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Roland Barthes (1915-1980) La Préparation du roman - Cours au Collège de France 1978-1980
La Préparation du Roman II - L'oeuvre comme volonté 1979-1980
Roland Barthes est élu au Collège de France le 14 mai 1976, à la chaire de sémiologie littéraire. Il enseigne jusqu'à sa mort des suites d'un accident, au printemps 1980. Les deux derniers cours se dérouleront sur deux années : Du 2 décembre 1978 au 10 mars 1979 soit 13 séances, à raison d'une heure par semaine pour la première année. Du 1er décembre 1979 au 16 février 1980 soit 10 séances, à raison d'une heure trente par semaine pour la deuxième année. La Préparation du Roman est moins un cours qu'une méditation à haute voix, libre, ouverte et aventurée autour d'une fiction : "Je simule celui qui veut écrire une oeuvre", dit Roland Barthes. La méthode sera donc celle de la simulation, la "théorie" devient fabulatrice. Durant les deux années de ce cours, Barthes construit ainsi un roman hypothétique, une oeuvre à venir en s'intéressant moins à l'objet fini qu'aux conditions mêmes qui vont peut-être le rendre possible. Le Roman de Barthes s'arrête à l'orée du roman tout en feignant d'y conduire. La Notation, la Phrase, l'Incident, le Mourir, la Jouissance d'écrire et le Non-écrire, le Continu et le Discontinu, la Vie méthodique, la Nuit, la Solitude, la Séparation, telles sont les étapes successives de ce cheminement très subjectif. Si la Préparation du Roman est un objet particulièrement poignant c'est bien sûr parce qu'il constitue les ultima verba, les dernières paroles de Barthes qui meurt quelques semaines seulement après avoir prononcé la dernière leçon, mais c'est aussi parce qu'il est de part en part habité par la conscience de la mort, non de la mauvaise mort qui interrompt tout, mais de son anticipation comme incitiation et comme appel à écrire, à construire, et à inscrire à même le présent continu de la vie la constellation des signes par où la littérature se déploie comme terre promise. -- Eric Marty Roland Barthes : Inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, 1977
Roland Barthes : "Comment vivre ensemble" ("How to live together"), Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977 02. Ensemble 01 - January 12, 1977 03. Ensemble 02 - January 19, 1977 04. Ensemble 03 - January 26, 1977 05. Ensemble 04 - February 2, 1977 06. Ensemble 05 - February 9, 1977 07. Ensemble 06 - February 16, 1977 08. Ensemble 07 - March 2, 1977 09. Ensemble 08 - March 9, 1977 10. Ensemble 09 - March 16, 1977 11. Ensemble 10 - March 23, 1977 12. Ensemble 11 - March 30, 1977 13. Ensemble 12 - April 20, 1977 14. Ensemble 13 - April 27, 1977 15. Ensemble 14 - May 4, 1977 NOTES on "Comment vivre ensemble" The audio material available here represents the whole lectures given by Barthes during his first 2 years' teaching at the Collège de France in 1977 and 1978, and also his inaugural lecture about the question of power (and the way it is inscribed in the core of the language). The Collège de France, in Paris, is a prestigious institution created in 1530 and whose vocation is both being a research center and a teaching space. Neither a University nor a High School, it also has to be distinguished from public research centers and does not award any degree either ; admission to lectures is free and open to all students without any preliminary registration. There are 52 chairs for 52 holders in a wide range of subjects. Professors are elected by their peers and, on their arrival, name their own chairs according to the researching themes they mean to develop. Actually, in opposition to the other institutions that provide an established knowledge (Lacan's « S1 »), the Collège de France deals with knowledge "inthe-making" (Lacan's « S2 »). The prestige of the Collège can be judged by its old professors : Champollion, Paul Valery, Henri Bergson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, André Leroi-Gourhan, Pierre Boulez, etc. Roland Barthes was elected to the Collège de France on Michel Foucault's proposal in March 1976 and created the chair of literary semiology there. A few days after his inaugural lecture on the 7th of January 1977, Barthes starts his lectures entitled « Comment vivre ensemble » ("How to live together") for the year 1977. The initial question that he asks to himself (: « How to find the right distance between me and my neighbour in order that an acceptable social living may be possible for all of us ? ») finds a direct answer in Barthes' following proposal : the idiorhythmy as a way (as a fantasy) of living, i.e. a system in which everyone should be able to find, impose and preserve their own rhythm of life. These lectures about living in community seem strangely refer to themes that Michel Foucault had previously dealt with. According to Barthes, power is precisely what forbids any idiorythmy because it imposes strict rhythms to individuals. The design of the paragon of an idiorhythmic way of living should be that of an anchorite or an ascetic stylite secluded on the top of his column (cf. Buñuel's Simon Of The Desert) ; on the other hand, the total rejection of idiorythmy is what will produce such communities as convents, monasteries or phalansteries (and we should also add two other types of communities that proscribe the possibility of idiorythmy to individuals, two main institutions in Foucault's works : psychiatric hospitals and prisons). During his 1977's lectures, Barthes will apply himself to clear a path to a living-together (probably utopian), towards this fantasy of society he suggests : a society that would allow everyone to live according to his own rhythm inside the community but without being based on an extreme solitude for each individual (hard to reach, except in the case of the authentic extatic mysticism and in the case of a deep - pathological - feeling of dereliction), a society that wouldn't be based on the extreme alienation of individiuals by a power (whatever its forms) fixing strict rhythms. -- Guillaume Patin, Editor / Curator
Roland Barthes : "Le Neutre" ("The Neutral"), Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978 16. Le Neutre 01 - February 18, 1978 17. Le Neutre 02 - February 25, 1978 18. Le Neutre 03 - March 4, 1978 19. Le Neutre 04 - March 11, 1978 20. Le Neutre 05 - March 18, 1978 21. Le Neutre 06 - March 25, 1978 22. Le Neutre 07 - April 1, 1978 23. Le Neutre 08 - April 29, 1978 24. Le Neutre 09 - May 6, 1978 25. Le Neutre 10 - May 13, 1978 26. Le Neutre 11 - May 20, 1978 27. Le Neutre 12 - May 27, 1978 28. Le Neutre 13 - June 3, 1978 NOTES on "Le Neutre" Just as the previous year's teaching about the living-together did, the 1978 's lectures originated from one of Bathes's personal fantasies : Neutral, the desire of Neutral. This is not a recent concern since Writing degree zero in 1953 already dealt with this subject. Barthes straightforwardly defines Neutral as something that thwarts, dodges the paradigm. Saussure's paradigm is based on the necessary opposition between two virtual terms (A and B) ; the mechanisms of this conflict is that it finally has to lead the individual to choose one of these two terms in order that a sense may happen. Neutral, then, stands as a third structural term that annihilates this implacable binarism of the paradigm. The neutral term occurs from the cancelling of the opposition in the paradigm : Neutral, degree zero, is defined as what is neither A nor B. Ethics (the range of the prescribed choices for individuals, of the responsabilities they have to take upon themselves, of the sense they continuously has to produce) currently implies another range in which individuals are tempted to dodge any conflict, any choice, tempted to avoid the sense : that's where the range of Neutral for Barthes lies. The method that he will apply during this teaching will be globally the same as the one he applied during the previous year : i.e. defining an object of study, an argument for these lectures, then describing several figures of this object (without defining or explaining them). These figures of Neutral (androgyny, consciousness, tolerance, tiredness, sleep, etc.) have previously been chosen with a claimed subjectivity and then brought before the audience in a random order to avoid any creation of sense that would only be an artefact (a real drawback in his teaching about the Neutral, i.e. precisely about what thwarts the production of sense). In that respect, the lectures must both describe and echibit the dimension of Neutral. Barthes' stake is to show up the weakness of the common ideas of doxa about insipidity and platitude of Neutral ; on the contrary, he tries to restore its strength, its bright and intense dimension in dealing with states, behaviors or speeches that aim at the removal of this intrinsic conflict inside the paradigm. Roland Barthes - La leçon de Proust pour la Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (1961) RELATED RESOURCES:  Roland Barthes in UbuWeb Film
Roland Barthes "The Death of the Author" on UbuWeb (Aspen Magazine)
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