Mitologías alimentarias cotidianas. Una relectura de Roland Barthes

Abstract

This article is a review of the French semiologist Roland Barthes' contributions to sociological studies on food consumption. In the first part there is an analysis on Barthes' approaches on the contemporary myth and their application to the routine food consumption. In the second part it is studied the idea of food consumption as a way of communication and system of signs, which is archetypical of a more formalistic Barthes, closer this time to orthodox linguistic structuralism thesis. Subsequently, the final turn of this author's work toward textualism and hedonism as ways of interpretation of eating facts is revised, giving entrance thus to the topics of the postmodern cultural movement. Finally, it is given a presentation of the criticisms toward food consumption's structuralist explanations, carried out by sociologists as Pierre Bourdieu and Michel de Certeau, as well as a balance of Barthes' legacy to the possible construction of a food consumption sociology, which can have in consideration its symbolic dimension.