Stafford, AJ (2015) Classé, Surclasser, Déclassé, or, Roland Barthes, Classification without Class. L'Esprit Createur, 55 (4). pp. 148-164. ISSN 0014-0767
Abstract
This article considers the ambivalent attitude of Roland Barthes to the act, status, and usefulness of classification and of classifying. It covers three distinct periods in his career: that of jobbing journalist with Marxist leanings in the 1950s, of structuralist academic in the 1960s, and of the writer in the 1970s. The article traces the figure of the duck-billed platypus, a metaphor for the scandalous exception, as deployed in Barthes’s various writings during these three periods; and it investigates the ways in which taxonomy, and other aspects of classification, led, firstly, to a critique of historical formalism, secondly, to a methodological accommodation with classification, and finally to an attempt by the writer to avoid, atopically, all forms of classification especially that of social class.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Editors: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015, L’Esprit Créateur. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Classification; formalism; structuralist methodology; atopianism; ex-classification |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) > French (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 14 Apr 2015 11:03 |
Last Modified: | 23 Jun 2023 21:46 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/esp.2015.0057 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1353/esp.2015.0057 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:84935 |