Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Abbreviations and References
- Introduction
- 1 Barthes's Heretical Teaching
- 2 Leçon and ‘Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure…’
- 3 Comment vivre ensemble, Le Neutre and their Context
- 4 Japonisme and Minimal Existence in the Cours
- 5 La Préparation du roman: The Novel and the Fragment
- Afterword
- Appendix List of Roland Barthes's Seminars and Lecture Courses at the École pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France, 1963–1980
- Bibliography
- Index
Afterword
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Abbreviations and References
- Introduction
- 1 Barthes's Heretical Teaching
- 2 Leçon and ‘Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure…’
- 3 Comment vivre ensemble, Le Neutre and their Context
- 4 Japonisme and Minimal Existence in the Cours
- 5 La Préparation du roman: The Novel and the Fragment
- Afterword
- Appendix List of Roland Barthes's Seminars and Lecture Courses at the École pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France, 1963–1980
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
At the opening of L'Entretien infini, Maurice Blanchot points out that Nietzsche's fragmentary approach to writing is inconsistent with the requirements of the academy, which demands that research be presented in a continuous and developmental form. ‘Nietzsche […] fut professeur’, writes Blanchot,
[mais] il dut renoncer à l’être et pour diverses raisons, dont l'une est révélatrice: comment sa pensée voyageuse qui s'accomplit par fragments, c'est-à-dire par affirmations séparées et exigeant la séparation, comment Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra auraient-ils pu prendre place dans l'enseignement et s'accorder avec les nécessités de la parole universitaire?
The questions asked here of Nietzsche could equally be asked of Barthes. Nietzsche is an archetypal figure for Barthes in terms of both philosophy and poetics, because of his perspectivist approach to knowledge and his anti-systematic employment of the fragment. But unlike Nietzsche, Barthes ultimately enters into a successful negotiation with the academy. Barthes's ‘pensée voyageuse’ managed to furnish a fruitful pedagogy without abandoning the ‘exigence fragmentaire’ which for Barthes is not only a formal but also an ethical issue.
Barthes's lecturing style is inflected by the ethos of the Collège de France, an institution which favours the teaching of ‘la science en voie de se faire’. The process-based approach to knowledge implied by such an ethos is used by Barthes as the basis for his own non-teleological teaching. Added to this is Barthes's self-definition, in his inaugural lecture, as an essayist. Many of the essay's attributes are embodied in Barthes's lectures: scepticism, an opposition to systems whether rhetorical or ideological, and a conviction that the act of criticism cannot take place without self-criticism.
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- Roland Barthes at the Collège de France , pp. 200 - 204Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012