Roland Barthes

From Wikiquote

Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician.

[edit] Sourced

• The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition ... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.
  • "Modern," in The Pleasure of the Text (1975)
• Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.
  • "Talking," in A Lover's Discourse (1977)
• What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.
  • "Le monde où l'on catche," in Mythologies (1957)
• The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized!
  • "Sentence," in The Pleasure of the Text (1975)
• The petit-bourgeois is a man unable to imagine the Other. If he comes face to face with him, he blinds himself, ignores and denies him, or else transforms him into himself.
  • "Myth on the Right," in Mythologies (1957)

[edit] External links

• "Between Zero and a Hard Place" by Gilbert Wesley Purdy. Essay on Barthes' Writing Degree Zero.
• Barthes page from the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory (registration needed)
• Roland Barthes and Photography by Ron Burnett
• "From Work to Text" Essay written by Barthes.
• "Wrestling" Excerpt from Mythologies.