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Criticism and Theory > barthes > Flashcards

barthes Flashcards

1
Q

What does Barthes major philosophy suggest?

A
  • questions the hierarchy of what the value of a text it (all text, even non scribed texts)
  • major political object is to show that the way a state/ culture thinks is based on structures which dominate society
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2
Q

what is interpolation?

A
  • forcing a certain viewpoint upon an individual, without their awareness
  • this is often a subconscious experience
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3
Q

relationship between culture and society

A
  • culture is intrinsically linked to society, therefore they shouldn’t be read as if they exist within a vacuum
  • they are the product of the space and period in which they are produced
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4
Q

what does Barthes maintain in the death of the author?

A
  • texts are not written by a single figure called the author, but instead are the MATERIAL form of the society from which it emerges
  • every text is made by many authors which give it meaning. The reader is one of the auhtors
  • with the birth of the reader, comes the inevitable death of the author
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5
Q

possible contradiction in Barthes work

A
  • how can there be a reader is there is no author?
  • we are all products of a larger societal/ cultural context, how can the reader detach themselves, whilst the author remains ensnared?
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6
Q

how can the outline of a circle represent a text?

A
  • superficially it is made up of a series of different social/ political and historical factors
  • surroundings are influenced by everything
  • inside is empty (where the author should be)
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7
Q

why does Barthes reject the word auhtor

A
  • belives it conotes too much power/ auhtority over a written text
  • as all texts are merely a product of all of society, how can an individual be responsible for it?
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8
Q

what is one of the comical/ paradoxical features of the Death of the Author?

A
  • Roland Barthes copy writes the phrase ‘death of the author’, by making this statement and by people listening to him, he BECOMES an authoritative author
  • the title itself (mort d’auteur) is highly reminiscent of Malory’s Mort D’arthur.
  • the essay constantly alludes to other texts: it relies on the INDIVIDUAL voice of authors to make it work
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9
Q

context of the essay

A
  • rise of new criticism in the 1940s: anglo-american movement with favoured the intrinsic rather than the extrinsic value/ analysis of a text, as a poem is completely self contained
  • written in 1967: shortly before 1968 in France, a period of mass social reform etc
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10
Q

Problems in new criticism

A

-it is impossible to study a text with absolutely NO concern of the intention of the author
- New criticists believe that deconstructing a poem shed light on ‘new truths’, but all these truths appeared to be truths of a specific person: 50y/o white male from oxford
-

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11
Q

difference bewteen Barthes and new criticism?

A

NC: text is stable- produces one answer
Barthes: text is highly unstable, produces millions of different answers

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12
Q

what do J.C, carlier and C T Watts say about the essay?

A
  • most misunderstood essay in the English language
  • they believe that the entire essay is an elaborate joke, to test the extent to which people believe WHAT is written by an author/ authoritative figure
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13
Q

text/ self IF you accept everythign Barthes says

A
  • every text that you read is compromised of tissues of meaning of millions of different sign systems
  • you, like the text, have no core essence/ identity, but just a circle of experience
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14
Q

what is the intentionalist fallacy?

A

-putting complete faith in the author and blindly following their interpretation, rather than coming up with your own interepretations

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15
Q

Barthes style (visually)

A
  • frequent use of inverted commas, e.g. “theological”, “message” “explained” and italicisation (disentangles, deciphered, writing): this causes these phrases be both foregrounded and ridiculed
  • Use of punctuation/ capitalisation to demote ideas (Author-God, Author, author, writer)
  • exclaimation marks: derision, /
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16
Q

Barthes style linguistically:

A
  • use of a royal plural, makes the argument more forceful/ convincing
  • ‘we know now’- now makes it seem as if people who don’t agree are stuck in an ignorant past
  • Also ‘now’ emphasises temporarily: the text is currently being formed
  • irony and sarcasm
  • very melodramatic: ‘truly revolutionary’ ‘liberates’
17
Q

What is the effect of placing author-god in brackets?

A

yokes the two ideas together, demotes one by demoting the other

18
Q

what is contradictory about the phrase ‘writing is to be ranged over, not pierced’

A
  • his essay, through visually distinguishing one concept from another, (through bracket, inverted commas, italics etc) causes you to do exactly that
19
Q

what does ‘disentangling’ suggest and what does ‘run’ suggest?

A 
DISENTANGLING
- multiple ways of going over a text
-positive image, setting free
RUN
-destructive, damaging (e.g. a run in a stocking)
20
Q

why is the destructive imagery in the essay not NECESSARILY a negative thing?

A
  • destruction of the ‘intentialist’s fallacy’ allows space for new ideas/ visions
  • freeing and liberating: wall must be broken in order to gain freedom
21
Q

what is the effect of the chiasmus ‘writing ceaselessly posits meaning ceaselessly to evaporate it’

A

-the structure itself reflects the evaporation of meaning

22
Q

what contextual factor reduces the impact of the claim Barthes makes on the death of the author?

A
  • He wrote a book entitles ‘Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes’
23
Q

what was an argument which formed the backdrop for the death of the Author?

A

-A Racine scholar, Picard, wrote new criticism or new fraud to which Barthes argued rhat the traditional critics recourse to values such as clarity, nobility and humanity actually is a censoring force on other interpretative possibilities

24
Q

how does Barthes begin his essay and why?

A
  • takes an example from Balzac’s novel sarrasine, where a sculpture falls in love with an Italian women, who is later revealed to be not a woman but a castrato
  • he focuses on a specific sentence about ‘feminity’, which we shall never whose opinion this is
25
Q

what does Barthes argue the best way to read a text is?

A

-to suspend preconceived ideas concerning the author’s character

26
Q

what is writing to Barhes?

A
  • the destruction of every voice, every point of orgin

- a negative space where all identity is lost

27
Q

origin of the author according to Barthes

A
  • author is a modern figure, with origins in the middle ages and that grew out of English empiricism, French rationalism which valued the prestige of the individual
  • culmination of capitalist ideology
28
Q

problem with contemporary criticism?

A
  • too much of a focus on the author explainigjn their work

- often the failure of an individuals work is seen as a failure in their life

29
Q

why is giving authority to an author foolish

A
  • this was something that Barthes suggests was known by Mallarme (french writer)
  • Language, NOT the author, speaks
30
Q

difference between the Author and the modern scriptor

A
  • Author: seen as being the past of their book. They are seen as nourishing the book. There relationship to the book is like that of a father with a child (hierarchical and obvious sense of who made what)
  • Modern scriptor: born simultaneously with the text and is in no way capable of preceding or exceeding writing
31
Q

what is a text according to Barthes?

A
  • not a line releasing a single meaning but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings clash and blend
  • a tissue of quaotations
32
Q

what is the only power of an author?

A
  • mix writings, counter ones with another

- acts as an immense dictionaries from which they can draw a writing

33
Q

previous link between author and critic

A
  • reign of the author is the reign of the critic
  • previously critics would spend time trying to decipher a text, find its one true meaning. This would often be the result of finding an author (their ‘true self’ would sehd meaning on the text)
  • this is stupid as no te
34
Q

what is the effect of using new terms?

A
  • foregrounds the idea that NOTHING is fixed, not even language.
  • language itself, like literary text refuse one single meaning/ a single best word for a concept: this is constantly changing
35
Q

why (example) does Barthes believe that the reader is important

A
  • uses the example of Greek Tragedy, where due to the multiple meanings of the words etc. teh reader is able to predict the catastrophe/ climax BEFORE the characters
  • the unity of a text relies on the reader, who pieces together all these different quotations phrases etc to built one coherent interpretation: each reader is different, thus, each reader has a different interpretation

Criticism and Theory (6 decks)

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