Phantasmagorical Research: How Theory Becomes Art in the Work of Roland Barthes

Abstract

: In his latest statements, Roland Barthes imagines a becoming-art of his thinking. But rather than switching from a theoretical to a literary form he reflects his desire of a new writing as the beginning of a new thinking, which leads him to another knowledge. His intended new form is ambivalent. It results from indecision between essay and novel, critique and narration and thereby detects a hidden dynamic of thinking: Its phantas-matic sources and emotional conditions reveal an affective knowledge, in which the pathos leads to the truth and gains the significance of a philosophem .