Understanding Barthes

For the project of “starring” the text, I pick no other but the first four sentences of “Evaluation”, the introductory part of Barthes' S/Z. “Evaluation” outlines the difference between the texts that are "consumed" (readerly texts) and the texts that are rewritten while being read ("writerly texts"). It also criticizes literary analyses that tend to “consume” literature, rather than "recreate" it through reading it. It also provides a model according to which “writerly” texts should be approached (and recreated). As readers, we must not fall into the trap of comfort and attempt to “consume” Barthes' theory. As he explains, we must attempt to “recreate” his text while reading it. Precisely because I find it very easy to simply “consume” Barthes' text, I will attempt to “star” or decompose it. In other words, I will try to treat it as a “writerly” text. Even though Barthes initially condemns the way in which literary analysts create models for analyzing literary works, he still suggests the way in which we could “restore” the text to language and open it to new interpretations - he provides five codes for "rewriting" texts. However, in the final paragraph of his essay From Work to Text Barthes argues that even the discourse about the text has to be writerly and that even there we have to “recreate” the discourse. That is why the five codes that Barthes provides in S/Z, in my opinion, should be taken only as a suggestion of a how a work can be "written" while being read. Barthes offers five codes, but those five codes do not have to be exhaustive. They can also be a suggestion for how other codes can be created. In this commentary, I will be using two codes – cultural and theoretical. Cultural code is here the same cultural code that Barthes uses in S/Z - it is the code that recognizes references to our common cultural inheritance. Theoretical code is the one that traces references to other literary theories. The purpose of the two codes is to help me decipher the way in which Barthes' argument is structured and how Barthes succeeds to make it convincing. I choose the first four sentences because they provide an introductory unit that outlines Barthes' motives for writing S/Z and an outline of how he is going to treat the text.

There are said to be certain Buddhists whose ascetic practices enable them to see a whole landscape in a bean.

The opening sentence of “Evaluation” is a good example of how Barthes uses cultural code. As the first link suggests, ascetic practices are in our perception strongly associated to the notion of abstinence and lack of things essential in an average human life. The word “ascetic”, therefore, is likely to connect with the words such as “lack” or “missing”. Because of that, whatever Barthes compares to these practices later is likely to be associated with the same notion of “lack”. Moreover, Barthes juxtaposes a landscape to a bean. It is significant that he uses the word “whole” as opposed to single indefinite article “a”. In this way he enforces the binary opposition of the big landscape and a small bean. Visualization of these two terms makes any sort of connection between them seem almost absurd. Again, this is a way of foreshadowing the absurdity of the practice that will be presented as analogous to ascetic Buddhistic practices. Cultural code in this sentence enables us to form a standing position with regard to the topic Barthes is about to discuss. He does not need to express his disagreement directly and we do not have to know explicitly his attitudes. Cultural code prepares us to share his viewpoint.

Precisely what the first analysts of narrative were attempting: to see all the world's stories (and there have been ever so many) within a single structure: we shall, they thought, extract from each tale its model, then out of these models we shall make a great narrative structure, which we shall reapply (for verification) to any one narrative: a task as exhausting (ninety-nine percent perspiration as the saying goes) as it is ultimately undesirable, for the text ultimately loses its difference.

In this sentence, Barthes reveals what is the other element of comparison started in the first sentence. He even strengthens this comparison by using the word “precisely”. Now, all the associations we formed in relation to the ascetic, the landscape and the bean are transferred to the other part of comparison – literary analysts and their practices. Barthes compares their attempts to provide a single model of narrative structure to the attempts to see the whole landscape in a bean. The notion of absurdity of the attempt of literary analysts is foreshadowed through the comparison. Barthes even reenforces it by adding that “there have ever been so many” world's stories. He contrasts all the world's stories to a single structure, foreshadowing again his attitude that attempts to unify them are pointless. "We shall, they thought..." - a direct juxtaposition of future and past tense suggests that the attempts of the first analysts of narrative were never utilized. Until now, it was solely the cultural code that indirectly introduced Barthes' viewpoint. Similarly to the fact that seeing landscape in a bean means huge reduction of the landscape, attempting to provide a single narrative structure for the whole world literature means immense reduction of the world literature.

Barthes uses the word “model” to describe the single structure literary analysts attempted to provide. He also uses it in a strange context – he claims the model was supposed to be “extracted”. Now, this is the first instance in which the theoretical code is used. “Model” is perhaps one of the most significant and one of the oldest key terms in literary criticism. It was first used by Plato to explain that things we know are representations of divine ideas. Those ideas are models, they are unique and unavailable to us. Hence, when Barthes explains that literary analysts would “extract the model” from (presumably) all the representations, we can see that it is not the way it is supposed to work. “Model” that is extracted from the representation is not a model, because the model comes before the representation. Hence, the model cannot be extracted and the theoretical code here explains to the informed reader the pointlessness of trying to construct a model (“a great narrative structure”) by merely unifying examples.

It is only after this that Barthes directly expresses his disagreement with the notion of creating “a great narrative structure”. However, the reader is not particularly surprised by his viewpoint because she was prepared for it by the codes that were used previously.

Barthes continues to explain that providing a model of single narrative structure would have as a consequence the text ultimately losing its "difference". This is the next place where Barthes uses theoretical codes. Firstly, he refers to “the text”. This might not seem relevant at first, but, similarly to the way he establishes the binary opposition of writerly and readerly texts in S/Z, he establishes the same type of binary opposition between the Text and the work in his essay From Work to Text. Even though in this case the word “text” is not capitalized, it still suggests the way Barthes wants a piece of literature to be perceived. The use of the word “text” instead of “work” suggests possibility of rewriting, of recreation. Theoretical code here enables us to notice self-reference that, by directing us to other work of the same author, helps us understand the given text better.

Moreover, the term “difference” is also a theoretical code. Starting from Paul de Man and his Semiology and Rhetoric, the term “difference” suggests the two ways of interpreting a text. The first is grammatical, denotative, and the second one is rhetorical, the one that liberates the text and enables it to embody multiple meanings. Therefore, when Barthes writes that the text would lose its “difference”, the rhetorical code implies that it would be the connotative that would be lost and the text would be enclosed in its denotative meaning and reduction to denotative meaning is what Barthes ultimately means when he writes about "consumption" of the text.

Jacques Derrida uses the example of the French verb différer that has two meanings at the same time – to differ (which implies comparison) and to defer (to postpone). Writing has both of these characteristics – to imply different meanings and to defer some or others. For Derrida, meaning is always postponed because it always depends upon the context and we can never reach the core or one absolute meaning. Theoretical code here suggests that when Barthes writes that the text would lose its difference, we might associate it to Derrida and the verb différer. The awareness of the meaning as dependent on the context would be lost if we perceived context as one and absolute and that would again mean that the text would be left enclosed only in one denotative meaning and would simply be "consumed". Hence, both theoretical codes imply that we have to observe terms outside of their direct context because that is the only way to open new associations and meanings.

This difference is not, obviously, some complete, irreducible quality (according to a mythic view of literary creation), it is not what designates the individuality of each text, what names, signs, finishes off each work with a flourish; on the contrary, it is a difference which does not stop and which is articulated upon the infinity of texts, of languages, of systems: a difference of which each text is the return.

At first, this sentence probably sounds confusing. How can difference not be an irreducible quality of the text if it is always there and cannot be contained in any other category? Moreover, how can it be that difference does not designate the individuality of the text? If we assumed that difference is a necessary quality of the text, that would already mean that we are limiting the text, that we are assigning it some characteristics that it must always possess. Every text returns (is restored) to difference and difference can be only perceived through the “infinity of all texts”. That means that "difference" is not a specific quality, but rather a notion developed through all texts. To make us understand this, Barthes again uses cultural code. He mentions “a mythic view of literary creation” as a reference to the Biblical myth of creation. Barthes uses this code to suggest that there is nothing like supreme authority when it comes to text. We can all give life to it equally, so it is not even the notion of “difference” that gives life to the text. “Difference” itself is produced by text.

The whole sentence in general contrasts the idea of “finishing off” (“naming”, “signing”) to the idea of infinity (impossibility to finish off). All the three former terms assume the existence of some sort of authority, while the later does not. In The Death of the Author Barthes argues that there is no one who can have authority over the text. As soon as it is produced, text loses its author – he becomes irrelevant for the life of the text. What Barthes does not want is the “difference” to become the new authority. That is why he uses terms that imply authority and explains that they are not characteristic of “difference”. Theoretical code here suggests us the reference to The Death of The Author. In this case, the code serves to help us understand the concept of "difference" and prevents us from mistakingly perceiving that concept as the new "authority". “Difference” emerges from “infinity” of texts and it does not precede them. That is why it can never have authority over the texts.

A choice must then be made: either to place all texts in a demonstrative oscillation, equalizing them under the scrutiny of an in-different science, forcing them to rejoin, inductively, the Copy from which we will then make them derive; or else to restore each text, not to its individuality, but to its function, making it cohere, even before we talk about it, by the infinite paradigm of difference, subjecting it from the outset to a basic typology, to an evaluation.

It is interesting that Barthes starts the sentence by saying that “a choice must be made”. By that he already decides the “choice” he is giving us. If we are able to choose and decide how to deal with text on our own, then we are able to “explode” the text from within, we are able to open up and reconstruct its meanings. Therefore, even though Barthes formally gives us choice, it is more of a rhetorical then of a real choice. Yet, on one hand, he offers us “demonstrative oscillation” that, as the graph shows, could imply the notion of entrapment in our cultural code. That is because objects that oscillate necessarily come back to the starting point. If we perceive the text as an oscillation, then the analysis of it comes down to discovering already existent "axes of symmetry" with the help of “science”. Such an approach eliminates artistic value of the text because its value is precisely the fact that it cannot be standardized. At this point, Barthes does not mention the model of a single narrative structure, but rather a Copy. What was foreshadowed in the second sentence by subtle reference to Plato is confirmed here. A single narrative structure could never be the model because it is "extracted" from examples of narratives. It could only be a Copy. Theoretical code directs us again to Plato who argues that Copy always lacks the essence the Idea possesses. Hence, a Copy is not something we want to deal with when analyzing literature.

On the other hand, Barthes offers us the other pole of binary opposition and that is the text that would “cohere” “even before we talk about it”. Such an idea is only possible if the “infinite difference” is the only notion that we have about text in general. “Basic typology”, in that case, is not a simplification on Barthes' part, it is an attempt to apply as few rules as possible. Codes are an example of basic typology – even though at the first reading they might seem to be limiting the text, the fact they are few and very general enables us to explore different implications of the text more throughly.

We analyzed some of cultural and theoretical codes in the first four sentences of “Evaluation” of Barthes' S/Z. It is important to note that the codes I use are only one suggestion of how implications of language and its metonymic quality can strengthen the argument of the text, clarify it, or open new meanings. Codes that I analyzed could be interpreted in different ways too. For example, the interpretation of the analogy of the Buddhist ascetics and seeing the landscape in a bean could be totally different. Instead of picking up the word “ascetic”, I could have picked up the word “Buddhist” as a cultural code that often implies wisdom and balance. In a similar fashion, a bean does not have to represent cultural code for simplicity – we can remember the folk tale of Jack and The Beanstalk. In that case, the analogy could imply that literary analysts looking for the perfect model in a bean might actually be right and, similarly to Jack, able to discover something unknown through the process of systematization. However, that is not the way I “write” Barthes' text as I read it. The implications of language I choose to see reflect my current interests in the theory of literature. I often feel the same as Alice in the picture above – I see the comfortable road swept away in front of me and I feel I am given freedom that I am not sure how to use. I also find the words of Cheshire Cat strangely reassuring and appropriate – if I do not know where I am going to in advance, then it does not matter which road I take because every one will take me somewhere.