How to Read Barthes’ Image — Music — Text by Ed White (review)

For many of his readers, Roland Barthes’s genius lies in his early ‘scientistic’ work. And yet scholarly attention today focuses strongly on his late, rather ‘literary’ projects, which are perhaps the more challenging: his lecture series at the Collège de France (1976–80), La Chambre claire (1980), and the Journal de deuil: 26 octobre 1977–15 septembre 1979 (2009). However, it is the period of transformation of Barthes the ‘theorist’ into Barthes the ‘writer’ that interests Ed White in his erudite readers’ manual to the thirteen essays, originally published between 1961 and 1973, edited and translated by Stephen Heath as Image — Music — Text (London: Fontana, 1977). White takes particular care in unpacking the methodic complexity that becomes apparent when Barthes’s essays are read in dialogue with one another, a complexity that has turned Heath’s anthology into a classic in the Anglo-American world. White’s detailed section-by-section interpretation of the individual texts is very clear. Although his accessible language may appear conversational at times, he avoids oversimplifying the ambiguities of Barthes’s writing. Following Heath’s non-chronological ordering of the essays, White organizes his reading according to three main themes: Barthes’s changing positions on language from ‘a system of meaning veiling reality’ to ‘the environment of humans comprised of both repressive and emancipatory potential’ (p. 2); his shifting attitude towards radical or Marxist politics; and, finally, the modifications in Barthes’s style from the problem-solving, didactic orientation of the earlier work towards the more experimental, fragmentary, and ambivalent quality of his later writings. Despite his considerable sensitivity towards the manifold contradictions, divisions, and jolts in Barthes’s writing, White aims for synthesis, frequently pausing to summarize and contextualize positions, concepts, and the terms discussed. Treating Image — Music — Text according to the motto of the ‘How To Read Theory’ series as ‘a single, key-text’, however, potentially runs the risk of prioritizing Heath’s compilation over Barthes’s original essays, suggesting a coherence that never really existed. This impression is further enhanced by the fact that White pays comparatively little attention to questions arising from Heath’s highly acclaimed translation itself. At the same time, throughout his treatment of Barthes’s essays, White aims to ‘correct or modify’ Barthes’s predominant use of the male pronoun (p. 12), an interference with Barthes’s writing that Heath himself had contemplated but then, quite rightly, dismissed. The concluding section, ‘Reading across Barthes’, offers a good overview on relevant primary and secondary literature, yet stops, unfortunately, as early as 2009. Nonetheless, White has written a valuable introduction to key aspects of Barthes’s semiological work, one that will serve as a useful companion to undergraduate students and teachers alike.