Do literário como procedimento: buscas de escrita em dois livros de Roland Barthes

Abstract

In this study Roland Barthes is regarded as a writer, that is, someone who does not employ language, but instead ventures in it. From this standpoint I engage on an aesthetic-like reading of A lover’s discourse: fragments, published in 1977, and Camera lucida: note on photography, published in 1980. After Genette (Fiction et diction) and Lopes (A legitimação em literatura), I understand style as that which renders content and form indissociable. I work with (and advance) the hypothesis style that may manifest itself not only in syntactical and lexical arrangements, but also in a writer’s work with the many textual genres at their disposal and the parameters, assumptions and reading conventions associated with formal aspects of each genre. Thus, this study addresses the importance of the following question in Barthes’ intellectual activities: how can one make research, teaching and writing not just about literature, but also literary? From this standpoint, I study the corpus within the network of Barthes’ oeuvre (contemporary papers, posthumously published diaries and course notes), concentrating on recurrent propositions, themes and compositional aspects. I also endeavour to map the values attributed by Barthes to his writing choices, as well as how, where and whether those values are presented to his readers. Therefore, as the corpus calls into question not only its objects (the lover’s discourse, photography) but also the making of the books themselves and its conditions of possibility, the very practice of writing comes to be conceived in different terms – as a never-ending wound. Aside from renowned Barthes scholars (Perrone-Moisés, Pino, Coste, Marty, Roger, Compagnon), I appeal also to Derrida and Blanchot to seek in A lover’s discourse and Camera lucida that which, like literature, “resists and survives the typified discourses that surround [them]: philosophies, sciences, psychologies” (Barthes, Lecture). Among the main research findings are connections between the corpus and Barthes’ Lecture (in Inauguration of his Chair at Collège de France), as I attempt to show that the resistances and detours so significant in the writing of both A lover’s discourse and Camera lucida, in their affirmations and oscillations, are closely linked to epistemological uncertainties that also permeate Barthes’ teaching activities. Without the slightest intention of verifying whether the values attributed by Barthes to his compositional choices are indeed accomplished by his writings, I merely attempt to underscore the vigor of ethical concerns in his writing.