Showing papers by "Roland Barthes published in 1982"

A Barthes Reader

Abstract: 'To read through A Barthes Reader is finally to be left with the image of Barthes as one of the great public teachers of our time' New Republic Edited by Susan Sontag, A Roland Barthes Reader offers a definitive selection of works by the French intellectual Roland Barthes, including seminal essays, such as 'Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives' as well as his more unusual works, such as 'The World of Wrestling'. 'At last, with A Barthes Reader, we have a sort of Michelin guide to one of the most beguiling minds of our era. Smartly introduced by Susan Sontag, the Reader samples Barthes' achievement over three decades' Newsweek

Empire of Signs

Abstract: Now it happens that in this country (Japan),' wrote Barthes, 'the empire of signifiers is so immense, so in excess of speech, that the exchange of signs remains of a fascinating richness mobility and subtlety.' It is not the voice that communicates, but the whole body - eyes, smiles, hair, gestures. The body is savoured, received and displays its own narrative, its own text. Barthes discusses bowing, the courtesy in which two bodies inscribe but do not prostrate themselves, and why in the West politeness is regarded with suspicion - why informal relations are though more desired than coded ones. He described the progressive Japanese spectacle and the demeanor worth regard to food: the essentially visual denotation of the coloured state of raw flesh or vegetable of Sukiyaki or tempura. The cook's purpose is 'to make us witness to the extreme purity of his cuisine; it is because his activity is literally graphic.' He explains the relation between ideographic writing and painting; the theatrical traditions of No, Kabuki and Bunraku; the pure designation (which abolishes finality) of the Zen literary expression, the haiku; the organization of space in the ideal Japanese house, in which propriety or ownership is never delineated - walls slide, partitions are fragile - and there is nothing to grasp. 'What will be in question,' wrote Barthes of this seminal, previously untranslated work, 'will be the city, the shop, the theatre; manners, gardens, violence; faces, eyes and the brushes with which it is all written but not painted.' Translated from the French by Richard Howard.