Roland Barthes Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Ross Chambers

Critical Essay by Ross Chambers

SOURCE: Chambers, Ross. “Pointless Stories, Storyless Points.” In Loiterature, pp. 250-69. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

In the following essay, originally published in 1994, Chambers comments on Barthes's treatment of his homosexuality in Incidents and Soirées de Paris in the context of postcolonialism and historical consciousness.

Conversely, a book is conceivable: which would report a thousand “incidents” but would refuse ever to draw a line of meaning from them; it would be, quite specifically, a book of haikus.

—Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes

Rosencrantz: Incidents! All we get is incidents! Dear God, is it too much to expect a little sustained action?

—Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

When Barthes's Incidents was published posthumously, there was a mild outcry in the world of the Paris literati.¹ There are two relatively unremarkable texts in this volume (“La lumière du sud-ouest” and “Au Palace ce soir …”); the...
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