ABSTRACT
Every essay in Roland Barthes's collection, Mythologies, is an ironic repetition of the process, an unconscious act of linguistic vengefulness: even as language takes off the mask of petit-bourgeois mythology of objects and activities, it clothes them anew in the garb of bourgeois intellectualism. The writings of Barthes constitute a paradox, which is perhaps why he lends himself so readily to being conscripted into the role of critical paradigm for the new Left-leaning African, especially the Nigerian critic. Barthes's essay is, of course, purely exploratory, but the methodology is clear. Peopl could see that he was struggling against the territory of the ineffable, against a very stubborn product, one whose language is highly arbitrary and less accessible to the authoritarian language of leftocratic criticism. When Barthes, in his own search for a winnowed value of music, settled on 'grain', he was responding to an apprehension of experience which, he implores, must be rescued from the ineffable.
