1384 Pages
    by Routledge

    Thirty years ago the English-speaking world was discovering the work of some of the key poststructuralist theorists for the first time: Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology had just appeared in translation, as had Roland Barthes’ S/Z, Jacques Lacan’s Écrits, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and Pierre Macherey’s A Theory of Literary Production. English editions of Julia Kristeva’s Desire in Language and Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition were just around the corner.

    The subsequent ‘theory wars’ that raged on campuses in the 1980s are now generally seen as a thing of the past: poststructuralism is now, largely, a familiar and widely taught part of the academic landscape in the English-speaking world.

    Of all the poststructuralists, Roland Barthes (1915–80) is probably the most widely read. Mythologies has sold hundreds of thousands of copies in paperback and has never been out of print since it first appeared in English in 1972. And ‘The Death of the Author’, his short essay dating from 1968, is probably the most widely anthologized theoretical text of all. Moreover, even though he died over a quarter of a century ago, Barthes remains especially ‘alive’ to English-speaking audiences in that his voluminous writings are still being translated into English.

    Reflecting the vibrancy and dynamism of Barthes Studies, this four-volume collection, a new title in Routledge’s Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory series, brings together the best and most influential cutting-edge and canonical research on Roland Barthes. The gathered materials address the full range of Barthes’ extremely diverse output to provide the definitive evaluation of his work.

    With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Roland Barthes is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital research resource.

    PROVISIONAL CONTENTS

    Volume I

    Section 1: Myth, Doxa, History

    1. Maurice Blanchot, ‘The Great Hoax’, in Michael Holland (ed.), The Blanchot Reader (Blackwell, 1995), pp. 157–66.

    2. Raymond Picard, New Criticism or New Fraud?, trans. Frank Towne (Washington State University Press, 1969), pp. 1–27.

    3. Roland A.Champagne, ‘Alice and the Looking Glass: Roland Barthes as the Reader in History’, Bucknell Review, 1981, 26, 1, 52–63.

    4. Jonathan Elmer, ‘Something for Nothing: Barthes in the Text of Ideology’, Qui Parle, 1987, 1, 2, 48–61.

    5. Patrizia Lombardo, ‘History and Form’, The Three Paradoxes of Roland Barthes (University of Georgia Press, 1989), pp. 1–44.

    6. Sheri Hoem, ‘Laundering the Text: Barthes’s Criti-Myth-Oetics’, Paragraph, 1995, 18, 3, 286–99.

    7. Steven Ungar, ‘From Event to Memory Site: Thoughts on Rereading Mythologies’, Nottingham French Studies, 1997, 36, 1, 24–33.

    8. Diana Knight, ‘Structuralism Utopian and Scientific’, Barthes and Utopia: Space, Travel, Writing (Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 44–66.

    9. Marianne DeKoven, ‘Modern Mass to Postmodern Popular in Barthes’s Mythologies’, Raritan: A Quarterly Review, 1998, 18, 2, 81–98.

    10. Michael Kelly, ‘Demystification: A Dialogue between Barthes and Lefebvre’, Yale French Studies, 2000, 98, 79–97.

    11. Anne Herschberg Pierrot, ‘Barthes and Doxa’, Poetics Today, 2002, 23, 3, 427–42.

    12. Timothy Scheie, ‘Roland Barthes and the Myth of a National Theater’, French Forum, 2005, 30, 2, 79–96.

    13. Tom Tyler, ‘Quia Ego Nominor Leo: Barthes, Stereotypes, and Aesop’s Animals’, Mosaic, 2007, 40, 1, 45–59.

    Volume II

    Section 2: Writing/Reading

    14. Julia Kristeva, ‘How Does One Speak to Literature?’, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, trans. Thomas Gora et al. (Blackwell, 1980), pp. 92–123.

    15. Philippe Sollers, ‘Reading S/Z’, in Stephen Heath et al. (eds.), Signs of the Times: Introductory Readings in Textual Semiotics (Granta, 1971), pp. 37–40.

    16. Paul de Man, ‘Roland Barthes and the Limits of Structuralism’, Yale French Studies, 1990, 77, 177–90.

    17. Philip Thody, ‘Racine, Quarrels and Criticism’, Roland Barthes: A Conservative Estimate (Macmillan, 1979), pp. 54–68.

    18. Barbara Johnson, ‘The Critical Difference: Balzac’s "Sarrasine" and Barthes’s S/Z’, in Robert Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 162–74.

    19. Annette Lavers, ‘The Network (Synchrony)’, Roland Barthes: Structuralism and After (Methuen, 1982), pp. 47–65.

    20. Susan Sontag, ‘Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes’, Where the Stress Falls: Essays (Vintage, 2003), pp. 63–88.

    21. Dorothy Kelly, ‘The Cracked Mirror: Roland Barthes’s Anti-Autobiography Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes’, French Literature Series, 1985, 12, 122–8.

    22. Fredric Jameson, ‘The Ideology of the Text’, The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971–1986 (Volume 1: ‘Situations of Theory’) (Routledge, 1988), pp. 17–71.

    23. N. Katherine Hayles, ‘Information or Noise? Economy of Explanation in Barthes’s S/Z and Shannon’s Information Theory’, in George Levine and Alan Rauch (eds.), One Culture: Essays in Science and Literature (University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 119–42.

    24. Ronald Schleifer, ‘The Salutary Discomfort of Writing: Roland Barthes, Literature, and Obscurity’, New Orleans Review, 1988, 15, 2, 19–28.

    25. Clara Claiborne Park, ‘Author! Author! Reconstructing Roland Barthes’, The Hudson Review, 1990, 43, 3, 377–98.

    26. Andrew Brown, ‘The Scribbler’, Roland Barthes: The Figures of Writing (Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 152–209.

    27. Stephen H. Fleck, ‘Barthes on Racine: A Different Speech Act Theory’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 1992, 14, 143–55.

    28. Claire Oboussier, ‘Barthes and Femininity: A Synaesthetic Writing’, Nottingham French Studies, 1994, 33, 2, 78–93.

    29. Michael Halley, ‘... And a Truth for a Truth: Barthes on Bataille’, in Leslie Anne Boldt-Irons (ed.), On Bataille: Critical Essays (State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 286–94.

    30. Andy Stafford, ‘Writing and "Rêv-olution"’, Roland Barthes: Phenomenon and Myth—An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh University Press, 1997), pp. 159–87.

    31. Nicholas O. Pagan, ‘Roland Barthes and the Syllogisms of Literary Criticism’, Mosaic, 2000, 33, 1, 95–111.

    32. Malcolm Bowie, ‘Barthes on Proust’, Yale Journal of Criticism: Interpretation in the Humanities, 2001, 14, 2, 513–18.

    33. Jonathan Culler, ‘Barthes, Theorist’, Yale Journal of Criticism: Interpretation in the Humanities, 2001, 14, 2, 439–46.

    34. Antoine Compagnon, ‘Roland Barthes’ Novel’, trans. Rosalind Krauss, October, 2005, 112, 23–34.

    35. Dennis Hollier, ‘Notes (on the Index Card)’, October, 2005, 112, 35–44.

    36. Neil Badmington, ‘The "Inkredible" Roland Barthes’, Paragraph, 2008, 31, 1, 84–94.

    37. Andy Stafford, ‘"Preparation du romanesque" in Roland Barthes’s Reading of Sarrasine’, Paragraph, 2008, 31, 1, 95–108.

    Volume III

    Section 3: Love, Desire, Pleasure, Sex

    38. Robert Miklitsch, ‘Difference: Roland Barthes’s Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure’, Boundary, 1983, 2, 12, 1, 101–14.

    39. Stephen Heath, ‘Barthes on Love’, SubStance, 1983, 37–8, 100–6.

    40. Jane Gallop, ‘Beyond the Jouissance Principle’, Representations, 1984, 7, 110–15.

    41. André Aciman, ‘Deliberating Barthes’, Social Text, 1984–5, 11, 110–17.

    42. Naomi Schor, ‘Dreaming Dissymmetry: Barthes, Foucault, and Sexual Difference’, in Alice Jardine and Paul Smith (eds.), Men in Feminism (Methuen, 1987), pp. 98–110.

    43. George Bauer, ‘Eating Out: With Barthes’, in David Bevan (ed.), Literary Gastronomy (Rodopi, 1988), pp. 39–48.

    44. Leslie Hill, ‘Barthes’ Body’, Paragraph, 1988, 11, 2, 107–26.

    45. Lawrence D. Kritzman, ‘Roland Barthes: The Discourse of Desire and the Question of Gender’, MLN, 1988, 103, 4, 848–64.

    46. Mary Bittner Wiseman, ‘Texts of Pleasure, Texts of Bliss’, The Ecstasies of Roland Barthes (Routledge, 1989), pp. 86–107.

    47. Ben Stolzfus, ‘Toward Bliss: Barthes, Lacan, and Robbe-Grillet’, Modern Fiction Studies, 1989, 35, 4, 699–706.

    48. Armine Kotin Mortimer, "Loving Writing: Fragments d’un discours amoureux", Symposium, 2000, 54, 1, 27–42.

    49. Philippe Roger, ‘All Love Told: Barthes and the Novel’, in Shadi Bartsch and Thomas Bartscherer (eds.), Erotikon: Essays on Eros, Ancient and Modern (University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 245–57.

    Section 4: Sound and Vision

    50. Victor Burgin, ‘Re-reading Camera Lucida’, The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity (Macmillan, 1986), pp. 71–92.

    51. Barbara Engh, ‘Loving It: Music and Criticism in Roland Barthes’, in Ruth A. Solie (ed.), Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship (University of California Press, 1993), pp. 66–79.

    52. Corrina A. Tsakiridou, ‘Barthes Explores Photography "as a Wound"’, Paragraph, 1995, 18, 3, 273–85.

    53. Colin MacCabe, ‘Barthes and Bazin: The Ontology of the Image’, in Jean-Michel Rabaté (ed.), Writing the Image after Roland Barthes (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 71–6.

    54. Victor Burgin, ‘Barthes’s Discretion’, in Jean-Michel Rabaté (ed.), Writing the Image after Roland Barthes (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 19–31.

    55. Nancy M. Shawcross, ‘Mythologies of the Photograph’, Roland Barthes on Photography: The Critical Tradition in Perspective (University Press of Florida, 1997), pp. 25–45.

    56. Roland A. Champagne, ‘Roland Barthes the Pianist: The Mediation of His Music’, Semiotica, 1999, 123, 3–4, 357–66.

    57. Tim Dant and Graeme Gilloch, ‘Pictures of the Past: Benjamin and Barthes on Photography and History’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2002, 5, 1, 5–23.

    58. Howard Caygill, ‘Barthes and the Lesson of Saenredam’, Diacritics, 2002, 32, 1, 38–48.

    59. Katherine Kolb, ‘The Tenor of "Sarrasine"’, PMLA, 2005, 120, 5, 1560–75.

    60. Douglas Smith, ‘Funny Face: Humanism in Post-War French Photography and Philosophy’, French Cultural Studies, 2005, 16, 1, 41–53.

    61. Armine Kotin Mortimer, ‘Listening to Barthes with Millet: A Loving Overture’, Esprit Créateur, 2005, 47, 2, 5–16.

    62. Lucy O’Meara, ‘Atonality and Tonality: Musical Analogies in Roland Barthes’s Lectures at the Collège de France’, Paragraph, 2008, 31, 1, 9–22.

    Volume IV

    Section 5: Queer Barthes

    63. D. A. Miller, Bringing Out Roland Barthes (University of California Press, 1992), pp. 3–18.

    64. Robert K. Martin, ‘Roland Barthes: Toward an "écriture gaie"’, in David Bergman (ed.), Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality (University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), pp. 282–98.

    65. Diana Knight, ‘S/Z, Realism, and Compulsory Heterosexuality’, in Margaret Cohen and Christopher Prendergast (eds.), Spectacles of Realism: Body, Gender, Genre (University of Minnesota Press, 1995), pp. 120–36.

    66. Pierre Saint-Amand, ‘The Secretive Body: Roland Barthes’s Gay Erotics’, trans. Charles A. Porter and Noah Guynn, Yale French Studies, 1996, 90, 153–71.

    67. Patrick ffrench, ‘Barthes in Tangiers: Renegotiating Perversity’, Nottingham French Studies, 1997, 36, 1, 53–62.

    68. Murray Pratt, ‘From "Incident" to "Text": Homosexuality and Autobiography in Barthes’s Late Writing’, French Forum, 1997, 22, 2, 217–33.

    69. Philip Stewart, ‘What Barthes Couldn’t Say: On the Curious Occultation of Homoeroticism in S/Z’, Paragraph, 2001, 24, 1, 1–16.

    70. Jarrod Hayes, ‘Barthes’s Campy Fag Love’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 2002, 6, 1, 33–50.

    Section 6: Imagining Others

    71. Scott L. Malcomson, ‘The Pure Land Beyond the Seas: Barthes, Birch and the Uses of Japan’, Screen, 1985, 26, 3–4, 23–33.

    72. Réda Bensmaïa, ‘Oh, a Friend!’, The Barthes Effect: The Essay as Reflective Text, trans. Pat Fedkiew (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 62–89.

    73. D. A. Miller, ‘Japanese Eyes’, Bringing Out Roland Barthes (University of California Press, 1992), pp. 33–42.

    74. Diana Knight, ‘Barthes and Orientalism’, New Literary History, 1993, 24, 3, 617–33.

    75. Dalia Kandiyoti, ‘Roland Barthes Abroad’, in Jean-Michel Rabaté (ed.), Writing the Image after Roland Barthes (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 228–42.

    76. Marie-Paule Ha, ‘Another Barthes’, Figuring the East: Segalen, Malraux, Duras, and Barthes (State University of New York Press, 2000), pp. 95–117.

    77. Elisabeth Birk, ‘"L’Orient m’est indifférent": Roland Barthes’ Japan’, in Jane Conroy (ed.), Cross-Cultural Travel: Papers from the Royal Irish Academy Symposium on Literature and Travel (Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 407–16.

    Section 7: The Late Roland Barthes

    78. Michel Foucault, ‘Roland Barthes (12 November 1915–26 March 1980)’, in Diana Knight (ed.), Critical Essays on Roland Barthes (G. K. Hall, 2000), pp. 121–2.

    79. Jacques Derrida, ‘The Deaths of Roland Barthes’, in Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (eds.), The Work of Mourning (University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 34–67.

    80. John Sturrock, ‘Roland Barthes in Retrospect’, French Studies, 1981, 35, 3, 302–7.

    81. Tzvetan Todorov, ‘The Last Barthes’, Critical Inquiry, 1981, 7, 3, 449–54.

    82. Paul Smith, ‘We Always Fail: Barthes’ Last Writings’, SubStance, 1982, 36, 34–40.

    83. Lawrence D.Kritzman, ‘Barthesian Free Play’, Yale French Studies, 1984, 66, 189–220.

    84. Alec McHoul and David Wills, ‘The LATE(r) Barthes: Constituting Fragmenting Subjects’, Boundary, 1985–6, 2, 14, 1–2, 261–78.

    85. Michael Holland, ‘Barthes, Orpheus …’, Paragraph, 1988, 11, 2, 143–74.

    86. Michael Moriarty, ‘Affirming the Imaginary’, Roland Barthes (Polity, 1991), pp. 169–85.

    87. Raymond Bellour, ‘"… rait": Sign of Utopia’, trans. Jeffrey Boyd, Yale Journal of Criticism, 2001, 14, 2, 477–84.

    88. Pierre Saint-Armand, ‘Barthes’ Laziness’, trans. Jennifer Curtis Gage, Yale Journal of Criticism, 2001, 14, 2, 519–26.

    89. Jonathan Culler, ‘Preparing the Novel: Spiralling Back’, Paragraph, 2008, 31, 1, 109–20.

    Biography

    Neil Badmington is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Criticism and English Literature at Cardiff University. He is the author of Alien Chic: Posthumanism and the Other Within (Routledge, 2004) and editor of four volumes: Posthumanism (Palgrave, 2000), Posthuman Conditions (a special double issue of Subject Matters, 2007), Derridanimals (a special issue of The Oxford Literary Review, in press), and (with Julia Thomas) The Routledge Critical and Cultural Theory Reader (Routledge, 2008)