Roland Barthes, whose centenary falls in 2015, was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator, often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to another, he first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including Empire of Signs, The Pleasure of the Text, and Camera Lucida. In 1976, this one time structuralist outsider was (...) elected to a chair at France's preeminent College de France, where he chose to style himself as professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980. The greater part of Barthes's published writings have been available to a French audience since 2002, but here, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English. Divided into five themed volumes, readers are presented in volume one, 'A Very Fine Gift' and Other Writings on Theory, with Barthes's attempts to frame his lifelong curiosities in theoretical form, from his early musings on the sociology of literature through his high period of structuralism to his later reflections on Derrida. (shrink)

"I define the Neutral as that which outplays the paradigm, or rather I call Neutral everything that baffles paradigm." With these words, Roland Barthes describes a concept that profoundly shaped his work and was the subject of a landmark series of lectures delivered in 1978 at the Collège de France, just two years before his death. Not published in France until 2002, and appearing in English for the first time, these creative and engaging lectures deepen our understanding of (...) Roland Barthes's intellectual itinerary and reveal his distinctive style as thinker and teacher. The Neutral, as Barthes describes it, escapes or undoes the paradigmatic binary oppositions that structure and produce meaning in Western thought and discourse. These binaries are found in all aspects of human society ranging from language to sexuality to politics. For Barthes, the attempt to deconstruct or escape from these binaries has profound ethical, philosophical, and linguistic implications. _The Neutral_ is comprised of the prewritten texts from which Barthes lectured and centers around 23 "figures," also referred to as "traits" or "twinklings," that are possible embodiments of the Neutral or of the anti-Neutral. His lectures draw on a diverse set of authors and intellectual traditions, including Lao-tzu, Tolstoy, German mysticism, classical philosophy, Rousseau, Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, and John Cage. Barthes's idiosyncratic approach to his subjects gives the lectures a playful, personal, and even joyous quality that enhances his rich insights. In addition to his reflections on a variety of literary and scholarly works, Barthes's personal convictions and the events of his life shaped the course and content of the lectures. Most prominently, as Barthes admits, the recent death of his mother and the idea of mourning shape several of his lectures. (shrink)

This book brings together the great majority of Barthes's interviews that originally appeared in French in _Le Figaro Littéraire, Cahiers du Cinéma, France-Observateur, L'Express_, and elsewhere. Barthes replied to questions—on the cinema, on his own works, on fashion, writing, and criticism—in his unique voice; here we have Barthes in conversation, speaking directly, with all his individuality. These interviews provide an insight into the rich, probing intelligence of one of the great and influential minds of our time.

01. Leçon inaugurale/Inaugural lecture - janvier/January 7, 1977 « Comment vivre ensemble – Sur l'idiorrythmie » Leçons au Collège de France – 1977 02. Comment vivre ensemble 01 - janvier/January 12, 1977 03. Comment vivre ensemble 02 - janvier/January 19, 1977 04. Comment vivre ensemble 03 - janvier/January 26, 1977 05. Comment vivre ensemble 04 - février/February 2, 1977 06. Comment vivre ensemble 05 - février/February 9, 1977 07. Comment vivre ensemble 06 - février/February 16, (...) - Comment penser le (...) pouvoir dans le monde contemporain ? – Nouvel article. (shrink)

"Notes for a lecture course and seminar at Collaege de France (1976-1977)"-- T.p.

Roland Barthes' renowned and never before translated lectures pursue a central theme in his work, namely the quest for the neutral.

The late French literary and social critic's intimate journal, first published after his death and translated into English here for the first time, and three other autobiographical texts in which he explores his homosexuality are combined in one volume. Original.

Roland Barthes, the French critic and semiotician, was one of the most important critics and essayists of this century. His work continues to influence contemporary literary theory and cultural studies. Image-Music-Text collects Barthes's best writings on photography and the cinema, as well as fascinating articles on the relationship between images and sound. Two of Barthes's most important essays, "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative" and "The Death of the Author" are also included in this fine (...) anthology, an excellent introduction to his thought. These essays, as selected and translated by Stephen Heath, are among the finest writings Barthes ever published on film and photography, and on the phenomena of sound and image. The classic pieces "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative" and "The Death of the Author" are also included. (shrink)

Philosophers of religion divide neatly into two camps on the problem of evil: those who think it fatal to the concept of a loving God and those who do not. The latter have established a wide array of defensive positions down through the centuries, but none that has proved impregnable to sceptical attack. In his new book Mr Hick wisely abandons these older fortifications and falls back on highly mobile reserves. Not for him the ‘Fall of Man’ thesis, with its (...) unexplained choice to give up finite perfection; nor the Plotinian principle of plenitude, evil being an inevitable petering out of God's goodness; nor the ‘aesthetic’ gambit where the horrors of life constitute mere ‘shadows’ designed to highlight the beauty of creation; nor the ‘cosmic Toryism’, as someone called it, of Leibniz's ‘best of all possible worlds’; nor even, one might say gratefully, the gaseous obscurantism of Karl Barth's ‘das Nichtige’. All of these defences, and others besides, Mr Hick lumps together under what he calls ‘the majority report’ in Christian theodicy: the Augustinian tradition or type. In place of these venerable ramparts Hick elects the more fluid defence afforded, he thinks, by Irenaeus, Eastern Christianity and, in modern times, by Schleiermacher and a few contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Primacy of Christ: The Patristic Patrimony in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Analogy in Theology by Vincent C. AnyamaRoland MillarePrimacy of Christ: The Patristic Patrimony in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Analogy in Theology by Vincent C. Anyama (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2021), xii + 263 pp.In the famous dispute between Erich Przywara and Karl Barth, Przywara held the view that the analogy of being is the "formal principle of Catholic thought," whereas (...) Barth maintained the position that the analogy of being is the "invention of the Antichrist." The recent work of Fr. Vincent Anyama presents how the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, with this emphasis on the primacy of Christ, under the influence of the Church Fathers, contributes to the discussion revolving around the role of analogy within theology. Gottlieb Söhngen, one of Ratzinger's mentors and teachers, had appeased Barth with his argument of a Christocentric "analogia entis within an analogia fidei" (2–3). Anyama argues that Ratzinger has taken up the mantle of his mentor in appropriating his Christocentric synthesis of the analogy of faith and reason via his study of Augustine. The unique contribution of Anyama's work is that his study of Ratzinger takes the reader beyond the typical presentation of Ratzinger as an Augustinian and Bonaventurian theologian. Anyama's work engages the patristic influence of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tyconius, Justin Martyr, and Maximus the Confessor in addition to the significance of Augustine in Ratzinger's theology.Anyama's study is concerned with addressing Ratzingerian scholarship in two different areas. First, he wants to address what is an inadequate assessment of the patristic influence upon Ratzinger's theology in the scholarship of Peter Fletcher and Peter Kucer. Second, he intends to address varying questions relating to Ratzinger's use of analogy in the work of Peter McGregor, Justin Kizewski, Peter Kucer, and Gabino Bilbaco (235). Anyama explicitly notes that he relies upon a "hermeneutic of continuity" that is limited to the continuity between the patristic heritage and Ratzinger's theology (13). Anyama limits the scope of his study on Ratzinger's use of analogy by adopting the patristic categories utilized by Justin Kizekski in work God-Talk: (1) faith and reason, (2) image and participation, and (3) God-talk (12). These categories will frame the structure for part two of the book (chapters 3–5), whereas the first part of the book (chapters 1–2) focuses on the general patristic understanding of analogy and the Church Fathers quoted by Ratzinger.Jesus Christ is the Incarnation of the logos of the Father. The Church Fathers use "wisdom" and logos in reference to both philosophy and the Christian faith. In the thought of Origin, Christ is the one unique Logos, [End Page 307] who is both the source and ultimate end of the many words (logoi) of natural reason (26). As the eternal Logos, Jesus Christ is the consummate Image, whereas the human person is an "image of the Image" via the rational soul in the theology of Clement of Alexandria (33–34). This line of patristic thought will become important later on in Anyama's work as he addresses the theme of the primacy of Christ within Ratzinger's thought. Creation in the image of God is distinct from the notion of likeness to God within much of patristic thought. In the thought of Irenaeus and other Fathers, likeness is "understood as assimilation of creatures into God," which is a participation of the creature in the life of God via the gift of grace and the life of the Spirit (46–47). The notions used by the Fathers, which are underscored by Anyama, are the identification of reason as "seeds of wisdom" (Origen) and "Seeds of the Word" (Justin Martyr). The analogy between pre-Christian philosophy and the Christian faith will be a frequent theme in the writings of Ratzinger, who will begin his inaugural lecture at the University of Bonn with an insightful reflection upon the God of philosophy and the God of faith.When Anyama begins the second part of the book, he focuses on the thought of Bonaventure because of the prominent influence he... (shrink)

The work of the French literary review, intellectual grouping and publishing team Tel Quel had a profound impact on the formation of literary and cultural debate in the 1960s and 70s. Its legacy has had enormous influence on the parameters of such debate today. From its beginning in 1960 to its closure in 1982, it published some of the earliest work of Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes. It was also associated with some of the (...) key ideas of the French avant-garde, publishing key articles by Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud. The Tel Quel Reader presents for the first time in English the key essays written by the Tel Quel group. Essays by Julia Kristeva, one of the review's editor's Michel Foucault, and a fascinating interview with Roland Barthes are here made available for the first time in English. It provides a unique insight into the post-structuralist movement and presents some of the pioneering essays on literature and culture, film, semiotics and psychoanalysis. Assembling key essays from over a twenty-year period, The Tel Quel Reader is an indispensible resource for students of literature, cultural and visual studies, philosophy and French studies. (shrink)

Au Roland Barthes critique, celui des analyses litteraires des Essais critiques, du Sur Racine ou des constructions theoriques nourries par la linguistique et le structuralisme comme le Degre zero de l ecriture, S/Z, le Systeme de la mode; au Roland Barthes ecrivain, sachant meler, avec une originalite inimitable, fiction et reflexions analytiques dans le Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes ou les Fragments d un discours amoureux, il faudrait ajouter un Roland (...) class='Hi'>Barthes, moins connu et moins analyse, celui de l - amateur - d art. Il n aura pas fallu attendre son dernier livre, La Chambre claire, pour savoir que Roland Barthes aimait les uvres d art visuel et qu il pratiquait lui-meme, avec grand plaisir et serieux, la peinture. Des ses premiers textes rassembles dans les Essais critiques, il associe a des etudes sur Tacite, Chateaubriand, Baudelaire ou Robbe-Grillet, un essai sur Pieter Saenredam avec lequel il ouvre un recueil pourtant consacre a la litterature. Tout au long de son uvre, que cela soit sous la forme de preface de catalogues consacres a des artistes contemporains (Bernard Requichot, Daniel Boudinet, Cy Twombly), d articles sur des artistes classiques (Arcimboldo, Artemisia Gentileschi) ou de reflexions plus generales sur l art (le kitsch, le cinema, l abstraction, la musique), Roland Barthes a accorde une attention toute particuliere aux images. Elles etaient, a ses yeux, bien plus qu un passe-temps, un delassement intellectuel qui l eloignait de son veritable travail critique. L image, et l imaginaire qui lui est lie, possede une vertu que le texte ne semble pas pouvoir revendiquer: meler le langage expressif au discours critique, faire emerger la - substance sous le concept - et pousser la question de la signification jusqu a sa limite la plus extreme. Sans s embarrasser des regles methodiques dictees par l histoire de l art, en se voulant - sauvage et sans culture - devant ces uvres d art qui venaient a lui comme par - inadvertance -, qui l incitaient a l - aventure -, Roland Barthes a elabore une - esthetique - qui demeure une des plus singulieres et utiles contributions a l etude des images. Le - troisieme sens - et son correlat, la - signifiance - (cet - au-dela - du sens), l - imaginaire de l image - ou bien encore le celebre couple Punctum/ Studium avec lequel il precise la dimension subjective de tout commerce avec les uvres sont autant de propositions methodiques que l auteur reconsidere attentivement afin de tirer toute la force heuristique de cette - lecon de l image - a laquelle nous convie Roland Barthes. La - lecon de l art - que Barthes retient de son commerce constant avec les uvres d artistes contemporains (Cy Twombly, Daniel Boudinet, Bernard Requichot) ou anciens (Saenredam, Arcimboldo) a permis de developper une reflexion singuliere sur le fonctionnement des images. - En elaborant des notions comme la - signifiance -, le - troisieme sens - ou le fameux - punctum - afin de traduire les effets que les images provoquaient sur lui, Barthes a compose une veritable esthetique qu il est temps de lire avec autant de serieux que de plaisir.". (shrink)

Dimitri Lorrain est chercheur en sciences humaines (EHESS), spécialisé dans l'étude de l'art et de la littérature (il a publié des articles sur Michel-Ange, Alberti, ainsi que sur l'art des «?nouveaux commanditaires?»). Installé à Francfort-sur-le-Main, il chronique la vie intellectuelle allemande pour la revue Panorama des idées.

El artículo propone una lectura de La chambre claire de Roland Barthes tomando como base el sintagma “locura de la fotografía”, como indicio de una teoría original y radical de la experiencia fotográfica. En virtud de su estatuto ontológico y tecnológico (la conformación inédita de una imagen-tiempo) y de una articulación indisociable entre el orden referencial y el polo pulsional en el Spectator (ligando la fotografía, de manera central, a los procesos inconscientes), la foto posee una potencia singular: (...) la de marcar en el sujeto una intensidad afectiva única. Demostraremos que Barthes comprende la fotografía como el lugar de una experiencia extrema, en cuanto, en el evento del punctum, el Spectator roza el límite del sentido y el advenimento de lo innombrable. (shrink)

Even if the theoretical prestige of the notion of ecology is recent, an ecological writing has already been racticed, without receiving this name, by Roland Barthes. On several occasions, progressively after Writing Degree zero, Roland Barthes envisaged writing as a multifaceted practice, the most suitable for overturning the only order worth to be revolutionized, the symbolic order. We will take a fresh look at Barthes' writing as a theoretical concept in the early 1950s, along a (...) shift that takes the term first to the name of a technique. Finally, in the mid-1970s, writing comes to be defined by Barthes as a practice that ignores the dichotomy between matter or body and mind or idea, and which arrives, in a spiral return movement, at an inclusive conception that recovers both the concept and the practice. This is where writing meets, in Barthes' work, the act that Latour calls "greening" and which he defines above all as a new relationship between facts and values. In the light of the latest research in "Barthesian studies" we would like to show that the future of "theory", if it is ecology today, lies in the practice and ecological commitment of writing, as a mediator of meaning, a tool of "charitable fiction", at the confines of spirit and matter. (shrink)

Roland Barthes: For an Ecology of WritingEven if the theoretical prestige of the notion of ecology is recent, an ecological writing has already been racticed, without receiving this name, by Roland Barthes. On several occasions, progressively after Writing Degree zero, Roland Barthes envisaged writing as a multifaceted practice, the most suitable for overturning the only order worth to be revolutionized, the symbolic order. We will take a fresh look at Barthes' writing as a (...) theoretical concept in the early 1950s, along a shift that takes the term first to the name of a technique. Finally, in the mid-1970s, writing comes to be defined by Barthes as a practice that ignores the dichotomy between matter or body and mind or idea, and which arrives, in a spiral return movement, at an inclusive conception that recovers both the concept and the practice. This is where writing meets, in Barthes' work, the act that Latour calls "greening" and which he defines above all as a new relationship between facts and values. In the light of the latest research in "Barthesian studies" we would like to show that the future of "theory", if it is ecology today, lies in the practice and ecological commitment of writing, as a mediator of meaning, a tool of "charitable fiction", at the confines of spirit and matter. (shrink)

1 Where to begin? 'Life and times' Roland Barthes is generally acknowledged, even by those not conversant with his books, as one of the leading figures of ...

Previous chapter Roland Barthes is as famous as Lefebvre and Foucault and does not need much of a biographical introduction either. Let us begin with his election in 1976—on a proposal from Foucault—to the chair of Sémiologie Littéraire at the Collège de France. The very next year, on January 12, he remarkably initiated his teaching with a lecture course on “idiorrhythm” from the Roman Empire to the 20th century, entitled Comment vivre ensemble? Simulation romanesque de quelques - Pour (...) une éthique et une politique du rythme – Nouvel article. (shrink)