Seniolics, EvologvapIics, and BavlIes's VisuaI Concevns

AulIov|s) Bell B. McOvav

Souvce SuISlance, VoI. 9, No. 1, Issue 26 |1980), pp. 68-75
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Semiotics,
Erotographics,
and
Barthes's Visual Concerns'
BETTY R. McGRAW
Inasmuch as semiotics does not
always
limit itself to the
study
of the
categories
of the
sign
(Sa/Se)
as atomic units of
analysis,
this
essay
will also focus on the condi-
tion of the
sign
i.e.,
the essential
gap
out of which these
categories emerge
to be
monitored
by
the Derridean
concept
of
differance. Thus,
I will examine the
recent texts of Roland Barthes for
they
exhibit both
aspects
of the
sign:
on the
one
hand,
the overevaluation of the
binary sign, functioning
as an
object-fetish
and related to what Barthes has called
plaisir,2
and,
on the
other,
the notion of
jouissance
which decenters the entire narrative structure
(Derrida's
grammato-
logical project), making
visible a
primordial
lack at the center of existence
(the
Lacanian
beance)
which defines the
sign
as
nothing
more than a
legible,
albeit
unavoidable tool. The main
objective
of this
essay,
therefore,
will be to relate
Barthes's notion
ofplaisir andjouissance (developed
in the Pleasure
of
the
Text3)
to
two different
types
of visual
signs.
Consideration will be
given
first to a
metonymized
visual structure
functioning
as
object-fetish
and
already
mentioned
by
Barthes in his
"Diderot,
Brecht and Eisenstein."4 Discussion will
then focus on the second
type
of visual
signs
(i.e.,
jouissance), exemplified
in
Barthes's renewed romance with the letter. This is the Roland Barthes known as
the "letter
man,"
the one who
exposes
the
subject's
otherness
by playing
the
alphabet game, by confessing
to "fautes de
frappe"
(RB,
pp.
100-1,
[English,
96]),
and
by slipping
from S to Z in a
recurring
metathesis. It is the Barthes who
states in
Fragments
d'un discours amoureux that
only
one letter can
separate
truth
from death and who
gives
as an
example
Emeth,
the servant who dies when the E
of Meth is erased
turning
Truth
(Emeth)
into Death
(Meth):
"The truth is
what,
being
taken
away,
leaves
nothing
to be seen but death"
(FDA,
p.
230).5
The issue
that will be raised in the course of this
paper,
therefore,
relates man's visual
apparatus
to a form of
knowledge
which allows him to see and to know
(voir-savoir)
through
the infinite
process
of his
phantasm.6
In the course of the
argument,
it
should become
apparent
that a semiotic
investigation
which focuses on the condi-
tion of existence of visual
signs
is, indeed,
meeting
the
epistemological challenge
incumbent
upon
the semiotic
project.
Sub-Stance N?
26,
1980 68
Barthes's Visual Concerns
With the
writings following I'Empire
des
signes,
Barthes has shown an increased
preoccupation
with
language
used as a
spatial configuration,
a
place
where the
subject
is lured into the
specularity
of an earlier narcissistic bond
("the
double
Image
of the lover and of his other."
[FDA,
p.
99]).7
Central to Barthes's
preoccupation
is Lacan's notion of
beance,
the
original
lack
experienced by
the
child
through
the loss of a
gratifying experience
such as the
separation
of the
child from the mother's womb at birth. It is the notion of beance that informs the
dialectics of desire for the other and its sublimation
through symbolic
forms.
Thus,
in
emphasizing
the visual
aspect
of
language,
the Barthesian text
specifically designates
the
place
of the other as the site of a loss.8 One
thing
is
certain: Barthes's
emphasis
on the visual
aspect
of
language
has resulted in an
elaborate
coding
of a rhetorical
analysis
which
exploits
both the Derridean and
Lacanian view of the
printed
letter. As a material
entity,
irreducible to semantic
or
phonetic
functions,
it is
approached
from the side of the
body
where
language
is traversed
by
drives and libidinous
energy.
As it
surges
forth from the
libido,
this force
disrupts
the
ongoing
narrative and releases the tension needed to
maintain it. Libidinous drives are thus channelled into a
pleasurable
act,
and
fragmentary
discourse is turned into an
object
of
pleasure.
Barthes's text
actually
contain two
objects
of
pleasure
each of which
produces
two different
groups
of visual
signs.
The first
object
is based on the notion of
plaisir.
It relates to the identification of the social
subject
with his culture and is
inscribed in the
integration
of the
Ego
into its
society.
The text of
plaisir
"comes
from culture and does not break with
it,
is linked to a comfortable
practice
of
reading."
(PT,
p.
14)9
Plaisir is the result of the investment of
psychic energy
in a
fetishized
object oftenjust
a
form;
it is a
way
to fill the
absence,
the lack of
Being,
generated by
the
primary repression.
In
Fragments,
Werther's
glance
arrested on
the framed
image
of
Charlotte,
receives "the full fetishistic load and becomes the
sublime substitute of
meaning."'l Similarly,
a
single
utterance
excessively
repeated-"je
t'aime,
je
t'aime"-, and the numerous
holophrases
and tauto-
logies
which are
interspersed throughout
the text should be
interpreted
as acts
producing pleasure
"... .the word can be erotic
(...)
if it is
extravagantly
repeated."
(PT,
p.
42)11
But
plaisir, says
Barthes,
is
"logothete." Repetitions
reside within a
fortified,
closed
system,
and are used to
protect
the
subject's
cultural scheme. As a
result,
the
body
is sacrificed to fetishism.
The second
object
of
pleasure
resides within the undifferentiated
space
of
infinite semiosis where a term is its
simple opposite,
and where self becomes
other,
caught up
in a continuum of self-reflections. Without discrete
representa-
tions to nominate sameness and
difference,
all distinctions
(inside/outside,
subject/object, linguistic reality/phantasm)
are
blurred,
and the criterion for
signification
is of another order than that used when a text submits to the
constraints of
linguistically assignable
or
assigned
terms. For
example,
in
S/Z,
Sarrasine's narcissistic love for La Zambinella has lured him into this
space
of
sameness. He has created her as his own
symmetrical opposite
and,
by loving
her,
it is himself with whom he is in love.
Furthermore,
by loving
a
castrato,
the mirror
image
which is reflected back to him is that of his own castration. Sarrasine's
refusal to view La Zambinella as a real
other;
hence his
disregard
for the
69
Betty
McGraw
difference between himself and La Zambinella
("the
distance between himself
and La Zambinella has ceased to exist"
[S/Z, p. 239])12
is what
eventually
leads to
his destruction.
Jouissance, therefore,
is not
designated by
discourse and does not relate to
cultural
identity.
Instead,
it is
grounded
in the
figural space
of the
text,
in the
plasticity
of
writing,
and is
produced by
an
energetic
force which liberates the
organic being,
the seminal
fluid,
and leaves the
subject
with a sense of loss. The
text
ofjouissance
is "one that
imposes
a state of
loss,
the text that discomforts
(...),
unsettles the reader's
historical, cultural,
psychological assumptions,
the
consistency
of his
tastes, values, memories,
brings
to a crisis his relation with
language."
(PT,
p.
14)
13 Another
way
to
put
it would be to
say
that
whileplaisir
is
slave to the
subject's ego,jouissance,
on the other
hand,
is a
pure
manifestation of
the id.
While the text of
plaisir "obsessively repeat[s]
the
letter,"
that
ofjouissance
"hysterically
affirm[s]
the void."
(PT, p. 22)14
Literary
criticism,
says
Barthes,
"always
deals with the texts of
plaisir,
never the texts
ofjouissance."
(PT,
p.
21)
5
But what characterizes the
subject
of Barthes's
discourse, however,
is that he is
astride the two notions of
pleasure:
"he
enjoys
the consistence of his selfhood
(that
is his
[plaisir])
and seeks its loss
(that
is his
[jouissance]).
He is a
subject split
twice
over,
doubly perverse."
(PT,
p.
15)16
Barthes's
texts, therefore,
thematize
the chiasmic
relationship
between
plaisir andjouissance.
Just
as
psychoanalysis
has
exposed
the erotic
body
of
man,
Barthes is
exposing
the erotic
body
of the
text,
and the value that he has ascribed to the
notion of
plaisir andjouissance
in his recent
writing
calls for an
expansion
of the
concept
of the text and the
implementation
of a new aesthetics. The two notions
of
pleasure
are used as critical tools to
keep
the entire text from
being
overcome
by
norms and taxonomies. As an antidote to our illusion of
objectivity,
Barthes
has created a text which allows him to return to the
question
of bodies for "we
have several of them
[bodies];
the
body
of anatomists and
physiologists,
the one
science sees or discusses: this is the text of
grammarians,
critics, commentators,
philologists
(the
phenotext).
But we also have a
body
of
[jouissance] consisting
solely
of erotic
relation,
utterly
distinct from the first
body:
it is another
contour,
another nomination."
(PT,
p.
16)17
With this
significant gesture,
Barthes is
giving
the text a "human
form";
it is a
"figure,"
an
"anagram
of the
body";
at once
the
Ca (id)
and the Sa
(the
signifier)
of our erotic
body,
irreducible to the
logic
of
traditional criticism.
The
play
on the words
Ca
and Sa
(the
"ca du
corps") engenders
a
multiplicity
of
figures, polyvalent inscriptions
on the
body.
Instead of
following
the inherited
Cartesian method which consists in
ascribing
truth and
being
to a conscious
subject,
Barthes ascribes the "truth" of
being
to a
subjct
whose
phantasm
allows
him to see and to know
(voir-savoir)
through
the infinite
rearrangement
of its
signifiers.18
Once the visual
apparatus
is set into
place,
the
body metaphor
becomes an
exploration
of the libidinal constitution of
sight
and vision and the
entire discourse
tips
into a reflexion on the effects of
psychic energy
on the
graphic aspect
of
language,
on how it follows the contours of its
metaphors,
altering
its
forms,
with
gaps
and
parentheses,
and
giving
discourse a different
70
Barthes's Visual Concerns
value: the
subject
then "cuts himself off from the
world,
he unrealizes it
(....);
he
surrenders himself to the
Image,
in relation to which all
'reality'
disturbs him."
(FDA,
p.
90)19
It has been
suggested
that Barthes's
heightened sensitivity
to the
graphic
and
figurative potential
of
writing
has
literally
driven him to turn the
reading space
of his
language
into a visual one: "I have a disease: I see
language
(..
.)
I feel
myselfa visionary
and a
voyeur
of
language"
(RB,
p.
164,
trans.
mine).
2
Usingan
abundant
image-repertoire,
Barthes
manages
to
pass
off
fragments
of his
discourse as visual
signs:
"One
goes
from a
linguistic space
which is the
space
of
reading
i.e.,
of
listening
and of
understanding,
to a visual
space,
that of
painting,
of
seeing.
The
eye
no
longer apprehends aurally;
it desires
through
the act of
looking."21
In
relating
the notions of
plaisir
and
jouissance
discussed above to
Barthes's visual
concerns,
one should therefore
keep
in mind
Laplanche's
state-
ment that "the visual
apparatus
is the site of a conflict between two functions: a
function of
self-preservation
and a function of sexual excitation."22 Barthes's
texts can thus be
approached
with an
optic pencil, making possible
detours and
visual
expansion.
The
forty-some pages
of annotated
photographs prefacing
the
RolandBarthesparRolandBarthes
and the Girodet tableau of
Endymion
which
graces
S/Z
suggest
that the text no
longer belongs
to a readable
space
but to one
that is seen and
experienced by
a
subject
as he takes his
pleasure.
When,
in
Fragments,
Barthes
speaks
about Goethe's
young
Werther
falling
in love with that
part
of
Charlotte that is "framed
by
the door of her
house," (FDA,
p.
192)
23 he
describes,
in a marvelous
way,
how the
image
of Charlotte
(is
it her silhouette? her form? the
air she
assumes?)
responds
to the lover's
pleasure:
"this loved
body"
("ce
morceau de
corps")
with which Werther falls in love has the vocation of a fetish
and its
pleasurable
vision is
compulsively repeated
in the absence of the desired
object.
"The first
thing
we love is a scene."
(FDA, p. 192)24
Could this be the
primal
scene,
the one that initiates
desire,
"a
way
of
taking pleasure
without the risk of
having
children"
(FDA,
p.
205)?25
Is this
how,
on the cover
ofFragments,
the cut-
up
scene,
"Tobias and the
Angel,"
functions?
Undoubtedly,
it is a visual
metaphor
of the text of
plaisir.
Both the
framing
and the
fragmentation
of the
scene relate to the Lacanian mirror
stage
in which the aesthetic
organization
is
often
designated
as
play:
scenes,
episodes,
are so
many perfect
moments of
continuous
jubilation
which are not
integTated
into a
"superior" organic
level.
Plaisir, then,
"would be matched with the
divided-up
text,
the
singling
out of
quotations,
formulae,
turns of
phrase,
with the
pleasure
of the word."
(PT,
p.
63)26
Inasmuch as we are
workingwith
a visible
text,
Barthes makes it
possible
for
us to
pass
from
linguistic reality
to
phantasm
and from discourse to its otherness.
If
language
can
project
the other
away
from the
self, nevertheless,
it cannot
destroy
it. The lesson Mallarme has
already taught
us in Un
coup
de des and
Igitur,
is that the otherness of
language
exists in its
spatial configuration
and that it is not
one of
meaning
but one of
visibility.
Here,
the
signs
of
writing,
unlike the
spoken
word,
offer a visible trace of the other's
presence,
the beloved
object
that remains
71
Betty
McGraw
silent.27 But "if the 'other' does not
speak
(.. .)
he inscribes
somethingwithin
each
of those who desire him."
(FDA,
p.
79)28
That
"something"
that Barthes is
talking
about is inscribed on the
body
of the text in letters and words which double and
wink at one another. The
body
is
positioned
astride two
boundaries,
plaisir
and
jouissance.
To
pass
from one to the
other,
one must cross over the castrative
bar,
the bar
which,
in
S/Z,
separates
the
sinuous,
soft curves of the S from the
angular,
razor-sharp
lines of the Z. In the transition from
plaisir
tojouissance,
Barthes has
substituted for the
extravagance
of
repetition
the
euphoria
of
alphabetical
writing.
Sarrasine,
La
Zambinella,
and even Roland Barthes have become
acronyms
and the names of the authors Barthes
quotes
in
Fragments
are referred
to
by
their initials
only.
The
broken-up
visible
"alphabetisme" (alphabetical
writing)
has violated the
plenitude
of
language
and has
exposed
the
metaphoric
bond between letter and
body:
"the
alphabet
must be broken
up
to the
advantage
of
superior
rule: that of a breach
(heterology):
to
keep
a
meaning from'taking'."
(RB,
p.
148)29
The
alphabetical
mode of
writing inaugurates
a
configuration
in which
gaps,
empty
forms,
and silences are made visible. In the text
ofjouissance,
the
emphasis
is no
longer
on the semantized terms of the
system
but on the "form" of the void
which exists between them.30 As a
system
of
representation, language
cannot
speak
aboutjouissance;
it cannot even
designate
it, forjouissance
surges
forth from
the
typographical
blanks of
alphabetism
which are the visible exterior of the
letter of insistence. A
text,
says
Barthes,
can never
speak aboutjouissance,
for it is
"unspeakable,
inter-dicted.
(..
.)
(What
one must bear in
mind,
is that
[jouissance]
is forbidden to the
speaker,
as
such,
or else that it cannot be
spoken except
between
the
lines.") (PT,
p.
21
my emphasis)31
The "form"
ofjouissance
(it has to be a "form" since it is neither a
phonetic
nor
a semantic
part
of
language),
which is inscribed in the
spatial configuration
of
language,
is that of a
figure.
And while
images
and
figures
share the same matrix
of
signification,
the same
configuration,
the
passage
from one to the other is
easily explained:
a
figure
is the
loss,
the exterior
space
of the
signifier
which
exceeds the
recognizable
form of the
image
(RB:
"la
figure
excede le
corps").
Figures, says
Barthes,
are
necessary
tojouissance:
"figuration
[is]
the
way
in which
our erotic
body appears
(to
whatever
degree
and in whatever form that
may
be)
in the
profile
of the text."
(PT,
pp.
55-56)32
The
ever-changing relationship
of
image
to
figure,
of
plaisir
tojouissance,
creates a deferment mechanism which is
grounded
in an erotic substratum of
desire for the absent other. Barthes's increased addiction to
alphabetical writing
is in direct
proportion
to his desire to
expose
the otherness of discourse as a force
which
ruptures
the
authority
of
language.
This force is the other's desire and is
situated in a
delaying pause
which allows the
subject
to
manipulate
absence
stretching
it out as
long
as he
can,
so as to retard the moment when the other will
inevitably topple
from absence into death.
It is on the side of the
letter, therefore,
that the otherness of discourse
surges
forth,
and the
metaphoric
bond that Barthes has established between letter and
body
is
already apparent
in his
preface
to the
alphabet
of fashion
designer
Erte.33
72
Barthes's Visual Concerns
Overturning
the Saussurian binarism
(acoustic
image/concept)
with a
sign
which
depends
almost
exclusively
on its
graphic qualities,
Barthes doe not use letters to
compose
words
(".
. .who could feel like
writing
a word with Erte's
alphabet")
but
to show the
autonomy
of an
alphabetism independent
of
phoneticism.34
Barthes's infatuation with
alphabetical writing
stems from a
long-standing
human obsession which consists in
illustrating
letters of the
alphabet
with human
figures.
Sometimes,
a combination of human and animal
figures,
known as
mythological
chimera,
are
used;
at other times the human
figures
assume erotic
positions,
further
indicating
that the
place
of
jouissance
in the text is situated
within the
bodily
dimension of the letter. The
problematic
nature of the insistent
letter has led to a recent influx of intertextual
writings, many
of which have
ingeniously
revealed Barthes's own letter code.35
Leaving
these
aside,
the
reconstruction of
jouissance
in the Barthesian text would not
adequately
be
carried out if it did not extend to S/Z.
S/Z is a
specular
narrative in which the Z
ofjouissance,
not the S of
plaisir
stubbornly
insists,
turning
the
algorithm
into an
elegant graphic
emblem of
discourse and its otherness.
Z,
the evil
letter,
the
sign
of
death,
morbid and
cutting
stands as the inverted mirror
image,
the otherness of the curvaceous S.
S/Z is
Sarrasine,
separated
from La Zambinella
by
the bar of
castration,
that
specular
surface which reflects a difference
(S
vs.
Z)
so
itemized,
so
imperceptible,
as to make that difference akin to
similarity.
And,
unaware of Lacan's
schematics,
Sarrasine mistakes the absolute Autre for the undifferentiated autre. Thus
failing
to see the
difference,
Sarrasine's narcissistic love for La Zambinella culminates in
his destruction:
having
lifted the castrative
bar,
he has
toppled
into
death,
into
obscenity.
What Sarrasine mistook for
similarity
however contained a difference-an
otherness-that
language
can never
destroy.
The insistent
letter,
the "excessive
marks" is
permanently
inscribed in our discoure.
Thus,
in
turning
his text into
alphabetical writing,
Barthes
perpetuates
the crucial
practice
of Derridean
deconstructivism.
Furthermore,
his
gesture
is not
merely marginal-an
unavoidable
consequence
of his
emphasis
on the
fragmentary-,
for letters
which make
up
the visible text are
comparable
to a "textile whose knots would not
say anything
but for the holes that it holds."36
In
spelling
SarraSine with an S instead of a Z
Balzac,
contrary
to the rules of
French
onomastics,
may
have
temporarily
succeeded in
hiding
the bad
letter,
the
letter of deviance. It is
interesting
to note that whereas Balzac avoids
using
the
term "castration" as
something
which cannot be
named,
Barthes's text
every-
where
proclaims
it as the essence of a
problem
which leaves the
question
of
sexuality open. By
the same
token,
if Girodet's
painting portrays
an
Endymion
which embodies "chaste love andi flaccied
penis,"37
the text reminds us that the
portrait
was done after
Vien,
itself after a
copy
of Sarrasine's statue of that
obscene
object
of desire.
While,
we
may
not
wish,
publicly,
to cross over "the slash
of
censure,
the surface of the
mirror,
the
verge
of
antithesis,
the abstraction of
limit,
the
obliquity
of the
signifier,
the index of the
paradigm,
hence of
meaning,"
(S/Z,
p.
107)38 nevertheless,
as
critics,
we would be wise to remember
73
Betty
McGraw
that,
just
as the
dynamics
of insistence of
Z
awaits
Sarrasine, the otherness of
discourse
(the
"excessive
mark,"
the insistent
letter)
forever weaves its
way
into the
very
texture of our
language.
Kansas State
University
NOTES
1. The first
component
of
"erotographics,"
a word which I have made
up,
is
easy
to
recognize.
As
to its second
component,
it is derived from
graphein
to mean both
something
written, carved,
and the
instrument which transmits the
writing
or makes the
carving.
2. I have decided to retain the
original
French
termsofplaisirandjouissancethroughoutthis essay.
This is
mostly
because
jouissance,
unlike
plaisir,
is almost
impossible
to translated into an
English
equivalent.
3.
Acronyms
will make it
possible
to avoid a
proliferation
of entire titles:
Fragments
d'un discours
amoureux
(Paris:
Le
Seuil, 1977)
(English
translation
by
Richard Howard
[New
York: Hill and
Wang,
1978])
will hereafter be noted as
FDA;
Roland Barthes
par
Roland Barthes
(Paris:
Le
Seuil, 1975)
(English
translation
by
Richard Howard
[New York: Hill and
Wang, 19771),
hereafter
RB;
Leiplaisir
du texte
(Paris:
Le
Seuil, 1973)
(English
translation
by
Richard Miller
[New
York: Hill and
Wang,
1975]),
hereafter
PT;
and
S/Z (Paris:
Le
Seuil, 1973)
(English
translation
by
Richard Miller [New
York: Hill and
Wang, 1974]).
All
English quotes
will be from the available
English
sources,
unless
otherwise noted. French
quotes
will be
provided
in the footnotes.
4. In
Image
-
Music
-
Text,
trans.
Stephen
Heath
(New
York: Hill and
Wang, 1977),
p.
72.
5. "La
verite,
ce serait ce
qui,
etant
6te,
ne laisserait
plus a
decouvert
que
la mort."
FDA,
p.
272.
6. In
"Menstruum
universale
(literary Dissolution),"
Sub-Stance 21
(1978), Jean-Luc Nancy aptly
remarks that there is a kind of
knowledge
associated with
images
and
perception
(savoir-voir).
"In
retracing
its
etymological path,
we come
upon
the whole
primitive family
of
savoir,
to
know,
in the
sense of
voir,
to see: the Sandskrit
Veda,
the Greek eidos
(the
Platonic
Idea),
the Latin-Cartesian
evidentia . . ."
p. 24.
7.
("la
double
Image
de
l'amoureux
et de son
autre.") FDA,
p.
115
8.
It
is
interesting
to note
thatJulia
Kristeva's
theory
of
significance
is also
designated
as the site of
loss and folds into Lacan's
theory
of desire. See
Semiotike:
Recherches
pour
une
semanalyse (Paris:
Seuil,
1969),
p.
284.
9. "le texte de
plaisir
est celui
qui
vient de la
culture,
ne
rompt pas
avec
elle,
est lie a une
pratique
comfortable de la lecture."
PT,
p.
25
10.
Image
-
Music
-
Text,
op.
cit.,
p.
72.
11.
".
.. le mot
peut
etre
erotique (..
.)
s'il est
repete
a outrance."
PT,
p.
68
12. "Bien
mieux,
il n'existait
pas
de distance entre lui et la Zambinella."
S/Z,
p.
244
13. "celui
qui
met en etat de
perte,
celui
qui deconforte (.
.
.)
fait vaciller les assises
historiques,
culturelles,
psychologiques
du
lecteur,
la consistance de ses
gofits,
de ses valeurs et de ses
souvenirs,
met en crise son
rapport
au
langage."
PT,
pp.
25-6
14.
"repete
obsessionnellement la lettre
(.
.
.)
affirme
hysteriquement
le vide."
PT,
p.
38
15.
"porte toujours
sur des textes de
plaisir,jamais
sur des textes
dejouissance."
PT,
p.
37
16.
"iljouit
de la consistance de son moi
(c'est
le
plaisir)
et recherche sa
perte
(c'est
sajouissance).
C'est un
sujet
deux fois
clive,
deux fois
pervers."
PT,
p.
26
17. "nous en
[des
corps]
avons
plusieurs;
le
corps
des anatomistes et des
physiologistes,
celui
que
voit ou
que parle
la science: c'est le texte des
grammairiens,
des
critiques,
des
commentateurs,
des
philologues [c'est
le
pheno-texte]. Mais
nous avons aussi un
corps dejouissance
fait
uniquement
de
relations
erotiques,
sans aucun
rapport
avec le
premier:
c'est un autre
decoupage,
une autre
nomination."
PT, p. 29
74
Barthes's Visual Concerns
18.
Elsewhere,
I have discussed the
significant
contribution the visual
apparatus
can make on the
subject's self-knowledge.
See
my
"A chacun son cinema. .. ,"
forthcoming
in Semiotica.
19. "le
sujet
se
separe
alors du
monde,
il l'irrealise
(..
.),
il se livre a
l'Image, par rapport
a
quoi
tout
'reel' le
derange."
FDA,
pp.
106-7
20.
"j'ai
une maladie:
je
vois le
language
(.. .).Je
me sens visionnaire et
voyeur."
RB,
p.
164
21. "on
passe
de
1'espace linguistique,
celui de la
lecture,
qui
est celui ou l'on
entend,
a
l'espace
vis
ael,
celui de la
peinture
ou l'on
regarde.
L'oeil n'ecoute
plus,
il
desire."Jean-Francois
Lyotard,
Discours,
Figure,
(Paris: Klincksieck, 1974),
p.
267. For additional references to this
quote
see the
chapter,
"Pseudographie
de l'elaboration
secondaire,"
pp.
261-271.
22.
Jean
Laplanche, Life
and Death in
Psycho-analysis,
edited and translated
by Jeffrey
Mehlman
(Baltimore:
The
Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1976),
p.
49.
23. "encadree
par
la
porte
de sa maison."
FDA,
p.
227
24. "Nous aimons d'abord un tableau."
(FDA, p.
227 underlined in the
text)
25. "une maniere de se donner du
plaisir
sans le
risque
de faire des enfants."
FDA,
p.
243
26. "s'accorde au texte
decoupe,
au morcellement des
citations,
des
formules,
des
frappes,
au
plaisir
du mot."
PT,
pp.
99-100
27. "[Le
sujet] toujours present,
ne se constitue
qu'en
face de
[l'autre],
toujours
absent,"
Fragments,
op. cit., p.
19.
28. "si 'l'autre' ne
parle pas
(.
.
.) il inscrit
quelque
chose en chacun de ceux
qui
le desirent."
FDA,
p.
94
29. "II faut casser
l'alphabet
au
profit
d'une
regle superieure:
celle de la
rupture (de l'heterologie):
emp&cher qu'un
sens
'prenne'."
RB,
p.
151
30. Cf.
Lyotard, op.
cit.,
pp.
53-72.
31.
"in-dicible,
interdite.
(.
.
.) (ce
a
quoi
il faut se
tenir,
c'est
que
lajouissance
est interdite a
qui
la
parle,
comme
tel,
ou encore
qu'elle
ne
puisse
etre dite
qu'entre
les
lignes.")
PT,
my emphasis.
32. "la
figuration
[est]
le mode
d'apparition
du texte
erotique
(a
quelque degre
et sous
quelque
mode
que
ce
soit)
dans le
profil
du texte."
PT,
p.
88
33. Roland
Barthes, Erti, (Parma:
Franco Maria
Ricci, 1970). English
translation
by
William
Weaver,
distributed in the United States
by
Rizzoli International Publishers.
34. For further references to this
point,
see Masin's Lettre et
image (Paris: Gallimard, 1973).
35. In
particular,
see Tom
Conley's "Catching
Z's" New York
Literary
Forum,
Vol.
2,
"Inter-
textuality:
new
perspective
in
criticism," (1978)
pp.
113-128;
George
A. Bauer's "Uomo di lettere -
Lhomme Letre
-
B's XYZ
Game,"
op.
cit.,
pp.
139-158;
alsoJane
Gallop's
"BS,"
VisibleLanguage,
Vol.
XI,
No. 4
(Autumn 1977),
pp.
364-387;
Tom
Conley's
"BarthesExcs;
The
SilentApostrophe
ofS/Z,"
op.
cit.,
pp.
355-363;
Steven
Ungar's
"From
Writing
to the Letter: Barthes and
Alphabetese," op.
cit.,
pp.
391-429
(Steve
Ungar
also edited this
special
issue on Roland Barthes in Visible
Language).
36. "une textile ou noeuds ne diraient rien
que
des trous
qui s'y
trouvent."
Jacques
Lacan,
"Radiophonie,"
2/3
(Paris, 1970),
in
Jeffrey
Mehlman,
"The
'floating signifier':
Levi-Strauss to
Lacan,"
Yale French
Studies,
48
(1972),
p.
29;
translated
byJeanine
Parisier Plottel, New York
Literary
Forum,
special
issue on
"Intertextuality:
new
perspectives
in
criticism,"
edited
by
Jeanine
Parisier
Plottel,
Vol. 2
(1978),
p.
110.
37.
Bauer,
op.
cit.,
p.
150.
38. "la barre de la
censure,
la surface
speculaire,
le mur de
l'hallucination,
le tranchant de
l'antithese,
l'abstraction de la
limite,
l'oblicite du
signifiant,
l'index du
paradigme,
donc du sens"
S/Z,
p.
113
75