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Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.

Roland Barthes

He who reads a story only once is condemned to read the same story his whole life.
ROLAND BARTHES

Himself Life Reading Story
Television doomed us to the Family, whose household instrument it has become-what the hearth used to be, flanked by the communal kettle.
ROLAND BARTHES

Community Family Instrument Television
Literature is the question minus the answer.
ROLAND BARTHES

Answer Literature Question
In an initial period, Photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs. The ‘anything whatever’ then becomes the sophisticated acme of value.
ROLAND BARTHES

Notable Order Photography Sophistication Value
Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, perceptiveness, experience, vision.
ROLAND BARTHES

Age Experience Old Specific Vision
Isn’t desire always the same, whether the object is present or absent? Isn’t the object always absent? -This isn’t the same languor: there are two words: Pothos, desire for the absent being, and Himéros, the more burning desire for the present being.
ROLAND BARTHES

Absence Burning Desire Object Present
Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.
ROLAND BARTHES

Classification Forget Language Oppression Power Speech
Language is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech.
ROLAND BARTHES

Language Prevent Progression Speech
All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.
ROLAND BARTHES

Death Determination Photography Young
The photographic image is a message without a code.
ROLAND BARTHES

Code Image Message Photography
I cannot classify the other, for the other is, precisely, Unique, the singular Image which has miraculously come to correspond to the speciality of my desire. The other is the figure of my truth, and cannot be imprisoned in any stereotype (which is the truth of others).
ROLAND BARTHES

Classification Desire Myself Speciality Stereotype Truth Unique
To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not–this is the beginning of writing.
ROLAND BARTHES

Beginning Known Love Myself Writing
Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.
ROLAND BARTHES

Literature Poet Talk Writing
Someone tells me: this kind of love is not viable. But how can you evaluate viability? Why is the viable a Good Thing? Why is it better to last than to burn?
ROLAND BARTHES

Better Burn Evaluation Kind Love
What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.
ROLAND BARTHES

Existence Oneself Repeat Reproduction
In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott’s psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.
ROLAND BARTHES

Children Death Fear Mom Myself Patient Photography

Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.

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Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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