p. smith - roland barthes last writings.pdf

7/29/2019 P. Smith - Roland Barthes last writings.pdf

1/8

We Always Fail: Barthes' Last WritingsAuthor(s): Paul SmithSource: SubStance, Vol. 11, No. 3, Issue 36 (1982), pp. 34-40Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684312 .

Accessed: 19/08/2013 15:29

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Wisconsin Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

SubStance.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:29:45 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uwischttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3684312?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3684312?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uwisc


2/8

We AlwaysFail-Barthes'astWritingsPAUL SMITH

"On &chouetoujoursta arlerde ce qu'on aime": we always fail . ... Suchan apparentlyself-critical esignation,the titlegiven to Roland Barthes' lastpublished article,1might, n fact,by no means be an admission of regretorunqualified failure.Through a not too fancifulflightnto French etymologyit is possible to suggestthat thephrase"on 6choue . . ."mightforBarthes takeon an opposite, duplicitous implication--"amphibologiquement,"as itwere.2"Echouer: oucher au fond,"to reach the bottomor, in an older mode, reachthe essential.And alwaysbyaccident, aysLittre;by anguage, thatMallarmeanhazardousness, Barthesmight ay. The word"echouer" s furthermoreaccord-ing to one etymological dictionary consulted) influencedby the old French"eschec," in its sense of"butin,"bootyor spoils; so would it not be etumos osaythatsuch a failure s partly ur lot,orour rewardfor life ived,our realiza-tion of somethingthat can be carried off fterbattle?The idea that an "&chec"could be somewhat triumphant,and would beforever "toujours"), and yetultimate the essential), should effectivelycuttlethe wholenotionofachievement: chievements,n ourhistory, re alwaysteleo-logical and always comport ome more or less overt senseofa mastery.Bartheswas never a master,would never have wanted to be one, and it s thussalutaryto note that in "eschec" is also implicitly nscribed the whole social game ofchess in which the king is destined to die-"eschec et mat." In his project ofdecomposing the certainties and fixitiesof a kinglystructure,our culture,3

Barthes actsalmost as thatmosttriflingalue in thegame, thepawn who makesrelentlessforays against the space of the king-classical, doxical, scientific,masculine space as that s in our inherited ulture. And to the extentthatthisis a specifically isruptivegambit tconcernsus all. AsJean Louis Scheferhassuggested, Barthes has probably taken the measure of something n all hisreaders--what is the stature, then, of your peonage?4So, I think twould in one way be un-Barthesian to talk of the masteryofachievement n the work ofthissingleman: rather,perhaps,we should talkSub-Stance No 36, 1982 34

This content downloaded from 150.135.135.70 on Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:29:45 PMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/8

Barthes' Last Writings 35about his end, his "achevement,"or about the utterancesthat death put (puts)an end to. Perhaps, in Barthes' case, that end was not imposed too soon. Inhis finalbook, La Chambrelaire, Barthes complains about thatdestinywhichcaughthim,held him in thespace betweenhis owndeath and thatofhismother:thespace, we might say, ofhis disinheritancefrom he real. Afterhismother'sdeath, "ma propre mort est inscrite;entre les deux plus rien qu'attendre; jen'ai d'autre ressourceque cette ronie: arlerdu 'rien dire.' "6 s notthis suffer-ing exactlythe condition of the writer,oregrounded n our "modernism"butwhichBartheshas seen everywhere; s itnotthe disinheritance rom ome partof our lived bodies, from "I'Intraitabledont e suis fait,"7 he Imponderablewhich might,now, appear to some as the symptomof a sort of essentialistromanticism?There, exactly, is the problem of reading Barthes' last writ-ings- reading our modernismagainst his retracingofour history,or againsthis projectofreinstatingwhatwe have, in the name ofhistory, oo oftenwith-drawn fromthe scene and adjectivized as somethingaged and enfeebled.But forBarthesthedecompositionof the structures f a modernistregimewas as importantas the decompositionof any othersortof structure: Toutd'un coup, il m'estdevenu indiff6rente ne pas etremoderne."8Joining nwiththe modern regime is forBarthes simplyanother effort owards a discourseofmastery r ofvictory, subsumption fthepast into a supposedlynew ortho-doxy. For him, any politicalaction or militancywould necessarily ssume thesame discourses and modes ofoperation as thepreviousvictorsand achievershad imposed. Which is to say that such revolutionary action would becircular returning long the lines of the same geometry o the same politicallocus. And it is here, of course, that Barthes' importcan be located; ifthereis a place, anotherscene, where the imaginary dentifications f the civic canbe revised and reviewed (and it's not by accident thatBarthesultimately ndalmost grudginglywritesabout photography,that apparatus which gives usthingsto see, but not to re-see) it is forhim the scene ofwriting.Languageitself ffers s something n excess ofboth thepersonal and thepolitical. NotthatBartheswould have imaginedthat,politically,purely inguisticrebellionsare sufficient r complete,but theyhave precisely hisdecomposing effect nthe doxas we inhabit-whereas the assuming of the mantle of the inheritedis always a consolidation, not, obviously,ofthe modes fpolitics,butcertainlyof its epistemology.So what the last years of Barthes' lifebring him to (bring to him) is thenecessityof a different ction: "c'est la subversionde toute ideologie qui esten cause."9That action sundertaken ya singleman, a manwriting.nhabitingsuch a space is to suffer heagonies ofthe continualeffort fmakingone's sub-jectivity heard within the networks of the symbolic codes we traditionallyinhabit within, hat s, theterrifyingfficacyfthe aw'sprohibitive ationality.Against those fixedmodes must be posited, not anotherfixity, ut the frag-mentarycrossingof thesymbolicy the semiotic. hose terms, n thatfunction,derive fromJulia Kristeva who talks, too, ofthe female'snegative entry ntothesymbolicbythismeans; Barthes,for ll hisdisregard f thepolitico-sexual,10



4/8

36 Paul Smithenjoins exactlythis mode ofnegative entry. n Kristeva that mobile semiotictraversalofsymbolicfixitys giventhe name signifiance,hich Bartheshas con-flated with his own use of theword ouissance s it crosses the rigid egalityofsignificationn plaisir. 1FromLe Plaisirdu Texte nwards, that traversal s whatBarthes undertakes.His project is devoted to the exhaustingprocess f a writing"a d6couvert,"12writingwithoutcover, open to the skies, not shadowed by any system,butquite boldly givenover to a possibility fdiscovery. Perhaps therewe can inci-dentallylocate part ofthe man's fascination withProust, who offers seem-inglyendless flowofphrase and sentencewiththe end, exactly,ofdisclosingor uncoveringsomethingprofoundly ituated.) Barthes' abhorrenceofsystemled him to repudiate especiallythosewhollymodernsystemswhichhe himselfhad helped explore n the sixties structuralism,marxism,psychoanalysis, ndso on- and toreturn o the ntransitive-system fwritingtself,with ts mani-foldrelations to the subject on the one hand and to the culturedworldon theother: in its verypassage La Chambrelaire eflectsupon) such a dichotomy,the first art of the book offering reading ofphotography'srestingplace inthe symbolic,while the second part tellsus what photographymeans to hisown subjectivity.Withinthatdivision a divisionwhichhas hauntedphilosophyforever Barthes chooses (a-philosophically,as itwere) to valorize theeffectsof subjectivity.This finalbook, then,is a travelling owardsthevalorizationofthepawn,of the individual subject as he is set against the king. And yet it is inscribedwithinthe very ironythathe tells us of: the speaking about the inabilitytospeak, the knowledge that in destroying he king the pawn in fact ends thegame, ends his own life. So there is a sort of devolved nihilism nscribed inBarthes' whole project; perhaps it is the same sensation as that which residesin the heartofromanticismsecretly) r of existentialismovertly). t is, finally,the positingofa sortofdespair, but one which we can (and must) continuallytraverse nd enjoy,and fromwhichwe can thentakesomething way as booty.In "On 6choue toujours . . . ," givinghimselfover to the "failure"whichis thecelebratory riumphof the subject'sjouissance, arthesdiscovers,throughStendhal, a jubilatory possibilityofthe subject'spowerlessnessor impotence.When Stendhal talks about what he loves (his whole fantasyof taly in Rome,Naples,Florence,r La ChartreuseeParme),he falls nto theplatitudeof an unsys-tematicunityofeffectswhich, ifrespectedby thewriter, lways giveshim toa certain phasia, orthe end pointof"style."'3n and through tendhal,Barthesvalorizes the profound emptiness of stylewhich spins the novelist into theidolatrythat language can only speak deictically. Stendhal "dit simplement:1la l y a un effet"'" nd his language is thus reduced to the function fpointingout that some loved object is "beau/belle"; and this s performed n that mostsimple of tropes, the superlative. Stendhal reminds Barthes of the aphasicstruggleof the child, caught between the sensation of an overwhelming oveand the difficultyfexpression. Barthes sees here (and writes more about inLa Chambrelaire) heconflict etween the nfinite xtensibility,hemetonymic



5/8

Barthes' Last Writings 37course of the "Souverain Bien" thathe idolizes, and theanythingbut innocentpower of language.Insofar as the symbolic s, here, seen as overbearing Barthes spoke inhisinaugural lectureforthe College de France of the inherentfascismof codedlanguage)"5 its power must be negated, broughtto a check-mate.The pawnthus triesto speak his own subjectivity disinheritedfromthe real), in orderto reduce the symbolic,decompose our culture. In dealing specificallywithphotography,Barthes sees himself faced withpreciselyan apparatus for thelegalistic authorizingofthereal. The photographis in a certainway undeni-able, since itcarries ts referentwith t,not allowingus to denythepast exist-ence of that referent.To most photos we apply what Barthes calls a studium,a type of reading which cannot but be an endorsement of our place in therationalworldthat s ideologicallygivento us. But otherphotos,Barthesclaims,can cut across that fixity nd demand another kind of reading: "face a cer-tainesphotos, e me voulais sauvage, sans culture."16 o such imageswe applythe transgressivereading ofthepunctum, deictic remarkingofsomething nthephotowhichexceeds thefunctionary owerofthe studium. he punctumerecorrespondstowhat Barthes has elsewherecalled "la sp cialitede mon d6sir"'7(to, perhaps, Catullus' mica alis). What thepunctumeads off orus is the senseofour subjectivity n opposition to, or arising out of the culturalknowledgeof the viewer. In otherwords, the studium hoto is readable througha code,the punctum ne is not. And, of course, codes never allow us to speak ourdesire- theyare intrinsically otalitarian n thisrespect,takingour place andspeaking forus; thepunctumlides such a presumptionf the subject.Clearly, this simple schema that Barthes adopts to get at the essence ofphotography s an extension of hisnotions ofplaisir ndjouissance: tudium ivesonlypleasure, relying n an interpretable ositionfor hesubject; thepunctum,on the otherhand, is orgasmic and seminal. It is never more than a detail,a fragmentwhichspeaks to us. In relation to the egal and "pleasurable"unityof the self, t bespeaks a bodily loss.18A photo which acts in thisway is, forBarthes, interestingn the etymological sense that the individual subject isinscribed there in the infinitive interesse-f being, between one death andanother,between thepast and the real. It is in this nfinitive hatthe subject,as an effect f the image, sees his desire thrownbeyond the legalism of theimage itself.The space thatis being described here is, simply,thatofjouissance.Here,forBarthes,Nietzsche'snotionof"l'antiquesouverainetedu moi"19s celebrated,buthardly nthe senseofa will topower.Nietzsche'sphrasemust be understoodhere as part of his nurturing fan idea of self which will deny the efficacy fphilosophy'straditional self-reflective oment,or ofthat"thought"which willrejoin"structure"culture, history, he aw, philosophy tself)withthe"content"of the individual subject. Barthes' importance formodern thoughtcan besketchedout from here: his project, respectingNietzsche's immoralism andrealizing the "caractbre asociale de la jouissance"20 is to live in and celebrate(calibrate) preciselythat divisionwhichphilosophy s concernedto coverover



6/8

38 Paul Smithwithinthe subject himself. Emblematic of such a philosophical desire withinmodernism tselfs Lukics' attackon Nietzsche's mmoralism.Lukics, foundingan argument upon the politicallycharged notion of the necessityto dialecti-cally historicize the subject, wants to establish a bridge, a unityto lie whollybetween structure nd content: hiswill be thehistoricized ubjecthimself. ucha desire clearly mplies the appropriationof the means ofpower ofbourgeoisphilosophywhich has always soughtthe theoretical laboration of the subjectas precisely hatunified inkbetween culture nd individual.Of course,Lukics'stratagems indefeasibly artof what the TelQuelgroupwas concerned odecon-struct, nd it seems to me that it has been left argelyto Barthes to offer hedemonstration of the new subject actually living hat division.

In thisconnection,a remarkableaspect ofBarthes'offeringn the ast bookofa-philosophys its mplicit ebt tophenomenologynd existentialism.ndeed,the book is dedicated (ambiguously, it should be said) in homage to Sartre.What I think s at stake here is firstlyn embracingof thatdespairofSartre'sthecul-de-sac in whichhis social theorizing nded up when facedwiththenar-cissism a deuxof reader and writer.But Barthes' work adds to that sense ofan impasse a celebratory ssumption ofpreciselythe underlyingsexual loadof Sartre's crisis. Arising, bodily as it were, out of that re-readingof Sartreisjouissance tself; nd ifHusserl, too, presentsthe same crisis ofbeing unableto "epochize" the subject into the role demanded by philosophy,Barthes hastaken the hint. Marxism and phenomenology as systemshow themselvesproperly ncapable ofrationalizingdesire. Rather than attempting o imposesuch an image ofthesubjectBarthesrecognizesthatphilosophy's ailure houldbe inverted obecome, no longera crisisor a dead-end, but an inevitable con-dition ofthought,bespeakingthe subject'sfundamental lienation. The crisis,then,mustbe seen as a carnival, or a fiasco the fiasco, exactly,that inducesStendhal's platitudeofexpression n Italy).21What such an inversion nvolvesis thedecompositionofbourgeois thought nd theconcomitant ecognition hatour failure is triumphant,even our essential condition.So this s, finally,Barthes'carrying way ofthespoils from he battlefield.The theatreofwar inwhich thegiant systematizers ave fought tout (politicalanimals thatthey re, siblingsfighting or ontrolofthe father's acredobjects)is leftopen to the scavenger collecting scraps and trifles o carryback home.Home, of course, is the locus of the mother,about whom La Chambrelaireis written nthe end. Athis seminars t theCollege de France Barthesdescribedhis discourse as exactlythose "comings and goings of a child playingbesidehismother, eaving her,returning obringher a pebble, a piece ofstring, ndthereby racinga whole locus ofplay around a calm center."22n this ubila-tory ollecting ffragmentshenarcissistic ittle oyruns theriskofbeingcallednames by the olderboys (essentialist, un-political, ndividualist,romanticist),but such an embracingofpowerlessness as therewardsoftouching hebottom,glimpsingthe subject as he mightexist outside of ideology and culture. Tofailthedemands ofregal structures nd paternal aw is tonecessarilyestablisha voluptuous and subversive relationshipwith the mother.



7/8

Barthes' Last Writings 39If La Chambrelaire eemson the one hand to be a literalmemorial o Barthes'

mother, tmustalso be seen in this ight:as a deliberate rejectionofmastery.This iswhatBarthes saw laid open in Stendhalwhosefantasy f taly designatedtheoppositionbetween Italy as matria, nd France as patria. n Italy Stendhalcould find himself voluptueusementretirede la responsabilit6du citoyen."23If the valorizing of thatposition with all its fragmentation, ts sense of loss,its insecurity nd ouissance, eads to theplatitudesso disregarded by culturedcivilization, it has nonetheless an immense strategicand ontological impor-tance. And in theessay on Stendhal, Barthes s unafraid to court the risksthatsuch platituderuns: he compares Stendhal to the childrenanalyzed byWinni-cott,24playing with "transitional objects" in the fantastic space betweenthemselvesas infansdeprived ofadult language) and the mother's mage. If,as Winnicottsuggests,that space is worked-out n these children's squiggles"(a non-adult, non-tendentious anguage), the writer, n order to decomposethe greatstructures nder which we live in thrall,may have to learn to speakchildishly, o prolongthefragmentaryensationsofjouissance, alorize the sub-ject's irremediable division. Perhaps it is here that Barthes' lesson can belearned- in the endless measuringof our relationto the patriarchal space onthe one hand, and to thetexton the other which "met en 6tat de perte,celuiqui d6conforte . faitvaciller es assiseshistoriques, ulturelles, sychologiquesdu lecteur, a consistance de ses goits, de ses valeurs et de ses souvenirs,meten crise son rapport au langage."25

NOTES1. TelQuel,no. 85, pp. 32-38.2. Roland Barthes ar lui-mime, aris, 1975, pp. 76-77.3. Ibid., p. 67.4. "Barthes," Cahiersdu Cinema.5. La Chambre laire: Notesur la photographie,aris, 1980.6. Ibid., p. 145.7. Ibid., p. 153.8. "D6lib6ration,"elQuel,no. 82, p. 14.9. Le Plaisir du Texte,Paris, 1973, p. 54.10. Roland Barthes,p. 120.

11. Plaisir du Texte,p. 63.12. Roland Barthes,p. 106.13. "On ichoue . . ." p. 35.14. Idem.15. Published s Legon, aris, 1978.16. Chambre laire, p. 20.17. Fragments 'undiscours moureux, aris, 1977, p. 26.18.Thefirst ew agesofBettyMcGraw's rticle,Semiotics,rotographics,ndBarthes' isualConcerns," ub-Stance,o. 26, explorevery arefully hatthismightmeanforBarthes.19. Chambre laire, p. 21.20. Plaisir du Texte,p. 63.



8/8

40 Paul Smith21. I'm reminded ere ofPonge'sbeautifulextLa FabriqueuPri,where, n hisworknotesfor22 and 23 February 963,he remarks hat la platitude stune perfection."22. QuotedbyAnnetteMichelson n October,o. 12, p. 128.23. "On 6choue .. ." p. 34.24. Ibid., p. 37.25. Plaisir u Texte, p. 25-26.

The authorcknowledgeshegenerosityf heKillamFoundation nd DalhousieUniversity,nderwhoseauspicesthisworkwas carried ut.

This content downloaded from 150 135 135 70 on Mon 19 Aug 2013 15:29:45 PM
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

p. smith - roland barthes last writings.pdf

Documents