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We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.

Roland Barthes

It must always be considered as though spoken by a character in a novel
ROLAND BARTHES

Character Consider Myself Novel
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
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
I make the other’s absence responsible for my worldliness.
ROLAND BARTHES

Absence Myself Responsibility World
I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.
ROLAND BARTHES

Blame Guilty Myself Power
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
The book creates meaning, the meaning creates life.
ROLAND BARTHES

Creation Life Meaning
The author enters into his own death, writing begins.
ROLAND BARTHES

Author Beginning Death Deep Writing
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
To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power.
ROLAND BARTHES

Patience Power Wait
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
One must turn the tongue seven times in the mouth before speaking.
ROLAND BARTHES

Mouth Oneself Speaking Time Tongue
Whereas the work is understood to be traceable to a source (through a process of derivation or “filiation”), the Text is without a source – the “author” a mere “guest” at the reading of the Text.
ROLAND BARTHES

Reading Source Text Understand Work
A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.
ROLAND BARTHES

Invisible Photograph See
Painting can feign reality without having seen it.
ROLAND BARTHES

Myself Painting Reality See
To eat, to speak, to sing (need we add: to kiss?) are operations which have the same site of the body for origin.
ROLAND BARTHES

Body Eat Origin Sing Talk

We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.

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We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.

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