Barthes and Later Barthes Constituting Fragmenting Subjects

7/29/2019 Barthes and Later Barthes Constituting Fragmenting Subjects

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Bar S B R H S Barthes the Late(r) Barthes Constituting Fragmenting SubjectsAuthor(s): Alec McHoul and David WillsReviewed work(s):Source: boundary 2, Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (Autumn, 1985 - Winter, 1986), pp. 261-278Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/303524 .

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bar s b r h s barthesTHE L AT E (R) BARTHESconstituting fragmenting subjects*

Alec McHoul&David Wills1. Non-problematizationof the subject in necrology/literary history

It is a remarkablestrategy of literary history that its discourseacts as a kind of policing of the dead. The concepts "author" and"oeuvre"are majoragents in this. It becomes all the more remarkablewhen that policing is performed in relation to a set of texts some ofwhich have themselves been concerned to problematizematters such*Acompanion o this piece,"MouthsOff", ppearednthe AustralianiterarymagazineMeanjin, ol.43, nol4, 1984,pp.582-83.

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as the authorialsubject and which have been arguablycareful to avoida text-by-text unity. In her introduction to the Barthes Reader,'Sontagmanages just that-to stitch a common thread through the manifoldtexts which happen to have appeared over the signature "RolandBarthes." The principle of classification known as "the oeuvre" thusrecuperatesthe Barthestexts for literaryhistory,precisely because theynow are "the Barthes texts"; no more and no less.One topic that will dog these notes is "Did Roland Barthes gosoft?", i.e., are some of the last texts (Lover'sDiscourse and CameraLucida in particular)moments of literary ndulgence in which the pro-jects of formalist semiology and deconstructionism are negated? Son-tag cuts across all such possible discontinuities-for her, Barthesalways was soft, the author of genius, the man of feeling and letters.The tactic is obviously one of creating a unityand, more,a unityformedaround a centre, the personal author-subject. Formalism anddeconstructionism, it seems, can finally be put to one side now thatthe body of Barthes, inwhich the conscious author-subjectpresumablyresided, has been consigned. Inmore senses than one: there has beena failure to look more than one way.

or all his contributions to the would-be science ofsigns and structures, Barthes's endeavour was thequintessentially literaryone: the writer's organizingundera series of doctrinal auspices, the theory of hisown mind. ("WI,"p. viii)With the authorial mindfirmlyin place, the problemof the institutionaland discursive relations between texts ("doctrinalauspices"?) can beput to one side. What matters in the end is a uniquely creative subjectwho existed and worked independently of discursive possibilities inorder to produce a unique corpus. By these tactics, Barthes becomesliterature; literaturemarshalledoutside theorywhose subject (its topic)is that very creative subject--"his own mind."

Barthes's voice became steadily more intimate, hissubjects more inward. An affirmation of his ownidiosyncracy ... is the main theme of Roland Barthes.("WI,"p. xxxiv)

This is after all the expected product when a great figure dies-someassertions about his mind,his life and times, some attempt to producegeneralities about his work. And all because of an accident-the en-counter of a body with a van. Why should we be interested in that?Insteadwe mightattemptto producea readingwhich cuts acrosssuch traditional belletristic practices; a reading which does not formthings up this way. To start: it would have to reject the unity of theoeuvre-giving up the attempt to find changes, developments andperhaps even discontinuities in a set of texts simply because they arethe texts signed by a particularauthor-subject. A topic like "discon-

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tinuity in the texts of Barthes"would itself be a literary opic concern-ing unity. Perhaps instead, it would be productive to look at the wayin which certain textual practices (e.g., those of formalism ordeconstructionism) are risked, put into hazard, by being brought upagainst adjacent practices, say, belletrism, representationism,aestheticism and bourgeois liberal literary ndulgence. Then we mightsay "incidentally,that occurs in some of the texts signed by RolandBarthes."In that case, we would not be in the business of repeatingthe old battles between science and art,formalism and expressionism,or analysis andappreciation.Instead we would be asking:whatarethesediscursive forces and (by the way) do they produce some of the Bar-thes texts and in what measure?

It is a paradoxthat once the author is dead enough to becomethe subject of a brief text called an obituary, he is more than everrecuperated as the source and origin of a volume of texts which thatobituarywould seek to neatly close. His worksuddenly has attributedto it,with a vengeance, the coherence such readingsassumed it to haveall along. Bythe same token, the bodyof texts which bearhis signatureautomatically appear within a different frame once that signature canno longer be repeated. Since the Death of the Author,the name of atext of Barthes,2 t becomes difficult to operate outside of that paradox.To preventthe closure attempted by necrologies, the texts have to besomehow reanimated, but it remains difficult to reanimate theanonymous. The name has to be invoked either way.That is to say thatwithin the terms of reference of the necrology, rereadingimplies someform of reanimation.A redeployment of the texts needs to be effectedwhich escapes those terms of reference.Sontag's introductionto the BarthesReaderis probablyno moresurprisingthan Thody's"conservativeestimate,"3han Picard's Nouvellecritique ou nouvelle imposture,4 than any number of readings ofBarthes's texts that one might like to resist. Short of truth there willonly ever be (mis)-readings to compare. And since the death of theauthor it maywell be that there areonly evernecrologies inthe businessof writing on writing.On the other hand, it seems that necrologies, of the type whichmust by definition refer to the author as human subject, even if dead,in order to constitute themselves, create another paradoxwhich is theirown de(con)struction. They may claim to refer to a subject which ex-ists outside of the textual, but their very readings of that subject, ofhis life and times, of his kindness and humanity,are automatically tex-tualized.Theycan hardlyclaim to haveclosed the text aroundthe authornow dead when they are in the process of opening those texts to thecontexts of biography,history,and so on. Rescuing the humansubjectonly seems to protect him from textualization. In actual fact anyreference to himonce he is absent, is either reference to anecdote, hear-say and apocrypha, or to a text.A case in point. A necrologist, J. Gerald Kennedy,writes in the

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Georgia Review that Barthes said in his seminar programin 1978-79,that he was writinga novel.5The present writingsubject maintains thathe was also at the seminar and that he distinctly heard Barthes saythat he was not writing and could not write a novel. But it is there inprintin the Georgia Review.Itcan't be doubted that it is either true orfalse. It can presumablybe verified by references to other sets ofnotes(Kennedycites his own as reference), or by listening to a recording ofthe seminar. Perhaps he coughed as he spoke. Any reference has tobe to a remaining sign, to some sort of text. Foreven if he did say hewas writinga novel, he also said other things. Here is the r6sum6 froma set of notes: the course is announced the previous yearas being con-cerned with how one might go about writing a novel if one were to doso; the first lecture compares the idea with the "fantasy" he had an-nounced as his project in LeGon,6a week later he speaks of theweakness of an organ which prevents himfromwritinga novel, like so-meone with short fingers not being able to playthe piano (it is memorywhich he says he lacks); a week later still in introducing his studiesof haiku he says he will continue as if he were going to write a novelbut also refers to his commitment to the fragment and the difficultyof transition to the continuous.So, as soon as reading (be it simply listening, transcribing) isinvolved, it is clear that he did deliver some fiction. Besides, as longas one waits for the unpublished novel to appear,one will overlook theobvious "caractereromanesque"of CameraLucida.It is as easy to readbiographyand necrology as contributing to the death of the authorasto his revival.2. The question of context in writing on texts

"Context" is itself by no means unproblematic;no less so than"author" and "oeuvre"as Derrida makes perfectly clear when he re-writes "context" as "the collectivity of presences organizing the mo-ment of [the sign's] inscription."'7What could be argued is that (a)somesuch collectivity is neverabsent; there is no contextlessness while (b)no particlularsuch collectivity is ever the single organizerof all possi-ble inscriptive moments; there is no necessary contextfulness (suchas "the mode of production,""the Weltanschauung," tc). Further, on-text is always just that:the text(s) that go(es) with another text or texts.Inthis sense, we could begin to drawup some relations between thetexts of Barthes (noting that this collection is itself purely heuristic);relations which display those texts' differential contextfulness.Clearlythere are marked distinctions between, say, Elements ofSemiology and Lover's Discourse in this respect. In the former, thecon-texts of Saussure and the formalist project are the main organiz-ing collectivity while in the latter the literarysubject of writing, theaesthetic "I"with its history of self-reflexion organizes a good deal ofthe text. To that extent we can distinguish between a textual produc-tion which would speak of textual production and a textual productionwhich shows itself by indulging in the joy or pleasure of

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literature/text/writing.What separates these contexts is their relationto power. In the former,the power of discourse is transcended/tran-sgressed by an attempt to produce a meta-discourse. Power is deniedwithout reflexion on the power that is denied: one simply goes aheadand forms a metadiscourse without concern for the impossiblemetapowerfulness that is assumed in such a project.Onthe other hand,the avowedly "literary" exts deliberately speak on behalf of "entryin-to a place that we can strictly term outside the bounds of power,"8thereby constituting for themselves an "enormous, almost unjust,privilege" ("IL,"p.458).There are two problems here. Inthe first case (formalism)thereis the implicit assumption of transcending the level of the discursivealtogether so as to producea theorydivorcedfrompractice. Formalism,that is, runs the risk of naive theoreticism. Inthe second case (belleslettres) transcendence is well understood as an unattainable object.But its absence is not taken as a logical and material impossibility.Rather, belletrism seeks to appropriate transcendence, to steal thatdenied and illicitobject for "the interrogationof [its]own pleasure" "IL,"p. 458). Formalism is almost naively transcendent: it begins with theassumption of itself as the discourse of discourses. Belletrism is quiteopenly hedonistic-its transgression/transcendence is done openly,albeit by fiat. Tothat extent it displays its own impossibly free world:

The forces of freedom which are literaturedepend noton the writer's civil person, nor on his politicalcommitment-for he is, after all, only a man amongothers-nor do they even depend on the doctrinal con-tent of his work, but ratheron the labor of displace-ment he brings to bear on language. ("IL,"p. 462)Formalism/belletrism is but a single division among others in thatpoliticallybizarreunit "the texts of Barthes"-but it is an importantdivi-sion politically. For it asks the question "how does the text stand asa political practice, i.e., in relation to power?" Let it be stressed again:these discourses which we may call formalist "metalanguage" andliterary"will"do not monolithically inhabit single texts; nor do theyalone produce any given text. S/Z,for all its analytic precision, indulgesin the pleasures of "Sarrasine,"while the Lover'sDiscourse offers alsoa partialtaxonomy of the discursive strategies open (orclosed) to thelover.The point is to give a political relief map of (e.g.) the texts ofBarthes-and to open up the possibility of making strategic readerlyroutes through them.A single choice that faces us, at a particularcrossroads (trivialas it may be) is this: should the reading/text privilege itself bystandingabove, outside its "object discourse" (e.g., the discourse of fashion inElements) and so invoke an impossibly magisterial space of commen-tary (science?)? I.e.,should it seek to be the text which over-rules, inorder to describe, the rules of discursive production?Or: hould itgrasptransgression at the level of discursive practice itself and runthe risk

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of stepping across the fine line into bourgeois subjectivism(phenomenology?)?On the other hand, as the metaphor of trivia(three roads) im-plies ("IL," .467),is there a thirdway,anotherpossible relation betweentheory and practice? Politically,this is the space that the question ofcontext opens up.

There is a repeated explicitation in Barthes's texts of an am-biguous project.Varioustexts, as well as various pieces of text, mightread as one or the other sides of that ambiguity,and hence Elementsof Semiology might contrast with Camera Lucida and the Lover'sDiscourse with Mythologies. This ambiguity is explicited in CameraLucida in terms of an alternation between two languages, "one ex-pressive, the other critical."9But more interestingperhaps is the extent to which this ambigui-ty or this alternationbecomes implicated in the playof programmatiza-tion andstrategy.Foraccordingto the logic, perhapsthe syntax,of someof Barthes's texts, and in particular after Legon, that alternationbecomes translated into a generative process of the repeated erectionand abandonment of the system, of a series of systems. This wouldseem to both inviteand avoid a teleological positioning of his texts onthe one hand, and a bourgeois valorization of private and individualprivilege on the other.First of all this strategy refers to semiology:though it is also true that very early on I associatedmy investigations with the birthand development ofsemiotics, it is true as well that I have scarcely anyclaim as its representative, so inclined was I to shiftits definition (almost as soon as it was formed)....("IL,"p. 457)

The semiology of which the latter text is the inauguration,the officialand artificial beginning, will be described as apophatic ("IL,"p. 473),involving saying one thing and doing another.This matches well with the programmeof post-structuralism ingeneral,witness Krist6va's 6manalyse based on Marxistdialectics, Der-rida's deconstruction or,for that matter,Deleuze's devenirminoritaire.10The first of these is a semiotics whose dynamic ensures that itautomatically involves a critique of its own premises:

Semiology is thus a type of thinkingwherein sciencesees itself (is conscious) of the fact that it is a theory.Whenever it is produced, semiology thinks its object,its apparatus, and their relation, hence thinks itself,and becomes in this bending back upon itself thetheory of the science that it is. Which means that

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semiology is each time a re-evaluation of its objectand/or its models, a critique of those models ... andof itself.1Then there is Derrida'sdouble programme nvolvingthe reversalsof ex-isting dualisms and the development of alternative conceptual prac-tices. The two phases must not be seen as chronological, and althoughthe first implies an interminableanalysis, without the second only aninverted hierarchywould be installed.

Therefore one must proceed with a double gesture, interms of a unity which is at one and the same timesystematic and as it were of itself divided, a double-layered writing ... on the one hand go through a phaseof reversal... on the other hand ... mark the divisionbetween the inversion which brings down what gov-erned the hierarchy,and the irruptiveemergence of a"new"concept.... If this division, this double face ordouble phasing, can only be inscribed within a twin-pronged form of writing... it can no longer bedelineated except in a textual field that I shall callgrouped: at the outside it is impossible to put it intofocus (to bring it to a head); a unilineartext, a punc-tual position, an operation signed by a single author,these are by definition incapable of practising sucha spacing.2

The scandal proposed by Barthes is his relatingof such a programmeto a state of the subject, so that he goes on to say in Camera Lucidathat he will make a heuristic principle out of his protestation of in-dividuality or singularity, out of the realization that "the only surething ... in me" is a "desperate resistance to any reductive system"(CL,p.8). But,once again,this turns out to be the practiceparexcellenceas it locates the site of a moment which activates the programbut robsthat site and that moment of any priorityas origin by problematizingthem with respect to the objectively verifiable.That is to say that onecould not conceive of a system forverifyingwhether Barthes was real-ly split orvacillatingbetween two languages, norwhether he was essen-tially resistant to reductive systems; nor could one establish, outsideof that vacillation and that resistance, according to what movementthose two ideas interrelated. Barthes would simply be the lureof sucha diff6rance.Nor could that resistance to anyreductivesystem establishitself as the essential Barthesian subject position, for it involves itsown contradiction to the extent that this only sure thing is a resistanceto sure things.3. Subject position in "Lover'sDiscourse"

The subject is very explicitly framed in Lover's Discourse.

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Thetitle,when translated,gives priority o the loverand anteriori-ty to the fragments. So be it, no privilege is claimed for the original,but it does read "Fragments d'un discours amoureux," with thefragments as the first word,and the displacement of the lover into theadjectival form. Fragments of the discourse of love.There are three prefaces:1. A justification of the text in terms of an intellectualneglect forthe discourse in question23 The affirmationwhich becomesthe subject of the text acts in favour of a deprivatization of thatdiscourse. (Gregariousness is often discommended in Barthes, e.g.,Legon, but here it is valorized for its role in a process of demystifica-tion.) This preface ignores therefore the indulgence which the/a bodyof the text would seek to defend.2. The metalanguage (?)"Howthis book is constructed"(Fragments, pp. 7-12;LD,pp.3-9)whose first paragraphrenounces themetalinguistic in favourof the intractable/untreatable."The simulationof the lover's discourse has therefore been substituted for its descrip-tion, and the fundamental person of this discourse, namely the I, hasbeen reinstated in orderto put into play an enunciation ratherthan ananalysis" (Fragments, p.7, our translation).Once the I becomes an in-stanciation of parole, discourse (runninghitherand thither,figure andgesture), or at least this lover's discourse, is more like writing on thebody than on the subject, readings of a text of (physical)anxiety ratherthan a taxonomy of privateemotions.3. The foreword:"So it is a lover who speaks and whosays": (LD,p. 9), given a page of its own in the French(Fragments,p.13).The organization of the figures themselves involves expresssystems of distanciation, and the second preface includes referenceto Brechtian technique (LD,p. 5) with respect to the short paragraphwhich follows the title of each, said to be its argument,its direct speech(ourterm).Italso mentions systems of arbitrariness in the orderingofthe fragments.The coherence of each figure is broken by means of its syn-tagmatic divisions-numbering of sections without any logical se-quence; and also bymeans of its paradigmatic elf-referentiality, amelythe identificationof intertexts,whetherfriends,authors,or books, thosereferences being only unsystematically reinforcedbyfootnotes. Inthisregard, it seems the English takes the further liberty of omitting thetabulagratulatoria(Fragments, pp.279-81)at the end of the text whichlists, in sections numbered one to four,the names of friends referredto by initials in the text; the Goethe text; other writtentexts; and finallymusic and films.A final d6coupage operates in the index at the very end(Fragments,pp.284-287)which gives the alphabeticaltitle of each figure,the word or phrase which appears at the top of the page for each newfigure,and the numberof sections within each figure to which are nowgiven forthe firsttime individual itles or headings. Thistable is severelyedited and becomes the Contents page of the English translation.Are Barthes's interruptions of the coherence of the text suffi-

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cient to counter a constitution of an inviolable human subject withinthe text? Do they reinforce that operation?On the other hand, isn't thatsubject, byvirtueof being in love,subject in the text to both systematicand randomfragmentation? One reads of a subject which resists thatfragmentation (cf. references to writingin the figures entitled "Drame"and "Ecrire";he fear of abandoning love to the risks of textualization)but which cannot avoid being implicated in it.This subject, in uttering,in writing the love he says cannot be written, is being more than everconfronted with "thewaste (le gdchis) of language" (Fragments, p.115,our translation).

"Iwant to change systems" (LD,p. 60):two readings of this atleast can be made; either the "I"would move from one extant systemto another, or it would undertake a transformation of extant systems:which? The question specifies two possible subject positions: thebourgeois "I" and the revolutionary "I".A good deal of the Lover'sDiscourse can be read as a recuperationof the former.Again,Sontag'spraise for Barthes's hedonism serves to condemn him:To assume that society is ruled by monolithicideologies and repressive mystifications is necessaryto Barthes's advocacy of egoism, post-revolutionarybut nevertheless antinomian: his notion that theunremittinglypersonal is a subversive act. This is theclassic extension of the aesthete attitude, in which itbecomes a politics: a politics of radical individuality.Pleasure is largely identified with unauthorizedpleasure, and the rightof individualassertion withthesanctity of the asocial self. In the late writings, thetheme of protest against power takes the form of anincreasingly private definition of experience (asfetishized involvement) and the ludic definition ofthought. ("WI,"p. xxxi)

This is not merely bourgeois but fascist-and it is no exculpation hereto simply assert that "language ... is quite simply fascist" ("IL," .461),forthat is to give up struggle. Itassumes too that the being of languageis pre-knowable.The Lover'sDiscourse, as Sontag puts it, is a post-revolutionarydiscourse; it pretends that the revolution has already elapsed which,for the bourgeoisie, it indeed has. But more:there is the pretence thatrevolutionis personal revolution("Iwant to change systems"), that bychanging the subject position everything changes-for me. Thecategory of the asocial self is itself a bizarre one strategically speak-ing for it denies collective action (except presumably byaccumulation).What is invoked here is the bourgeois ethic of freedom: I want to befree, I will be free, because I simply am free to be free. What such a

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discourse cannot tackle is extant unfreedoms, for they are dissolvedby fiat priorto this speech, as the very condition of this speech. Whatis effaced is a long list of conditions of possibility: power,unfreedom,society, history ... in order that a bourgeois subject may speak. Theonly speech that can emerge under such conditions can be obscentity:

The amorous catastrophe may be close to what hasbeen called, inthe psychotic domain,an extreme situa-tion, "a situation experienced by the subject as ir-remediablyboundto destroy him"; he image is drawnfrom what occurred at Dachau. Is it not indecent tocompare the situation of a love-sick subject to that ofan inmate of Dachau? Can one of the mostunimaginable insults of History be compared with atrivial,childish, sophisticated, obscure incident occur-ring to a comfortable subject who is merely the vic-tim of his own Image-repertoire? LD,pp. 48-49)

The question is not rhetorical.Barthes answers it. Positively! And thatmust separate such a discourse irremediably rom a liberatorypolitics.In the place of a liberatory-collective problematic, there emerges analready liberated subject. And that is precisely the point: there is notheory of the subject here as such, no formal problematization(unlikein, say, SIZ).There is simply the affirmation of a subject-a paradingof a subject. Inthe Lover'sDiscourse, there is talk of an "innercompul-sion" (LD, pp. 80-81),a language, a demon of discourse, that whichanimates. But the lover is always the one to which discourse doessomething. That one exists separately from discourse and is then af-fected by it. At least this is the subject's self-understanding-and itmight be another question where Barthes is in all of this.There is a radical shift between S/Z and Lover's Discourse inwhich effect (subject as discursive effect) is replaced byaffect (the pre-existent seat of emotions). Andthat affect eliminates all historical anddiscursive specificity. "Love" (sic) constitutes "a long chain ofequivalences" (LD,p. 131) inkingall lovers throughout time, space andlanguage. The differential productions of amorous discourse in par-ticular conjunctures (e.g., the medieval, the 19th century romantic,thetechnological) are effaced in this move.The discourse of love, more importantly,recuperates bourgeoisrealism:"the hero is real (because he is created out of an absolute pro-jective substance in which every amorous subject collects himself)"(LD,p.219).Hence there can be an escape from "thedeath of classifica-tion" (LD,p. 221),a point outside semantic systems which is no moreand no less than the realitself. Asubject which can so operate becomesa paradigmcase of literary realism.

we can say that literature, whatever the school inwhose name it declares itself, is absolutely,

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categorically realist: it is reality,i.e.,the very spark ofthe real. ("IL,"p. 463)This is not a point forthe emergence of critique,for Barthes,but a pointof celebration.4. Punctum and subject position in "CameraLucida"

The last paragraphof Part I of Camera Lucida multiplies theambiguities-subjectivity being imperfect in the search for universaltruth, he will descend further into himself (CL, p. 60)-until in the lastline he announces the necessity of a palinode: he will have to recant.Recant on what? In practice this recanting will explain itself in termsof a search for the lost essence of his dead mother in a particularphotograph,and in terms of understanding that essence, that truth,tobe equivalentto one discovered througha more disinterested approach,a discovery which was in fact published in Communications in 1964as "Rhetorique de I'image,"in the same volume as "Elbments des6miologie."14 So who is kiddingwhom? Would the real RolandBarthespause from recanting and stand up?He already did. He can be positively identified in hisphotograph(s). Those, for instance he himself published in RolandBarthes.5So what, one can ask, is the punctum of any photograph ofBarthes?A question which is tantamount afterRonaldBarthes and afterthe photographs textualized therein, to asking what the point is of anytext by/ofBarthes. That point will be reserved. For the moment one cansay that the punctum of the later texts by Barthes, that which strikesthe reader, is their palinody, the way in which the subject is co-extensively (likethe photographand its referent)written in and writtenout. The punctum as elaborated in Camera Lucida has to be theultimateform of that dynamic,addressed as it is to a privilegedsystemof reference. As described in PartI of that text, the punctum poses aproblemin terms of its possible comparison with a simplistic and sub-jective model of reading. Firstly, he punctum is said to stand out fromthe studium, to strike a viewer who has not however sought its effect(CL,pp. 26-27). But later, in the discussion of Hine's "IdiotChildren,"the emergence of the punctum is said to depend on an active defencemechanism on the partof the viewer (CL, p. 51).Finally,it is given thestructure of the supplement-'what I add-and what, of course isalready in the image"(CL,p. 55).This ambiguity is developed in Part IIas the punctum comesmore explicitly to participate in the presence/absence structure of thephotograph, adding to, pointing out in, that structure, the play ofdeath--"By giving me the absolute past of the pose, the photographtells me death in the future. What pricks me is the discovery of thisequivalence" (CL,p. 96). Hence, even in, especially in, this privilegedsystem of reference that is photography(analogue rather han arbitraryrelationship of signifier and signified), what stands out more than

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anything else is the idea that the event of the text, the advent of thesign, implies absolute rupture. All representation participateshenceforth in the spectral.Hence the punctum of a good number of texts signed "Barthes",which can be read as a palinodizing subject, reads also as the deathof that subject, and comes finally to participate in the same structureas the point of any text of/by Barthes, the point of any text after Bar-thes, the pointof anytext afterthe death of the author,namelythe pointthat he is dead. The idea that a subject or at least a signature written"Barthes" is the punctum of the texts which bear that name, isdeveloped by Derrida16n his contribution to a necrology along with theidea that in CameraLucida this enunciation operates so that a certainform of (his)death becomes the point of the text. Forwhereas in othertexts it has been Barthes's habit-changing with fashion, like a suitof clothes1L-to play off against each other concepts which are in ap-pearance diamterically opposed, in this last text that operation is, asit were, photographed; its realization becomes co-extensive with itsreferent,its explicitation co-existensive with its practice.That practicebecomes glaringly, mbarrassinglyobvious, and at the same time leavesdocumentary evidence of the moribundityof metalanguage.

As soon as it [the punctum] can no longer simply beopposed to the studium although it remainsdistinguished from it, as soon as one can no moredelineate here between two places, two contents, ortwo things, then this punctum cannot be entirelyreduced to a concept.... This concept of a phantomis as difficult to grasp... as a phantom of a con-cept.... This concept of a photograph photographs[Ce concept de la photographie photographie...] allconceptual oppositions, it uncovers there a hauntinglink which perhaps constitutes every "logical"chain.28

What would be a simple expression of the bourgeois theory ofart? Undoubtedly it would be realist. The art object would exist out-side and beyond either its productionor its consumption, precisely asobject. Its position in the "stream of life"would be as an object givenquite freely to subjective interpretation.That is, codes of productionandconsumption would be suspended oreffaced entirelyand the "view-ing process" would consist in a unique subjectivity working over thereified object, thus producing an "interpretation,"a "what I alone cansee." In Camera Lucida this object/subject becomesphotographlpunctum:Lastthing about the punctum:whether or not it is trig-gered, it is an addition: it is what I add to thephotograph and what is nontheless already there. To

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Lewis Hine's retarded children, I add nothing withregardto the degenerescence of the profile:the codeexpresses this before I do, takes my place, does notallow me to speak; what I add-and what, of courseis already in the image-is the collar, the bandage29(CL, p. 55)

The art-object is, as it were, withdrawn(albeit consciously here) fromthe codes of its possibility as product and consumable and replacedinto an ideal space of viewing where the "I"can create a free variation,noticing what it will(s):The photograph touches me if I withdrawit from itsusual blah-blah:"Technique","Reality","Reportage","Art",tc.: to say nothing, to shut my eyes, to allow thedetail to rise of its own accord into affective con-sciousness.(CL, p. 55)

Outside of the code(s), inthis free space, there remainsa continual sup-plement to the power and conditions of possibility of photography,amore that is never pre-knowable, that only arises in thephenomenological conjuncture of reified image and free-rangingcon-sciousness. Itis no merecoincidence, then, that the following fragmentsare comparable-This is why,as soon as Ireached an age which allowedme to emerge from the tutelage of myteachers, Iaban-doned the study of letters altogether, and resolving tostudy no other science than that which I could findwithin myself or else in the great book of the world,I . . .20

... I persisted; another louder voice urged me todismiss such sociological commentary; ookingat cer-tain photographs, Iwanted to be a primitive,withoutculture. So Iwent on, not daringto reduce the world'scountless photographs, any more than to extendseveral of mine into Photography: in short, I foundmyself at an impasse and, so to speak, "scientifical-ly" alone and disarmed. (CL,p. 7)

Camera Lucida is indeed a Cartesian project, an attempt to efface alllearning,all "natural nterpretations." 1 Therebya space is cleared be-tween ego and the real in order for ego to attain to true ("direct")knowledge of its object, to see it outside anyavailable means of seeing.Precisely this is eliminated in the Cartesian/bourgeois theoryof art:meditation. And in its place is put meditation-the playof affec-tive consciousness. This is the strategy that a liberatorydiscourseneeds to supplant, a strategy which alwaysworks because it has it both

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ways-subjectivism and realism.Whathas to be seen is that this isa false dichotomy; ne producedbybourgeoisaesthetics precisely norder oritto beableto delimit he entiredomainof "art" nd to claimbothoutposts as its own:The realists,of whomI am one and of whom I wasalready ne whenI assertedthat the Photographwasan imagewithouta code-even if,obviously, ertaincodes do inflectourreadingof it-the realistsdo nottakethe photographora "copy" f reality, ut foranemanation fpastreality: magic,notanart. CL,p.88)

A subtle realism, hen: one that adds a realistversionof history o arealistversionof art, hereby xtending tempirically utleaving tjustas theoreticallyand strategically rozenas before.(It is easy to beremindedof LukAcsn this respect.)Whywoulda text wishto makeanalyticallyubtlethatreadingof artwhichalreadydominatesbyvirtueof its entireinfusion nto thestreamof life? Onlyan aristocraticrather than,say, a scientific-distaste for common sense could be at workhere.5. The risk of writing literature

To"write iterature"s to repeatthe discourses of the literarywhichhave heirownquitespecificconditionsof possibilityas techni-ques and institutions.Davies notes that the term "literature" asundergone everalcrises of meaninghistorically,22he mostcriticalbe-ingthat whichcan be datedto the 1860sand 70s. Hecites the follow-ing OEDentry:Literaryroductionsas a whole; he bodyof writingsproducedna particularountry rperiod, rthe worldin general.Now also in a more restrictedsense, ap-pliedto writingwhich has claimto considerationonthe groundof beautyof formor emotionaleffect.23

Thisrelativelynew restricted ense has nowbecomea dominantoneandis co-terminouswith the emergenceof the bourgeoisconceptionof artandthe individual.To"write iterature"s, under hese presentconditions,to sur-rendero a discourseof formalandemotionaleffectivity,.e.,affectivi-ty.It is to excise the political(nomatterhowmuchthe politicalmaybe its topic):and particularlyo excise the politicsof literature.Forto "write iterature" nder hese conditionsis preciselytoforgetthe clause "under hese conditions"and to assume that theliterary lwayswas and will be irremediably matterof formalandemotive beauty.To "writeliterature"s, therefore, o indulge."In-

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dulgence"works here in both senses: in the sense of excessive gratifica-tion and in the sense of an exemption from strictures or a magicallygranted freedom.So we might ask: does Barthes "write literature" n, for exam-ple, CameraLucida and Lover'sDiscourse? Certainly Sontag would un-equivocally recuperate Barthes for the domain of literature.What is inplayhere is something like the extension of the "literary deology,"themistaken assumption that the literaryis not the effect of a training incertain technical and institutional practices, not the reproduction ofa set of apparatuses for reading, but ratherthe emotional surrendertothe "work"(ha!)which induces a response in those privileged soulswho aresimply pre-disposedto "the beautiful."Ifonly they were literallypre-disposed.)To ask whether or not Barthes "writes literature" is to askwhether or not the Barthes texts have been read in that latterway andwhether or not that is or is becoming the dominant mode of "readingBarthes." And that is a matter in turn of a struggle between distinctreadings.Whatit is betterto say is that Barthesrisks writing iterature-i.e.,that there is a deliberate casting of the die, a demand made bythetexts that they be permittedto be recuperatedby literary deology. Thatrisk is continually runand, to display it as risk, the possibility of thenon-literary e.g.,the possibility of formalism and analysis) must be con-tinually run up against. It too must be "present"-the point is a well-known Saussurian one after all. The two discourses--inviting tworeadings-must be set in play with or against one another. Thus, inLover'sDiscourse, the lover's indulgent fantasies are classified into astructuraltaxonomyof amorous discourse. InCameraLucida, he unfet-teredego ranges fromphotograph o photographalmost wilfullydisplac-ing the possible codes of reading as it goes. The formalcodes are notso much absent from the texts (i.e.,unmentioned); hey are placed therein order to be abnegated. But they are present-so that one readingof Camerawould produce it as a text where the struggle forthe literary(orindeed against the literary)s seen in process. Andthat is the natureof the risk-the hazard of being swallowed up in the leviathan of"literature."

There can therefore be no final verdict. What is (to count as)literarydepends very much on what is constituted as literary: oday atypographical error, omorrowa work of art.24thas nothing to do with"what is in the text itself." The very concept of "in the text itself" isone produced by literary deology. Anotherpossibility is cancellation-the literaryand the analytic efface one another; ratherin the way thatthe various accolades surrounding Roland Barthes cancel each otherout: "Semiologist and structualist"/"championof the Noveau Roman";"critic of bourgeois myths"/"moralistand hedonist"; "the one whostartles and outrages"/"the would-be scientist."25Looking both wayswould then itself lead to another kind of absence.

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A numberof Barthes'stexts treat the problematicof textualstudiesintermsof the matter fwriting. alinode ndapophasis, ecant-ingas erasure,havealreadybeen mentionedas figuresof that relation-ship. They can be comparedwith Genette's palimpsest,26 just asBarthes'sdiscussion of rhetoric an be comparedwiththe ideathatcriticism, s writinguponwriting,vokesa relationwith tsobjectwhichis analogous o thatbetweenthe literal ndthefigurative.n heessaysof the fifties, writingas a problematic f the literarys discussed intermsofthenouveau oman.7nS/Z here s attempted readerly ritingof a readerlytext. In Pleasure of the Text,the texte de jouissance issaid to call forthanothersuch text.As soon as Writing egreeZero, critique f bourgeoisdeologyanda rewriting f literary istorygo handinhand.The term"writing"(6criture),s itcompareswith a termsuch as "literature,"omes thento involvea reassessment both of the parameters f the literary ndof thestatusof criticalanalysis.PerhapsBarthes'smostimportanton-tributiono that reassessment,certainly hatto which he gavemuchattention,s the revalorizationf theessay,reduced nlater exts to thefragment.Again, t is inthe "Inauguralecture"1982)hatthefragmentis recommended s a strategy, nspite of the ambiguity f the opera-tion it sets in play:

I must admitI have producedonly essays, an am-biguousgenre n whichanalysisvies withwriting."IL,"p.457)Fragmentations proposednthefinalpageof thataddressas a counter-tactic to the ruses of discursivepower ormations, ndsuggests therecognitionof rupture s constitutiveof languageandwritingwhichinforms he grammatological roject:

And I am increasingly convinced ... that the fun-damental peration f this looseningmethod s, ifonewrites,fragmentation....("IL," .476.)

Henceinthe firstplace, he riskof writingiteraturen the caseof Barthes's exts is the riskof ambiguitywhich arises as a resultofa lackof clear definitionbetweendifferent ypes of writing; s a resultof the contamination f literature ycriticismwhichposes as writingwhichis otherthan derivative ndparasitical;hus the riskof reading"writing"s a participialdjectivewithout ts also beingreadas a nounin appositionto "literature."Butthe otherrisk of writing iteratures withouta doubtthatimpliedbythe activesense of thatparticiple,he fact of its beingcon-cernedwithenunciationas Barthesdiscusses in the "Inauguralec-ture"andagainin Lover'sDiscourse,whichinturn mpliesthe playofa subject in that process.

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in writing it [knowledge] is an enunciation ... enuncia-tion exposes the place and energy of the subject, itslack even (which is not the same as its absence)...it assumes the task of giving utterance to a subjectwhich is at the same time insistent and uniden-tifiable... 28

The question is whether that subject is seen in playas effect of discur-sive formations,or whether it is given a pre-ordainedorm outside enun-ciation; and whether the choice of the literarytext as privileged sitefor the exploration of that enunciative process is a poorchoice, or onewhich on the contraryallows for greater problematization.That is therisk (l'enjeu),the gamble, the level of the stakes. Whether the matterremains, in Barthes's texts, in a state of play(en jeu), or betraysa bluffthat hasn't paid off, that is the question. A good question and a goodsubject for a later Barthes paper.

James Cook University

NOTES1 Susan Sontag, "Writingtself:On RolandBarthes" nA BarthesReader, d. SusanSontag (London:Cape, 1982),pp. vii-xxxvi hereaftercited as "WI").2 Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author,"n Image-Music-Text,d. StephenHeath (New York:Hill &Wang, 1977).3 PhilipThody,RolandBarthes:AConservativeEstimate(London:Macmillan, 977).4 RaymondPicard,Nouvellecritiqueou nouvelle imposture (Paris:Pauvert,1965).5 J. Gerald Kennedy,"Roland Barthes:Autobiography, nd the End of Writing,"Georgia Review 35 (1981).6 RolandBarthes,Legon: egon inauguralede la chaire de s6miologie litt6raireducollbge de France,prononc6e le 7 janvier 1977 (Paris:Seuil, 1978)7 Jacques Derrida,"SignatureEvent Context,"Glyph1 (1977),182.8 Roland Barthes, "InauguralLecture,Coll6ge de France," n A Barthes Reader,ed. Susan Sontag (London:Cape,1982),p.458(hereaftercited inthe text as "IL").9 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography,trans. RichardHoward Hill&Wang, 1981),p. 8 (hereaftercited in the text as CL).10 Gille Deleuze & FdlixGuattari,MillePlateaux:Capitalismeet schizophr6nie Paris:Minuit,1980), pp. 284-380.11 Julia Krist6va,"LaS6miologie: science et/ou critiquede la science." in Th6orie

d'ensemble, ed. TelQuel(Collectif) Paris:Seuil, 1968),pp.85-86.Our ranslation,her emphasis.12 Jacques Derrida,Positions (Paris: Minuit,1972), pp.56-58. Ourtranslation,hisemphasis.

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13 Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux (Paris:Seuil, 1977), p. 5(hereafter cited in the text as Fragments). See also: A Lover's Discourse:Fragments,trans. RichardHoward London:Cape, 1979),p. 1 (hereaftercited inthe text as LD).14 Roland Barthes, "il6ments de s6miologie," Communications 4 (1964),91-135;and "Rh6toriquede I'image,"Communications 4 (1964),40-51.15 RolandBarthes,RolandBarthes,trans. RichardHoward NewYork:Hill&Wang,1977).16 Jacques Derrida,"Les morts de Roland Barthes,"Po6tique 47 (1981),269-292.17 Derrida,"Les morts de Roland Barthes,"p. 273.18 Derrida"Les Morts de Roland Barthes,"p. 274. Our translation.19 The photo by Lewis Hine is to be found in CameraLucinda,p. 50.20 Ren6Descartes,Discourse on MethodlTheMeditations, rans.F E.Sutcliffe(Har-mondsworth:Penguin, 1972),p. 33.21 Paul Feyerabend,Against Method (London:New Left Books, 1975).22 TonyDavies, "Education, Ideology and Literature,"Red Letters7 (n.d.),4-15.23 Davies, "Education,"p. 5.24 See lanHunter,"TheConcept of Context and the Problemof Reading," outhernReview 15 (1982),80-91.25 See Jonathon Culler,Roland Barthes (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins,1983),blurb.26 G6raldGenette,FiguresIIIParis:Seuil, 1969).See particularlyhe paper"Raisonsde la critique pure,"pp. 7-22.27 See Stephen Heath, The Nouveau Roman: A Study in the Practice of Writing(London:Elek, 1972).28 Roland Barthes, Legon, p. 20. Ourtranslation.

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