Roland Barthes and the palimpsest anatomy

Abstract

In Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, we are given the following reading advice: “All must be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel”. The sentence, on introducing what Eric Marty has defined as a carnival game in which “I”, “he” and “you” constantly alternate, disorganizes the autobiographic discourse regulated by modern prescriptions, thus turning the work into a real patchwork: re-writings, additions, obliterations amidst books, subjects, memories, so that the new enunciation prevents us from knowing whether it talks about the present or the past, let alone whether it really talks about the writer’s life. For Françoise Gaillard, this is due to the fact that Barthesian biography does not regard the bios as representing what has been lived, but life in what it has of the most organic: the body in its constant dilations and inventions. In fact, in Barthes, the body is always atopic, unable to be apprehended in its totality. There is always an excess in it, an insignificant trace, something beyond any sense. Therefore, writing about is to participate in dispersion: amidst music, literature, photography, daily life. Such excess, such anti-hierarchical combination of languages and affects composing a palimpsestically impure anatomy is what will interest us here.