Barthes, R. "From Work to Text" 1

Introduction

Roland Barthes is a contemporary pioneer literary critic, writer, sociologist, philosopher in French. In his article From work to text, Barthes puts forward an epoch-making theory of the Text. He distinguishes the work and the text, denies the authority of the author and gives the reader the right to reproduce; he affirms the Text is a dynamic, open system and tries to construct a Text utopia. The post-structuralism theory of Barthes and other French philosophers as Foucault, Derrida, Lacan and Leotta was contributed to art history from 1970s.

A Turning from traditional Work to Post-modern Text

In literary criticism, author, work and reader constitute a close system, the barycenter is constantly changing from the three inseparable parts. Traditional literary criticism places author to the dominant position, the work is a completed entity endued its signification by author, in this case the reader receive the work passively. In Barthes’s theory of the Text, the text is emphasized and is no longer related to the work, it is a reproduction made by the reader. The article From work to text declares Barthes’s leave to Structuralism and is an echo in Deconstructionism. Barthes indicates that the work is collapsed by the rise of the Text in the changing of in the conception of language, new interdiscipline is circulating. Traditional theory bases on the work is likened to Newtonian close system, which underpinned the myth of author; while the theory of the Text is as Einsteinian open system which is applicable to intertextual production and at the same time embodies the principle of interdisciplinarity.

The Deconstructive Text

Barthes lays out seven characteristics of the Text in his From work to text: 1. the Text is different with traditional the work which is dependent on the activity of discourses; 2. the Text is unclassifiable; 3. the Text generates perpetual signifiers and the signified is infinitely deferred; 4. the origin is emphasized in the work but the Text is untraceable; 5. the work is owned by its father-the author, but the Text refers to each other; 6. the Text is opened to the readers’ participating; 7. the reading of text arouses a pleasure as in utopia.

Bathers at first distinguishes the Text with the work, he states the real difference between the two is “the work is a fragment of substance, occupying a part of the space of books (in a library for example), the Text is a methodological field.” In another words, the work is tangible and can be held by hand, but the Text is insubstantial, it can only held in language and it only exists in the movement of a discourse. Barthes regards the Text as a constant “weaving” process: the text is a tissue, a woven fabric, the reader is precisely the fabricator. Therefore, the Text is unclassifiable in literature. To the level of Semiology, the Text offers an open system for signifiers, thus signified is infinitely deferred. The centrality is vanished and the Text becomes the field for the playing of signifiers. In Barthes’s view, the multilevel Text construction contains no central, no meaning.

The filiation relationship between the author and the work in traditional literature criticism is rebelled by Barthes in his earlier work in The death of the author, 1968, the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author . In his From work to text, the authority of the author is denied, the author is no longer the subject in “weaving”. The text stems from infinite signifiers, and the name of the author is no longer inscribed. Conversely, the author is no more the father but a visitor who weaved into the text. The reader was endued a prominence authority by Barthes, it becomes the fabricator other than the consumer.

To read the work is a simple consumption, while to read the Text is kind of play, activity, production, practice, which implies the distance between writing and reading is abolished. Barthes believes that the work brings a consumptive pleasure by offering certain meaning, the pleasure is concerning discovery; while to read the Text arouse a jotrissance of participating the “weaving process”, which is the interaction between the reader and the work, this unlimited reproduction can construct an utopia.