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Barthes's Body Of Knowledge, Gregory L. Ulmer

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Roland Barthes invites a reading of his own texts in terms of the same methodologies he employs in his criticism. The «Biographeme»—those few details, preferences, inflections—which Barthes identified in his favorite authors, may be sought in Barthes as well. Barthes's biographeme, for me, consists of a glutinous effect associated with the organs of the mouth and throat as presented in several images, some of which belong to his tutor texts (Poe and Réquichot). An analysis of this biographeme reveals Barthes's strategy for disseminating the subject of knowledge—the author's fantasmatic body—through the signifiers of writing, fusing the heterogeneous singularities of the …