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PARTISAN REVIEW
socia list dreami ng of secul ar perfecti o n , and the asceti c J es uit represent
contradi cto ry world -v iews. But Barthes ca res onl y for wha t they have in
common : th a t a ll have crea ted di stinct languages and systems of
o rderin g the world. By immersin g himse lf in these idi osyncrati c
visions he achi eves a kind of feti shisti c enj oyment th at owes no thing
to
the actua l contents of their works. Nor would it be worthwhil e, Barth es
arg ues, to a llemp t an y critique of the three autho rs' soc ia l doctrines;
wh y enter a struggle with bourgeo is ideo logy tha t woul d be compro–
m ised from the start-since tha t ideo logy a lready permea tes a ll aspects
of language, incl uding the language of p ro tes t aga inst it? All we can
hope to do, therefore, is to expropria te the cl assic texts of our culture
for o ur persona l pleas ure and " di sgui se them as one does stolen
goods." Indeed , Ba rthes woul d seem to a ttribute a spec ia l va lue to
di sto rtin g th e accepted meaning of a tex t. Where the o rthodox criti c
in vokes some o bj ect ive standard of fid elity to a work , Banh es en–
courages the reader to " kidnap " it, to ta ke pl easure in ass imil a ting it
into hi s pri va te text of fantasy and des ire.
Barth es a lso bel ieves in ta king libert ies with the form of the criti ca l
text itself.
Th e Pleasure of the T ext
is strung together from a series of
meditati o ns whi ch range in length from a pa ragraph to a few pages
and arc set in a lp habeti ca l order accord ing to some key word in each . In
R. o land Barth es
one would expect a shift to ch rono logical narrat ive but
th e same sys tem is used , as if to emphas ize wittil y th e supremacy o f the
I
in gui sti c code over the anecdo tes tha t comprise a
I
ife. Wh o but Barthes
would think of presenting hi s autobi ography in a lpha beti cal order?
The o ther o rganizin g princip le is the rad ical change in the portraya l o f
Barthes' life before and after he becomes a writer. In the first section he
medita tes on images of his mo th er, of hi s famil y, of Bayonne (where he
grew up ); these are the clues to the los t world of hi s youth whi ch he can
no longer know o r even understand. T hen come the rites o f passage
that p recede hi s voca ti on as a writer: hi s long confinement in sanitari–
ums, and his becoming a di scipl e of Andre G ide. But these stages are
g iven onl y the mos t cursory menti on. We must fill in fo r o urselves the
poss ibl e influence of in va lidism on Barthes' deve lo pment , or th at
of Gide's fascin ati on with th e perverse, the stolen , and the counterfeit.
T he las t and longes t part of the book omits a ll the traditi ona l signpos ts
o f au tobiograph y. For Barthes, the writer's life is essenti all y
gratuito us- a free pl ay of thought, no t confined by time o r space but
by language, the medium he inhabits. T here are no more images o f
peopl e or places but onl y of the medium itself: p ictu res of documents,
doodl es, handwritin g sampl es. Language, he argues, sho ul d be the
