Roland Gérard Barthes

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BIOGRAPHY- From a living Thoughts to a Unforgettable Legacy

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Roland Grard Barthes


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Roland Grard Barthes(12 November 191526 March 1980) was aFrenchliterarytheorist,philosopher,linguist,critic,andsemiotician.Barthes' ideas explored a diverse rangeof fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory

includingstructuralism,semiotics,social theory,anthropology andpost-structuralism.

LIFE

Roland Barthes was born on 12 November 1915 in the town ofCherbourg inNormandy.Hewas the son of naval officer Louis Barthes, who was killed in a battle in the North Sea beforehis son was one year old. His mother, Henriette Barthes, and his aunt and grandmother raisedhim in the village of Urt and the city ofBayonne.When Barthes was eleven, his family

moved toParis,though his attachment to his provincial roots would remain strong throughouthis life.

Barthes showed great promise as a student and spent the period from 1935 to 1939 attheSorbonne,where he earned alicense in classical letters. He was plagued by ill healththroughout this period, suffering fromtuberculosis,which often had to be treated in theisolation ofsanatoria.His repeated physical breakdowns disrupted his academic career,affecting his studies and his ability to take qualifying examinations. It also kept him out ofmilitary service duringWorld War II and, while being kept out of the major Frenchuniversities meant that he had to travel a great deal for teaching positions, Barthes later

professed an intentional avoidance of major degree-awarding universities, and did sothroughout his career.

His life from 1939 to 1948 was largely spent obtaining a license in grammar andphilology,publishing his first papers, taking part in a medical study, and continuing to struggle with hishealth. In 1948, he returned to purely academic work, gaining numerous short-term positionsat institutes inFrance,Romania,andEgypt.During this time, he contributed to the leftistParisian paper Combat, out of which grew his first full-length work,Writing Degree

Zero(1953). In 1952, Barthes settled at theCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique,

where he studiedlexicology andsociology.During his seven-year period there, he began towrite a popular series of bi-monthly essays for the magazineLes Lettres Nouvelles, in whichhe dismantled myths ofpopular culture (gathered in theMythologiescollection that was

published in 1957). Knowing little English, Barthes taught atMiddlebury College in 1957and befriended the future English translator of much of his work,Richard Howard,thatsummer in New York City.

Barthes spent the early 1960s exploring the fields ofsemiology andstructuralism,chairingvarious faculty positions around France, and continuing to produce more full-length studies.Many of his works challenged traditional academic views ofliterary criticism and of

renowned figures of literature. His unorthodox thinking led to a conflict with a well-knownSorbonne professor of literature,Raymond Picard,who attacked the FrenchNew Criticism (a
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label that he inaccurately applied to Barthes) for its obscurity and lack of respect towardsFrance's literary roots. Barthes' rebuttal in Criticism and Truth(1966) accused theold,bourgeois criticism of a lack of concern with the finer points of language and of selectiveignorance towards challenging theories, such asMarxism.

By the late 1960s, Barthes had established a reputation for himself. He traveled totheUS andJapan,delivering a presentation atJohns Hopkins University.During this time, hewrote his best-known work, the 1967 essay "The Death of the Author," which, in light of thegrowing influence ofJacques Derrida'sdeconstruction,would prove to be a transitional piecein its investigation of the logical ends ofstructuralist thought. Barthes continued to contributewithPhilippe Sollers to theavant-garde literary magazineTel Quel,which was developingsimilar kinds of theoretical inquiry to that pursued in Barthes' writings. In 1970, Barthes

produced what manyconsider to be his most prodigious work, the dense, critical readingofBalzacsSarrasineentitledS/Z.Throughout the 1970s, Barthes continued to develop his

literary criticism; he developed new ideals oftextuality and novelistic neutrality. In 1971, heserved as visiting professor at theUniversity of Geneva.

In 1975 he wrote an autobiography titledRoland Barthesand in 1977 he was elected to thechair of Smiologie Littraire at theCollge de France.In the same year, his mother,Henriette Barthes, to whom he had been devoted, died, aged 85. They had lived together for60 years. The loss of the woman who had raised and cared for him was a serious blow toBarthes. His last major work,Camera Lucida,is partly an essay about the natureofphotography and partly a meditation on photographs of his mother. The book containsmany reproductions of photographs, though none of them are of Henriette.

On 25 February 1980, Roland Barthes was knocked down by a laundry van while walkinghome through the streets of Paris. One month later he succumbed to the chest injuriessustained in that accident.

At this time he was considered a leading critic of his generation, his book,A Lover'sDiscourse(1977), sold more than 60,000 copies in France. His work became known inpopular culture in Europe and America, securing the translation of many of his books sincehis death at the age of sixty-four. Such works include: Writing Degree

Zero(1953),Mythologies(1957), Criticism and Truth(1966), S/Z(1972),The Pleasure of the

Text(1973), and The Rustle of Language(1984).

In his early work, Barthes was a structuralist and semiotician, influenced by the writings ofFerdinand de Saussure's study of signs and signification. He preferred not to classify histhought, evident in the range of subject-matter for analysis in his works, often to provoke the

bourgeoisie.

He wrote on popular phenomena from soap-ads to wrestling, articles that originally appearedinLe Monde, which perhaps inspired him to conflate elements of what had been perceived ashigh or low culture. His interest in popular media and events was due in part to what he saw
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as an abuse in such phenomena of ideology. Barthes believed that the starting point for suchworks did not lay in the author's intentions of traditional value judgments, but by the texts

produced, as systems unto themselves whose underlying structures form the "meaning of thework as a whole." His works had a diversity, applying semiotic theory and/or literary critique,

looking to disrupt the French literary establishment, while other essays focused on morepersonal issues such as the text, music, love and photography.

Thus, Barthes works inspired criticism from colleagues. Raymond Picard, a professor at theSorbonne and Racine scholar, critiqued what he saw as an unscholarly and subjectiveapproach of Barthes' study, Sur Racine(1963), in his essay,Nouvelle Critique ou Nouvelle

Imposture?(1965). Barthes responded with the publication of Critique et Veritin 1966, inwhich he argued for a science of criticism over the university criticism, showing that thelatter promulgated critical terms and approaches connected to dominant class ideology.Terms such as the value of clarity, humanity and nobility cannot be taken as self-evident forresearch, but act as a censoring function for other means.

Barthes went so far as to question the extent to which one can know one's purpose or placeof understanding apart from language, the written in relationship to its contrary in speech,"for writing can tell the truth on language, but not the truth on the real" (fromImage-

Music-Text,1977). This strain of structural linguistics in Barthes' thought was developed ingreater detail in S/Z (1970), an analysis of the fiction of Balzac's work,Sarrasine.

Barthes primary thesis in S/Z demonstrates that the power of fiction lies in the products ofartifice in the form of intriguing details, enigmas, and plausible actions rather than in theimitation of reality. His complex analysis is not intended to construct a system ofclassification, he envisions Balzac's work as the weaving of codes that come together in thereader, in which the reader makes of them a unity. This runs contrary to the idea of a text ashaving an origin in the author; it is thus interpreted as a death of the author and the birth ofthe reader.

Barthes identified a series of five codes within the text of fiction that form the network ofsignifications in the reader: the hermeneutic code (presentation of an enigma); the semic code(connotative meaning); the symbolic code; the proairetic code (the logic of actions), and thegnomic, or cultural code, which evokes a particular body of knowledge.

Barthes final book,La Chambre Claire(Camera Lucinda, 1980), illustrates the closerelationship he had with his mother. It was written in the three years between the death of hismother and his own; the book is a discussion of the communicating medium of photography.He describes portraiture, the experience of being before the camera in which his "body never

finds its zero degree, no one can give it to me (perhaps only my mother? For it is notindifference which erases the weight of the imagethe Photomat always turns you into a


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criminal type, wanted by the policebut love, extreme love)." He points to a ritual magic ofphotography, disclaiming it as an art. Perhaps recalling something of Benjamin's writings onphotography, he struggles with the experience of his mother and an image of his ailingmother (who he was nursing near the time of her death) within him as "my inner law, as my

feminine child Once she was dead I no longer had any reason to attune myself to theprogress of the superior Life Force (the race, the species)."

On 25 February 1980, Roland Barthes was knocked down by a laundry van while walkinghome through the streets of Paris. One month later he succumbed to the chest injuriessustained in that accident.


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Writings and ideas

Early thought

Barthes's earliest ideas reacted to the trend ofexistentialistphilosophy that was prominent inFrance during the 1940s, specifically to the figurehead of existentialism,Jean-Paul Sartre.Sartre'sWhat Is Literature?(1947) expresses a disenchantment both with established formsof writing and more experimental,avant-garde forms, which he feels alienate readers.Barthes response was to try to discover that which may be considered unique and original inwriting. In Writing Degree Zero(1953), Barthes argues that conventions inform bothlanguage and style, rendering neither purely creative. Instead, form, or what Barthes calls

"writing" (the specific way an individual chooses to manipulate conventions of style for adesired effect), is the unique and creative act. A writer's form is vulnerable to becoming aconvention, however, once it has been made available to the public. This means thatcreativity is an on-going process of continual change and reaction. Barthes regardedAlbertCamussThe Strangeras an ideal of this notion, thanks to its lack of embellishment or flair.

InMichelet, a critical analysis of the French historianJules Michelet,Barthes developedthese notions, applying them to abroader range of fields. He argued that Michelets views ofhistory and society are obviously flawed. In studying his writings, he continued, one shouldnot seek to learn from Michelets claims; rather, one should maintain a critical distance and

learn from his errors, since understanding how and why his thinking is flawed will showmore about his period of history than his own observations. Similarly, Barthes felt thatavant-garde writing should be praised for its maintenance of just such a distance between itsaudience and itself. In presenting an obvious artificiality rather than making claims to greatsubjective truths, Barthes argued, avant-garde writers ensure that their audiences maintain anobjective perspective. In this sense, Barthes believed that art should be critical and shouldinterrogate the world, rather than seek to explain it, as Michelet had done.

Semiotics and myth

Barthes's many monthly contributions that were collected in hisMythologies(1957)frequently interrogated specific cultural materials in order to expose howbourgeois societyasserted its values through them. For example, the portrayal of wine in French society as arobust and healthy habit is a bourgeois ideal that is contradicted by certain realities (i.e., thatwine can be unhealthy and inebriating). He foundsemiotics,the study ofsigns,useful inthese interrogations. Barthes explained that these bourgeois cultural myths were "second-order signs," or "connotations." A picture of a full, dark bottle is asignifier that relates to aspecific signified: a fermented, alcoholic beverage. However, the bourgeoisie relate it to anew signified: the idea of healthy, robust, relaxing experience. Motivations for such
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manipulations vary, from a desire to sell products to a simple desire to maintain thestatusquo.These insights brought Barthes in line with similar Marxist theory.

InThe Fashion SystemBarthes showed how this adulteration of signs could easily betranslated into words. In this work he explained how in the fashion world any word could be

loaded with idealistic bourgeois emphasis. Thus, if popular fashion says that a blouse is

ideal for a certain situation or ensemble, this idea is immediately naturalized and accepted astruth, even though the actual sign could just as easily be interchangeable with skirt, vest orany number of combinations.

In the end Barthes'Mythologiesbecame absorbed into bourgeois culture, as he found manythird parties asking him to comment on a certain cultural phenomenon, being interested in hiscontrol over his readership. This turn of events caused him to question the overall utility ofdemystifying culture for the masses, thinking it might be a fruitless attempt, and drove himdeeper in his search for individualistic meaning in art.

Structuralism and its limits

As Barthes' work withstructuralismbegan to flourish around the time of his debates withPicard, his investigation of structure focused on revealing the importance of language inwriting, which he felt was overlooked by old criticism. Barthes' "Introduction to theStructural Analysis of Narratives" is concerned with examining the correspondence betweenthe structure of a sentence and that of a larger narrative, thus allowing narrative to be viewedalonglinguistic lines. Barthes split this work into three hierarchical levels: functions,

actions and narrative. Functions are the elementary pieces of a work, such as a singledescriptive word that can be used to identify a character.

That character would be an action, and consequently one of the elements that make up the

narrative. Barthes was able to use these distinctions to evaluate how certain key functionswork in forming characters. For example key words like dark, mysterious and odd, when

integrated together, formulate a specific kind of character or action. By breaking down the

work into such fundamental distinctions Barthes was able to judge the degree of realismgiven functions have in forming their actions and consequently with what authenticity anarrative can be said to reflect on reality. Thus, his structuralist theorizing became another

exercise in his ongoing attempts to dissect and expose the misleading mechanismsofbourgeois culture.

While Barthes foundstructuralism to be a useful tool and believed that discourse of literaturecould be formalized, he did not believe it could become a strict scientific endeavour. In thelate 1960s, radical movements were taking place in literary criticism. Thepost-structuralist movement and thedeconstructionism ofJacques Derrida were testing the boundsof the structuralist theory that Barthes' work exemplified.

Derrida identified the flaw of structuralism as its reliance on a transcendental signifier; a

symbol of constant, universal meaning would be essential as an orienting point in such a
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closed off system. This is to say that without some regular standard of measurement, a systemof criticism that references nothing outside of the actual work itself could never prove useful.

But since there are no symbols of constant and universal significance, the entire premise ofstructuralism as a means of evaluating writing (or anything) is hollow.

Transition

Such thought led Barthes to consider the limitations not just of signs and symbols, but also ofWestern cultures dependency on beliefs of constancy and ultimate standards. He travelled

toJapan in 1966 where he wroteEmpire of Signs(published in 1970), a meditation onJapanese cultures contentment in the absence of a search for a transcendental signifier.

He notes that in Japan there is no emphasis on a great focus point by which to judge all otherstandards, describing the centre ofTokyo,the Emperors Palace, as not a great overbearing

entity, but a silent and nondescript presence, avoided and unconsidered. As such, Barthesreflects on the ability of signs in Japan to exist for their own merit, retaining onlythesignificance naturally imbued by their signifiers. Such a society contrasts greatly to theone he dissected inMythologies,which was revealed to be always asserting a greater, morecomplex significance on top of the natural one.

In the wake of this trip Barthes wrote what is largely considered to be his best-known work,the essay "The Death of the Author" (1968). Barthes saw the notion of the author, or authorialauthority, in the criticism of literary text as the forced projection of an ultimate meaning ofthe text. By imagining an ultimate intended meaning of a piece of literature one could inferan ultimate explanation for it. But Barthes points out that the great proliferation of meaning inlanguage and the unknowable state of the authors mind makes any such ultimate realizationimpossible. As such, the whole notion of the knowable text acts as little more than another

delusion of Westernbourgeois culture. Indeed the idea of giving a book or poem an ultimateend coincides with the notion of making it consumable, something that can be used up andreplaced in a capitalist market. "The Death of the Author" is sometimes considered to beapost-structuralist work, since it moves past the conventions of trying to quantify literature,

but others see it as more of a transitional phase for Barthes in his continuing effort to findsignificance in culture outside of thebourgeois norms .Indeed the notion of the author being

irrelevant was already a factor of structuralist thinking.

Textuality and S/Z

Since Barthes contends that there can be no originating anchor of meaning in the possibleintentions of the author, he considers what other sources of meaning or significance can befound in literature. He concludes that since meaning cant come fromthe author, it must beactively created by the reader through a process of textual analysis. In hisS/Z(1970), Barthesapplies this notion in an analysis of a short story by Balzac calledSarrasine.The end resultwas a reading that establishedfive major codes for determining various kinds of significance,with numerous lexias throughout the text. The codes led him to define the story as having a
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capacity for plurality of meaning, limited by its dependence upon strictly sequential elements(such as a definite timeline that has to be followed by the reader and thus restricts theirfreedom of analysis). From this project Barthes concludes that an ideal text is one that isreversible, or open to the greatest variety of independent interpretations and not restrictive in

meaning. A text can be reversible by avoiding the restrictive devices thatSarrasinesufferedfrom such as strict timelines and exact definitions of events. He describes this as thedifference between the writerly text, in which the reader is active in a creative process, and areaderly text in which they are restricted to just reading. The project helped Barthes identifywhat it was he sought in literature: an openness for interpretation.

Neutral and novelistic writing

In the late 1970s Barthes was increasingly concerned with the conflict of two types oflanguage: that of popular culture, which he saw as limiting and pigeonholing in its titles anddescriptions, and neutral, which he saw as open and noncommittal. He called these twoconflicting modes theDoxa and thePara-doxa.While Barthes had shared sympathies withMarxist thought in the past (or at least parallel criticisms), he felt that, despite its anti-ideological stance, Marxist theory was just as guilty of using violent language with assertivemeanings, as wasbourgeois literature. In this way they were both Doxa and both culturallyassimilating. As a reaction to this he wroteThe Pleasure of the Text(1975), a study thatfocused on a subject matter he felt was equally outside of the realm of both conservativesociety and militant leftist thinking:hedonism.By writing about a subject that was rejected

by both social extremes of thought, Barthes felt he could avoid the dangers of the limitinglanguage of the Doxa. The theory he developed out of this focus claimed that while reading

for pleasure is a kind of social act, through which the reader exposes him/herself to the ideasof the writer, the finalcathartic climax of this pleasurable reading, which he termed the blissin reading orjouissance,is a point in which one becomes lost within the text. This loss of selfwithin the text or immersion within the text, signifies a final impact of reading that isexperienced outside of the social realm and free from the influence of culturally associativelanguage and is thus neutral with regard to social progress.

Despite this newest theory of reading, Barthes remained concerned with the difficulty ofachieving truly neutral writing, which required an avoidance of any labels that might carry animplied meaning or identity towards a given object. Even carefully crafted neutral writingcould be taken in an assertive context through the incidental use of a word with a loadedsocial context. Barthes felt his past works, likeMythologies,had suffered from this. He

became interested in finding the best method for creating neutral writing, and he decided totry to create a novelistic form of rhetoric that would not seek to impose its meaning on thereader.

One product of this endeavor wasA Lover's Discourse: Fragmentsin 1977, in which hepresents the fictionalized reflections of a lover seeking to identify and be identified by ananonymous amorous other. The unrequited lovers search for signs by which to show and

receive love makes evident illusory myths involved in such a pursuit. The lovers attempts toassert himself into a false, ideal reality is involved in a delusion that exposes the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarrasinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarrasinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarrasinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pleasure_of_the_Texthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pleasure_of_the_Texthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pleasure_of_the_Texthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jouissancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lover%27s_Discourse:_Fragmentshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lover%27s_Discourse:_Fragmentshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lover%27s_Discourse:_Fragmentshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lover%27s_Discourse:_Fragmentshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jouissancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pleasure_of_the_Texthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarrasine


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contradictory logic inherent in such a search. Yet at the same time the novelistic character is asympathetic one, and is thus open not just to criticism but also understanding from the reader.The end result is one that challenges the readers views of social constructs of love, withouttrying to assert any definitive theory of meaning.

Photography and Henriette Barthes

Throughout his career, Barthes had an interest in photography and its potential tocommunicate actual events. Many of his monthly myth articles in the 50s had attempted toshow how a photographic image could represent implied meanings and thus be used by

bourgeois culture to infer naturalistic truths. But he still considered the photograph to have

a unique potential for presenting a completely real representation of the world. When hismother, Henriette Barthes, died in 1977 he began writingCamera Lucidaas an attempt toexplain the unique significance a picture of her as a child carried for him. Reflecting on the

relationship between the obvious symbolic meaning of a photograph (which he called thestudium) and that which is purely personal and dependent on the individual, that whichpierces the viewer (which he called the punctum), Barthes was troubled by the fact that such

distinctions collapse when personal significance is communicated to others and can have itssymbolic logic rationalized. Barthes found the solution to this fine line of personal meaningin the form of his mothers picture. Barthes explained that a picture creates a falseness in the

illusion of what is, where what was would be a more accurate description. As had been

made physical through Henriette Barthes's death, her childhood photograph is evidence ofwhat has ceased to be. Instead of making reality solid, it reminds us of the worlds ever

changing nature. Because of this there is something uniquely personal contained in thephotograph of Barthess mother that cannot be removed from his subjective state: therecurrent feeling of loss experienced whenever he looks at it. As one of his final works beforehis death, Camera Lucidawas both an ongoing reflection on the complicated relations

between subjectivity, meaning and cultural society as well as a touching dedication to hismother and description of the depth of his grief.

Posthumous publicationsA posthumous collection of essays was published in 1987 byFranois Wahl,Incidents.Itcontains fragments from his journals: his Soires de Paris(a 1979 extract from his eroticdiary of life in Paris); an earlier diary he kept (his erotic encounters with boys in Morocco);andLight of the Sud Ouest(his childhood memories of rural French life). In November2007,Yale University Presspublished a new translation into English (by Richard Howard) ofBarthes's little known work What is Sport. This work bears a considerable resemblancetoMythologiesand was originally commissioned by theCanadian Broadcasting

Corporation as the text for a documentary film directed byHubert Aquin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Lucida_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Lucida_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Lucida_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Wahlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_University_Presshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Aquinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Aquinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_University_Presshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Wahlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Lucida_(book)


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In February 2009,ditions du SeuilpublishedJournal de deuil(Journal of Mourning), basedon Barthes' files written from 26 November 1977 (the day following his mother's death) up to15 September 1979, intimate notes on his terrible loss:

The (awesome but not painful) idea that she had not been everything to me. Otherwise I

would never have written a work. Since my taking care of her for six months long, sheactually had become everything for me, and I totally forgot of ever have written anything atall. I was nothing more than hopelessly hers. Before that she had made herself transparent sothat I could write.... Mixing-up of roles. For months long I had been her mother. I felt like Ihad lost a daughter.

He grieved his mother's death for the rest of his life: "Do not say mourning. It's toopsychoanalytic. I'm not in mourning. I'm suffering." and "In the corner of my room where shehad been bedridden, where she had died and where I now sleep, in the wall where herheadboard had stood against I hanged an iconnot out of faith. And I always put someflowers on a table. I do not wish to travel anymore so that I may stay here and prevent theflowers from withering away."

In 2012 the book Travels in Chinawas published. It consists of his notes from a three-weektrip to China he undertook with a group from the literary journalTel Quelin 1974. Theexperience left him somewhat disappointed, as he found China "not at all exotic, not at alldisorienting".

Influence

Roland Barthes's incisive criticism contributed to the development of theoretical schools suchasstructuralism,semiotics,andpost-structuralism.While his influence is mainly found inthese theoretical fields with which his work brought him into contact, it is also felt in everyfield concerned with the representation of information and models of communication,including computers, photography, music, and literature. One consequence of Barthes'

breadth of focus is that his legacy includes no following of thinkers dedicated to modelingthemselves after him. The fact that Barthes work was ever adapting and refuting notions of

stability and constancy means there is no canon of thought within his theory to model one'sthoughts upon, and thus no "Barthesism".

Key terms

Readerlyand writerlyare terms Barthes employs both to delineate one type of literature fromanother and to implicitly interrogate ways of reading, like positive or negative habits themodern reader brings into one's experience with the text itself. These terms are mostexplicitly fleshed out inS/Z,while the essay "From Work to Text", fromImageMusicText(1977) provides an analogous parallel look at the active and passive, postmodern andmodern, ways of interacting with a text.

Readerly text
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A text that makes no requirement of the reader to "write" or "produce" their own meanings.The reader may passively locate "ready-made" meaning. Barthes writes that these sorts oftexts are "controlled by the principle of non-contradiction" (156), that is, they do not disturbthe "common sense," or "Doxa," of the surrounding culture. The "readerly texts," moreover,

"are products [that] make up the enormous mass of our literature" (5). Within this category,there is a spectrum of "replete literature," which comprises "any classic (readerly) texts" thatwork "like a cupboard where meanings are shelved, stacked, [and] safeguarded" (200).

Writerly text

A text that aspires to the proper goal of literature and criticism: "... to make the reader nolonger a consumer but a producer of the text" (4). Writerly texts and ways of readingconstitute, in short, an active rather than passive way of interacting with a culture and itstexts. A culture and its texts, Barthes writes, should never be accepted in their given forms

and traditions. As opposed to the "readerly texts" as "product," the "writerly text is ourselveswriting, before the infinite play of the world is traversed, intersected, stopped, plasticized bysome singular system (Ideology, Genus, Criticism) which reduces the plurality of entrances,the opening of networks, the infinity of languages". Thus reading becomes for Barthes "not a

parasitical act, the reactive complement of a writing," but rather a "form of work".

TheAuthorand thescriptor

Authorandscriptorare terms Barthes uses to describe different ways of thinking about thecreators of texts. "The author" is our traditional concept of the lone genius creating a work of

literature or other piece of writing by the powers of his/her original imagination. For Barthes,such a figure is no longer viable. The insights offered by an array of modern thought,including the insights ofSurrealism,have rendered the term obsolete. In place of the author,the modern world presents us with a figure Barthes calls the "scriptor," whose only power isto combine pre-existing texts in new ways. Barthes believes that all writing draws on

previous texts, norms, and conventions, and that these are the things to which we must turn tounderstand a text. As a way of asserting the relative unimportance of the writer's biographycompared to these textual and generic conventions, Barthes says that the scriptor has no past,

but is born with the text. He also argues that, in the absence of the idea of an "author-God" to

control the meaning of a work, interpretive horizons are opened up considerably for theactive reader. As Barthes puts it, "the death of the author is the birth of the reader."

Criticism

In 1964, Barthes wrote "The Last Happy Writer" ("Le dernier des crivains heureux"inEssais critiques), the title of which refers toVoltaire.In the essay he commented on the

problems of the modern thinker after discovering the relativism in thought and philosophy,discrediting previous philosophers who avoided this difficulty. Disagreeing roundly withBarthes' description of Voltaire, Daniel Gordon, the translator and editor ofCandide(The

Bedford Series in History and Culture), wrote that "never has one brilliant writer sothoroughly misunderstood another."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltairehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltairehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism


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In popular culture

Barthes' "A Lover's Discourse: Fragments"was the inspiration for the name of 1980snewwave duoThe Lover Speaks.

Jeffrey Eugenides's "The Marriage Plot"draws out excerpts from Barthes' "A Lover'sDiscourse: Fragments" as a way to depict the unique intricacies of love that one of the maincharacters, Madeleine Hanna, experiences throughout the novel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lover%27s_Discourse:_Fragmentshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_wave_musichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_wave_musichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lover_Speakshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Eugenideshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marriage_Plothttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marriage_Plothttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Eugenideshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lover_Speakshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_wave_musichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_wave_musichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lover%27s_Discourse:_Fragments


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Bibliography

Works

(1953) Le degr zro de l'criture

(1954) Michelet par lui-mme

(1957)Mythologies,Seuil: Paris.

(1964)lments de smiologie, Communications 4, Seuil: Paris.

(1967) Writing Degree Zero. Annette Lavers & Colin Smith (trans.) (1967). London: Jonathan Cape.

(1970)L'Empire des signes, Skira: Paris.

(1970)S/Z,Seuil: Paris.

(1972)Le Degr zro de l'criture suivi de Nouveaux essais critiques, Editions du Seuil: Paris.

(1973)Le plaisir du texte, Editions du Seuil: Paris.

(1975)Roland Barthes, ditions du Seuil: Paris

(1977)Potique du rcit, Editions du Seuil:Paris.

(1977)Fragments d'un discours amoureux", Paris

(1978)Prface, La Parole Intermdiaire, F. Flahault, Seuil: Paris

(1979) Sur Racine, Editions du Seuil: Paris

(1980)Recherche de Proust, Editions du Seuil: Paris.

(1980)La chambre claire : note sur la photographie. - [Paris] : Cahiers du cinma : Gallimard : Le Seuil,1980.

(1980) Sade, Fourier, Loyola, Editions du Seuil: Paris.

(1981)Essais critiques, Editions du Seuil: Paris.

(1982)Litrature et ralit, Editions du Seuil: Paris.

s(1988)Michelet, Editions du Seuil: Paris.

(1993) uvres compltes, Editions du Seuil: Paris.

(2009) Carnets du voyage en Chineby Roland Barthes.[10]

(2009)Journal de deuilby Roland Barthes.[10]

Translations to English

The Fashion System(1967), University of California Press:Berkeley.

Writing Degree Zero(1968), Hill and Wang:New York.ISBN 0-374-52139-5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/Zhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/Zhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/Zhttp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragments_d%27un_discours_amoureuxhttp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragments_d%27un_discours_amoureuxhttp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragments_d%27un_discours_amoureuxhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes#cite_note-lrb.co.uk-10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes#cite_note-lrb.co.uk-10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes#cite_note-lrb.co.uk-10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes#cite_note-lrb.co.uk-10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes#cite_note-lrb.co.uk-10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes#cite_note-lrb.co.uk-10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_Degree_Zerohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_Degree_Zerohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0374521395http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0374521395http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0374521395http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0374521395http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_Degree_Zerohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes#cite_note-lrb.co.uk-10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes#cite_note-lrb.co.uk-10http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragments_d%27un_discours_amoureuxhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/Zhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)


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Elements of Semiology(1968), Hill and Wang:New York.

Mythologies(1972), Hill and Wang:New York.

The Pleasure of the Text(1975), Hill and Wang:New York.

S/Z: An Essay(1975), Hill and Wang,ISBN 0-374-52167-0

Sade, Fourier, Loyola(1976), Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York.

Image, Music, Text(1977), Hill and Wang:New York.

Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes(1977) (In this so-called autobiography, Barthes interrogates himself asa text.)

The Eiffel Tower and other Mythologies(1997), University of California Press:Berkeley. (first published1979)

Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography(1981), Hill and Wang :New York.

Critical Essays(1972), Northwestern University Press

A Barthes Reader(1982), Hill and Wang, New York.

Empire of Signs(1983), Hill and Wang

The Grain of the Voice: interviews 1962-1980(1985), Jonathan Cape: London.

The Responsibility of Forms : Critical essays on music, art, and representation(1985), BasilBlackwell:Oxford.

The Rustle of Language(1986), B.Blackwell:Oxford.

Criticism and Truth(1987), The Athlone Pr.:London.

Michelet(1987), B.Blackwell:Oxford.

Writer Sollers(1987), University of Minnesota Press:Minneapolis.

Roland Barthes(1988), Macmillan Pr.:London.

A Lover's Discourse: Fragments(1990), Penguin Books:London.

New Critical Essays(1990), University of California Press:Berkeley.

Incidents(1992), University of California Press:Berkeley.

On Racine(1992), University of California Press:Berkeley

The Semiotic Challenge(1994), University of California Press Berkeley.

The Neutral: Lecture Course at the Collge de France (19771978)(2005), Columbia UniversityPress:New York.

The Language of Fashion(2006), Sydney:Power Publications.

What is Sport(2007), Yale University Press: London and New Haven.ISBN 978-0-300-11604-5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elements_of_Semiologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elements_of_Semiologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pleasure_of_the_Texthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pleasure_of_the_Texthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/Z:_An_Essayhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/Z:_An_Essayhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0374521670http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0374521670http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0374521670http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eiffel_Tower_and_Other_Mythologieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eiffel_Tower_and_Other_Mythologieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Lucida_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Lucida_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer_Sollershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer_Sollershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lover%27s_Discoursehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lover%27s_Discoursehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidentshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidentshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780300116045http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780300116045http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780300116045http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780300116045http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidentshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Lover%27s_Discoursehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer_Sollershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Lucida_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eiffel_Tower_and_Other_Mythologieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0374521670http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/Z:_An_Essayhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pleasure_of_the_Texthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythologies_(book)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elements_of_Semiology


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Mourning Diary(2010), Hill and Wang: New York.

The Preparation of the Novel: Lecture Course at the Collge de France (19781979)(2011), ColumbiaUniversity Press:New York.


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His Famous Books Cover Page

Documents

Roland Gérard Barthes