After several readings I still don't fully grasp the intent of Roland Barthe's "The Rhetoric of the Image". It will take a few more readings I think. The concept of a 'sign' containing 'signifiers and signifieds' is straight forward enough and the examples used make a lot of sense when it comes to deconstructing an image. I can also relate to the poststructuralist notion that a sign can be polysemous (my favourite new word). Poststructuralist thinking, in similarity to the Postmodernist view, believes that art is intertextual. Cultural, sociological, and lived experience are all tools used to perceive artworks in a particular way. The artworks originator and the individual viewer cannot claim definitive authority over it. There is commonality of experience and there is difference - all are valid. In this respect I liked Barthe's description of a 'floating chain' of signifieds' that are waiting for the viewer to anchor around an image. The viewer (through individual intertextual experience) selects a signified sign and makes sense of the work to counteract the "terror of uncertain signs". Barthes (1977).
This, I think, is the gist of what Barthes was writing about although I will definitely need to re-read some more.
Barthes, R. (1977) The Rhetoric of the Image.
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