From Redescription to Writing: Rorty, Barthes, and the Idea of a Literary Culture

One might feel tempted to advance the argument that Roland Barthes can be regarded as an almost ideal member of a Rortyan literary or poeticized culture, that is, as a strong poet shaping, in a truly idiosyncratic, innovative, and creative manner, a postmetaphysical culture. Concentrating on the late Barthes, this article seeks to elucidate his development from postmetaphysical forms of redescription and self-creation to what could be termed an existential understanding of the practice of writing. In his lecture on Proust at the Collège de France in 1978, it becomes obvious that it is no longer possible to count Barthes among the proponents of a radically antifoundationalist and antiessentialist thinking.