Barthes

Its interesting to trace how he was very rigorous and systematic as a young man, and got more sensuous in his later work.

Search - Culler's 'Fontana Modern Masters' book on Barthes.

barthes = cool

Sorry I've lowered the tone.

Destroy Culler's book, I'm afraid.

Search: WDZero, Mythologies, Plaisir du Texte maybe. Edna is pretty much on the money, to be honest.

Now I am reading and rereading and it's just completely blowing me away, so so beautiful and nuggetty and clever.

i prefer showers anyway.

I have just been asked to go to America and talk about Derrida. I wonder if it would be better if I had instead been asked to go and talk about Barthes. Maybe not: maybe I would rehash old views, mine and others'.

As for the book - gosh, I have it here. I think it's somewhat bland, dry, polite, cautious. Good things, maybe, some of them; just not very Barthesian. I recall too that it seems to go against a grain that said that later RB was better than earlier. Maybe this was a good move at the time. Maybe I was too harsh, if I dismissed the book.

I wonder has Thomson ever written at any length at all on RB.

Don't go, The Pinefox. We must, I feel, fight the brain drain.

But if you do go, bring us a stick of rock.

I don't know

I am sorry, if I have given you the wrong end of the stick.

I was just wondering about america and I wasn't listening the pinefox.

oh, yeah, I guess it was, kinda, about a comma.

I think 'The Pleasure Of The Text' is my second-favouritest book ever, at this moment in my life.

"A Lovers Discourse" is one of PJ Harvey's favourite books apparently. I must check it out when I have time. I like this guy's writing and I'm not a theory buff. "Mythologies" is great. He goes through pop culture with a fine tooth comb in it. "The Death of The Author" is some A+ intellectual punk rock trolling. I love his writing on music too ("The Grain of the Voice").

http://theconversant.org/?p=7847

Alex Wermer-Colan: Introduction to The Renaissance of Roland Barthes
Youna Kwak: Avert Your Eyes: Roland Barthes and the Ethics of Intimacy
Jonathan Culler: Late Barthes
Lucy O’Meara: Some Remarks on Roland Barthes’s Lectures
Russell Stephens: On the Reception of Photography: Between Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin
David Greetham: Retexting the Barthesian Text in Textual Studies
Margot Note: Site/Sight as Text, Barthes and Zero Degree Architecture
Claire Raymond: Roland Barthes, Ana Mendieta, and the Orphaned Image
Rosalind E. Krauss: The “Charm” of Roland Barthes

online proceedings from conference on late barthes

https://www.thecut.com/2017/12/learning-to-live-with-a-partner-who-never-says-i-love-you.html

Le français classique, seul instrument dont dispose actuellement la littérature, sauf à recourir à des procédés encore plus ésotériques, c’est avant tout le langage d’un groupe puissant, ou bien oisif, ou bien pratiquant un travail spécial, qu’on pourrait appeler travail directorial. De ce langage sont forcément exclues une infinité d’actions, et l’action elle-même...

« Responsabilité de la grammaire », 1947

I know I'm showing how basic I am but this is blowing me away. Barthes speaks of the « mythe de la clarté française dont le destin est si étroitement lié à l’histoire politique de la France ». Clarity of language is fascism, as he'll later say; here he stresses its aim in directive speech. I've been reading Vaugelas to understand the origins of clarity in French grammar, and Vaugelas is explicitly aiming to construct a language whose usage mirrors that of the court: to construct a language for the new nobles of France, the bourgeoise. But what then of language in ordinary life if it isn't clear? What kind of lifestyles do we lead then? I am just beginning to understand the possibilities.

Make sure you read Le degré zéro de l'écriture next, which greatly expands on those ideas.

I did read the pertinent article there, but I find the writing in this article more striking.

but I should keep reading that text as well. I knew nothing of Barthes until last week.

i think you might also get something out of the late lectures, specifically in this case, Le neutre, where he explores how one might use language or concepts designed to thwart the binary paradigm, the apodictic and clear or dogmati.

ok thanks!

Seconded, although my preference re: le neutre obviously goes to Blanchot (see: L'Entretien infini and Le pas au-delà in particular).