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
3 - Comment vivre ensemble, Le Neutre and their Context
- 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
Ne pas oublier que nous sommes très précisément dans une phase active de déconstruction ‘saine’ de la ‘mission’ de l'intellectuel: cette déconstruction peut prendre la forme d'un retrait, mais aussi d'un brouillage, d'une série d'affirmations décentrées.
Barthes, Le Neutre, 6 May 1978At the end of his inaugural lecture, Barthes states that the time has come for him to teach in a particular way: ‘Vient peut-être maintenant l'âge d'une autre expérience: celle de désapprendre’. The first two lecture series at the Collège de France quite obviously stage this ‘désapprentissage’, forming a sprawling, deliberately unauthoritative constellation of areas of knowledge. Barthes's fantasies of the ideals of the ‘vivre-ensemble’ and the ‘neutre’ are sketched by recourse to a heterogeneous corpus of texts, and the exposition of his own views is intercut throughout by the aleatory method employed, and by exhortations to the listeners to consider everything Barthes is saying as merely a ‘dossier’ that is opened; it is up to them to take each idea further.
The methodology and ideals of Comment vivre ensemble and Le Neutre are very closely linked. In this chapter I shall examine Barthes's treatment and organisation of his material, and discuss how his ‘fantasmes’ can function as a teaching device. The lectures' insistent theme of spatiality will also be examined as it relates to the listeners’ experience of and investment in the topics of the lectures. The ideals of the idiorrythmic community – which in fact is a solitude with benevolent interruptions – and of neutral discourse and behaviour, are examined for what they reveal of Barthes's distaste for intellectual and political discourse in the specific context of the late 1970s in France.
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- Roland Barthes at the Collège de France , pp. 87 - 117Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012