[Tyr Zalo Hawk]: 712.Essays.Response Papers.Benedict Barthes

Well, there went my opinion on Barthes. Structuralism, getting to the bigger picture, overanalyzing, whatever you want to call it it’s most certainly a subject and a method of thinking that can’t be ignored in world such as ours. Yet, so is the notion that the audience is the most vital aspect for any piece of literature (after all, without an audience then it’s just ink on a page in the attic). So, who am I to believe? Do I side with the Barthes that I only knew an hour ago – one who vehemently opposed looking into the author, part of the text’s history and origin – or the Barthes newly revealed to me as a champion of the overarching contextual sphere (compared to which the text is but a shadow)? It’s a confusing job, but someone’s gotta do it.
Before making a decision in this matter, it’s nice to know the two walls I’m up against. One the one side there is Structuralism, the finely tuned concept that everything is much bigger than it appears. For a structuralist, nothing is more important than finding the larger, grander themes of the world which a work connects to: “things cannot be understood in isolation” a hesitant Berry tells us, “they have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they are a part of” (Berry 38). If the phrase ‘have to’ didn’t strike me like a sledgehammer, then I’m not sure what did. I realize that every ideology and sect thinks they’re right, but I’m really bad at being told what I ‘have to do’ when it comes to reading something. In fact, my immediate reaction was to scoff and say: “Well, not according to Barthes it’s not” (Hawkaluk). How wrong I was. Not 10 pages later, Berry can be found expounding upon Barthes, “who applied the structuralist method to the general field of modern culture” (Berry 46), and his role as one of the founding fathers of the structuralist movement. Wasn’t this the man who said the author was dead? The man whom I had to admire for his passionate push of the audience into the spotlight? How had he suddenly (for me, anyways) become an impressive figure in the history of doing almost the exact opposite? Apparently, the Barthes I was introduced to was only a temporary one.
The explanation of Barthes’ betrayal of all that I had known him by is summed up as only a phase, to be specific his “post-structuralist phase” which is “always said to begin… with his 1968 essay ‘The Death of the Author’” (Berry 49). POST-Structuralism? I’ve just been introduced to the regular stuff and now I’m told that Barthes was temporarily a member of the group that originated after the critical method he helped to establish in the mainstream? How much more confusing can a guy get? And, more importantly, if post-structuralism shares something with structuralism’ (if only in that in the two share a good deal of letters), then why do the two concepts appear to be so radically different (Down with the author vs. bring in the world)? Perhaps I’m asking all the wrong questions right now, but it seems to me that this stuff is meant to confuse, and while I may be a fan of confusing people as much as possible, I’m not so much one for Barthes, no matter which camp he’s in. In fact, I want a new Barthes.
I want a Barthes that doesn’t look at just the bigger picture with all the interwoven threads and themes. I want a Barthes who isn’t so concerned about whether the author of a text lives or dies, and who or what gets the spotlight. I want a Barthes whose first name is Tyr (this one is really just an option, but it’d be cool). Honestly, all I really want is a balanced perspective. I’ve never been the kind of person to think that the author was the be-all and end-all on the subject (especially not after my workshop experiences this semester), but nor have I been one for looking too much into any one subject too deeply. It’s interesting to note that a certain author was gay, or black, or that they lived in Europe when India was being extorted for spices, but often a text doesn’t need any of that to be interesting, or to be understood. I read Huck Finn without a clue in the world on all the implications the novel held for its time period. I didn’t even know, or care, what time period it was written in. It was a good book back then, and now that I know all about slavery, Mark Twain, and the racial tensions of the early 1800’s it’s still a good book. I won’t say it’s better or worse for all this knowledge, because oftentimes it’s both. Knowing all of this about the life and the context of the novel makes it an entirely different entity. It’s like the ‘Most Photographed Barn’ scene from Don Delillo’s White Noise, instead of seeing the barn/work for what it is, too much hype/knowledge will make it something else entirely:
“What did the barn look like before it was photographed?” he said. “What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can’t answer these questions because we’ve read the signs, seenthe people snapping pictures. We can’t get outside the aura… We’re here, we’re now” (Delillo 13).



Works Cited

Berry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 3rd ed. Manchester University Press: New York, NY. 2009.

Hawkaluk, Tyr. Personal experience. October 19th, 2010 at approximately 10:15 P.M. Mountain Standard Time.

Delillo, Don. White Noise. Penguin Group: New York, NY. 1986.