Barth's Work Research Articles

The ‘Inkredible’ Roland Barthes

The opening of the fourth session of The Neutral — the course given by Roland Barthes at the Collège de France in 1977–8 — is marked by a dramatic spillage of ink. Rather than take this as an incidental, trivial moment, I read it as one of the many ‘ink blots’ that colour the work of Barthes. Tracing his ‘almost obsessive relation to writing instruments’ and the material act of inscription, this essay relates the ‘ink blots’ to the development of a ‘non-arrogant’, non-expressive, non-idealistic theory of language in The Neutral and other texts by Barthes.

Wittgenstein at Ground Zero

Drawing on the work of Barthes and Wittgenstein, this article presents an argument for taking seriously the widespread sentiment, at the time, that the events of what we have since come to call “9-11” were unspeakable. Central to the article is an analysis of two sharply contrasting responses to the 9-11 events, the Here Is New York photographic exhibition and a symposium by prominent intellectuals in The London Review of Books . The widespread revulsion that greeted such intellectual attempts to make sense of 9-11, the article argues, is not evidence of sentiment clouding reason so much as a refusal to efface a profound otherness by assimilating it to the categories of our comprehension—much like Here Is New York 's use of photographs to resist the translation of 9-11 into text.

'That God May Have Mercy Upon All': A Review-Essay of Matthias Gockel's Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election

AbstractThe doctrine of election lies at the heart of Reformed theology. This essay offers a review of Matthias Gockel's recent comparison between two of Reformed theology's greatest voices: that of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth. Gockel outlines Schleiermacher's contribution to the doctrine before turning to consider its modifications in Barth's work. The advance of these two thinkers on this issue has significant implications for the ongoing questions of universal election and universal salvation. Consequently, the possibility of an apokatastasis panton arises naturally from their theology. This possibility is briefly explored.

Relative Negation als Gleichnis der absoluten? Eine Auseinandersetzung zwischen Karl und Heinrich Barth

Der Einfluss Heinrich Barths auf die diastatische Auffassung der Gott-Mensch-Beziehung in der »dialektischen Theologie« seines Bruders Karl scheint bedeutend gewesen zu sein. Der Autor des vorliegenden Beitrags vertritt jedoch die Ansicht, dass sowohl Karl Barth wie auch eine gängige Einschätzung des Sachverhalts im Blick auf Heinrich Barths Position Opfer eines Missverständnisses geworden sind, demgegenüber diese Position in ihrem dauerhaft haltbaren Sinn zu rekonstruieren und zu rehabilitieren ist. Die für Heinrich Barths philosophisches Werk insgesamt in der Tat kennzeichnende Akzentuierung der Transzendenz (bezüglich der transzendentalen Prinzipien beziehungsweise Gottes) muss mit Bezug auf die Platonische Idee des Guten in erster Linie als Transzendenz gegenüber einer theoretischen Gesamtschau verstanden werden, welche die ethische Lebensproblematik bedenkenlos vereinnahmt und damit um ihre Aktualität bringt. So verstanden bedeutet Heinrich Barths Betonung der Transzendenz nicht das Aufreißen einer kaum mehr überbrückbaren Kluft, sondern verweist vielmehr auf die Aufgabe, das Gott-Mensch-Verhältnis, den Begriff einer »Gotteserkenntnis« und letztlich die Problematik der Transzendenz als solche von einem Gesichtspunkt aus neu zu bestimmen, für den die ethische Lebensproblematik im Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit steht.

Complexity Theory

In popular dialogues, describing a system as "complex" is often the point of resignation, inferring that the system cannot be sufficiently described, predicted nor managed. Transport networks, management infrastructure and supply chain logistics are all often described in this way. Academic dialogues have begun to explore the collective behaviors of complex systems to define a complex system specifically as an adaptive one; i.e. a system that demonstrates 'self organising' principles and 'emergent' properties. Based upon the key principles of interaction and emergence in relation to adaptive and self organising systems in cultural artifacts and processes, this paper will argue that complex systems are cultural systems. By introducing generic principles of complex systems, and looking at the exploration of such principles in art, design and media research, this paper argues that a science of cultural systems as part of complex systems theory is the post modern science for the digital age. Furthermore, that such a science was predicated by post structuralism and has been manifest in art, design and media practice since the late 1960s.

Mauriac: The Poetry of a Novelist by Paul Cooke Philippe Baudorre (review)

828 Reviews the emotional paradigms?or, to use Proust's narrator's terminology, the 'modeles de sentiments' (A la recherchedu tempsperdu, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 4 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1987-89), iv (1989), 661)?lying at the heart ofthe Recherche. She probes especially Marcel's separation anxiety,embedded in the drame du coucher and forming the template for heightened moments of self-awareness later in the novel. Moreover, Wimmers works deftlyon the early drafts of the novel, where the powerful assertion of affectiveneed is often unmitigated by irony or humour. Constructing the bridge between the novel's hero and its reader is central to Wimmers 's argument. She demonstrates how the narrator ofthe Recherche regularly seeks to work outwards from the prison of Marcel's emotional crisis. The figures of the sick hotel guest and the lonely traveller who feature in the opening pages of Combray and who become Wagnerian-style leitmotifs fill a crucial role: they widen the focus and draw the reader in. The cognitive reading of Marcel's emotional life thus becomes, additionally, an invitation to the reader to engage in self-recognition. In a pathos-driven analysis of the kind promoted in Barthes's later work, Wimmers constructs elegantly her reflection on the traumas of Albertine disparue and the affecting sense of physical decline conveyed by the Guermantes matinee in Le Temps retrouve. Stressing the transformative power of literature, she quotes from Ricceur: ' "we try to gain by means of imaginative variation of our ego a narrative understanding of ourselves"' (p. 7). The scanning, in tandem, of literature and life also sees Wimmers look passionately at the power of literature for Marcel. His privileging of Racine's Phedre, George Sand's Francois le Champi, and Massenet's Manon illustrates how art provides a voie royale to emotional and psychological self-discovery. The young Proust already demonstrates an awareness of this transposition between hero and mo? tivated reader when summing up the attraction of 'les beaux livres': 'sous chaque mot chacun de nous met son sens ou du moins son image qui est souvent un contre-sens' (Contre Sainte-Beuve, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), p. 305). Wimmers's achievement is to have patiently constructed a finely argued poetics of narrative forthe Recherche that is powerfully grounded in affect. Royal Holloway, University of London Edward J.Hughes Mauriac: The Poetry of a Novelist. By Paul Cooke. (Faux Titre, 240) Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2003. 280 pp. ?57. ISBN 90-420-0848-2. Franpois Mauriac 6: un ecrivain journaliste. Ed. by Philippe Baudorre. (Revue des Lettres Modernes, serie Francois Mauriac, 6) Caen: Minard. 2003. 187pp. ?19. ISBN 2-256-9106i-x. Although Francois Mauriac and his work are still considered rather unfashionable by the wider critical community, these two volumes remind us both of the continuing vitality of Mauriac studies and of the diversity of a writer who, in the UK at least, has long since been pigeon-holed as a 'Catholic Novelist'. Paul Cooke's monograph offersthe firstfull-length study of Mauriac's poetry, which emerged over a forty-year period until it petered out in the 1940s. Mauriac always claimed to see himself as a poet firstand foremost, and it was a favourable review of his firstcollection of poems by Maurice Barres in 1910 that launched his literary career; but both the critics and the wider reading public proved reluctant to recognize him as such during his lifetime, much to his regret. Cooke sets out to reassess his poetry, arguing that it is essential for a proper understanding of his work as a novelist. He adopts a chronological approach to trace the development of Mauriac's verse, making deft use of statistical analysis to map out its thematic and semantic universe, and highlight the ways in which it evolves (a trend towards greater density of expression, forexample). His study is lucid MLRy 100.3, 2005 829 and rigorous, and also honest in its appraisal. While it acknowledges that the early verse has little to retain the interest of the general reader, it makes an eloquent case for the later work, and Le Sang d'Atys (1940) in particular, which Mauriac himself considered his best work in...

Sujet, verbe, complément: le moment grammatical de la littérature française 1890–1940 by Gilles Philippe (review)

MLRy 99.2, 2004 505 reminiscences and show the cultural importance of radio at the time, not just in Paris, but in the provinces as well. They and the university academies here?Pierre-Marie Heron on Paul Gilson, Lai'la Ben Ezedine on Francois Billetdoux, and Hatem El Hicheri on Jean Amrouche?also explore differences between writing forthe printed page and for the microphone. As well as containing two CD-ROMs with archive recordings of work by Tardieu, Gilson, Clancier, Billetdoux, and Temple, a very thorough 'phonographie' of Gilson, Clancier, Billetdoux, and Temple, largely based on the database of the Institut na? tional de l'audiovisuel, almost half the volume is made up of documents carefully chosen and well presented by Heron, including notably the transcription of a lecture given by Temple on his activities as director of radio for the Languedoc-Roussillon area from 1954 to 1986. In presenting the papers, Heron is extremely modest about his own part and that of his colleagues in this and other publications in rectifyingthe previous neglect of the literary history of French radio. As the former home of the only provincial version ofthe Club d'Essai, it is only fittingthat Montpellier and its university should play a major role in this endeavour, and in this close collaboration between academies and professionals whose work they describe, much is done to show just how interesting and inspiring radio can be. University of Leeds Christopher Todd Sujet, verbe, complement: le momentgrammatical de la litteraturefrancaise i8go-ig40. By Gilles Philippe. (Bibliotheque des Idees) Paris: Gallimard. 2002. 258 pp. ?15. ISBN 2-07-076408-7. The late nineteenth century witnessed a renewal of interest in grammatical issues surrounding literature, in particular questions of syntax and morpho-syntax. Gram? mar was no longer seen as a set of constraints, but rather as a range of choices. At this time we see the praise of syntax over vocabulary, and the conception of a true writer as a grammarian as well as an artist. Literary criticism becomes grammatical analysis; writers invoke the influence of grammarians. The First World War is preceded by nationalistic praise of French language and literature. Between the wars, there is a new era of linguistic purism. The most notable linguistic 'quarrel' of the time concerns Flaubert's style. Over the space of a year, the quarrel evolved from a simple controversy over grammatical norms and the classic literary canon to an en? tire rethinking of the status of literature, which reshaped the intellectual climate. In 1919 Louis de Robert published his polemical article 'Flaubert ecrivait mal', which launched the debate. Ofthe many views expressed, Proust claimed that Flaubert was a genius as his use of grammar was so original. A second crucial debate was that on the status of 'style indirect libre', as a grammatical process to be explained linguistically , or a simple literary effect. This was also linked to discussion of the use of 'imparfait de narration'. An examination of grammar books of the period shows a similar range of concerns, in particular the question of the status of literary ex? amples in grammatical description. In the field of education, pedagogic grammars of the period promote inductive methods for studying grammar in context, and the famous 'explication francaise' dominates as an exercise in grammatical description and literary evaluation. The influence of this methodology is shown in the literary criticism of Sartre, particularly his discussion of Flaubert's style. Sartre has an idealistic conception of 'good style', and Flaubert does not fitin with this. However, as Philippe points out, the two writers have very similar styles, so there is an element of self-criticism here. Over time, Sartre moves froma stylistic conception of literature to 506 Reviews a political one. And indeed, the second half ofthe twentieth century marks the passing ofthe 'moment grammatical'. This is clear in the work of Barthes, where grammatical criticism is replaced by semiotic analysis. For Philippe, Barthes's paradox is that he tries to produce a non-grammatical description of literature, knowing all the while he cannot fully succeed as literature has a grammatical base. Overall, this volume shows a wonderful depth and breadth of knowledge, and is written in...

Bibliographie du voyage français en Italie du moyen âge à 1914 by Vito Castiglione Minischetti, et al (review)

506 Reviews a political one. And indeed, the second half ofthe twentieth century marks the passing ofthe 'moment grammatical'. This is clear in the work of Barthes, where grammatical criticism is replaced by semiotic analysis. For Philippe, Barthes's paradox is that he tries to produce a non-grammatical description of literature, knowing all the while he cannot fully succeed as literature has a grammatical base. Overall, this volume shows a wonderful depth and breadth of knowledge, and is written in a stimulating manner. It will be of great interest to grammarians, linguistic historians, and literary scholars. University of Wales Swansea Dulcie M. Engel Bibliographie du voyage francais en Italie du moyenage a 1914. By Vito Castiglione Minischetti, Giovanni Dotoli, and Roger Musnik. (Biblioteca Della Ricerca, Bibliographica, 3) Fasano: Schena Editore; Paris: Presses de l'Universite de Paris-Sorbonne. 2002. 541pp. ?33. ISBN 88-8229-309-2 (Schena); 2-84050233 -x (Paris-Sorbonne). Defining a corpus of travel literature is often a process of salvaging what Margaret Cohen has dubbed (referringin her case to fiction) the 'great unread' (The Sentimental Education of the Novel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)). Most travel narratives are by their very nature ephemeral, capturing the contemporary mo? ment with varying degrees of documentary accuracy, but then rapidly replaced by subsequent accounts. Some travel accounts manage, however, to achieve a status that might be deemed canonical, and a number ofthese are included in this substantial new bibliography of works by French travellers to Italy. As a result, texts by Montaigne, Stendhal, Chateaubriand, and Barres are absorbed into the rich and uneven archive that constitutesthis resource together with works by much lesser-known authors. The compilers' principal criterion remains a pragmatic one and ignores debates about the uneasy relationship between travel accounts and fiction: 'nous avons repere tout texte, toujours des livres, exceptionnellement des articles, qui soit le resultat d'un voyage reel en Italie, et qui ne se presente pas comme un texte de creation' (p. 10). As a result, travel literature is presented here as a complex, catholic genre, encompassing not only travel narratives, but also guide books, memoirs, and other accounts covering fields as diverse as history, medicine, archaeology, and entomology. The introduction is brief, and the volume presents itselfmodestly as being primarily a research tool. As such, it will complement detailed studies of its subject, such as Marie-Madeleine Martinet's Le Voyage d'ltalie dans les litteratures europeennes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996). The entries in the bibliography reveal nevertheless perceptible shifts: whereas the earlier texts reflect a retrospective, antiquarian interest and a denial of coevalness that pay scant attention to the actual country through which their writers travelled, works published 1801-1914 (which unsurprisingly make up two-thirds of the entries) suggest an increased attention to contemporary Italy. The choice of 1914 as a cut-offdate is expedient, although the explanation given (namely that the twen? tieth century is 'une epoque ou le voyage change de perspective et de valeur', p. 13) is not wholly convincing, and Sophie Basch's study of contemporary French travellers in Greece (Le Voyage imaginaire: les ecrivains francais en Grece au xx0 siecle (Paris: Hatier, 1991)) would suggest the potential value of a similar exploration of recent French travel to Italy. Travel literature has enjoyed a recent revival of interest in both anglophone and francophone scholarship. Whereas the former has been characterized by postcolonial concerns, the latter has focused on generic and poetic issues. The two traditions meet, however, in their foregrounding of intertextuality,a phenomenon that links scholar? ship as seemingly diverse as that of Edward Said and Christine Montalbetti. If it is MLR, 99.2, 2004 507 accepted that travellers move through both space and the accounts of their predecessors , then bibliographies such as this fulfilan essential role. The volume is aware of its own limits and inconsistencies: dates of birth and death are provided erratically, and annotation is included only forworks in the earlier periods. For scholars active in this area, however, this bibliography will prove invaluable in their effortsto explore the complexity of this particular field of travel?to cite its authors, 'la meme operation serait souhaitable pour les voyageurs...

MYTHOLOGIES REVISITED: ROLAND BARTHES AND THE LEFT

This essay arises from the author's scepticism about the received notion, prevalent both in literary and cultural studies, that Roland Barthes's work of the 1960s constituted an abandonment of the previous decade's social critique. The paper develops the argument that, to the contrary, understanding Barthes's socio-cultural development following World War II and in the French cultural context helps to situate the political engagement of his writings in the 1950s and to clarify the continued political commitment of this work from the 1960s onward. This essay addresses a series of questions: what was Barthes's relationship to the 1950s French intelligentsia that prepared his active participation in the heterodoxical Marxist journal, Arguments, a forum for many of the urgent intellectual debates between 1956-62? What is the relationship of this activity to his writings of the early 1950s, developed into Mythologies in 1957, as well as to the shift toward semiology and structuralism and to the purported abandonment of social critique betokened by this shift? How do these phases inform the different readings of Barthes's work developed in more recent interpretations of his writing? It is argued that we would do better to view the structuralist phase and especially the ‘later’ Barthes (from the late 1960s onward) more fully and deliberately in relation to the early, explicitly political period. This revised perspective, one not limiting Barthes to works such as Mythologies, will help us better comprehend Barthes's continuing legacy for sociosemiotic critique both in literary criticism and in cultural studies and to create new ground for interdisciplinary dialogue that is very much needed in an era of questioning the limits and borders of this field.

The Early Reception of Karl Barth's Theology in Britain: A Supplementary View

One of the axioms of modern church history in Britain is that whereas Anglo-Saxon thought was on the whole impervious to the appeal and achievement of Karl Barth, it was among the Scots alone that the Swiss theologian's theories found any real resonance and creative response. Stephen Sykes in a 1979 volume of studies in Barth's theological method, mentions the somewhat bewildered response to his publications in Britain and the United States between 1925 and the mid-1980s and goes on to say that ‘from now onwards it is in Scotland that Barth is taken with the greatest seriousness in the English speaking world’. In a later volume of centenary essays, R. H. Roberts traced the reception of the theology of Karl Barth ‘in the Anglo-Saxon world’ by quoting the evidence of such late 1920s and early 1930s figures as J. H. Morrison, John McConnachie, H. R. Mackintosh, Norman Porteous and A. J. MacDonald to claim that ‘it is clear from an early stage that enthusiasm for Barth's work … was primarily a Scottish attribute’. In another essay in the same volume, Colin Gunton contrasted the usual English attitude to Barth with that of theologians from other lands: ‘For the most part and despite exceptions’, he claimed, ‘the English find it difficult to come to terms with the theology of Karl Barth’, while in a companion volume Geoffrey Bromiley noted that this was hardly the case for theologians and pastors ‘in such diverse lands as Switzerland, Germany, France, Holland, Hungary, and Scotland’. Again and again, it is Scotland which is emphasised as being the place within the British Isles where Barth's ideals took root.

"A Lover's Discourse": Byblis in Metamorphoses 9*

Some people would never have been in love, had they never heard love talked about. François La Rochefoucauld, Maxims Character is not intrinsic, but literary, a compendium of all one has read. Linda Kauffman, Special Delivery In Metamorphoses 9, Ovid gives us the story of Byblis, a young woman in love with her brother Caunus. Critical discussion of the tale has focused on the ethical aspects of incest, 1 the mixture of genres in the story, 2 and, more recently, the play of repetition and difference in the episode. 3 This paper argues that, in the Byblis episode, Ovid suggests that the process of "being in love" is a discursively constructed experience. Throughout the tale, Byblis is obsessed with the idea of language as the creator of reality; she speaks of her problematic love for her brother as a dilemma of names and [End Page 285] words. In addition, Ovid exploits the pun implicit in Byblis's name 4 in order to highlight the close connection between being a lover and being a reader and writer. Byblis's monologues and amorous ploys consist wholly of literary tropes and conventions and are modeled upon Latin elegy. Her entire love affair is conducted as if Byblis has "read" all of Latin elegy as well as the Heroides and the Ars Amatoria. In positing a link in the story of Byblis between "being in love" and reading, I draw upon Roland Barthes's claim in A Lover's Discourse that "no love is original" (1978.136). The premise of Barthes's work is that the discourse of love is a repository of cultural conventions. How we appear and what we do while "in love" are little more than enactments of a script that has been played out by many before us. In A Lover's Discourse, Barthes interweaves literary allusions and the first-person laments of an unnamed lover and demonstrates how the process of "being in love" is intimately associated with that of reading and writing. In the introduction to his work, Barthes himself calls a lover's discourse "a discourse whose occasion is indeed the memory of the sites (books, encounters) where such and such a thing has been read, spoken, heard" (1978.9). But while A Lover's Discourse is useful in shedding light on the recycling of Latin elegy in the Ovidian tale, it cannot account for the gender dynamics of the story. Byblis's status as a female lover and reader (and writer) of elegy plays a primary role in her "erotic failure" and her ultimate destruction at the end of the tale. To address the question of gender in the tale, I turn to recent feminist criticism on elegy. Various scholars have contended that despite the appearance of egalitarian unions between men and women, the amatory relations depicted in elegy are asymmetrical. 5 The elegiac puella is a constructed and passive object of desire (both erotic and artistic) rather than an active subject, the written rather than the writer. I would argue that, in the tale of Byblis, Ovid makes explicit the gendered power relations of the genre by staging the intervention of a female desiring subject in the world of elegy. Byblis transgresses gender boundaries when she aligns herself with the male amator and suffers the consequences of her actions. Ovid suggests that although love is a textual construct, in the world of elegy, erotic experience exists within a gendered hierarchy. [End Page 286] I. Readers and Lovers When the text opens, Byblis is unaware of her romantic feelings for her brother. She recognizes her passion only through a dream (Met. 9.468-71). The manner in which Byblis comes to realize her feelings is patterned after the initial poems of Book 1 of the Amores. 6 In Amores 1.2, the narrator represents himself as tossing and turning and questioning why he is unable to sleep. He initially rejects the notion that love is the cause of his restlessness, since he...

Jesus Christ: The Same Yesterday, Today and Forever

I turned fifty this past summer, and since then I have been in a rather reflective frame of mind. It has been nearly thirty years since I first started reading Barth, and I have begun to reflect on Barth's significance in new ways. The old ways remain, of course: after many years, I still respect his rigour, his precision, his sheer mastery and elegance; in fact, more each time I study him. It is not news, I imagine, that Karl Barth is a great dogmatic theologian; but I really mean more than that. Unlike so many of our cultural leaders these days, and I suppose in any day, Barth's work does not become dated, or threadbare with study, but rather remains fresh; indeed it grows in power as the others against whom we used to measure him quietly recede into the past. He is a true doctor of the church, and like all doctors, confessors and martyrs, Barth teaches us still. But as I have lately reflected on this wonderful achievement of Barth's, I have been struck by how little I understood it when I first started reading the Church Dogmatics.

Barthesian Discourse: Having Your Cake and Eating It Too

When Philippe Sollers set out in May 1980, shortly after Roland Barthes' death, to write a succinct preface to the new, abridged edition of the seminal collective work of Tel Quel known as Theorie d'ensemble (originally published in 1968), (1) it was appropriate that he should try to summarize some of the major aims of the volume's contributors. In his words, the book's essence port[ait] sur un reve: unifier la reflexion et declencher a partir de la generalisee.(7) Born of a no doubt utopian critical dream of unifying the many contemporary varieties of structuralism in vogue at the time, and closely connected to the infamous evenements de mai 68, Theorie d'ensemble does indeed read (still) like a compendium of the major provocative ideas of that era. Even in an abridged format, the volume unfolds like a series of usually deliberate attempts to subvert various institutional powers and instances within the literary arena. As it happens, Sollers ends his preface by giving hommage to a towering figure whose essay appears second only to one by Michel Foucault in both the new and old editions of the collection. Clearly, he wished thereby to place this entire methodological and theoretical crucible (creuset), as he calls it, sous le signe de quelqu'un dont la complicite a tellement compte dans ces jours de mutation aventureuse, quelqu'un qui vient de nous quitter mais dont le style d'intervention, par son ampleur, sa justesse, sa mesure, nous aidait et nous aidera encore a aller plus loin: Roland Barthes. (7) Taking Sollers' assessment seriously, I should like to suggest that Barthes's work as a whole must be read as an on-going quest for a subversion generale. In doing so, I am hardly going out on a weak limb inasmuch as in countless other studies practically every other critic who has ever written on Barthes documents similar, subversive stylistic proclivities. In her recent book Sens et non-sens de la revolte, (2) Julia Kristeva, for instance, rereads the early writings of Barthes (beginning with Le Degre zero de l'ecriture and Mythologies) with an eye towards this very tendency, which she effectively extends to the rest of the Barthesian corpus. Emphasizing the ever-present semi ological project that underlies all of Barthes' texts--which she first defines, after Saussure, not as a simple formalisation, mais recherche des lois dialectiques de la signifiance--Kristeva immediately goes on to insist that Barthes' real goal was une desubstantification de l'idealite signifiante. C'est dire que la portee de ces textes est d'abord negative. (436) In other words, from at least two of his closest acquaintances, Sollers and Kristeva, we get the distinct impression that Barthes was a rebel with seemingly countless causes. Unwilling to accept set categories and structures, Barthes was a writer whose subjectivity: defini[e] dans le topos de sa communication avec l'autre, commence par nier cette communication pour pouvoir formuler un autre dispositif. Negatif du premier dit naturel, ce nouveau langage est par consequent non plus communicatif, mais, dironsnous, transformatif, quand il n'est pas mortel aussi bien pour le je que pour l'autre. (436) It would appear, then, that Barthes was concerned primarily with breaking or transforming our reading and writing habits, with forcing us not to look backwards, as it were, at what texts (in the widest acceptation of that term) have always been said to express, but to look ahead instead to what else they might be saying. Literary language, in particular, was significant to Barthes not because it reminds us of things we already know, but because of what it can tell us now and in the future about other impulses, forces, and significations, which are discreetly at work within what he calls ecriture. Thus, with regard to his specific study of mythologies, for example, Kristeva points out that: A l'oppose d'un structuralisme qui cherchait dans le mythe les structures permanentes de l'esprit humain [an allusion to the kind of early structuralist project of, say, a Levi-Strauss], c'est la surdetermination sociale et historique que Barthes vise a travers le phenomene discursif. …

Learning From the Swat Pathans: Political Leadership in Afghanistan, 1978-97

The conflict in Afghanistan, now two decades old, has generated considerable attention from journalists, policy analysts, and political scientists, but the literature on the conflict includes few references to the work of Fredrik Barth on political leadership among the Swat Pakhtuns of neighboring Pakistan. Here I explore the relevance of Barth's work to an analysis of the war in Afghanistan. In particular, I examine Barth's “methodological individualism” and compare his approach with alternative approaches advanced by three of his principal critics: Talal Asad, Akbar S. Ahmed, and Michael Meeker. [Afghanistan, Pakistan, political authority, Islam]

Announcement of the Presentation of the IUAES Commission on Nomadic Peoples 'Lifetime Achievement award' to Professor Fredrik Barth

It is my happy office as Chair of the Awards Committee to announce that the IUAES Commission on Nomadic Peoples presents its first ever 'Lifetime Achievement Award' to Professor Fredrik Barth for his contributions to the study of nomadic peoples. Through this honorific presentation, the Commission, on behalf of all students of nomadic peoples, wishes to express its appreciation to Professor Barth for his astute, imaginative, and powerful portrayals and analyses of nomadic peoples, and for his ground-breaking theoretical conceptions and formulations about their lives and circumstances. Each student of nomadic peoples will have her or his own reasons for being grateful to Professor Barth; each will in her or his own way have a debt to his work. I am confident that my colleagues will share in my enthusiasm for honouring Professor Barth. However, in these remarks about Professor Barth's work, I speak for myself out of my own experience, and each colleague will have to add his or her own perspective of appreciation. It is quite true that Professor Barth's work on nomads strongly influenced and inspired subsequent ethnographers of nomadic peoples (although clearly not in the way suggested by Street 1990; cf. Salzman 1995). In the mid-1960s, when I was a graduate student, I read Nomads of South Persia and various of Professor Barth's articles, and drew on them explicitly and implicitly, consciously and unconsciously in my own research, as did my coevals and those who followed. Ecologie Relationships of Ethnic Groups in Swat , North Pakistan (1956), Nomads of South Persia (1961), The Land Use Patterns of Migratory Tribes of South Persia (1960), and Nomadism in the Mountain and Plateau Areas of South West Asia (1960), offered the reader enlightening accounts of several, groundbreaking themes: first, understanding nomadic peoples in terms of their ecological adaptation; second, appreciating the role of ethnicity in ecological specialisation; third, placing nomadic peoples within a wider social and political context, and especially in their participation in a complex society involving markets and state institutions. These works went farther, demonstrating the interplay between ecology, ethnicity, and complex society, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, social, political and economic organisation among nomadic peoples. At the time of this research and writing by Professor Barth, a particular image and a model of nomadic peoples dominated anthropology. This representation

Nomads and their trade partners: historical context and trade relations in southwest Iran, 1840–1975

Fredrik Barth's classic work on Basseris (1961) demonstrated the importance of Iranian pastoral nomads' exchanges with the settled world. In this article I examine historical variations in the nature of exchange relationships and the political and economic context in which these were embedded. I argue that the “friendly” relations described by Barth were an anomaly associated with the Pahlavi dynasty's destruction of tribal elites, and I demonstrate that tribespeople have a long history of actively contesting unfavorable conditions of trade.

« Chassez le style par la porte, il rentrera par la fenêtre »

« Show Style the Door, It'll Come Back Through the Window » The work of Barthes, Riffaterre or Goodman has reinscribed the preoccupation with style in literature without reestablishing a dualism between thought and language, norm and variation, or form and content.

Cultural Criticism, Literary Theory, Poststructuralism

Leitch argues for the use of poststructural theory in cultural criticism. He maintains that deconstruction remains crucial for a truly critical approach to cultural studies. Literary critics now frequently use sociological, historical, political, and institutional methods of inquiry. This turn toward dis-course and away from literature has led to a resurgence of cultural criticism, a mode of analysis revitalized and reformed by the arrival of theory. Leitch illustrates the weak points of influential predecessors, showing how poststructuralism offers useful advances over reigning modes of critical inquiry. Leitch develops positions on key topics: social formations and cultural critique; authorship and intention; poetic discourse and the social text; literary genre and cultural convention; minority literatures and general poetics; textual interpretation and assessment; institutional theory and analysis; and Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and poststructuralism. He draws on the work of Barthes, Deleuze, de Man, Derrida, Foucault, Jameson, Kristeva, Lentricchia, Lyotard, Said, and Scholes - whose work he does not hesitate to criticize.

Who Gets Lost in the Funhouse

CAROLYN NORMAN SLAUGHTER Who Gets Lost in the Funhouse -IY story, any section of story, will do. This one: There's no point in going farther; this isn't getting anybody anywhere; they haven't even come to the funhouse yet. Ambrose is off the track, in some new or old part of the place that's not supposed to be used; he strayed into it by some onein -a-million chance, like the time the roller-coaster car left the tracks in the nineteen-teens against all the laws of physics and sailed over the boardwalk in the dark. And they can't locate him because they don't know where to look. Even the designer and operator have forgotten this other part, that winds around on itself like a whelk shell. That winds around the right part like the snakes on Mercury's caduceus. . . .' Now the trick is to get hold of it, hold on. Try it. Identify the character (s), thevoice(s), theplot(s), theme(s)—identify fact, fiction, implications , significance if any, truth if. The story moves under your hand, changes. It's Proteus you're onto. Ambrose in the funhouse? No, he's lying on the sand with that physically whelming presence he thinks is Magda, pretending to watch that impostor Peter show off his diving, muscles—form. The timing's wrong. The funhouse is later. The narrator, then, anticipating his story? Oh yes, and mirroring it, both ofthem wandering roundly off the track. The narrator's plan and his character's plot wandering off into the wrong time, out ofplace, astray. The characters' characters (author's Arizona Quarterly Volume 44 Number 4, Winter 1989 Copyright © 1989 by Arizona Board of Regents issN 004-1610 Lost in the Funhouse narrator's, character's) blur into each other; there's no focus; space is as imploded as time. The voice (author's, narrator's, character's) attenuates to one multidistinguishable whine. Point of view? Who's to see? When I understood that Proteus somewhere on the beach became Menelaus holding the Old Man of the Sea, Menelaus ceased. Then I understood further how Proteus thus also was as such no more, being as possibly Menelaus's attempt to hold him, the tale ofthat vain attempt, the voice that tells it. (167) Climactic confrontation. Turning point. Turning, turning, turning point. The rest is a story of diminishing returns. Ajax is dead, Agamemnon, all my friends, but I can't die, worse luck; Menelaus's carcass is long wormed, yet his voice yarns on through everything, to itself. Not my voice, I am this voice, no more, the rest has changed, rechanged, gone. The voice too, even that changes, becomes hoarser, loses its magnetism , grows scratchy, incoherent, blank. (167) The last word? Hold-on. One more interpretation. In my discussion of John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse I shall treat his "series" of stories as a novel: because a unity, a wholeness, is intended, according to the 'Author's Note," because a single work is achieved, as I hope to demonstrate, and because, as Barth remarked in a "conversation " referring to "book-length fiction" written today, "it's got to be called something or other."2 Besides, the form this novel takes (selected stories) is not new to the genre. The moderns broke up whatever unity the form had previously assumed: Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio), Williams (In the American Grain), and Faulkner (Go Down, Moses), for example, used collected stories in a technique of fracture, collage, collation , conflation. I shall call Barth's work a novel, but not to place it in the tradition of the moderns. If its form was predicted, legitimized, in the first half of the century, its themes and its attitudes toward them were not. Postmoderns lost something of the moderns' sense of shame, of shock, of loss, grief. The moderns' reactionary reaction to revolutions and world wars, to radical disorientation, first devolved to a milder, less passionate, because existentialist or nihilistic, dis-ease. The emphasis turned from events themselves to interpretations of them. We 82Carolyn Norman Slaughter seemed to have passed another crisis. The fever abated a bit, spirit revived. This turning point...

The Significance of Karl Barth for Contemporary Theology

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KARL BARTH FOR CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY TIE CENTENNIAL OBSERVATION of Karl Barth's rth provides a happy opportunity to reassess the sigficance of the Swiss theologian's work. Such a reappraisal is needed, because American theologians since the 1960s have tended to dismiss Barth as a once influential figure in a now discredited theological movement called " neoorthodoxy ." 1 Setting aside the oddity of a classification which lumps together such diverse thinkers as Barth, Brunner, Bultmann , Tillich, and the Niebuhrs, this easy dismissal hardly does justice to the man who produced the most wide-ranging theological work of the twentieth century, the Church Dogmatics . In this essay I will assess Barth's importance for contemporary theology by first viewing his thought in the context of the disputes surrounding the promulgation of the Barmen Declaration. Through an analysis of the criticisms directed against Barth by his conservative German Lutheran opponents of the 1930s, I will seek to show the ecumenical significance of Barth's work for theology in the 1980s. My introductory comments will focus on the Protestant tradition, because the theological and political disputes of those years were carried on in isolation from the Roman Catholic community.2 1 Both Protestant and Catholic theologians have tended to group Barth with the "neo-orthodox" movement. See, for example, Langdon Gilkey, Naming the Whirlwind (Indianapolis. Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), pp. 73-106: and David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury Publishing House, 1978), pp. 27-31. Tracy treats Barth and the other "neo-orthodox" theologians simply as "critical moments " in the history of modern liberalism. 2 The definitive work on the church in Nazi Germany is Klaus Scholder, Die Kirchen und das dritte Reich, (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1977). Only the 512 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KARL BARTH 518 The issues raised in that Reformed-Lutheran squabble in those early years of the Third Reich have, however, a continuing significance for contemporary Christian theologians from the full spectrum of confessional traditions. The Barmen Synod of May, 1984, and its famous declaration were primarily the result of the efforts of Reformed theologians . Karl Barth's essay "Theologische Existenz Heute!" launched the confessional protest movement against state interference in church affairs.3 While Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor, founded the " Pastors' Emergency League," the impetus for a confessional synod was provided by those free Reformed churches which first met in Barmen in January, 1984, and issued a statement of theological confession and protest authored by Karl Barth.4 The subsequent confessional synod met on May 29-81 at the Reformed Church of BarmenGemarke , and Barth, of course, authored the document we now know as the Barmen Declaration. Though Lutheran theologians and pastors were involved in the preparations for the Barmen synod, their direct contributions were rather limited. In fact, Barth reported that he wrote a first draft of the theological declaration while his two Lutheran colleagues, Thomas Breit and Hans Asmussen, took three hour long naps! With some glee Barth described the occasion. " The Lutheran first volume, which deals with the period 1914-1933, of this projected two volume work has been completed. The best studies in English of the churches' encounter with Nazism are J. S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches Under Hitler, 1933-1945, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1968) and Ernst Helmreich, The German Churches Under Hitler, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979). For works which focus primarily on Roman Catholicism's situation in the Third Reich, see Gordon Zahn, German Catholios and Hitler's Wars (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1962) and Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGraw & Hill, 1964). s Theologische l!Jwistenz Heute, 1 (1933). English translation: Theological l!Jwistence Today, trans. by R. Birch Hoyle (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1933). 4 Karl Barth, "Erklarung iiber das rechte Verstandnis der reformatorischen Bekenntnisse in der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche der Gegenwart," Theologische l!Jwistenz Heute, 7 (1943), pp. 9-15. 514 RONALD THIELMANN Church slept and the Reformed Church kept awake ... I revised the text of the six statements fortified by strong coffee and one or two Brazilian cigars." 5 Though Barth's account of Lutheran inaction was somewhat exaggerated, there can be no doubt that Barmen's chief critics...