Precursor Critics and the Anxiety of Influence

Abstract

In spring 1997,1 taught a graduate seminar on Roland Barthes. had a pro found sense, week after week, of loving Barthes. Book after book, loved his writing?loved reading it, talking about it in class, getting into and ap preciating detail of it. The more we looked at it, more loved it. Immediately after semester ended, set to work on an essay had agreed to write for a volume called The Familial Gaze, an essay on my boyfriend's photographs. Uncomfortable with a topic in which my exper tise was personal rather than professional, began by turning to Barthes's book on photography, La chambre claire, translated as Camera Lucida. The book provided me with framework sorely needed, and showed my gratitude in typical fashion. determined where Barthes had faltered, had dropped ball, and positioned myself as going him one better. Al though such positioning is probably deeply familiar to all of you, I'd like to give its flavor by quoting a bit from this 1997 essay. From first page: I want here to pick up position Camera Lucida briefly assumes and then drops. From second page: there may be something about second point of view that is most troublingly personal, anecdotal, self-concerned. . . . Perhaps that is why Barthes drops it like a hot potato. From third page: the son flees this position and attaches it defini tively to his mother. ... want to pick up perspective Barthes drops, to