Barthes has always been one of my favorite authors. He is really a writer, not just a theorist or critic. What I particularly like is that he is really a 19th century sensibility trying to deal with 20th century avant-garde, or maybe vice-versa. This tension can lead to very irritating moments in Barthes too, when he's hammering home some arbitrary distinction he wants to make.
The way Barthes has dated (or not) is also interesting to me. You can go back and forth between "did people really ever believe this" to "this could have been written yesterday," and back again. To simplify, the theoretical Barthes is dated, but the personal Barthes is not. The Barthes who believed semiology was scientific, and the one who used fountain pens and painted water colors.
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His translator -- has he helped or hindered the reception of Barthesian ideas? Or rather, what percentage of cultivated vagueness in academic discourse can we attribute to high-sounding but in fact inarticulate glosses of Barthes. I'm guessing upwards of five percent.
When you read him in French you realize how French he is.
When I read him in French I realize how slowly I have to read anything worth thinking about, and how often I read much more slowly than is called for.
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