Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?
Roland BarthesRead
All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that various institutions reinforce the same ideas and stereotypes through repetition.
Roland Barthes critiques how official institutions, such as schools and media, perpetuate stereotypes and ideologies through repetitive language and structures. He argues that this repetition shapes societal norms and perceptions, becoming a political reality that limits original thought and cultural diversity.
Themes
StereotypeLanguageIdeologyRepetitionInstitutional
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on media influence, this quote can illustrate the concept of stereotype perpetuation.
More from Roland Barthes
All quotes →If I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)
Roland BarthesRead
The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other.
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The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.
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I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
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All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.
Roland BarthesRead
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