Politics of Intermission in Roland Barthes

Abstract

Starting with the study and analysis of the fragments written from 1972 to 1977 , and having as guidelines the publishing dates of Le plaisir du texte and Fragments d'un discours amoureux, this work intends to portray Barthes's fragment writing as engendering the politics of meaning. At first, it aims at historicizing the essayistic form recovered by Barthes. The study of the masterpieces of German fragment writing is therefore of paramount importance: it will focus on how the genre, the theory and the practice of the fragment were developed by the early German Romanticists - especially the Schlegel brothers and Novalis - and, subsequently, by Nietzsche. As we historicize the form, we plan to inquire into displacements which were proposed by the genre's revival in the French milieu of the 70's. These had much to do with concepts Barthes developed during the period under analysis -such as textuality, work, neutral and body-, all of which allow us to inquire into the development of the politics of meaning in the fragments. (AU)