barthes Flashcards
What does Barthes major philosophy suggest?
- 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
what is interpolation?
- forcing a certain viewpoint upon an individual, without their awareness
- this is often a subconscious experience
relationship between culture and society
- 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
what does Barthes maintain in the death of the author?
- 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
possible contradiction in Barthes work
- 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?
how can the outline of a circle represent a text?
- 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)
why does Barthes reject the word auhtor
- 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?
what is one of the comical/ paradoxical features of the Death of the Author?
- 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
context of the essay
- 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
Problems in new criticism
-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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difference bewteen Barthes and new criticism?
NC: text is stable- produces one answer
Barthes: text is highly unstable, produces millions of different answers
what do J.C, carlier and C T Watts say about the essay?
- 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
text/ self IF you accept everythign Barthes says
- 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
what is the intentionalist fallacy?
-putting complete faith in the author and blindly following their interpretation, rather than coming up with your own interepretations
Barthes style (visually)
- 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, /
Barthes style linguistically:
- 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’
What is the effect of placing author-god in brackets?
yokes the two ideas together, demotes one by demoting the other
what is contradictory about the phrase ‘writing is to be ranged over, not pierced’
- his essay, through visually distinguishing one concept from another, (through bracket, inverted commas, italics etc) causes you to do exactly that
what does ‘disentangling’ suggest and what does ‘run’ suggest?
DISENTANGLING - multiple ways of going over a text -positive image, setting free RUN -destructive, damaging (e.g. a run in a stocking)
why is the destructive imagery in the essay not NECESSARILY a negative thing?
- destruction of the ‘intentialist’s fallacy’ allows space for new ideas/ visions
- freeing and liberating: wall must be broken in order to gain freedom
what is the effect of the chiasmus ‘writing ceaselessly posits meaning ceaselessly to evaporate it’
-the structure itself reflects the evaporation of meaning
what contextual factor reduces the impact of the claim Barthes makes on the death of the author?
- He wrote a book entitles ‘Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes’
what was an argument which formed the backdrop for the death of the Author?
-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
how does Barthes begin his essay and why?
- 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
what does Barthes argue the best way to read a text is?
-to suspend preconceived ideas concerning the author’s character
what is writing to Barhes?
- the destruction of every voice, every point of orgin
- a negative space where all identity is lost
origin of the author according to Barthes
- 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
problem with contemporary criticism?
- 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
why is giving authority to an author foolish
- this was something that Barthes suggests was known by Mallarme (french writer)
- Language, NOT the author, speaks
difference between the Author and the modern scriptor
- 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
what is a text according to Barthes?
- not a line releasing a single meaning but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings clash and blend
- a tissue of quaotations
what is the only power of an author?
- mix writings, counter ones with another
- acts as an immense dictionaries from which they can draw a writing
previous link between author and critic
- 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
what is the effect of using new terms?
- 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
why (example) does Barthes believe that the reader is important
- 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
