Barthes, Theorist

It is an honor to inaugurate this discussion of Roland Barthes. In beginning the movement "Back to Barthes" which our title heralds, I want to say what I take to be the importance of Barthes the theorist and semiologist today. Thereafter, I will briefly take up Barthes's championing of the concept of textuality, both because I think that the development of this concept is a crucial in the advance of the humanities and social sciences, or sciences humaines, and because I have some quarrel with Barthes's particular dealings with the topic. But in all these remarks I want above all to stress that in my view it is the early and middle Barthes and not the late, nostalgic or sentimental Barthes, to whom we should return.

The semiological Barthes, champion of a science of signs, has almost vanished from sight today, replaced by Barthes the writer. I clipped an article about him from Télérama of June 14th, 2000: "L'Empereur des signes" (The Emperor of Signs), whose heading reads, "Lover of language, idolater of the sentence, this writer used sociology and psychoanalysis but above all an uncommon subtlety, to illuminate French literature." ¹ No trace here of the champion of the avant-garde, critic of bourgeois myths, bête noir of the Sorbonne, scandal monger who proclaimed "the death of the author." Also elided here is semiology, replaced by sociology; and this is not just a mistake, as one sees later when semiology is mentioned as something he abandoned. Barthes is "un amoureux fou de notre langue, un possedé de ses finesses" (head-over-heels in love with our language, obsessed by its finer points)--a cultural icon whose passage through other supposedly radical phases to the love of the French language and its subtleties makes him all the more valuable as a confirmation that culture resides essentially in the relation of the individual subject to the mother tongue.

Having abandoned the scientific illusions of hard-line structuralism, rid of the slogans of political and cultural militancies, our semiologist began a new life of writing. Barthes henceforth lets Roland speak, bringing to the forefront the desiring subject, his singular self, unabashed lover of language and style. ²

I cite this not because it contemptible, but because it is at once typical, easily justified by the trajectory of Barthes's writings, and easy to support with quotations from the late writings, which mock his "rêve (euphorique) de scientificité" (euphoric dream of scientificity). ³ A section of Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, called "Forgeries," treats the binary oppositions of semiology as "figures de production," "des operateurs de texte" (figures of production, textual operators). ⁴ "On vole un langage sans cependant vouloir l'appliquer jusqu'au bout" (one steals language without, however, wanting to apply it thoroughly). ⁵ This is part of part of "la machine de l'ecriture" (the machine of writing): "Tel une baquette de sourcier, le concept, surtout s'il est couplé, lève une possibilité de l'écriture . . ." (like a magician's wand, the concept, especially if it is coupled, raises a possibility of writing). "Here," he says, "lies the possibility of saying something." Hence the work proceeds by "conceptual infatuations, successive enthusiasms, perishable manias" (engouements conceptuels, empourprements successifs, manies périssables). ⁶

It is tempting to adopt this posture of knowingness and celebrate the superior insight of the writer rather than the delusions of the would-be theorist. But I think the value, nay, the genius of Barthes lies not in the blend of knowingness and sentimentality of the late work but in the early work, which tries out possible sciences. In Essais Critiques he calls the writer a public experimenter, who tries out ideas in public, for the public. ⁷ In Barthes par Barthes he reverts to this idea: he [Barthes] "invokes notions," he says; "modernity is tried (the way one tries all the buttons on a radio one doesn't know how to work)." ⁸

It seems to...