“When we go out of our mind, where do we go?”
– Nicci Gerrard, “Words Fail Us: Dementia and the Arts,” The Observer 19 July 2015
Monthly Archives: July 2015
Impossible Literature
Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero (1953; 1967 in English)
Modernism begins with the search for a Literature which is no longer possible. [La modernité commence avec la recherche d’une Littérature impossible.]
Unexpressing the Expressible
Roland Barthes, Critical Essays (1964; 1972 in English)
We often hear it said that it is the task of art to express the inexpressible; it is the contrary which must be said (with no intention of paradox): the whole task of art is to unexpress the expressible, to kidnap from the world’s language, which is the poor and powerful language of the passions, another speech, an exact speech.
Illegible Writing
Roland Barthes, “Masson’s Semiography” (1973), The Responsibility of Forms (1982; 1985 in English)
For writing to be manifest in its truth (and not in its instrumentality) it must be illegible.
ANDREW GALLIX 