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Every new Fashion is a refusal to inherit, a subversion against the oppression of the preceding Fashion; Fashion experiences itself as a Right, the natural right of the present over the past.

Roland Barthes

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
Literature is the question minus the answer.
ROLAND BARTHES

Answer Literature Question
The book creates meaning, the meaning creates life.
ROLAND BARTHES

Creation Life Meaning
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
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

Desire Disappointment Pleasure Rival Truth
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
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
A paradox: the same century invented history and photography. But history is a memory fabricated according to positive formulas, a pure intellectual discourse which abolishes mythic time; and the photograph is a certain but fugitive testimony.
ROLAND BARTHES

History Invention Photography Review
It is no longer the sexual which is indecent, it is the sentimental.
ROLAND BARTHES

Emotional Sexuality
All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.
ROLAND BARTHES

Ideas Institution Meaning Official Popular Repeat Structure
The art of living has no history: it does not evolve: the pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good, there is no substitute for it. Other pleasures come, which replace nothing. No progress in pleasures, nothing but mutations.
ROLAND BARTHES

Art History Live Mutation Pleasure
Every photograph is a certificate of presence.
ROLAND BARTHES

Camera Certificate Photograph Presence
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
The photographic image is a message without a code.
ROLAND BARTHES

Code Image Message Photography
The lover who does not forget sometimes dies from excess, fatigue, and the strain of memory (like Werther).
ROLAND BARTHES

Forget Lover Memories Strain Time
Man does not exist prior to language, either as a species or as an individual.
ROLAND BARTHES

Existence Language Man Position

Every new Fashion is a refusal to inherit, a subversion against the oppression of the preceding Fashion; Fashion experiences itself as a Right, the natural right of the present over the past.

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Every new Fashion is a refusal to inherit, a subversion against the oppression of the preceding Fashion; Fashion experiences itself as a Right, the natural right of the present over the past.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Roland Barthes Quotes