Talk:Roland Barthes/Archive 1

'Works' ironic
I just wanted to point out the irony of the section listing Barthe's publications being called "works". That is all, back to work everyone. --Jeremyclarke 22:49, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Barthes' or Barthes's?
Now is it Barthes'? If so, why? If the end-of-word "s" is silent, shouldn't we rather write Barthes's? (He was no Greek or Roman, either.) Balthus 20:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

According to The Elements of Style, Strunk & White, 1918:
 * Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's.
 * Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,
 * Charles's friend
 * Burns's poems
 * the witch's malice

Rpresser 17:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Problem with "Structuralism" section
The "Structuralism" section contains this clause: "... thus allowing Barthes to view along linguistic lines." View what? 71.131.95.182

post-marxism
the post-marxism article was pointing to neo-communism, i split it out, but it will need much work to get it up to a basic level. if people are interested, please contribute what you know, edit my starter drivel :), and help build that article too. --Buridan 13:04, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

works commentaries
i deleted the following comments because they are highly un-encyclopedic: ''A beautiful and original work that stands somewhere between poetry and criticism. It is considered a novel by some.'' A particularly pleasant starting point, especially the famous first (The World of Wrestling) and last (Myth Today) essays.
 * 1) A Lover's Discourse
 * 1) Mythologies.

"A Lover's Discourse" is beautifull, but that is an opinion, not a fact. Also it is considered as a novel by WHO? Why is Mythologies a "particulary pleasent starting point"? Any book may be a good starting point on Barthes' works, depending on what you want from this oeuvre.

Removed the adjective 'fine' describing the biography by Calvet; it is a pov - I believe it is biased  work.al 21:46, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

redirect
"Elements of Semiology" redirects to "semiology", and "Michelet" to Jules Michelet. i dont think they should, because, altough the books are related to the articles, when someone clicks on a link on Barthes' article on the wikipedia, they expect to be taken to a page about the book, and not to a page about what the book is about.

Improve on Johns Hopkins link
Can no better link be found to Barthes online, other than the Johns Hopkins one. It is $80 for a individual subscription!! Vvirtually useless in an project like Wikipedia.

Left Something Out
It's strange that this article leaves out a dominate aspect of Barthes' life and philosopy, which is common to many Post-Structuralists. For example, here's a paragraph from the GLBTQ Encyclopedia article on Barthes:


 * If a single factor, however, can be said to have alienated Barthes from the bourgeois culture he came to distrust and felt compelled to demystify--a deterministic approach Barthes himself rejected--it would be his "perverse" sexuality. Like Proust, if not like Gide, who saw himself as a pederast, Barthes was homosexual. And like Remembrance of Things Past, a work in which everyone except the narrator (who may or may not be named "Marcel") turns out to be gay, Barthes's critical texts--including ones that concern "text"--are best understood in relation to this sexual marginality. TimeDog 17:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The article has a lot of problems. The almost total lack of mention of Barthes' homosexuality is, arguably, the least of them. Lexo (talk) 01:10, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

-- Additionally there is no "See Also" section —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.126.148.228 (talk) 15:01, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

(Ironic) Value Judgment
Allow me to point out a glaring irony in the 'Early Life' section. The section reads:

'he received his first exposure to culture, learning piano from his musically gifted aunt.'

First, this is a narrow definition of a very ambiguous concept, culture, and is therefore unencyclopaedic. Second, Barthes himself would disagree with the definition of culture here presented, as he believed that, simplistically, everything is culture, and would therefore identify his 'first exposure' to it as the moment he was born, or possibly, considering his Freudian influence, at conception.

I'm not going to change the statement, but I thought I would bring it to (y)our collective attention.

CamstaQuinn (talk) 00:31, 11 May 2008 (UTC)


 * We can't edit articles so that they conform, on a conceptual level, to the presumed philosophical principles of the subject of the article. We can only edit them according to Wikipedia standards.  Whatever concept of culture Barthes may or may not have had, he is not the arbiter of what makes a good wikipedia article about him.  It so happens that I admire his work very much, but I am also aware that he would probably have taken issue with WP guidelines; nevertheless, they rule here, and his own ideas don't.  I do, however, agree that the sentence quoted is pretty lame.  This whole article looks to me like it was translated from the French.  Lexo (talk) 01:15, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Posthumous publications
To begin two works of Barthes were published posthumously. The second was Carnets du voyage en Chine. It's sad that it's not referred to in this part of the article. My second point is that the publishing of these works has led to controversy in France where Francois Wahl has attacked the publishing. Unfortunately I have no sources for this, except an article in the cultural section in my morning paper, so I feel unqualified to enter material myself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.216.200.87 (talk) 09:42, 21 August 2009 (UTC)