Poststructuralism

26th of June 2019

Poststructuralism – and the language of photography

Read ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ by Roland Barthes in your course reader. If you want to take your study of semiotics further you could so worse than reading Daniel Chandler’s book Semiotics: The Basics or look at the web version at: www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.htm/

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The poststructuralism movement came in response to the structuralism movement, it arose in the 1960s in France, it started as a movement in philosophy and literature. It began emerging in other art forms over time. It came together using the deconstructional ideas of Jacques Derrida, anthropological theories of Creuda Levi-Strauss, and the linguists from Ferdinand de Saussure. It declares that a code of principles, will allude to a meaning, they act together without any input from a world outside. 

Barthes started by discussing the origins of the word ‘image’, which is from imitari, meaning to imitate. According to Barthes, an image will contain three messages. He uses a Panzani advert to illustrate this. The first message takes its form as linguistic. This is basically the text that supports the image. This message takes two forms, connotational and denotational. Often what is signified can depend on the viewers interpretation and our culture. The second message is iconic. Which is to do with the signifiers, mainly what is photographed. The third message is to do with the relationship between the signifiers and what is signified. So the three messages are linguistically, a coded iconic and non-coded iconic message. 

Text is an aid in deciphering an image. Sometimes it describes the scene, other time it elaborates it further, it is a form of direction, it leads the viewer to discover the signified parts of the image. But the text holds control over the image, this is its anchorage. This is found in main types of images, in particular in adverts. Relay is found more commonly in comic strips. These two functions are capable of working side by side.  According to Barthes, it is a “matter of a denoted description of the image” (Barthes, p. 37). This relates to the anchorage of the many meanings. When looking at the symbolic message, this restricts the connoted meaning, it is down to interpretation now. Barthes believes it is impossible to find an Images literal message in its pure state. Photographs appear to be a ‘message without a code’. On the other hand, drawings are coded. They have three levels, to replicate a scene using ruled transpositions, the coding requires the differentiation between the insignificant and significant, and lastly they need an apprenticeship. But in photographs, the transformation part, isn’t that, it become a recording function. It promotes the idea of realism, one which is taken mechanically. Our input into taking a picture, for example the lighting, the focus, the speed is the connotation, which comes from a cultural code. “Only the opposition of the cultural code and the natural non-code can, it seems, account for the specific character of the photograph and allow the assessment of the anthropological revolution it represents in man’s history” (Barthes, p. 40). The denoted images therefore, does not hint at a code, but plays an important role in the structure of the iconic message. 

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Bibliography

Barthes, R. (2007). ‘Rhetoric of the Image’ In: Evans & Hall (ed.) Visual Culture:A Reader. London: Sage Publications Ltd. pp. 33-40. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica. ‘Poststructuralism’. [Online]. At: https://www.britannica.com/art/poststructalism (Accessed on 19th of June 2019).