Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Mar 2016)
Avatars of a semiological adventure: the critical legacy of Roland Barthes and the drift of the structural / post-structural paradigm. An Introduction
Abstract
The production of Roland Barthes (1915-1980) is abundant and varied to the point where critical studies about his writing –and even, according to the own semiologist– have established different “phases” in the development of his thought. In this paper, we intend to observe two of those moments in Barthes´ theorizing, which coincide with the prevailing theoretical currents in France between the ´60s and ´70s: the structuralism and the post-structuralism. With this goal, we will analize two central texts in the semiotics of Barthes: “Introduction to the structural analysis of narratives” (1966) and “From work to text” (1971). The comparison of both works will allow us to observe the epistemological point of view and the model which the author adopted in each moment. It includes a change of perspective on the language, setting the concept of “story” (and others related as “levels of consciousness”, “the story grammar”, distortion and expansion operations, etc.) aside and using “text” as a methodological field held in language and his associated notions: game, practice, production, death of the author, among others.
