Roland Barthes at the Collège de France Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures 22 Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures Series Editors EDMUND SMYTH CHARLES FORSDICK Manchester Metropolitan University University of Liverpool Editorial Board JACQUELINE DUTTON LYNN A. HIGGINS MIREILLE ROSELLO University of Melbourne Dartmouth College University of Amsterdam MICHAEL SHERINGHAM DAVID WALKER University of Oxford University of Sheffield This series aims to provide a forum for new research on modern and contem- porary French and francophone cultures and writing. The books published in Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures reflect a wide variety of critical practices and theoretical approaches, in harmony with the intellectual, cultural and social developments which have taken place over the past few decades. All manifestations of contemporary French and francophone culture and expression are considered, including literature, cinema, popular culture, theory. The volumes in the series will participate in the wider debate on key aspects of contemporary culture. Recent titles in the series: 6 Jane Hiddleston, Assia Djebar: Out 14 Andy Stafford, Photo-texts: of Africa Contemporary French Writing of 7 Martin Munro, Exile and Post- the Photographic Image 1946 Haitian Literature: Alexis, 15 Kaiama L. Glover, Haiti Unbound: Depestre, Ollivier, Laferrière, A Spiralist Challenge to the Danticat Postcolonial Canon 8 Maeve McCusker, Patrick 16 David Scott, Poetics of the Poster: Chamoiseau: Recovering Memory The Rhetoric of Image-Text 9 Bill Marshall, The French Atlantic: 17 Mark McKinney, The Colonial Travels in Culture and History Heritage of French Comics 10 Celia Britton, The Sense of 18 Jean Duffy, Thresholds of Meaning: Community in French Caribbean Passage, Ritual and Liminality in Fiction Contemporary French Narrative 11 Aedín Ní Loingsigh, Postcolonial 19 David H. Walker, Consumer Eyes: Intercontinental Travel in Chronicles: Cultures of Francophone African Literature Consumption in Modern French 12 Lawrence R. Schehr, French Post- Literature Modern Masculinities: From 20 Pim Higginson, The Noir Atlantic: Neuromatrices to Seropositivity Chester Himes and the Birth of the 13 Mireille Rosello, The Reparative in Francophone African Crime Novel Narratives: Works of Mourning in 21 Verena Conley, Spatial Ecologies: Progress Urban Sites, State and World-Space in French Cultural Theory LUCY O’MEARA Roland Barthes at the Collège de France LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS First published 2012 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2012 Lucy O’Meara The right of Lucy O’Meara to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available ISBN 978-1-84631-843-6 Typeset by XL Publishing Services Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY Je devrais sans doute m’interroger d’abord sur les raisons qui ont pu incliner le Collège de France à recevoir un sujet incertain, dans lequel chaque attribut est en quelque sorte combattu par son contraire. […] Il me faut bien reconnaître que je n’ai produit que des essais, genre ambigu où l’écriture le dispute à l’analyse. Roland Barthes, inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, 7 January 1977 Contents Acknowledgements viii Note on Abbreviations and References ix Introduction 1 1 Barthes’s Heretical Teaching 27 2 Leçon and ‘Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure…’ 52 3 Comment vivre ensemble, Le Neutre and their Context 87 4 Japonisme and Minimal Existence in the Cours 118 5 La Préparation du roman: The Novel and the Fragment 163 Afterword 200 Appendix: List of Roland Barthes’s Seminars and Lecture 205 Courses at the École pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France, 1963–1980 Bibliography 207 Index 220 vii Acknowledgements I thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Nottingham for their financial support for the original research, and the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences for a research grant in 2009–10. I am extremely grateful to Diana Knight and Patrick O’Donovan for their generosity and for the invaluable advice they provided during the elaboration of this project. Thanks to all of the following people for their help: Anthony Cond of Liverpool University Press, Claude Coste, Jonathan Culler, Katie Jones, Nikolaj Lübecker, Éric Marty, Jutta O’Meara, Michael Sheringham. Finally, particular thanks to Tim Robb for his unfailing encouragement and support. viii Note on Abbreviations and References Throughout the text, references to works by Barthes are given by abbre- viated title and page number. Titles of works have been abbreviated as indicated below. All articles by and interviews with Barthes are referred to as they appear in the 2002 five-volume edition of the Œuvres complètes. References to the Collège de France lecture notes include the date of the relevant lecture as well as a page reference. All references to book-length texts by Barthes are to the individual Seuil editions of these works, with the exceptions of Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux and La Chambre claire, which are referred to as they appear in the Œuvres complètes. Full publication details of all works cited are to be found in the bibliography. In the cases of articles by and interviews with Barthes, full details of the original publi- cation (dates, journals, interviewers) are given in a note following each first reference. C Prétexte Roland Barthes: colloque de Cerisy CC La Chambre claire CVC Carnets du voyage en Chine CVE Comment vivre ensemble DZE Le Degré zéro de l’écriture EC Essais critiques ES L’Empire des signes FDA Fragments d’un discours amoureux L Leçon LA Séminaire: le Lexique de l’auteur ‘Longtemps’ ‘Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure…’ JD Journal de deuil M Michelet My Mythologies N Le Neutre OC, I Œuvres complètes tome I. 1942–1961 OC, II Œuvres complètes tome II. 1962–1967 ix x Roland Barthes at the Collège de France OC, III Œuvres complètes tome III. 1968–1971 OC, IV Œuvres complètes tome IV. 1972–1976 OC, V Œuvres complètes tome V. 1977–1980 PR La Préparation du roman I et II PT Le Plaisir du texte RB Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes SFL Sade, Fourier, Loyola S/Z S/Z Note on the use of the recordings of the lectures Where I have expanded quotations from the lecture notes with trans- criptions from the recordings, this is indicated by the use of pointed brackets < >. Transcriptions are my own and are made from the record- ings of Leçon, Comment vivre ensemble, Le Neutre, and La Préparation du roman. Introduction Il essaye (ou il ne peut s’empêcher) de tenir un discours qui ne s’énonce pas au nom de la Loi et/ou de la Violence; c’est-à-dire qui ne soit ni politique, ni religieux, ni scientifique. Il ne lui reste donc plus que le discours esthétique. Comment pourrions-nous encore appeler ce type de discours? Tout simplement le discours individualiste. Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes (inédits) The shield of the Collège de France shows a book resting on a leafy back- ground, with the legend ‘Docet Omnia’ – ‘Everything is taught’ – framed by stars. It is inlaid in the floor of the Collège’s main entrance on Rue des écoles in Paris. Elsewhere in the building, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phrase describing the institution’s promotion of experimental, unregulated teaching is carved in large gilded letters into the wall: ‘Ce que le Collège de France, depuis sa fondation, est chargé de donner à ses auditeurs, ce ne sont pas des vérités acquises, c’est l’idée d’une recherche libre’. Roland Barthes taught at the Collège de France from 1977 to 1980 as holder of the Chair of Literary Semiology. He imagined having his own motto for his lectures. Not carven, but effaceable, it would be a sign hung beside the bust of Henri Bergson in the lecture theatre where Barthes lectured on Saturday mornings. The sign would feature a quotation from Montaigne’s Essais: ‘Je n’enseigne point. Je raconte’.1 Montaigne was an enthusiastic adopter of mottoes, having Greek and Latin maxims, many of them drawn from Sceptic texts, cut into the rafters of his study: ‘Iudicio alternare’, he reminded himself, and ‘Que sçay-je?’2 The carvings at the Château de Montaigne prioritise inquiry, reflection, and abstention from quick decisions. Barthes is drawn to this intellectual spirit: he reminds his audience in 1978 of the medal that Montaigne had had struck in 1576, which depicted a set of balanced scales, and the Pyrrhonian legend ‘Epokhe’: I hold back.3 Barthes imagines erecting a notice which would demonstrate that he too will abstain from judgment: ‘Comment mettre sur ma demeure ou mon entreprise intellectuelle un écriteau: “Fermeture de jugement pour congé annuel”?’ (N, 254). The imagined mottoes that Barthes wishes to display upon his 1 2 Roland Barthes at the Collège de France teaching at the Collège de France are the ‘signs’ of an intellectual project that is radically self-effacing, at the same time as it makes subjectivity central to the investigation. It is the argument of this book that the Collège de France lectures represent an important addition to Barthes’s corpus which allows us to arrive at a new reading of his thought. This new reading involves opposing those perceptions of Barthes according to which the potency of Barthes’s work diminishes towards the end of his life as it becomes more subjective and aesthetic in focus.