The Barthes Effect: The Essay as Reflective Text

by Réda Bensmaïa, Pat Fedkiew (Translator), Michele H. Richman (Foreword by)

The Barthes Effect was first published in 1987. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The author acknowledges the essay as an eccentric phenomenon in literary history, one that has long resisted entry into the taxonomy of genres, as it concentrates on four works by Roland The Pleasure of the Text, A Lover's Discourse, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, and Camera Lucida. Maintains that with Barthes the essay achieves a status of its own, as reflective text. ". . . a study rigorously conscious of the critical maneuvers it executes and, more importantly, questions as critical practice . . . " Bensmaïa's strategy produces a successful investigation of the interstices and slippages of meaning which Barthes addressed in his work." SubStance Reda Bensmaia is associate professor in the departments of French and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, and translator Pat Fedkiew, a graduate student in French at Minnesota. Michele Richman is associate professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Reading Georges Beyond the Gift .

Genres: Criticism

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Réda Bensmaïa is Professor Emeritus, Formerly University Professor of French and Francophone literature in the French Studies Department and in the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University. He has published extensively on French and Francophone literature of the Twentieth century as well as on film theory and contemporary philosophy.

He is the author of The Barthes Effect, Introduction to the reflective Text (Minnesota, THL, 1987); The Years of Passages (Minnesota, Theory out of Bounds, 1995); Alger ou la Maladie de la Mémoire (L'Harmattan, 1997) and Experimental Nations or The Invention of the Maghreb (Princeton University Press, Spring 2003). He is also the Editor of Gilles Deleuze (Lendemains, Berlin, 1989) and Recommending Deleuze (Discourse, 1998)

Reviews

[Paras2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

extremely hard to follow the arguments presented and I wasn't interested one bit