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185
1B6.B--,
BARTHES
READER
within this institution, its essential raw material, language. Institutionally, the literature of France is its language, a halflinguistic, half-aestheticsystem which has not lacked a mythic
dimensionas well, that of its clarity.
When, in France, did the author ceasebeing the only one to
speak? Doubtless at the time of the Revolution, when there
first appear men who appropriate the authors' language for
political ends. The institution remains in place: it is still a
matter of that great French language, whose lexicon and
euphony are respectfully preserved throughout the greatest
paroxysm of French history; but the functions change, the
personnel is increasedfor the next hundred years; the authors
themselves,from Chateaubriand or Maistre to Hugo or Zola,
help broaden the literary function, transform this institutionalized language of which they are still the acknowledged owners into the instrument of a new action; and alongside these
authors in the strict senseof the word, a new group is constituted and develops, a new custodian of the public language.
Intellectuals? The word has a complex resonance;1I prefer
calfing them here writers. And since the present may be that
fragile moment in history where the two functions coexist, f
should like to sketch a comparative typology of the author and
the writer with referenceto the substancethey share: language.
The author performs a function, the writer an activity. Not
that the author is a pure essence:he acts, but his action is
immanent in its object, it is performed paradoxically on its
own instrument: language;the author is the man who labors,
who works up his utterance (even if he is inspired) and functionally absorbs himself in this labor, this work. His activity
involves two kinds of norm: technical (of composition, genre,
style) and artisanal (of patience,correctness,perfection). The
'Apparently
e4
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R E A D E R
inductor of ambiguity,2 second, evidence, since he has consigned himself to language, the author cannot have a naive
"work
consciousness,cannot
up" a protest without his messagefinally bearing much more on the working-up than on the
protest: by identifying himself with language,the author loses
all claim to truth, for language is precisely that structure
whose very goal (at least historically, sincethe Sophists), once
it is no longer rigorously transitive, is to neutralize the true
and the false.3 But what he obviously gains is the power to
disturb the world, to afford it the dizzying spectacle of praxis
without sanction. This is why it is absurd to ask an author for
"commitment":
a "committcd" author claims simultaneous
participation in two structures,inevitably a source of deception. What we can ask of an author is that he be responsible;
again, let there be no mistake: whether or not an author is
responsiblefor his opinions is unimportant; whether or not an
author assumes,more or less intelligently, the ideological implications of his work is also secondary; an author's true
responsibilityis to support literature as a failed commitment,
as a Mosaic glance at the Promised Land of the real (this is
Kafka's responsibility,for example) .
Naturally, literature is not a grace, it is the body of the
projects and decisionswhich lead a man to fulfill himself (that
is, in a sense,to essentializehimself) in language alone: an
author is a man who wants to be an author. Naturally too,
society, which consumesthe author, transforms project into
vocation, labor into talent, and techniclueinto art: thus is born
the myth of fine writing: the author is a salaried priest, he is
the half-respectable,half-ridiculous guardian of the sanctuary
' An author can produce a system, but it will never be consumed as such.
3Structure of reirlity and structure of language: no better indication
of the
difficulty of a coincidence between the two than the constant failure of
dialectic, once it becomes discourse: for language is not dialectic, it can
only say "we must be dialectical," but it cannot be so itself: language is
a representation without perspective, except precisely for the author's; but
the author dialecticizeshirnself, he does not dialecticizethe world.
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a
of the great French language, a kind of national treasure'
sacred merchandise, produced, taught' consumed, and exported in the context of a sublime economy of values' This
iacralization of the author's struggle with form has great consequences,and not merely formal ones: it permits society-or
Society-to distance the work's content when it risks becoming an embarrassment, to convert it into pure spectacle' to
*hl.tr it is entitled to apply a liberal (i'e', an indifierent)
judgment, to neutralize the revolt of passion,the subversionof
"committed" author into an incescriticism (which forces the
sant and impotent Provocation)-in short, to recuperatethe
author: every author is eventually digested by the literary institution, unless he scuttles himself, i.e., unless he ceasesto
identify his being with that of language: this is why so few
authors renouncewriting, for that is literally to kill themselves,
to die to the being they have chosen; and if there are such
authors, their silence echoes like an inexplicable conversion
(Rimbaud).4
"transitive" man, he
The writer. on the other hand, is a
posits a goal (to give evidence, to explain, to instruct), of
which languageis merely a means;for him languagesupports
a praxis, it does not constitute one. Thus language is restored
to the nature of an instrument of communication, a vehicle of
"thought." Even if the writer pays some attention to style, this
concern is never ontological. The writer performs no essential
technical action upon language; he employs an utterance
common to all writers, a koinE in which we can of course
distinguish certain dialects (Marxist, for example, or Christian, or existentialist),but very rarely styles' For what defines
the writer is the fact that his project of communication is
naive: he does not admit that his message is reflexive' that it
a These are the modern elements of the problem' We know that on the
contrary Racine's contemporaries were not it- all surprised when he suddenly
stoppeciwriting tragedies and became a royal functionary'
190 13s.'
BARTHES
READER
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both witch doctor and intellectual in a sense stabilizing a disease which is necessary to the collective economy of health'
And naturally it is not surprising that such a conflict (or such
a contract, if you prefer) should be joined on the level of
language; for language is this paradox: the institutionalizalion
of subjectivity.
1960