John Paul Ricco
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226717777
- eISBN:
- 9780226113371
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226113371.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
In this chapter, Roland Barthes’ book on photography Camera Lucida, is read alongside his lectures at the College de France on The Neutral and The Preparation of the Novel, in order to argue for the ...
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In this chapter, Roland Barthes’ book on photography Camera Lucida, is read alongside his lectures at the College de France on The Neutral and The Preparation of the Novel, in order to argue for the way in which through his writing, Barthes opened up a space for a shared sense of the future anteriority of loss and death with his readers, including in and around scenes of beds and bedrooms—as in images by such contemporary French photographers as Daniel Boudinet and Bernard Faucon, both of whom Blanchot wrote about. These images, like others in this book, are read as scenes of erotic pleasure and a certain kind of mourning now theorized as “neutral.” By attending to the textual and rhetorical spacing of Camera Lucida and other late writings, and to Barthes’ own thinking on the space of writing as peri-graphic, the author foregrounds the caesurae, parentheses, and ellipses that punctuate Barthes’ writing, and argues that these suspensions textually present and perform a notion of neutral mourning that Barthes was on the verge of developing right up until his accidental death in 1980.Less
In this chapter, Roland Barthes’ book on photography Camera Lucida, is read alongside his lectures at the College de France on The Neutral and The Preparation of the Novel, in order to argue for the way in which through his writing, Barthes opened up a space for a shared sense of the future anteriority of loss and death with his readers, including in and around scenes of beds and bedrooms—as in images by such contemporary French photographers as Daniel Boudinet and Bernard Faucon, both of whom Blanchot wrote about. These images, like others in this book, are read as scenes of erotic pleasure and a certain kind of mourning now theorized as “neutral.” By attending to the textual and rhetorical spacing of Camera Lucida and other late writings, and to Barthes’ own thinking on the space of writing as peri-graphic, the author foregrounds the caesurae, parentheses, and ellipses that punctuate Barthes’ writing, and argues that these suspensions textually present and perform a notion of neutral mourning that Barthes was on the verge of developing right up until his accidental death in 1980.
Nicholas Harrison
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159094
- eISBN:
- 9780191673481
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159094.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
In his book on Sade, Roland Barthes expresses that the greatest type of subversion or counter-censorship does not necessarily bring shocks to the law, the police, or to public opinion. Instead, it ...
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In his book on Sade, Roland Barthes expresses that the greatest type of subversion or counter-censorship does not necessarily bring shocks to the law, the police, or to public opinion. Instead, it concerns the inventing of a paradoxical discourse in which invention proves to be a revolutionary act. This chapter attempts to look into the ‘counter-censorship’ discourse in French literary culture during the 20th century. Also, the chapter aims to show that this discourse emerged from the overlap and intersection of the discourses covered in both the legal-historical notion of censorship as well as in the psychoanalytic notion of censorship. Specifically, the explanation rests on Breton and the Surrealists's work on Sade's singularity, and on the work of Barthes and the Tel Quel group.Less
In his book on Sade, Roland Barthes expresses that the greatest type of subversion or counter-censorship does not necessarily bring shocks to the law, the police, or to public opinion. Instead, it concerns the inventing of a paradoxical discourse in which invention proves to be a revolutionary act. This chapter attempts to look into the ‘counter-censorship’ discourse in French literary culture during the 20th century. Also, the chapter aims to show that this discourse emerged from the overlap and intersection of the discourses covered in both the legal-historical notion of censorship as well as in the psychoanalytic notion of censorship. Specifically, the explanation rests on Breton and the Surrealists's work on Sade's singularity, and on the work of Barthes and the Tel Quel group.
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846312304
- eISBN:
- 9781846316166
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846316166.005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter analyses the writing of Roland Barthes. It begins with a reflection on the exile of the mythologue in Mythologies, and goes on to contrast the jubilant fantasies of L'Empire des signes ...
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This chapter analyses the writing of Roland Barthes. It begins with a reflection on the exile of the mythologue in Mythologies, and goes on to contrast the jubilant fantasies of L'Empire des signes with the nostalgia and also the emptiness that trouble the narrative voice of Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, La Chambre Claire, and the essays collected in Incidents. It is argued that the theoretical consideration of otherness is consumed, at the same time, with uncertainty concerning the position of the writing persona in his text. If Mythologies sketches a concrete critique of colonial discourses of identity, the more subjective conclusion, together with the fantasies and insecurities of works such as L'Empire and Incidents, also contribute to postcolonial debate, since they dramatise the unwitting anxieties and textual projections that can trouble our attempts to contemplate the other.Less
This chapter analyses the writing of Roland Barthes. It begins with a reflection on the exile of the mythologue in Mythologies, and goes on to contrast the jubilant fantasies of L'Empire des signes with the nostalgia and also the emptiness that trouble the narrative voice of Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, La Chambre Claire, and the essays collected in Incidents. It is argued that the theoretical consideration of otherness is consumed, at the same time, with uncertainty concerning the position of the writing persona in his text. If Mythologies sketches a concrete critique of colonial discourses of identity, the more subjective conclusion, together with the fantasies and insecurities of works such as L'Empire and Incidents, also contribute to postcolonial debate, since they dramatise the unwitting anxieties and textual projections that can trouble our attempts to contemplate the other.
Calum Gardner
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941367
- eISBN:
- 9781789629231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941367.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
As many of the poets considered here belonged to poetry ‘movements’ which constituted themselves through journals, this chapter is structured around those journals, considering the various ways in ...
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As many of the poets considered here belonged to poetry ‘movements’ which constituted themselves through journals, this chapter is structured around those journals, considering the various ways in which small poetry periodicals used Barthes. Considering reviews, interviews, and manifestos, it offers a narrative of Barthes in notable magazines such as the New York-based L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and its Canadian counterpart Open Letter, and smaller publications such as Bloomington, Indiana’s Wch Way. In this way, it includes the work of poets and critics whose engagement with Barthes is more tangential and bound up with the general project of a community of writers, such as Michael Palmer and Steve McCaffery.Less
As many of the poets considered here belonged to poetry ‘movements’ which constituted themselves through journals, this chapter is structured around those journals, considering the various ways in which small poetry periodicals used Barthes. Considering reviews, interviews, and manifestos, it offers a narrative of Barthes in notable magazines such as the New York-based L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and its Canadian counterpart Open Letter, and smaller publications such as Bloomington, Indiana’s Wch Way. In this way, it includes the work of poets and critics whose engagement with Barthes is more tangential and bound up with the general project of a community of writers, such as Michael Palmer and Steve McCaffery.
Calum Gardner
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941367
- eISBN:
- 9781789629231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941367.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
The methodology of the book means that writers’ engagement with Barthes is what is studied, but this risks erasing writers who shy away from him. This chapter considers why some poets, particularly ...
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The methodology of the book means that writers’ engagement with Barthes is what is studied, but this risks erasing writers who shy away from him. This chapter considers why some poets, particularly those who are people of colour and/or queer, reject Barthes aesthetically and politically. This issue is positioned in relationship to contemporary discussions of avant-garde poetry and whiteness, and these concerns are illustrated with a more in-depth reading of the work of John Yau. This is followed by a discussion of queer objections to the Barthes of language poetry and a consideration of his work in the context of the New Narrative. The chapter concludes by considering why Kathy Acker rejects Barthes in favour of Bataille.Less
The methodology of the book means that writers’ engagement with Barthes is what is studied, but this risks erasing writers who shy away from him. This chapter considers why some poets, particularly those who are people of colour and/or queer, reject Barthes aesthetically and politically. This issue is positioned in relationship to contemporary discussions of avant-garde poetry and whiteness, and these concerns are illustrated with a more in-depth reading of the work of John Yau. This is followed by a discussion of queer objections to the Barthes of language poetry and a consideration of his work in the context of the New Narrative. The chapter concludes by considering why Kathy Acker rejects Barthes in favour of Bataille.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846318436
- eISBN:
- 9781846317866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318436.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the four lecture courses given by Roland Barthes at the Collège de France 1977 and 1980. This volume examines Barthes' ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the four lecture courses given by Roland Barthes at the Collège de France 1977 and 1980. This volume examines Barthes' conception of the role of the intellectual as shown in his teaching and in his elaboration of particular social values and suggests that Collège de France represents the apogee of his career as a public intellectual. It also considers his use of fragmentation in his writing and teaching and analyzes how these techniques fragmentation are linked to his antisystematic thought generally.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the four lecture courses given by Roland Barthes at the Collège de France 1977 and 1980. This volume examines Barthes' conception of the role of the intellectual as shown in his teaching and in his elaboration of particular social values and suggests that Collège de France represents the apogee of his career as a public intellectual. It also considers his use of fragmentation in his writing and teaching and analyzes how these techniques fragmentation are linked to his antisystematic thought generally.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846318436
- eISBN:
- 9781846317866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318436.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines the teaching techniques of Roland Barthes. It analyzes the impact on his dual status as an intellectual marginal to the university system, and as a professor at the most elite ...
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This chapter examines the teaching techniques of Roland Barthes. It analyzes the impact on his dual status as an intellectual marginal to the university system, and as a professor at the most elite institution in France on his teaching style. It suggests that the evolution of Barthes' pedagogical philosophy was influenced by the ethos of the ‘heretical’ institutions in which he was employed. This chapter also highlights Barthes' opinion that the Collège de France was an ideal institution in which to teach because of its particular status and institutional ethos.Less
This chapter examines the teaching techniques of Roland Barthes. It analyzes the impact on his dual status as an intellectual marginal to the university system, and as a professor at the most elite institution in France on his teaching style. It suggests that the evolution of Barthes' pedagogical philosophy was influenced by the ethos of the ‘heretical’ institutions in which he was employed. This chapter also highlights Barthes' opinion that the Collège de France was an ideal institution in which to teach because of its particular status and institutional ethos.
François Noudelmann
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231153942
- eISBN:
- 9780231527200
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231153942.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This book engages the musicality of Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Roland Barthes, all of whom were amateur piano players and acute lovers of the medium. Though piano playing was a ...
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This book engages the musicality of Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Roland Barthes, all of whom were amateur piano players and acute lovers of the medium. Though piano playing was a crucial art for these thinkers, their musings on the subject are largely scant, implicit, or discordant with each philosopher's oeuvre. The book both recovers and integrates these perspectives, showing that the manner in which these philosophers played, the composers they adored, and the music they chose reveals uncommon insight into their thinking styles and patterns. The text positions the physical and theoretical practice of music as a dimension underpinning and resonating with Sartre's, Nietzsche's, and Barthes's unique philosophical outlook. By reading their thought against their music, it introduces new critical formulations and reorients their trajectories, adding invaluable richness to these philosophers' lived and embodied experiences. The result heightens the multiple registers of being and the relationship between philosophy and the senses that informed so much of their work.Less
This book engages the musicality of Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Roland Barthes, all of whom were amateur piano players and acute lovers of the medium. Though piano playing was a crucial art for these thinkers, their musings on the subject are largely scant, implicit, or discordant with each philosopher's oeuvre. The book both recovers and integrates these perspectives, showing that the manner in which these philosophers played, the composers they adored, and the music they chose reveals uncommon insight into their thinking styles and patterns. The text positions the physical and theoretical practice of music as a dimension underpinning and resonating with Sartre's, Nietzsche's, and Barthes's unique philosophical outlook. By reading their thought against their music, it introduces new critical formulations and reorients their trajectories, adding invaluable richness to these philosophers' lived and embodied experiences. The result heightens the multiple registers of being and the relationship between philosophy and the senses that informed so much of their work.
Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160658
- eISBN:
- 9781400852598
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160658.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter describes the gradual discrediting of the notion of genius. In France in the 1950s, contemporaneously with the Minou Drouet affair, it became the object of a powerful cultural critique ...
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This chapter describes the gradual discrediting of the notion of genius. In France in the 1950s, contemporaneously with the Minou Drouet affair, it became the object of a powerful cultural critique under the aegis of literary theory, when Jean-Paul Sartre and Roland Barthes—more or less simultaneously—portrayed it as an anachronistic legacy from the previous century, and denounced it as a one of the myths that lay at the heart of bourgeois ideology. Two of Barthes's texts in Mythologies (1957) specifically target genius—one devoted to Einstein's brain, and the other to Minou Drouet. Much the same goes for Sartre, whose autobiography, Les Mots, begun in 1953 (and finally published in 1964), targets genius and the child prodigy as central components of his farewell to literature.Less
This chapter describes the gradual discrediting of the notion of genius. In France in the 1950s, contemporaneously with the Minou Drouet affair, it became the object of a powerful cultural critique under the aegis of literary theory, when Jean-Paul Sartre and Roland Barthes—more or less simultaneously—portrayed it as an anachronistic legacy from the previous century, and denounced it as a one of the myths that lay at the heart of bourgeois ideology. Two of Barthes's texts in Mythologies (1957) specifically target genius—one devoted to Einstein's brain, and the other to Minou Drouet. Much the same goes for Sartre, whose autobiography, Les Mots, begun in 1953 (and finally published in 1964), targets genius and the child prodigy as central components of his farewell to literature.
François Noudelmann
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231153942
- eISBN:
- 9780231527200
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231153942.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter examines how Roland Barthes affirmed the radical difference between playing and discussing music yet wrote about his own piano playing. Barthes played the piano daily; he was also a ...
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This chapter examines how Roland Barthes affirmed the radical difference between playing and discussing music yet wrote about his own piano playing. Barthes played the piano daily; he was also a “connoisseur,” an expert of musicology. But he wished to maintain a clear distinction between his writing and his playing. His writings initiate a shift in musicology toward an analysis of practice—a shift that is even more marked because he considered amateur practices. In Barthes's texts, the amateur's playing implements feelings and temporalities that elude the pejorative, or perhaps merely underestimating, definition of amateurism. Based on the idea of a shifting subjectivity, Barthes's theoretical intention comes close to being impossible. But he was careful not to construct a full philosophical aesthetics—even if he did develop a little philosophy of amateurism. This chapter considers how Barthes's movement toward theoretical generality develops through the personal description of his tastes, his sensitivity, indeed his sexuality, all of which are linked to the piano.Less
This chapter examines how Roland Barthes affirmed the radical difference between playing and discussing music yet wrote about his own piano playing. Barthes played the piano daily; he was also a “connoisseur,” an expert of musicology. But he wished to maintain a clear distinction between his writing and his playing. His writings initiate a shift in musicology toward an analysis of practice—a shift that is even more marked because he considered amateur practices. In Barthes's texts, the amateur's playing implements feelings and temporalities that elude the pejorative, or perhaps merely underestimating, definition of amateurism. Based on the idea of a shifting subjectivity, Barthes's theoretical intention comes close to being impossible. But he was careful not to construct a full philosophical aesthetics—even if he did develop a little philosophy of amateurism. This chapter considers how Barthes's movement toward theoretical generality develops through the personal description of his tastes, his sensitivity, indeed his sexuality, all of which are linked to the piano.
Howard Felperin
- Published in print:
- 1986
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128960
- eISBN:
- 9780191671746
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128960.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Within the history of literary criticism, the year 1966 may well come to be regarded, if not as miraculous or apocalyptic, at least as auspicious of that crisis from which the institution has not yet ...
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Within the history of literary criticism, the year 1966 may well come to be regarded, if not as miraculous or apocalyptic, at least as auspicious of that crisis from which the institution has not yet emerged, the transition from its interpretive or hermeneutic to its theoretical phase of development. Not only was 1966 the year in which Pierre Macherey published Pour une theorie de la production litteraire, inaugurating the recent vogue of ‘structuralist’ Marxist criticism, but it was arguably also the year in which structuralism itself came of age as a literary-critical school and movement with the publication by Roland Barthes of Critique et verite. The passage is worth quoting at some length, since it foreshadows the concerns that have since become familiar in structuralist poetics.Less
Within the history of literary criticism, the year 1966 may well come to be regarded, if not as miraculous or apocalyptic, at least as auspicious of that crisis from which the institution has not yet emerged, the transition from its interpretive or hermeneutic to its theoretical phase of development. Not only was 1966 the year in which Pierre Macherey published Pour une theorie de la production litteraire, inaugurating the recent vogue of ‘structuralist’ Marxist criticism, but it was arguably also the year in which structuralism itself came of age as a literary-critical school and movement with the publication by Roland Barthes of Critique et verite. The passage is worth quoting at some length, since it foreshadows the concerns that have since become familiar in structuralist poetics.
Calum Gardner
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941367
- eISBN:
- 9781789629231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941367.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter considers how Barthes was read in America, among a far wider range of poets than in Britain. It starts with a brief consideration of Robert Duncan’s essay on the ‘kopoltus’, and then ...
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This chapter considers how Barthes was read in America, among a far wider range of poets than in Britain. It starts with a brief consideration of Robert Duncan’s essay on the ‘kopoltus’, and then looks at the poets gathered in Ron Silliman’s 1975 anthology ‘The Dwelling-Place’, New York School writers such as Bernadette Mayer, and other ‘Language poets’, closing with a more in-depth consideration of the importance of Barthes to Lyn Hejinian. Links are established between these writers’ poetics, which are varied but all describable as ‘language-centred’.Less
This chapter considers how Barthes was read in America, among a far wider range of poets than in Britain. It starts with a brief consideration of Robert Duncan’s essay on the ‘kopoltus’, and then looks at the poets gathered in Ron Silliman’s 1975 anthology ‘The Dwelling-Place’, New York School writers such as Bernadette Mayer, and other ‘Language poets’, closing with a more in-depth consideration of the importance of Barthes to Lyn Hejinian. Links are established between these writers’ poetics, which are varied but all describable as ‘language-centred’.
Calum Gardner
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941367
- eISBN:
- 9781789629231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941367.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
In the late 1980s a new approach to Barthes begins to emerge, centred around the use of his work to approach the emotional life. Although this is more traditional poetic subject matter, Barthes still ...
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In the late 1980s a new approach to Barthes begins to emerge, centred around the use of his work to approach the emotional life. Although this is more traditional poetic subject matter, Barthes still inspires innovative and avant-garde approaches. This chapter demonstrates the relevance of Barthes’s work on love to Anne Carson and Deborah Levy, and also shows how his other texts can be applied to these purposes, showing how Kristjana Gunnars uses the more technical Writing Degree Zero to write about grief. The chapter also uses Chris Kraus’s notion of ‘lonely girl phenomenology’ as part of the critical framework with which it approaches alternative creative engagements with theory.Less
In the late 1980s a new approach to Barthes begins to emerge, centred around the use of his work to approach the emotional life. Although this is more traditional poetic subject matter, Barthes still inspires innovative and avant-garde approaches. This chapter demonstrates the relevance of Barthes’s work on love to Anne Carson and Deborah Levy, and also shows how his other texts can be applied to these purposes, showing how Kristjana Gunnars uses the more technical Writing Degree Zero to write about grief. The chapter also uses Chris Kraus’s notion of ‘lonely girl phenomenology’ as part of the critical framework with which it approaches alternative creative engagements with theory.
Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199270842
- eISBN:
- 9780191710292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199270842.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines the history of the idea of the literary vocation first as the overwhelming compulsion to write as described by Rilke and, second in terms of the practical organization of ...
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This chapter examines the history of the idea of the literary vocation first as the overwhelming compulsion to write as described by Rilke and, second in terms of the practical organization of day-to-day life required by writing, as described by Max Jacob or Roland Barthes. Biography, according to Sollers, is a way of highlighting the real consequences that writing has on lived existence, while Barthes explores the prospect of a writing regime independently of any tangible creative outcome.Less
This chapter examines the history of the idea of the literary vocation first as the overwhelming compulsion to write as described by Rilke and, second in terms of the practical organization of day-to-day life required by writing, as described by Max Jacob or Roland Barthes. Biography, according to Sollers, is a way of highlighting the real consequences that writing has on lived existence, while Barthes explores the prospect of a writing regime independently of any tangible creative outcome.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846318436
- eISBN:
- 9781846317866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318436.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines Roland Barthes' La Préparation du roman lecture series at the Collège de France. It explains that the first Préparation du roman course subtitled De la vie à l'oeuvre (December ...
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This chapter examines Roland Barthes' La Préparation du roman lecture series at the Collège de France. It explains that the first Préparation du roman course subtitled De la vie à l'oeuvre (December 1978–March 1979) highlighted Barthes' desire in his previous intellectual work and his concern with oppressive public expectation. The second course subtitled L'Oeuvre comme volontéfocused on the examination of the material, real-world conditions that are necessary in order for him to be able to write his proposed work.Less
This chapter examines Roland Barthes' La Préparation du roman lecture series at the Collège de France. It explains that the first Préparation du roman course subtitled De la vie à l'oeuvre (December 1978–March 1979) highlighted Barthes' desire in his previous intellectual work and his concern with oppressive public expectation. The second course subtitled L'Oeuvre comme volontéfocused on the examination of the material, real-world conditions that are necessary in order for him to be able to write his proposed work.
Elissa Marder
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823240555
- eISBN:
- 9780823240593
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823240555.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines Roland Barthes' gloss on Charles Clifford's nineteenth-century photograph “Alhambra” in Camera Lucida and explores how, via this image, Barthes conjures up an alternative model ...
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This chapter examines Roland Barthes' gloss on Charles Clifford's nineteenth-century photograph “Alhambra” in Camera Lucida and explores how, via this image, Barthes conjures up an alternative model of temporality that he calls “utopian time” and which he associates with a return to the body of the mother. Following Barthes' photographic response to this image, it explores what happens when photography loosens its grasp on its various referential conscious powers: (to know, to prove, to document) and gives itself over instead to become a form of writing. As writing, photography calls for a mode of reading (of events, texts, and the world) that is neither conscious nor unconscious as conventionally understood. In this sense, photographic writing operates at the very limits of what can be imagined as “visible” or even “possible.” The final section of the chapter engages in a reading of some recent fictions by Hélène Cixous to show how, in the photographic images of déjà vu that come to us in dreams and in writing, we might by chance discover latent traces of as yet unwritten future histories.Less
This chapter examines Roland Barthes' gloss on Charles Clifford's nineteenth-century photograph “Alhambra” in Camera Lucida and explores how, via this image, Barthes conjures up an alternative model of temporality that he calls “utopian time” and which he associates with a return to the body of the mother. Following Barthes' photographic response to this image, it explores what happens when photography loosens its grasp on its various referential conscious powers: (to know, to prove, to document) and gives itself over instead to become a form of writing. As writing, photography calls for a mode of reading (of events, texts, and the world) that is neither conscious nor unconscious as conventionally understood. In this sense, photographic writing operates at the very limits of what can be imagined as “visible” or even “possible.” The final section of the chapter engages in a reading of some recent fictions by Hélène Cixous to show how, in the photographic images of déjà vu that come to us in dreams and in writing, we might by chance discover latent traces of as yet unwritten future histories.
Roshanak Kheshti
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479867011
- eISBN:
- 9781479861125
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479867011.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 3 deploys Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes’s term signifiance to further theorize the desire that drives the listener to world music. This is a desire that works counter to signification or ...
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Chapter 3 deploys Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes’s term signifiance to further theorize the desire that drives the listener to world music. This is a desire that works counter to signification or processes of identification. It explores the theme of subjective transcendence testified to by many listeners of world music through signifiance in order to theorize the loss of the self (which Barthes opposes to identification). Through several case studies from fieldwork as well as through the close reading of a song from the Kinship Records release Arabian Journeys, this chapter examines the production processes that choreograph the “loss of the self” in sound.Less
Chapter 3 deploys Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes’s term signifiance to further theorize the desire that drives the listener to world music. This is a desire that works counter to signification or processes of identification. It explores the theme of subjective transcendence testified to by many listeners of world music through signifiance in order to theorize the loss of the self (which Barthes opposes to identification). Through several case studies from fieldwork as well as through the close reading of a song from the Kinship Records release Arabian Journeys, this chapter examines the production processes that choreograph the “loss of the self” in sound.
Calum Gardner
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941367
- eISBN:
- 9781789629231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941367.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
The Scottish poet Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1947-1975) is one of the first poets writing in English to have engaged with Barthes in a major way. Many of her poems reference him and some are titled ...
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The Scottish poet Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1947-1975) is one of the first poets writing in English to have engaged with Barthes in a major way. Many of her poems reference him and some are titled after his work, and he has left his mark on her critical writing. However, because of the manner and order in which these texts were made available to Anglophone audiences, her view of Barthes in the early 1970s seems incomplete and skewed to our eyes today. Embarking on close readings of her poetry and prose, this chapter offers a detailed breakdown of the relationship between the work of Forrest-Thomson and Barthes.Less
The Scottish poet Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1947-1975) is one of the first poets writing in English to have engaged with Barthes in a major way. Many of her poems reference him and some are titled after his work, and he has left his mark on her critical writing. However, because of the manner and order in which these texts were made available to Anglophone audiences, her view of Barthes in the early 1970s seems incomplete and skewed to our eyes today. Embarking on close readings of her poetry and prose, this chapter offers a detailed breakdown of the relationship between the work of Forrest-Thomson and Barthes.
Sam Ferguson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- April 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198814535
- eISBN:
- 9780191852121
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198814535.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines a moment when the literary avant-garde returned to diary-writing and the writing subject, by focusing on Roland Barthes’s experiments with the diary (journal intime). These ...
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This chapter examines a moment when the literary avant-garde returned to diary-writing and the writing subject, by focusing on Roland Barthes’s experiments with the diary (journal intime). These experiments take place in the context of his project for a ‘Vita Nova’ (seeking a unification of his life and writing, and a new, subjective form of literature), and are all related to his mourning for his mother. His Journal de deuil (written 1977–1979) pursues an impossible ideal of diary-writing, in which a univocal, fully present writing subject expresses a valuable interior experience to produce a literary œuvre. The impossibility of this ideal leads Barthes to his reflections on the diary in the article ‘Délibération’, and then to an almost perfectly opposite form of diary-writing project, with Soirées de Paris. These two diaries, exploring opposite extremes of writing, are placed by Barthes as components within his imagined novel (Vita Nova).Less
This chapter examines a moment when the literary avant-garde returned to diary-writing and the writing subject, by focusing on Roland Barthes’s experiments with the diary (journal intime). These experiments take place in the context of his project for a ‘Vita Nova’ (seeking a unification of his life and writing, and a new, subjective form of literature), and are all related to his mourning for his mother. His Journal de deuil (written 1977–1979) pursues an impossible ideal of diary-writing, in which a univocal, fully present writing subject expresses a valuable interior experience to produce a literary œuvre. The impossibility of this ideal leads Barthes to his reflections on the diary in the article ‘Délibération’, and then to an almost perfectly opposite form of diary-writing project, with Soirées de Paris. These two diaries, exploring opposite extremes of writing, are placed by Barthes as components within his imagined novel (Vita Nova).
Robert C. Solomon
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- November 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780195145502
- eISBN:
- 9780199834969
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019514550X.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Roland Barthes's book, A Lover's Discourse, is a classic confession of the pains of love. This chapter is an homage to the late great contemporary French thinker.
Roland Barthes's book, A Lover's Discourse, is a classic confession of the pains of love. This chapter is an homage to the late great contemporary French thinker.
