This polemic calls for an end to our enchantment with Theory in the IS field. My critique uses Barthes’ structuralism to argue that theories are myths which order, interpret and normalise the world. I address the fundamental question “what is a fact”, drawing on the epistemology of Ludwik Fleck, which deserves more recognition in IS, supplemented by the structuralism of Roland Barthes. A “fact”...

In his Course in General Linguistics, first published in 1916, Saussure postulated the existence of a general science of signs, or Semiology, of which linguistics would form only one part. Semiology therefore aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all these, which form the content of ri...