Barthes's Mythological "Photogeny"

Abstract:What is commonly said about Barthes's semiology of the image is that the later developments, aiming at positing an ontology of the referent, reversed completely the initial analyses of the constructedness of myth. However, by looking at the new translation of Barthes's Mythologies, one can see that these critical vignettes exhibit a theory of the image that partly anticipates the later meditations on the punctum elaborated in Camera Lucida. Thus, the original concept of "photogeny" deployed in Mythologies can be seen as providing a transition to the later ontology.