Revolutionary Speech

“There is therefore one language which is not mythical, it is the language of man as a producer: wherever man speaks in order to transform reality and no longer to preserve it as an image, wherever he links his language to the making of things, metalanguage is referred to a language-object, and myth is impossible. This is why revolutionary language proper cannot be mythical. Revolution is defined as a cathartic act meant to reveal the political load of the world: it makes the world; and its language, all of it, is functionally absorbed in this making. It is because it generates speech which is fully, that is to say initially and finally, political, and not, like myth, speech which is initially political and finally natural, that Revolution excludes myth. Just as bourgeois ex-nomination characterizes at once bourgeois ideology and myth itself, revolutionary denomination identifies revolution and the absence of myth. The bourgeoisie hides the fact that it is the bourgeoisie and thereby produces myth; revolution announces itself openly as revolution and thereby abolishes myth” (146).

This passage really grabbed my attention, as I was starting to question whether or not everything that is communicated to a group of people is indeed mythical. This is great! Revolution is meant to shake up what is conceived to be natural, and revolutionary speech in itself is very political and antithetical to myth. ¡Viva la revolución!
Then I started thinking. I’ve done a lot of talking about changing the world. I’ve done it enough that it has lost some of its political motivations and just seems to me to be something natural that I should do. Revolution in itself has lost some of its sparkle, especially since the 1950s. It has even become a fad, over-talked about. Environmentalism is now in fashion. We have talked about saving energy so much, mind you under good intentions, that it has lost its political drive and has just become something that is. The mover and the shaker aren’t so rare anymore. Activism and revolution is chic, and itself is a bourgeois joint-stock company. You too can save Darfur by donating your change! Green is the new black! Support your favorite cause by sending a check. The bourgeois is hiding the fact that is is bourgeois by pretending to be revealing the terrible political state of elsewhere. Bono and Angelina spend their free time trying to save Africa, to create an image of themselves that isn’t totally capitalist.
Maybe then activism isn’t revolution after all. Maybe it is that “left-wing myth [which] supervenes precisely at the moment when revolution changes itself into ‘the Left’” (146). After all, activism isn’t meant to “reveal the political load to the world.” It comes only after it is exposed, and the population of activists is much greater than that of the revolutionaries. So, in the end, I agree with Barthes. Revolutionary speech, when truly revolutionary, is not myth.