BOOKS
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rea lm of p lay, fa ntasy, inventi on-a beli ef displ ayed, no t to say
fl aunted, in th e extraordinary rococo preciousness of his style, thi ckl y
o rn amented with recondite jargon und words ingeni ously coined. In
The Pleasure of the T ext
the enemi es of such an un trammeled
d i course are the two " poli cemen " of French intell ectual life, orthodox
Marx ism and Freudi ani sm. In
R o land Barthes
they are referred to as
Science, Militancy, and
Doxa
(Barthes' term for " the petit-bourgeois
consen sus"). H e def ines " perversion " as a pl eas urabl e evasion of these
three censors. His examp les are homosexuality and has hish , but one
m ight a lso cite the more rarefied pl easures of intell ec tual dislocati ons
and incongruiti es. Thus criti cism emul a tes the pose of the dand y.
(Ri chard Mill er 's transla ti on of
Th e Pleasure of the T ex t
conveys more
o f the peculi ar charm of Barthes' prose than Richard H oward 's
workmanlike but occas iona ll y stiff or imprecise · ·:::rsion of
R oland
Bart hes.
T he latter also omits the ori ginal's useful bibli ography and
tabl e o f contents; and it replaces Barthes' abstract cover with a photo–
g raph of him-thus fa lsel y impl ying th at the book is an iconic portrait
o r revela ti on o f its author. )
In th e Eng lish-s peaking world the emphas is in literary theor y h as
been mov in g away fr om the o bj ective and canoni cal work towards the
immed ia te experi ence of the person reading it. But critics o f thi s
pers uas ion mu st sa ti sfy confli ct in g im pul ses; a t the same time, they
des ire to g ive a compl ete and spo ntaneous account of their responses to
the tex t and
to
reconcil e thi s account with some sys tem capabl e o f
conferri ng o rder and cog('ll CY on their literary experi ence. Mos t com–
monl y, the sys tem has been Freudi an . Ba rthes tri ed to straddl e a simil ar
d il emma in the works of hi s middle peri od, but he reli ed on a
stru ctura li st ra ther than a psychoana lyti c model; his commenta ri es on
lit erary texts-S / Z is an extreme examp le- combined a hi ghl y arbi –
trary cont ent with a ri gorously structured fo rm (thi s made them
pa rti cul arl y repell ent to the typi ca l Anglo-Saxon , a long with man y
simil a r manifestati ons of French structura li sm ). Hi s recent works,
however, stron g ly assert wilfulness and spontaneity a t the expense of
structure, whi ch now appears as the enemy of pl eas ure. Marxi sm is
virtua ll y di scarded, psychoanalys is admitted onl y as a " fiction " that
g ives one li cen se to pl ay o r to dream; when proposed as Law it must be
fl o uted in the name of " the pl eas ure of the text. "
Barth es' criti cism , therefore, is no lon ger an analys is but a perfor–
mance. It justifi es itself by its. lingui sti c inventi ve ness and by the
subtl ety of its litera ry associa ti ons, no t by any " fidelity" to the work o r
by th e interpre ti ve po'wer of an y set moral o r psychological scheme.
