His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular culture. Some fifty years after the 'Structuralist Controversy' at Johns Hopkins University, how can we read this exemplary (post)structuralist analysis in a way that re-inscribes the central question of sexuality and gender in-difference? We propose a hospitable rereading of S/Z that will open dialogues between Queer Studies and various branches of literary studies.Roland Gérard Barthes ( / b ɑːr t/ French: 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980 ) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. S/Z, Barthes's seminal analysis of Balzac's short story Sarrasine, emerges as a key text foretelling the figure of the Neutral, translating at the same time the relation between Barthes's own sexuality and work. Given Barthes's reticence on his own gay sexuality and the interest the discovery of his posthumous autobiographical fragments/diaries sparked in the Feminist and Queer communities, it seems useful to revisit some of his own writings in order to better understand his implied views on sexual difference, homosexuality and identity politics. Yet its sexual undertones can be strongly felt in many of Barthes's works. Defined as a stance of 'retreat' or 'oscillation' that dodges or 'baffles paradigm' (binary oppositions), it has never been referred to as directly associated with questions of gender and sexuality. The Neutral is a late concept which Barthes developed during his 1978 lecture course at the College de France. At the end, we discuss inscriptions of affection in the experience of loss and the distinguishing traits of mourning writing we propose that a certain pathos may be at work in the Diary, weaving a particular brand of connection between writing, love and their spectre-like objects and participants. Our analysis revisits Freud's pioneering study "Mourning and melancholia", Kristeva's work on the same subject and Blanchot's musings on the close ties between writing and death, as well as critical studies of Barthes' Mourning diary and other writing projects equally haunted by the loss of his mother (Camera lucida and the intended novel Vita Nova) we also identify similarities between the writings-in-mourning undertaken by Barthes and by Dante Alighieri. Considering its role in Barthes' oeuvre, we examine a) the special relationship between presence and absence that occurs in mourning, b) Barthes' reckoning with that psychoanalytic concept and c) the particularities of writing harboured in grief. This paper addresses the notes published posthumously as Roland Barthes' Mourning diary.
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