The fashion system is a book by the philosopher and semiotics Roland Bart [1] , first published in 1967 [2] . The fashion system is considered the classic work of Bart and one of the central works of the structuralist movement [3] . Bart considers fashion as an iconic system that defines the characteristics of culture and the social system of the second half of the 20th century. [4] .
Content
General characteristics
In the Fashion System, Bart develops the ideas he had already indicated in Mythologies , a collection of articles published as a separate book in 1957 . Bart sees fashion as an iconic structure, one of the tasks of which is the formation of a system of modern myth. Unlike the essayistic manner of Mythologies , the structure of the Fashion System reproduces the principle of academic research and is organized more formally. Fashion forms a conditional language and code, which becomes an element of the system. Bart represents fashion with a set of signs that form as a combination of the signifier and the signified. Fashion functions as a sign-value system. Clothing acquires connotation significance; it enters the space of the media and translates visual images into the language of verbal symbols and social attitudes.
Fashion System: Idea and Sources
In his study, Bart considers fashion as a form of language [5] . In this position, he relies on the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure , using his model of the sign and sign system as applied to fashion [6] . A year before the publication of the Fashion System, a book by Michel Foucault was published. Words and things - Foucault's formative work, in which an attempt was also made to unify the system of things and language [7] . In the next few years, two more important works on the linguistic construction of fashion and the theory of consumer society will be published: The System of Things ( 1968 ) and the Consumer Society ( 1970 ) by Jean Baudrillard . The Bart fashion system , thus, became one of the works devoted to the phenomenon of consumption and became one of the defining works on fashion theory [6] . As one of the studies of an important analytical wave, Bart's work, however, was begun ten years earlier. In the second half of the 1950s, Bart turned to Levi-Strauss, trying to become his student and wanting to write fashion work under the leadership of Levi-Strauss [3] . Levy-Strauss refused, considering Bart's style to be too literary, and the theme to be too far-fetched. As a result, the Fashion System was written under the direction of linguist Andre Martine .
The structure and general content of the work
The work is divided into several sections and considers the following areas [8] : 1. The structure of the signifier. 2. The structure of the signified. 3. The structure of the sign. 4. The rhetorical system. Bart considers fashion in the system of the signifier and the signified , comparing clothing and the design of the sign . He identifies three forms of the existence of clothes - real clothes, presented clothes and used clothes. He considers all three types of costume as different categories that distinguish between the principle of the formation of meaning and the form of presentation. In this design, “real” clothing exists in the production system, “used” in the everyday consumer system, and “presented” in magazines and stores. “Presented” clothing is part of a mythological system that is formed by the media, fashion photography [9] and sales mechanisms. “Real” clothing does not exist outside the fashion system and is subordinate to its principles. Bart says that at first a myth is formed that arises around the clothes “presented” and only then does real clothing appear. Fashion, therefore, becomes the consumption system of myth, the costume is the result of the language of fashion.
Fashion and vestimentary code
This concept is included in the sign system of fashion and accumulates the main semiotic characteristics: the signified, signifier and referent, which reflect and support the logic and rhetoric of the sign. Fashion is divided into types and classes, being a connotative realization of a myth. Bart proceeds from the assumption that the vestimentary code consists of three main systems: clothing-image (photo or drawing), clothing-description (text) and real clothing. The first and third systems are denotative (the transmission of a visual image), the second is connotative, since it is “between things and words” [10] , it finds a connection between fashion, clothing and society. Fashion descriptions acquire the status of metalanguage, the purpose of which is to explain and at the same time veil the essence of this world of myths and symbols.
The vestigial matrix as a concept goes through the whole fashion system with the leitmotif, revealing the semiotic paradigm of the connotations and denotations of this “temporary domination of style”. In the connotative system of clothes, the signifier combines the object (thing), the caliper (part of the thing) and the variant (details of the thing, which causes a change in fashion). The vestigial matrix reveals the dynamics of fashion and the degree of its impact on society. All three elements of the matrix are connected by the process of “radiation of meaning”: fashion seeks to “shine through inert materials with meaning” [11] . The semiotic and philosophical understanding of fashion is carried out using the vestigial matrix, which combines the connotations of clothing (elegance, elegance, openness-closeness) and projects the “description” of clothing on its “image”, thereby building a sign system, or syntagma.
Work Significance and Resonance
Bart's fashion system not only became an important work of the structuralist period - it laid the foundation for the study of fashion as an analytical phenomenon, defining the term "Fashion System" as such. This concept continues to be used as a philosophical-semiotic and cultural-semiotic research basis (for example, in studying the impact of advertising on the life and activities of society [12] ); in the field of post-industrialism and the information society [13] , in semiotics itself (for example, a new turn in the study of advertising as coded information and the connotation of myth [14] . In the general philosophical and linguo-philological spheres, the fashion system becomes both an actual term of the modern scientific world, and . the possibility of a special turn to the problem of generalizing tendencies of the present time "fashion system" is usually regarded as a phenomenon associated with the linguistic turn - the desire to see language and text-based thinking and g avnoy form of human consciousness [15] .
Criticism
The work of R. Bart was evaluated by most philosophers ( Jean Baudrillard , Michel Foucault , Paul Virillo , Julia Kristeva ) from a positive perspective - as an unusual interpretation of the usual phenomenon of the present. The application of semiotics methods in the analysis of fashion and advertising was perceived by the scientific community as an innovative approach to a common understanding of the essence of post-industrial society, bourgeois culture and their dependence on simple mechanisms of psychological influence.
Somewhat negatively, the book of the philosopher was perceived by researchers of the sociological school as an unsuccessful attempt at a complex theoretical and linguistic analysis of a simple everyday sphere. So, J. Culler notes that “Bart was apparently misled by linguistics in his view that distributive analysis can produce a number of classes that do not need justification by any explanatory function. ... He neglected what should be explained, and in the end did not explain anything ” [16] .
See also
- Denotation
- Sign
- Information society
- Connotation
- Myth
- Fashion
- Fashion photography
- Meaningful
- Meaning
- Post-industrial society
- Advertising
- Structuralism
Notes
- ↑ Bart R. Fashion System. Articles on the semiotics of culture. M.: Publishing House. Sabashnikovs, 2003.512 s.
- ↑ Barthes R. Système de la mode. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967 - 328 p.
- ↑ 1 2 Dyakov A.V., Emelyanova M.A. Roland Bart: Fashion system and suspiciousness to the System // Bulletin of the Leningrad State University. A.S. Pushkin. 2009. Issue. No. 1 (25).
- ↑ Vasilieva E. The idea of a sign and the principle of exchange in the field of photography and the language system // Bulletin of St. Petersburg University. Series 15. Art criticism. 2016. issue. 1. S. 4–33.
- ↑ Zenkin S. Roland Bart and the Semiological Project / Roland Bart. Fashion Stem. Articles on the semiotics of culture. M.: Publishing House Sabashnikovs, 2003, p. 10-21.
- ↑ 1 2 Vasilieva E. The ideology of the sign, the phenomenon of language and the “Fashion System” / Fashion Theory: body, clothing, culture 2017, No. 45, pp. 11-24.
- ↑ Foucault M. Words and things. Archeology of the humanities. (1966) Per. with fr. V.P. Vizgin and N.S. Avtonomova. - M .: Progress, 1977 .-- 488 p.
- ↑ Barthes R. Système de la mode. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967 - 328 p.
- ↑ Vasilieva E. The phenomenon of fashion photography: regulation of mythological systems / International Journal of Cultural Studies, No. 1 (26), 2017, p. 215-245
- ↑ Bart R. Fashion System. Articles on the semiotics of culture. M .: Publishing house to them. Sabashnikovs, 2003.62 p.
- ↑ Bart R. Fashion System. Articles on the semiotics of culture. M.: Publishing House. Sabashnikovs, 2003.277 s.
- ↑ Baudrillard J. Consumer Society. His myths and structures. M .: Cultural Revolution, Republic, 2006.269 p .; Baudrillard J. The System of Things. M .: Rudomino, 2001.168 s .; Baudrillard. G. Symbolic exchange and death. M .: Dobrosvet, 2000.387s ..
- ↑ Baudrillard J. Simulacra and Simulation.
- ↑ Karmalova E. Yu. Audiovisual advertising in the context of culture: myth, literature, cinema. - St. Petersburg: Publishing House of St. Petersburg State University, 2008 .-- 213 p. (as well as other works of this scientist in this field) ..
- ↑ Clark E. History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004
- ↑ Culler J. Structuralist Poetics. Structuralism, linguistics and the study of literature. - L .; N.-Y .: Routledge, 2002. P. 43-44.
Literature
First Edition
- Barthes R. Système de la mode. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967 - 328 p.
In Russian
- Bart R. Fashion System. Articles on the semiotics of culture. M.: Publishing House. Sabashnikovs, 2003 .-- 512 p.
Books
- Bart R. Empire of signs / Transl. from French J. G. Brazhnikova. M .: Praxis, 2004.144 s.
- Dyakov A.V. Roland Bart as he is. St. Petersburg: Vladimir Dal, 2010.317 s.
- Bensmaïa R. The Barthes Effect: The Essay as Reflective Text. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987 .-- 122 p.
- Gil M. Roland Barthes: Au lieu de la vie. Paris: Flammarion, 2012 .-- 562 p.
- Lavers A. Roland Barthes: Structuralism and After. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1982.- 314 p.
- Lurie A. The Language of Clothes. Random House: 1981 - 272 p.
Articles
- Vasilieva E. The ideology of the sign, the phenomenon of language and the “Fashion System” / Fashion Theory: body, clothing, culture 2017, No. 45, pp. 11-24.
- Vasilieva E. The idea of the sign and the principle of exchange in the field of photography and the language system // Bulletin of St. Petersburg State University. Series 15. Art criticism. 2016. issue. 1. S. 4–33.
- Dyakov A.V. , Emelyanova M.A. Roland Bart: Fashion system and suspiciousness to the System // Bulletin of the Leningrad State University. A.S. Pushkin. 2009. Issue. No. 1 (25).
- Zenkin S. Roland Bart and the semiological project / Roland Bart. Fashion Stem. Articles on the semiotics of culture. M.: Publishing House Sabashnikovs, 2003, p. 10-21.
- Zenkin S. Image, story and death. Georges Bataille and Roland Barth / New Literary Review, 2013, No. 5 (123), p. 25 - 43.
- Zenkin S.N. Roland Bart - theorist and practitioner of mythology // Mythology. Will enter.
- Kosikov G.K. Roland Bart - semiologist, literary critic // Bart R. Selected works. Semiotics. Poetics / Compilation, total. ed. G.K. Kosikova. M .: Progress , 1989.S. 3-45.
- Svendsen L. Fashion and Language / Philosophy of Fashion. M .: Progress-Tradition, 2007, p. 91 - 108.
- Trushina L. E. The mythology of advertising by R. Bart // Sense of myth: mythology in history and culture. The Thinkers Series. 2003. Issue. Number 8.
- Sontag S. Remembering Barthes / Under the Sign of Saturn, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980.