Reading S/Z was a frustrating experience. I actually found the examination of Serrasine fascinating and rather fun. But agree with Barthes’ theory I do not, and what is more I find him incredibly condescending. The examination of Balzac, while perceptive, reads like a rough draft, and I want to call Barthes on his presumption in attempting to present a sophisticated argument while feeling above the need to present it in an organized way. Complete sentences? Perhaps this is similar to the discomfit engendered by Kate Hayles’ departure from normative academic discussion, but both seem a ruse to trick me into buying into a theory on false grounds.

In section V (Reading, Forgetting), Barthes seems to discount the entire process of reading as an act in which one can be expected to follow certain norms or formulate conclusions. And while he claims that reading is not a parasitical act, he refuses to be held accountable for his reading. It may be work, but it is work that cannot be held to a standard. His descriptions of reading struck me as intolerably snobbish, and in the worst sort of snobbery that denies the need to explain one’s self or even consider the presence of other(s). “I name, I un-name, I rename” he says, but on this ideological basis (and yes, I think it is an ideology) what right does he have to expect anyone to read his namings and renamings? And in this sense it seems to me to be a denial of 1) any sort of communal sense implicit in reading and 2) any sense of (for lack of better terms) value or reconciliation or even gained knowledge possible in the act of reading. I liked Barthes’ examination of Sarrasine quite a lot, and yet what is Barthes actually trying to do? His theorizing did not sell me on the idea of his interpretations. What is the close reading for? And the refusal to take responsibility here does seem to follow throughout. Barthes is caught in his own tirade against ideology –of course he shrugs off (or rather turns up his nose at) expectations for readings that ‘count’, but I guess I am not sure why his example is supposed to depart so radically from traditional readings of a text, unless it is his unpolished form. On page 98 he presents the function of writing as “to make ridiculous, to annul the power (the intimidation) of one language over another.” This strikes me as ideological in its own right, and while it may make its point in a roundabout way by being an ultimately unsustainable system itself, this seems to be the only function granted to literature, and I fail to see where ‘essays’ such as Barthes' are justified within this system.

All in all I felt a bit tricked into liking Barthes’ read of Serrasine while not sold at all on his theory or hermeneutic methodology.

-Grace