Barthes, Roland - Writing Degree Zero (FSG, 1990)
Barthes, Roland - Writing Degree Zero (FSG, 1990)
Barthes, Roland - Writing Degree Zero (FSG, 1990)
Bardies
Writing
Degree
Zero
Thmlated byAnnetteLavers and Colin Smith
'Preface by Susan Sontag
Writing Degree Zero
Writing Degree Zero is translated from
the French Le Degre Zero de L'Ecriture
© 1953 by Editions du Seuil
Translation © 1967 by Jonathan Cape Ltd.
Preface copyright © 1968 by Susan Sontag
Library of Congress catalog card number: 75-105325
Standard Book Number: 8070-1545-8
First published as a Beacon Paperback in 1970
by arrangement with Hill and Wang, Inc.
Introduction
P ART I
What is Writing? 9
Political Modes of Writing 19
Writing and the Novel 29
Is there any Poetic Writing? 41
P A R T II
Selected Bibliography 89
Note on the Author 90
PREFACE
Xl
PREFACE
Xli
PREFACE
Xlll
PREFACE
XlV
PREFACE
xv
PREFACE
XVI
PREFACE
XVll
PREFACE
XVlll
PREFACE
XIX
PREFACE
xx
PREFACE
XXI
PREFACE
XXll
PREFACE
XXlll
PREFACE
xxiv
PREFACE
SUSAN SoNTAG
xxv
INTRODUCTION
2
I N T R O D UC T I O N
3
IN T R O D U C T I O N
4
I N T RO DUC T ION
5
IN TRO DUC T I O N
6
· Part One
WHAT IS WRITING?
9
WR I T IN G D E G R E E Z E RO
10
WHAT I S WRITING?
II
WRITING D E G R E E ZERO
12
WH A T I S WRITI NG?
13
WRITING D EG R E E Z E RO
16
WHAT I S WRITING?
18
P O L ITIC A L M OD E S O F
W RITIN G
20
PO L I T I C A L MODES O F WRITING
2 I
WR I T I N G D EGR E E ZERO
22
POLITICAL M OD E S OF WRITING
23
W R I TING D E G R E E ZERO
27
WRITING D E G R E E ZERO
30
WRITING AND TH E NOVEL
31
WRITING DEG R E E ZERO
33
W R ITI N G D EC R E E Z E RO
34
WRITING AND THE NOVEL
35
WRITI N G DE G R E E Z E RO
37
W R ITI N G D E G R E E Z E RO
39
W R ITI N G D E G R E E Z E RO
43
W R ITI N G DE G R EE ZE R O
44
IS THE R E A NY P OETI C W RI TI N G ?
45
WRI T I N G DE G REE ZERO
47
WR I T I N G DE G REE ZERO
49
WRITING DEGREE ZERO
50
IS T H E RE A NY P O E TIC W R ITI N G ?
55
WRITING DEGREE ZERO
57
WRITING DEGREE ZERO
59
WRITING DEGREE ZERO
60
BOURGEOIS WRITING
61
STYLE AS CRAFTSMANSHIP
66
WR I T I N G AND REVOLUTION
68
W R I T I N G A ND R E V O L U TIO N
70
W R I TI N G A N D R E VO L U TIO N
71
WRIT I N G DEG REE ZERO
73
W RITIN G AN D S IL E N CE
74
WRI TING A N D SILEN CE
ing their own tracks and creating their own laws. The
threat of becoming a Fine Art is a fate which hangs
over any language not based exclusively on the
speech of society. In a perpetual flight forward from
a disorderly syntax , the disintegration of language
can only lead to the silence of writing. The final
agraphia of Rimbaud or of some Surrealists (who ipso
facto fell into oblivion), this poignant self-destruction
of Literature, teaches us that for some writers, lan
guage, the first and last way out of the literary myth,
finally restores what it had hoped to avoid, that there
is no writing which can be lastingly revolutionary,
and that any silence of form can escape imposture
only by complete abandonment of communication .
Mallarme, the Hamlet of writing, as it were, well
represents this precarious moment of History i n
which litera.ry language persists only the better to
sing the necessity of its death . Mallarme's typo
graphical agraphia seeks to create around rarefied
words an empty zone in which speech, liberated from
its guilty social overtones, may, by some happy con
trivance, no longer reverberate. The word, dissociated
from the husk of habitual cliches, and from the tech
nical reflexes of the writer, is then freed from re
sponsibi lity i n relation to all possible context; it
appears in one brief act, which, being devoid of re
flections, declares its soli tude, and therefore its inno
cence. This art has the very structure of suicide : in it,
silence is a homogeneous poetic time which traps the
75
WRITI N G DEGREE ZERO
77
V, R I T I N G 0 E G R E E ZER0
79
WRITING DEG R EE Z ER O
80
W R I T I N G A N D S P E EC H
81
W R ITI N G DEGRE E ZERO
85
WRITING DEGREE ZERO
86
T HE U TO PI A OF L A N G U A G E
88
THE AUTHOR