Il piacere del mito: Roland Barthes sociologo della cultura

The paper aims at investigating the mythographical function that writing assumes for Roland Barthes within the contemporary mitghologies, described by the semiologist according a sociocultural and communicative approach. In his works Barthes analyzes the notion of writing as a founding myth of modernity, capable of shaping and building the discursive rhetorics of everyday life. Whereas in Mythologies (1957) everyday life is read as an empire of myths, in The plaisure of text (1973) writing rises to a peculiar myth of the communicating society, whose practice and knowledge are fundamental to understand the innovation of the participated meanings spread by actors. Writing becomes a social myth (or myth of myths), celebrated in The plaisure of text, in which Barthes imagines the constitution of a society of the friends of text, hanging between utopia and dystopia. This society is founded on the plaisure of text and enjoyment of narrations, which Barthes outlines describing the empire of myths that build the myth of writing. This is one of the possible interpretations of the research developed by Barthes as a sociologist of culture, absorbed by the floating complexity of modernity.