a given, fixed, identity so that the same person is able to shift across subject
positions according to circumstances. Thus do discourse, identities and social
practice in time–space form a mutually constituting set.
In a sense one does not have an identity or even identities; rather, one is
described as being constituted by a centre-less weave of beliefs, attitudes and
identifications. Since we cannot see our identities as objects of our own vision or
understanding, we cannot say what a person is; rather, we have to decide how
people are best described for particular purposes. Amongst the advantages of
describing identity as the weaving together of patterns of discourse into a centre-
less web, and not as a set of attributes that are possessed by a unified core self, is that
it offers the possibility of an enlargement of the self through the addition of new
beliefs, attitudes and desires phrased in new vocabularies.

Links Articulation, discourse, identity, postmodernism, subjectivity

Myth In general terms a myth is a story or fable that acts as a symbolic guide or map of
meaning and significance in the cosmos. In cultural studies, the concept of a myth
refers more to the naturalization of the connotative level of meaning, a use that is
somewhat similar to the notion of ideology. Thus myth makes particular world-views
appear to be unchallengeable because they are natural or God-given. This argument
is taken from the work of Roland Barthes in the late 1960s and early 1970s for whom
myth has the task of giving historical contingency an eternal justification.
According to Barthes, we can talk of two systems of signification; that is,
denotation and connotation. Denotation is the descriptive and ‘literal’ level of
meaning shared by virtually all members of a culture. Thus, ‘pig’ denotes the
concept of a useful pink farm animal with a snout and curly tail etc. At the second
level of signification, that is, connotation, meanings are generated by connecting
signifiers to wider cultural concerns, that is the beliefs, attitudes, frameworks and
ideologies of a social formation. Meaning becomes a matter of the association of
signs with other cultural codes of meaning. Thus, ‘pig’ may connote nasty police
officer or male chauvinist according to the sub-codes or lexicons at work.
Meaning is said to multiply up from a given sign until a single sign is loaded with
manifold meanings. This connotation carries expressive value arising from the
cumulative force of a sequence (syntagmatically) or, more usually, by comparison
with absent alternatives (paradigmatically). Where connotations have become
naturalized as hegemonic, that is, accepted as ‘normal’ and ‘natural’, they act as
conceptual maps of meaning by which to make sense of the world. These are myths,
a second-order semiological system or metalanguage that speaks about a first-level
language. The sign of the first system (signifier and signified) which generates
denotative meaning becomes a signifier for a second order of connotative
mythological meaning.