The neuter
The neuter ( Le neutre ) is an essay on literary theory by the French post-structuralist and semioticist Roland Barthes . A German translation of the 1978 lecture was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 2005 .
content
Roland Barthes “Das Neutrum” is not a text conceived for publication, but rather notes from a lecture that Barthes gave during the 1978 summer semester at the Collège de France . Barthes refuses - as in other of his writings - a systematic approach in the presentation of his 23 (originally 30) "figures", in which he demonstrates his concept of the neuter.
Classification and style
Barthes ordered his published works at three different stages: In the first phase, he turned in the successor Ferdinand de Saussure of language or the discourse to, in the second phase Barthes working on a semiotic analysis of fashion before settling in the third Phase turned to the text . The "neuter" lectures also fall into this phase. In Barthe's late notes, his tendency towards the literary and artificial - similar to " Die Lust am Text " - emerges more strongly, influences from psychoanalysis , Kristeva , Derrida and Nietzsche become clear.
The neuter
Barthes defines: “I define the neuter as that which overrides the paradigm , or better: I call the neuter that which overrides the paradigm. Because I don't define a word; I name one thing […]. ”Barthes uses the term paradigm synonymously with ' conflict '. According to its interpretation, the neuter avoids a meaningful conflict by refusing to choose one option and rejecting another. As a so-called " tertium ", the neuter undermines the binary structure inherent in the paradigm.
The aleatoric representation of the book complements the content of the lectures on a formal level, since - according to Barthes - the neuter “is detached from the access of meaning” and thus eludes dogmatic or hierarchical modes of representation. The neuter, according to Barthes, is ultimately something difficult, provocative and offensive, "because it involves thinking of the indistinguishable, the temptation of the last (or first) paradigm: the differentiated and the indistinguishable."
The figures
The “figures” that Barthes presents to the recipient include “the tenderness”, “the color” and “the adjective ”. Barthe's conception of the neuter in the "delicacy" shows itself, for example, as the pleasure of analyzing a linguistic act, an act that "undermines the expected [...] and suggests that the delicacy is a perversion that is associated with the superfluous (functionless) Detail plays ”. In the field of colors, however, the neuter reveals itself precisely in the colorless, whereby Barthes emphasizes the "meaningful opposition [...] between the colored and the colorless".
The ambivalent neuter
Barthes sees the neuter as ambivalent and by no means neutral: it can only resolve conflicts by inserting it as a third, complex term between the ambivalent terms. For the semiologist, however, this third term is not a zero term - as demonstrated by the figure of the “adjective” and its “quality of desire” - rather the neuter becomes a gradient and thus brings subtlety into the paradigmatic structure.
The game
Roland Barthes, who as a student of Roman Jakobson - the founder of Prague structuralism - adhered to structuralist theory, after reading the writings of Jacques Derrida turned more to the "opening of the sign", and although he remained true to his semiological approach, he added that logocentric alignment to de Saussures' concept of sign through intertextual procedures. For him, the focus was on playing with the reading of texts: This game can also be found in the "neuter", where the individual "figures" in which the neuter is articulated are read from various randomly compiled texts.
reception
The “neuter” received little attention from literary research , although it characterizes the “late” Barthes more closely. Cord Riechelmann read “Das Neutrum” as an investigation into “the behavior of subjects when speaking and to the language of others” and “Thoughts on media reality in a time when private television did not exist in its present form”; Julia Encke saw the lectures less as "imparting knowledge or theory", but rather as "instructions for use in life".
See also
literature
- The neuter. Frankfurt / M. 2005, Suhrkamp. ISBN 3-518-12377-7 [Le neutre, 2002]
Web links
- Review of "Das Neutrum" in the review forum literaturkritik.de of the University of Marburg
- Review notes on Das Neutrum at perlentaucher.de