roland barthes

Critical Analysis of Roland Barthes “The Death of the Author” Roland Barthes says in his essay The Death of the Author, “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” For the most part I agree with this statement. There can be no real level of independent thinking achieved by the reader if their thoughts are dictated by the Author’s opinions and biases. For this reason there needs to be a distance between the Author and those who read the work. Barthes makes two main points as to why the death of the Author is an inevitable and beneficial occurrence. To begin with Barthes states that the author is merely a way through which a story is told. They neither create the story nor form it, these have already been done. The author is merely retelling this story that has already been told many times. His argument against original thought is very persuasive, especially considering the many ways stories have been logically broken down into a predictable sequence of events. For instance, Vladimir Propp (Literary Theory) a Russian Formalist used Formalist theories to determine thirty one plot functions in Russian folk tales. Each folk tale has at least some, if not all, of these functions, typically in the order which he has organized them but occasionally one or two will be inverted. Most modern fairy tales are merely an adaptation of a classic fairy tale and they follow the general functions that Propp outlined. Even beyond fairy tales, most fiction stories fall into a typical patter with a beginning problem, a training period, a set back of the hero, the hero overcoming the obstacle, the conflict, and finally resolution. There are no original thoughts, just old thoughts combined in different patterns or adjusted to fit the current society. Music, fashion, and movies are an example of the never ending recycling of ideas. There are only so many musical combinations or clothing styles that people find pleasing. It is inevitable that old styles will be used to “inspire” new ones. It is easy to see in all different areas of society how there are few no new ideas, merely old ideas being reused. Barthes second point is that if the reader were to view the work through the Author’s eyes then they would gain no benefit from the reading. By associating the Author with the text, the text is automatically limited. Instead of drawing their own meaning from the text using their own experiences and therefore stimulating their own thoughts of their lives and how it connects with the world around them the reader is then restricted to trying to guess what the author meant. The reader focuses on understanding the Author’s opinions and whether they agree with the Author and don’t focus on their own thoughts and opinions of the piece. Barthes claims that it is the status of the reader that should be elevated, not the status of the Author. If the reader gains any deep insight from a piece of writing it should not be considered due to the Author’s genius but instead to the personal experiences of the reader providing them with an insightful interpretation. Barthes believes that if it is the reader who brings meaning to the text then there can be no limit to the interpretations available because everyone in the world has their own unique experiences that have shaped them. For the independent thinking of readers and the growth of their skills of interpretation the death of the Author is necessary, in most cases. The death of the Author is not always a necessary occurrence however, in some cases the presence of the Author is needed for the reader to achieve a greater understanding of what is being read. For instance, in the book Slaughterhouse 5: A Children’s Crusade, Kurt Vonnegut went through great effort to make himself known at the beginning of the book. The entire first chapter is told in first person from the author’s point of view as he rambles about how he wanted to write a book about the bombing of Dresden. He was there when Dresden was bombed and was one of the only survivors. The first chapter of the book he describes how he has wanted to write a book about the bombing of Dresden for years but he’s never been able to find the right words. “There’s nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.” Vonnegut said. After spending the first chapter introducing the reader to himself Vonnegut then proceeds to take himself out of the story (for the most part) and instead tell the story of Billy Pilgrim. Pilgrim had also survived the bombing of Dresden but a head injury later in life combined with post traumatic stress disorder caused Pilgrim to lose his grip on reality. Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time and being unstuck causes him to flash back and forth from the past to the future and back again. As a reader if I had not known Vonnegut’s background as one of the few survivors of the bombing of Dresden then I would have not been able to understand the book. I would have seen it as crazy and disjointed and not have been able to draw any meaning out of it. However, looking through the eyes of the Author I got an understanding and view of the events that was completely different from what I would have understood on my own. If the Author is writing on a topic of which the reader will have their own past experiences to compare it to then the birth of the reader must come at the cost of the death of the Author. However, if the reader has no experiences on which to base their judgments or to grasp the meaning of the text with then it might be necessary for the Author to tell the reader of their own experiences. I agree with Barthes when he says that the reader and the readers interpretation and understanding of a text is what is important. However, sometimes the understanding of the reader is best helped by the presence of the Author. That being said, the Author should only make an appearance if it will help the understanding of the reader. Here again, the focus is on the reader and their understanding, not on the Author. It is inevitable though that some readers will have a certain mindset about a book before they even buy it because of the author’s name on the cover. The reader may have liked a different book the author had written or had disliked it, but depending on which it was before they pick the book up they will already have an idea of what it is going to be like. Some readers have been known to buy entire series after reading the first book because they know they like the Author so much. They are basing four or five books off of their experience from one and the name of the Author. Should it be that way? Authors want to claim credit for the work they’ve done but Barthes says that where the work originated from isn’t what’s important, it’s the destination that matters. If we were to take Barthes statement that authors are not creating new material merely meshing bits and pieces from previous writings together, then for the author to claim credit of the piece would essentially be plagerism, for they would be taking credit for thoughts that were not theirs. Putting their names on books could qualify for intellectual property theft as well, according to Barthes. Unless, of course, the author is not seeking to take credit for the story itself but instead wants to take credit for the order in which the words are put together to form the story. So maybe the author is not dead at all. After all, if the author was completely dead then there would be no names on the covers of books. Not only would they not be allowed to take credit for a story that has already been told but they would not be allowed to affect the reader’s interpretation of their story. Even though Barthes thinks that knowing the Authors background would be detrimental to the readers interpretation of the text I wonder if the public would really wish to know nothing about the writer whose book they are reading. Is it possible that reading the book without the name or basic information of the author could be like watching a movie without knowing what the rating or the plot summary of the movie is? To what extent is it right to broaden the readers horizons? Some people choose to live highly sheltered lives, only reading certain things or watching specific t.v. shows. Anything that doesn’t fall under their approved categories is to be completely ignored. So if we were to take the Authors name off of books, would going into a bookstore be akin to playing a game of Russian Roulette for them? Not knowing the author means not knowing if there may be any hidden surprises in the book. So aside from the Author’s objections to not getting credit for their work, would the readers object? In this way the Author isn’t dead, for their reputation still affects the readers choice and open mindedness to the book. It seems that when Barthes says “the birth of the reader must come at the cost of the death of the Author,” he is thinking idealistically, not realistically. It would help the interpretations and understanding of the reader for there to be no connection between the Author and the text, in that Barthes is correct. If the only focus was the individual interpretations of the reader then the absolute disassociation of the Author with the text would be a beneficial thing. However, I don’t believe that the Author will ever be completely dead. Barthes said that the Author should get neither praise for a good book not blamed for a bad one and yet this is exactly why the Author will never be fully dead. Readers want heroes and villains, people to look up to and people to despise. A good writer earns praise from the readers and social status, but a controversial writer can draw just as much negative attention as an inspiring writer can draw positive attention. In this way people seek to categorize their lives, and to categorize books the readers need labels. Their favorite labels are the Authors who wrote the books. I think that the readers are partially responsible for the continued presence of the Author, as well as the Author’s own interests in being involved. Is the Author fully dead? No, but neither is he fully alive either. The Author is stuck somewhere between.
In his essay, 'Death of the Author' Roland Barthes criticizes the inherent implications of considering the author when examining a text. Barthes argues that the author is merely a vehicle in which a story is told. He does not create or form the story, but rather mediates, relates and performs the story as it already exists. The author himself exists only at the point at which he is telling the story and thus, his history, culture and values are without influence and even further, nonexistent in relation to the analysis of the text. Believing this, Barthes condemns the practice of attributing the success of a text to the genius of the author. In the same vein, he also believes that a failing in a text cannot be ascribed to the failings of the writer because he is but an image representing the text and their strengths and weaknesses are separate because they are separate entities. In considering the author simultaneously with the analysis of the text, Barthes believes that the text becomes automatically limited. The reader examines the text in terms of the authors perspective, searching for the author's interpretations and motivations rather than seeking his own understanding.
Language itself is just the repetition of a system created long ago. Writing it essentially the manipulation and transcription of thoughts and ideas already discovered. By looking at the text through the eyes of the author, the reader acquires nothing original as he is only digesting predetermined explanations. Barthes bases his entire principle on this idea claiming that it is only the status of the reader not the author that should be elevated. It is the reader who brings meaning to a text using their own experiences and knowledge to achieve a new and unique understanding of the words. This being so, a text can have an unlimited number of possible interpretations because each reader that approaches a piece of writing unsullied by preliminary knowledge of the author has the liberty to extract any meaning from the text. Barthes cleverly concludes that "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author."

Source: http://www.shvoong.com/books/2139-death-author/#ixzz2iBXHB400

WIKIPEDIA:

In his essay, Barthes argues against the method of reading and criticism that relies on aspects of the author's identity — their political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal attributes — to distill meaning from the author's work. In this type of criticism, the experiences and biases of the author serve as a definitive "explanation" of the text. For Barthes, this method of reading may be apparently tidy and convenient but is actually sloppy and flawed:
"To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text."
Readers must thus separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate the text from interpretive tyranny (a notion similar to Erich Auerbach's discussion of narrative tyranny in Biblical parables). Each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings. In a well-known quotation, Barthes draws an analogy between text and textiles, declaring that a "text is a tissue [or fabric] of quotations," drawn from "innumerable centers of culture," rather than from one, individual experience. The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the "passions" or "tastes" of the writer; "a text's unity lies not in its origins," or its creator, "but in its destination," or its audience.
No longer the focus of creative influence, the author is merely a "scriptor" (a word Barthes uses expressly to disrupt the traditional continuity of power between the terms "author" and "authority"). The scriptor exists to produce but not to explain the work and "is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, [and] is not the subject with the book as predicate." Every work is "eternally written here and now," with each re-reading, because the "origin" of meaning lies exclusively in "language itself" and its impressions on the reader.
Barthes notes that the traditional critical approach to literature raises a thorny problem: how can we detect precisely what the writer intended? His answer is that we cannot. He introduces this notion in the epigraph to the essay, taken from Honoré de Balzac's story Sarrasine in which a male protagonist mistakes a castrato for a woman and falls in love with him. When, in the passage, the character dotes over his perceived womanliness, Barthes challenges his own readers to determine who is speaking, and about what. "Is it Balzac the author professing 'literary' ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom? Romantic psychology? … We can never know." Writing, "the destruction of every voice," defies adherence to a single interpretation or perspective. (Barthes returned to Sarrasine in his book S/Z, where he gave the story a rigorous close reading.)
Acknowledging the presence of this idea (or variations of it) in the works of previous writers, Barthes cited in his essay the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who said that "it is language which speaks." He also recognized Marcel Proust as being "concerned with the task of inexorably blurring…the relation between the writer and his characters"; the Surrealistmovement for employing the practice of "automatic writing" to express "what the head itself is unaware of"; and the field of linguistics as a discipline for "showing that the whole of enunciation is an empty process." Barthes' articulation of the death of the author is a radical and drastic recognition of this severing of authority and authorship. Instead of discovering a "single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God)," readers of a text discover that writing, in reality, constitutes "a multi-dimensional space," which cannot be "deciphered," only "disentangled." "Refusing to assign a 'secret,' ultimate meaning" to text "liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason, science, law."[1]

Critical Authority
In his The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes argues that critics up until his time have been not the sages, but the ruiners of Literature. His essay could have been easily called The Death of the Critic, or even The Rape of the Text. He describes Critics as a destructive force to texts, and that their inclusion of information beyond (or rather, beneath) the texts to which these critics cast their own pens is destructive to the very texts they examine.
When describing the work of the Critic, Barthes repeatedly uses language which brings destruction to mind, including the words "decipher" (or code-breaking), "pierce," and "evaporate." He further describes a text as a delicate, even ephemeral thing, comparing it first to a tissue, and then to the threads of a stocking. It is as if a text is a membrane that a writer holds before him for examination (reading, not criticism), and that these Critics, in their search for the author, must tear their way through the text in order to examine him.
In contrast, although Barthes calls this idea "the death of the author," the language used to describe the process of this death is far more gentle, even passive. The author is not in fact, torn, pierced, or destroyed, he simply "diminishes like a figurine at the far end of the literary stage." Since the text stands between the author and the reader, the author is not harmed by his "death". He simply goes unseen.
Barthes, in fact, lays no guilt at all on the writer for this destruction of text. It is the Critic upon whom culpability is set. It is the Critic who has brought the writer (who upon publication is as immediately distanced from the text as any other reader) into the realm of examination. The reason, Barthes explains, for the inclusion of the Author into analysis of his work, is that when the actual life experiences, attitudes, and emotions of the Author are included in an analysis, the Critic can claim that these attitudes and emotions represent the True Meaning of the text. This penetration of the text deflates it and closes it to further scrutiny. It seems then to Barthes that either the Author or the text must be removed from the process for this destructive scrutiny to end.
In removing the Author from analysis of a text, Barthes simultaneously preserves all texts for further study, reopening the closed books, and also overturns the idea of the "Critic", authorizing (forgive the pun) all readers to be critical of what they read. Since without an Author there can no longer be an "authoritative viewpoint", all viewpoints are valid, and texts are therefore not only reassembled, but broadened to limitless "disengagements" by any number of Readers.
It is this new figure, that of the Reader, which can emerge after the removal of the Author and the Critic, and it is to this Reader that all texts are directed. Barthes says "the true place of writing is reading," and this, to him, seems as important as any other idea about a Text. It is is the reading (not in the person who in some unseen and distant place and time put the text to paper), that the text comes to life. A text still tied to its Author is either unfinished or not to be read by the public. A text to be read by the public is therefore severed from the hand of the Author by necessity, and the Reader is born.

Discussing Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author”
Posted by kebornus on January 24, 2012 in Uncategorized
Roland Barthes expresses compelling points throughout his essay, but I have to disagree with him. He states: “The voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins” (Barthes 142). Although I agree that a text is subject to analysis once it it written, I do not believe that an author or the context in which the work was written can be taken out of the equation. The author does not, in my opinion, “die”, but is instead is honored by a scrutiny of his or her text. Here’s why I say it is an honor: The meaning of the text is enhanced by reader scrutiny but not changed.
To remove an author from his or her writing takes away from the text’s analysis because the facts behind the writing/the motive for writing is not analyzed. The removal of the author results in the reader projecting his or her opinion without any facts to back it up, it would be similar to an essay without any works cited. Without taking the author into consideration, analysis becomes too objective, and ultimately can result in awrong interpretation of the text–And yes I think there can be a wrong interpretation of the text (it is similar to how someone can misinterpret another’s actions).
The context of the author’s writing must also be taken into account because the context of the situation has a vast impact on the meaning of the text. Take for example Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, the meaning of the speech could be interpreted falsely if the listener doesn’t know that Martin Luther King was a leader in the civil rights movement advocating human rights. If the listener/reader did not know who was speaking or the context in which the speech was given, they would not know its significance, and thus not be able to effectively interpret it. Readers should, therefore, take into account the author’s background and the context in which the text was written in order to make an effective analysis. In doing so, they will be able to making more sensical arguments that have the ability to be backed up and supported. It also encourages readers to dig deeper and to broaden their thinking
“The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” – Roland Barthes

Must the Author be dead to make way for the birth of the reader? In Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author,” Barthes asserts that the Author is dead because the latter is no longer a part of the deep structure in a particular text. To him, the Author does not create meaning in the text: one cannot explain a text by knowing about the person who wrote it. A text, however, cannot physically exist disconnected from the Author who writes it. Even if the role of the Author is to mix pre-existing signs, it does not follow that the Author-function is dead. Moreover, Barthes attributes “authorship” to the reader who forms meaning and understanding. The reader is, however, an abstraction “without history, biography, psychology”(Barthes 1469). These contexts – history, biography, and psychology – can only be set by the Author. Thus, the Author is alive and well because the text cannot exist without the Author, the mixing o...

Death of the Author
Many of Barthes’s works focus on literature. However, Barthes denied being a literary critic, because he did not assess and provide verdicts on works. Instead, he interpreted their semiotic significance. Barthes’s structuralist style of literary analysis has influenced cultural studies, to the chagrin of adherents of traditional literary approaches.
One notable point of controversy is Barthes’s proclamation of the ‘death of the author’. This ‘death’ is directed, not at the idea of writing, but at the specifically French image of the auteur as a creative genius expressing an inner vision. He is opposing a view of texts as expressing a distinct personality of the author.
Barthes vehemently opposes the view that authors consciously create masterpieces. He maintains that authors such as Racine and Balzac often reproduce emotional patterns about which they have no conscious knowledge. He opposes the view that authors should be interpreted in terms of what they think they’re doing. Their biographies have no more relevance to what they write than do those of scientists.
In ‘The Death of the Author’, Barthes argues that writing destroys every voice and point of origin. This is because it occurs within a functional process which is the practice of signification itself. Its real origin is language. A writer, therefore, does not have a special genius expressed in the text, but rather, is a kind of craftsman who is skilled in using a particular code. All writers are like copywriters or scribes, inscribing a particular zone of language.
The real origin of a text is not the author, but language. If the writer expresses something ‘inner’, it is only the dictionary s/he holds ready-formed. There is a special art of the storyteller to translate linguistic structures or codes into particular narratives or messages. Each text is composed of multiple writings brought into dialogue, with each code it refers to being extracted from a previous culture.
Barthes’s argument is directed against schools of literary criticism that seek to uncover the author’s meaning as a hidden referent which is the final meaning of the text. By refusing the ‘author’ (in the sense of a great writer expressing an inner brilliance), one refuses to assign an ultimate meaning to the text, and hence, one refuses to fix its meaning.
It becomes open to different readings. According to Barthes, the unity of a text lies in its destination not its origin. Its multiplicity is focused on the reader, as an absent point within the text, to whom it speaks. The writer and reader are linguistic persons, not psychological persons. Their role in the story is defined by their coded place in discourse, not their specific traits.
A text cannot have a single meaning, but rather, is composed of multiple systems through which it is constructed. In Barthes’s case, this means reading texts through the signs they use, both in their structure in the text, and in their wider meanings.
Literature does not represent something real, since what it refers to is not really there. For Barthes, it works by playing on the multiple systems of language-use and their infinite transcribability – their ability to be written in different ways.
The death of the author creates freedom for the reader to interpret the text. The reader can recreate the text through connecting to its meanings as they appear in different contexts.
In practice, Barthes’s literary works emphasise the practice of the craft of writing. For instance, Barthes’s structuralist analysis of Sade, Fourier and Loyola emphasises the structural characteristics of their work, such as their emphasis on counting and their locations in self-contained worlds. He views the three authors as founders of languages (logothetes).
The Structure of Narrative
In ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives’, Barthes explores the structure of narrative, or storytelling, from a structuralist perspective. Narrative consists of a wide variety of genres applied to a wide variety of substances – for example, theatre, film, novels, news stories, mimes, and even some paintings. We can see what Barthes terms ‘narrative’ whenever something is used to tell a story. People using this theory will often refer to the way people live their lives as narratives, and some will talk about a right to tell our own story.
Narrative is taken to be humanly universal – every social group has its own narratives. Barthes models the analysis of narrative on structuralist linguistics. The structure or organisation is what is most essential in any system of meaning.
The construction of a narrative from different statements is similar to the construction of a sentence from phonemes. Barthes argues that there are three levels of narrative: functions, actions, and narration. Each has meaning only in relation to the next level.
Functions refer to statements in narratives. Every statement or sentence in a novel, for example, has at least one function. Barthes gives examples like: ‘James Bond saw a man of about fifty’ and ‘Bond picked up one of the four receivers’.
For Barthes, every statement has a particular role in the narrative – there are no useless statements, no ‘noise’ in the information-theory sense.
But statements vary in their importance to the narrative, in how closely or loosely it is tied to the story. Some are functions in the full sense, playing a direct role in the story. For instance, a character buys a gun so s/he can use it later in the story. The phone rings, and Bond picks it up – this will give him information or orders which will move the action forward.
Others are ‘indices’ – they index something which establishes the context of the story. They might, for instance, convey a certain atmosphere. Or they might say something about the psychology or ‘character’ of an actor in the story. The ‘four receivers’ show that Bond is in a big, bureaucratic organisation, which shows that he is on the side of order. The ‘man of about fifty’ indicates an atmosphere of suspicion: Bond needs to establish who he is and which side he is on.
Among the former – the true functions – these can be central aspects of the narrative, on which it hinges (‘cardinal points’ or ‘nuclei’), or they can be complementary (catalysers). To be cardinal, a function needs to open or close a choice on which the development of the story depends. The phone ringing and Bond answering are cardinal, because the story would go differently if the phone didn’t ring or Bond didn’t answer.
But if Bond ‘moved towards the desk and answered the phone’, the phrase ‘moved towards the desk’ is a catalyser, because it does not affect the story whether he did this or not. Stories often contain catalysers to provide moments of rest from the risky decision-points.
Barthes sees true functions as forming pairs: one initiates a choice and the other closes it. These pairs can be close together, or spread out across a story. The choice is opened by the phone ringing, and closed by Bond answering it.
Indices are also divided into true indices, which index things like an actor’s character or an atmosphere, and informants, which simply identify something or situate it in time and space. A character’s age is an example of an informant. True indices are more important to the story than informants.
All moments of a narrative are functional, but some more so than others. Functions and indices are functional in different ways. Cardinal functions and true indices have greater functionality than catalysers and informants. At root, however, a narrative is structured through its nuclei. The other functional elements are always expansions on the nuclei. It is possible, as in folk-tales, to create a narrative consisting almost entirely of nuclei.
Functions are arranged into narratives by being attached to agents – characters in the story who engage in actions. Every narrative necessarily has agents. The actions of an agent connect the nuclei of the narrative to particular ‘articulations of praxis’ – desire, communication and struggle.
The third level, narration, occurs between the narrator (or writer) and the reader. The narrator compiles the narrative in a way which is addressed to the reader, and ‘produces’ the reader as a particular position in the narrative. The positions of narrator and reader are clearest when a writer addresses a factual statement directly to the reader: ‘Leo was the owner of the joint’. Narrator and reader are largely empty positions within the narrative.
Narratives also have a kind of logical time which is interior to them and is barely connected to real time. This logical time is constructed by the series of nuclei (which open and close choices), and their separation by other nuclei and by subsidiary elements. It is held together by the integration of the pairs of nuclei.
Narratives implicitly receive their meaning, however, from a wider social world. Barthes maintains that narratives obtain their meaning from the world beyond them – from social, economic and ideological systems.
Barthes criticises the narratives of his day for trying to disguise the process of coding involved in constructing a narrative. As in Mythologies, he again argues that this naturalisation of signs, and denial of the process of social construction of meaning, is specifically bourgeois. Both bourgeois society and its mass culture ‘demand signs which do not look like signs’. They are reluctant to declare their codes.
Narrative also contains other potentials. Like dreaming, it alters the familiar in ways which show different possibilities. Although what is ‘known’ or ‘experienced’ is constantly re-run through narratives, the narratives do not simply repeat what is re-run through them. They open a ‘process of becoming’. In other words, things can run differently when run through narrative. Narrative shows that other meanings are possible. Familiar things can be given different meanings.
What happens in narrative has no referent. It doesn’t refer to something in the real world. Rather, what happens in narrative is language itself – the celebration of its many possibilities. However, it is also closely connected to monologue (which follows in personal development from dialogue).
Barthes is highly critical of realist and naturalist views of writing. For Barthes, literature is built on emptiness: it represents something which is not really there. All the arts of fiction, including theatre, cinema and literature, are constructed based on signs. They function by the suspension of disbelief. They function by calling certain desires or structures into play, causing people to feel various emotions. They are not representations of reality, but rather, a way to induce feelings in the audience.
The attempt to convince the audience that the story is real is a way of reproducing the naturalisation of signs. A supposedly realistic or naturalistic art or literature never really ‘tells it like it is’. It represents through a set of conventional signs which stand for ‘reality’.
Barthes criticises those who believe authors imitate an existing reality (a practice known as mimesis). He is in favour of an emphasis on the creation of a discursive world (semiosis) rather than mimesis. Hence his interest in Sade, Fourier and Loyola. Instead of conventional views of the world, alternative presentations can denaturalise the present and provide utopian alternatives.
Barthes also criticises the idea of clarity in literature, for similar reasons. Clarity is simply conventional. It is relative to a particular regime of signs. It amounts to a criterion of familiarity. Therefore, it has conservative effects. Barthes views clarity as a class attribute of the bourgeoisie, used to signify membership of this class (this contrasts sharply with the more common claim in activist circles that speech should be clear so as to be working-class or inclusive).
However, this is not strictly an expressive view either. The actor or author doesn’t necessarily induce sympathy for their own feelings. Such an effect can amount to confusing art with reality. Instead, the actor, author and audience all know it’s fiction.
In some contexts, such as theatre, wrestling, and (in Barthes’s view) Japanese culture, performance or artifice is recognised for what it is. It is not taken to be natural or real. In these contexts, signs have no content. Their operation serves to show the existence and functioning of signs. It also allows an expressive use of signs, to stand for particular emotions.
In ‘Rhetoric of the Image’, Barthes discusses the different levels of meaning in a Panzani advert. Firstly, there’s a linguistic message, which has the usual denoted and connoted levels. Secondly, there’s a connotation, established by juxtaposition, associating the brand with freshness and home cooking. Thirdly, there’s the use of colours and fruits to signify ‘Italianicity’, the mythical essence of Italy. Fourthly, the processed product is presented as if equivalent to the surrounding unprocessed items. These signifiers carry ‘euphoric values’ connected to particular myths. According to Barthes, at least the third of these meanings is quasi-tautological.
The language of images is constructed in particular zones or ‘lexicons’. Each of the connoted meanings refers to a specific body of social practice which certain readers will receive, and others may not. For instance, it mobilises ideas from tourism (Italianicity) and art (the imitation of the style of a still life painting). Often the same signifieds are carried by text, images, acting and so on. These signifieds carry a particular dominant ideology. A rhetoric of the image deploys a number of connotative images to carry messages.
All images are ‘polysemous’ – they can be read in a number of ways. In an image such as this, language is used both explicitly and implicitly to guide the selection of meanings. The text directs the reader as to which meanings of the image to receive. Barthes thus suggests that texts have a repressive value relative to images: they limit what can be seen. It is in this limitation that ideology and morality function. Ideology chooses among multiple meanings which ones can be seen, and limits the shifting flow of signification which would otherwise happen.
Euphoria and Affect
Euphoria has both positive and negative meanings in Barthes’s work. As a negative term, it refers to the enjoyment of a closed system or familiar meaning which is induced by mythical signifiers. For instance, the fashion system is euphoric because its persistence as a system defies death. People can partake in a system of meanings which seems eternal, and thereby experience some of its illusory universality as euphoria. Myth provides euphoria because it provides a sense that something is absolutely clear. It aims for a euphoric security which comes with enclosing everything in a closed system. Tautology, for instance, gives someone the minor satisfaction of opting for a truth-claim without the risk of being wrong (because nothing substantive has been said). This can be compared to Negri’s argument in Time for Revolution that systemic closure yields a certain type of enjoyment.
On the other hand, it can also signify an experience of fullness arising from actually escaping the regime of myths. In ‘The Third Meaning’, Barthes analyses Sergei Eisenstein’s films, suggesting the presence of what he terms an ‘obtuse’ meaning alongside the explicit denotative and connotative meanings.
These images simply designate an emotion or disposition, setting in motion a drift in meaning. They don’t represent anything. They are momentary, without development or variants. They have a signifier without a signified. They thus escape the euphoria of closed systems, pointing to something beyond.
Indeed, an obtuse meaning is not necessarily visible to all readers. Its appearance is subjective. It is permanently empty or depleted (it remains unclear how this positive ‘empty signifier’ relates either to the ‘mana-words’ of Mythologies, or to Laclau’s rather different use of the same term). It can also serve as part of mythical schemes. For instance, ,moral indignation can function as a pleasant emotion.
The obtuse meaning is not present in the system of language, though it is present in speech. It almost sneaks into speech, on the back of language. It appears as a rare and new practice counterposed to the majority practice of signification. It seems like a luxury: expenditure without exchange. And it seems to belong, not to today’s politics, but to tomorrow’s. Barthes sees such facets as undermining the integration of characters, turning them into nubs of facets. In other words, the ‘molar self’ of the character (who, in Mythologies, is connected to social decomposition and misrepresentation) is replaced by a different kind of connection which is, perhaps, directly lived and connected to the world, rather than projecting a literary figure onto it.
It has been read in terms of a moment of emotion prior to thought. I think it might be better linked to Deleuze’s idea of the ‘time-image’: the obtuse image is a momentary image which expresses the contingency of becoming. Barthes suggests that the obtuse image is carnivalesque, and that it turns the film into a ‘permutational unfolding’, a flow of becoming in the system of signs.
Writerly Reading: S/Z
In S/Z, a text devoted primarily to the study of Balzac’s short story Sarrasine, Barthes proposes a distinction between two types of texts.
A text is ‘writerly’ if it can be written or rewritten today. A ‘writerly’ text is constructed in such a way as to encourage readers to reuse and reapply it, bringing it into new combinations with their own meanings. It is celebrated because it makes the reader a producer, not a consumer, of a text. The ‘writerly’ value restores to each person the ‘magic of the signifier’. The writerly text is inseparable from the process of writing, as an open-ended flow which has not yet been stopped by any system (such as ideology or criticism).
It is necessarily plural. This is a kind of plurality distinguished from liberalism: it does not acknowledge partial truths in different positions, but insists on difference as such. Difference constantly returns through texts, which re-open the network of language at a different point.
Barthes counterposes this view to an essentialist or Platonic view in which all texts approximate a model. For Barthes, texts instead offer entrances into the network of language. They do not offer a norm or law. Rather, it offers a particular perspective constructed of particular voices, fragments of texts, and semiotic codes. Texts have only a contingent unity which is constantly rewritten through its composition in terms of codes. A writerly text should have many networks which interact without any of them dominating the others.
The ‘readerly’, in contrast, reduces a text to something serious, without pleasure, which can only be accepted or rejected. A ‘readerly’ text is so heavily attached to a particular system of meanings as to render the reader passive. It is a reactive distortion of the ‘writerly’ through its ideological closure.
Readerly texts must, however, contain a ‘limited’ or ‘modest plural’ in order to function. This limited plurality of the text is created through its connotations. There are also writerly and readerly styles of reading texts, depending whether one seeks predetermined meanings in it, or seeks instead to inscribe it in new ways.
Instead of treating a text as a single phenomenon which represents something, Barthes proposes to examine a text through the plural signs it brings together. Instead of giving a unified image of a text, it decomposes it into component parts. Such a reading uses digressions to show that the structures of which the text is woven can be reversed and rearranged.
Barthes calls this style of reading ‘starring’ of a text. It cuts the text up into blocks of signification, breaching its smooth surface and especially its appearance of naturalness. It interrupts the flow of the text so as to release the perspectives within it. Each block is treated as a zone, in which the movement of meanings can be traced. The goal of this exercise is to hear one of the voices of the text.
Readers should reconstitute texts as plural. Among other things, this means that forgetting meanings is a necessary part of reading. It ensures that multiple readings remain possible, and therefore, that signifiers are allowed to shift or move.
One can’t reduce all stories to a single structure, because each text carries a particular difference. This kind of difference is not an irreducible quality, but the constant flow of language into new combinations. Analysing the function of each text restores it to this flow of difference.
He also calls for re-reading, as a means to avoid repetition and to remove texts from linear time (before or after) and place them in mythical time. Re-reading is ‘no longer consumption, but play’, directed against both the disposability of texts and their distanced analysis, and towards the return of difference. It helps create an experience of plural texts.
In this text, Barthes criticises many of his earlier views. He now claims that connotation is ever-present in ‘readerly’ texts (though not in some modern texts). There is no underlying denotative layer. Denotation is simply the most naturalised layer of connotation.
Further, connotation carries voice into the text, weaving a particular voice into the code. The writer, here, has more of a role than Barthes previously allowed. Writing brings in historical context through connotation.
The text as expression for the reader is also criticised. Readers are also products of prior texts, which compose subjectivity as subject-positions in narratives. Reading is itself a ‘form of work’. The content of this work is to move, to shift between different systems or flows which have no ending-point.
The work is shown to exist only by its functioning: it has no definite outcome. To read is to find meanings within the endless flow of language. We might think of it as creating particular, temporary points or territories by finding resonances within a field which is like an ocean or a desert.