On Signs

by Marshall Blonsky (Editor)

Thirty years ago Roland Barthes and others first perceived the power of unassertive objects as "signs," bearers of accepted opinion and of ideological manipulation. In the three decades since, there has developed a new science of signs, called semiotics . Its practitioners include advertisers, politicians, media pundits, and cultural mandarins, all of whom send signals―a product, an image, a service, an idea―to those who will "buy" only if they recognize themselves in the message. On Signs opens up semiotics to a broad, nonspecialist audience. Here the founders of the discipline, along with some of the leading "signmaker" of contemporary culture, undertake to explain the signs in subjects as diverse as El Salvador's death squads and ladies' lingerie, the letters of Pliny and the windows of Tiffany's, fashion, food, film, jokes, psychoanalysis, and history. The forty-six essaye gathered here are either newly written for On Signs or (save one) newly translated into English. Among the contributors are Roland Barthes, Michel de Certeau, Jacques Derrida, Edmundo Desnoes, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Thomas A. Sebeok, and others. On Signs is, to say the least, provocative. Umberto Eco writes on cowboys and Indians at a White House press conference, Edmundo Desnoes on the meaning of Castro's beard. Jan Kott explains the dramaturgy of a heart attack, Roland Barthes tells how to spend a week in Paris, and Milton Glaser reveals the semiotic underpinnings of supermarket design. Thomas Sebeok show how―and why―to communicate with people who wil live 10,000 years from now. On Signs will astonish, enlighten, and amuse. What it does, no book has done before.

Genres: Theory, Nonfiction, Essays, Sociology

536 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1985

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent anthology of semiological texts.

[Alienne Laval · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read.

[M]

from Roland Barthes, "The Shape I'm In: Interview with French "Playboy"

"Playboy": Your problem is sugar?

Barthes: For me, yes. But that is not the case for everybody. And then you know, there are fads. Take Atkins, for example. He maintains that if you get rid of all sugars, fruits included, you can eat as much as you want of everything else. In reality, it is an ideology that is tailor-made for Americans, in so far as, on the one hand, it frustrates them enormously (they are the people who eat the most sugar): therefore it gives them the energy to struggle over an important point (no more sundaes, no more ice cream, no more Cokes, etc.). On the other hand, the Atkins diet gives Americans an enormous compensation: breakfast! It recurs on every page of Atkins like a kind of description of the golden age: all is not lost because with Atkins, in the morning, you are entitled to eat anything you want, bacon, sausage, eggs, poached, fried, etc.

Playboy: Another compensation: it gives them a guru. Part of the "religious" aspect of dieting.

Barthes: It is better to "add up" diets. And then in the end there is only one system for losing weight: do not eat. Do you know what I spoke about with the administrator of the College de France, during my first visit for candidature? The American statistics on the percentage of successful weight-loss diets. Barely 5 per cent last - the others last a while, then they give up. In the modern world, there is a social dialectic which keeps you from sticking to a diet: if you eat something with someone, you are immediately subjected to the other's attention, which keeps you from respecting your diet in one way or another. I m forced to compensate for my meals in restaurants by eating ascetically when I am at home. A salad. A grilled steak - I don't like meat. But it is the food best suited to keeping you from getting fat.

Playboy: And cheese?

Barthes: I like it enormously. I often have some between meals. I should not but...

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Acquired 1998
The Word, Montreal, Quebec

[Leonard Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less flashy but more useful than "American Mythologies", this is a fine book on semiotics by Roland Barthes' American protege.

[rebecca]

i effluviously covet this book. that isn't how you spell effluviously, i guess. anyway i wonder if i will covet it as much in 2008 or 2009 as i did in 2002.