Barthes on Trees

October 27th, 2007 Fred McVittie

If I am a woodcutter and I am led to name the tree I am felling, whatever the form of my sentence, I ’speak the tree’, I do not speak about it. This means that my language is operational, transitively linked to its object; between the tree and myself, there is nothing but my labour, that is to say an action. This is political language: it represents nature for me only inasmuch as I am going to transform it, it is a language thanks to which I ‘act the object’; the tree is not an image for me, it is simply the meaning of my action. But if I am not a woodcutter, I can no longer ’speak the tree’, I can only speak about it, on it…. I no longer have anything but an intransitive relationship with the tree; this tree is no longer the meaning of reality as a human action, it is an image-at-one’s-disposal.. (Barthes 1973, p.145-46).

(This) acceptance of the risk inherent in positive interpretation is all the more remarkable because Barthes, whose sense of historicity and negativity is equal to Sartre’s or Brecht’s, usually cannot help giving expression to a fundamental hope, whose strength can be deduced negatively from the constant emphasis on language in his work, be it the ‘language’ of poetics, the language in which the critic writes his interpretation, or the final act of writing which for him is the natural conclusion of the reading intimacy (p.94). This is the hope of doing without language altogether, without representation or mediation of any kind. In Mythologies, the intellectual who can only ‘speak about a tree’ is seen to envy the woodcutter who, according to Barthes, ‘speaks the tree’ – uses the immediate language of action (pp. 145, 156, 158).
(Nisbet: 1989. p. 139)

Nisbet, Hugh Barr. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Cambridge University Press. 1989.

Barthes, R. (1973). Myth today In: Barthes, R. Mythologies. London: Collins/ Paladin. Original publication, in French, 1957.

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Barthes Multi-dimensional Space

April 30th, 2008 Fred McVittie

In ‘Death of the Author’ Roland Barthes refers to a text not as ‘a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.’ The dimensionality that Barthes is referring to here is, presumably, the tissue or fabric of language (and quotations) which make up the text. In making mention of the concept of ‘dimension’ he invokes the idea of a space, in this case a space of connection, deferral, and difference. Within the terms of the metaphor of this blog however, it might be more useful to talk about the ‘three-dimensional space of writing’. In this imaginary space there is horizontal extension away from the body and there is vertical extension. The objects of knowledge which are created by some of the writing are positioned at some distance in the horizontal plane, whilst some are positioned closer. Distant objects are most clearly delineated and bounded, separate from contamination by the body of the subject. Closer objects of knowledge fall within the reach and grasp of the hand, and are given affordance and malleability by their proximity. Objects inside the body cease to be objects at all, and acquire the properties of subjecthood.

The vertical dimension offers a vantage point from which a greater span of space might be panoptically available, and this elevated position offers the possibility of overview unavailable from ground level. The higher ground also suggests a more rarified, convergent, ’spiritual’ view, from which the irrelevant details disappear in favour of the grand plan.

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