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. Barthes exploits his perception of the ‘uncertainty’ of the essay form in order to propose a digressive and pan-generic organisation of his material. The only sense of certainty comes from his refusal of dogmatic, ‘certain’ ideological discourses. Thus Barthes's teaching unfurls, as he said that the text of La Chambre claire did, from ‘la seule chose sûre qui fût en moi (si naïve fût-elle): la résistance éperdue à tout système réducteur’ (CC, 794).

The fundamental preoccupation that links each of Barthes's four lecture courses at the Collège de France to each other and to Barthes's concurrent published work is the concern with fragmentation and divagatory exposition.