codes

Résumés of common knowledge, the cultural codes provide the syllogisms in the narrative (there are many, as we have seen) with their major premise, based always on public opinion (“probable,” as the old logic said), on an endoxal truth, i n short, on the discourse of others. But, inversely and complementarily (...): all the cultural codes, taken up from citation to citation, together form an oddly joined miniature version of encyclopaedic knowledge, a farrago: this farrago forms the everyday “reality” in relation to which the subject adapts himself, lives. One defect in this encyclopedia, one hole in this cultural fabric, and death can result. 

Roland Barthes, S/Z 

with a foreword by Ingeborg Flagge

2008, CODES, Herrmann & Valentiny and Partners, | Waechter-Böhm, Liesbeth | Birkhäuser, Basel-Boston-Berlin | ISBN 978-3-7643-8767-9