Roland Barthes Body Theory Research

Roland Barthes was a famous literary theorist of the twentieth century in France.In his autobiography,Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes,he divided his own thoughts into four stages:social mythology,semiotics,textuality and morality."Body" is a common issue that could be found in his magnum opus around different periods:"Mythologies""The Fashion System " "Empire of Signs" "S/Z" and "The Pleasure of the Text".The issues about "body" seem to be fragmented in the texts of Barthes,tangled with his"langue" issues.However,in the deep of his thoughts,the "body" problem has been accompanied by Roland Barthes' theoretical thinking.The purpose of this paper is to show the internalization of Barthes' focuses on the issue of physical issues,to discuss the rich connotation of "body" issues in his thoughts.The text captures the discussion of the body in Roland Barthes' main works,uses the method of close reading to discuss,and combines the social background of the time and philosophy to study more deeply and broadly.Chapter 1 introduces Roland Barthes'thoughts and the scholars'researches on Barthes,providing an ideological background for exploring body issues,pointing out the overlook of scholars on the body issues in Barthes' thoughts.Chapter 2 illustrates the body in "Mythologies",Roland Barthes discussed the body in the films "Julius Caesar" and "Queen Christina",that was,"Romans in the film" and "Garbo's face",respectively.In the film,the body transferred from the nascent language into a secondary language,from the language system into the mythological system.Those bodies which seemed "natural",in fact,was artificial,those bodies which seemed to represent "order and truth",turned out to be determined by bourgeois ideology.The body of the film was rhetorical and played a role of signification.The bourgeoisie,by means of signification,transformed history into nature and classified everything into its legitimacy.In the mythology stage,Roland Barthes primarily focused on the social body of the western mainstream of the social culture.Chapter 3 deals mainly with body in the structuralism-poststructuralism.In the structuralism stage,the order of grammar excluded the body.Although clothes and sexy were discussed in "The Fashion System",these were not pointing to the body,Barthes only analyzed the clothes system structurally.In the late 1960s,Roland Barthes changed from the scientific stage into textuality stage."Empire of Signs" narrated the eyelids and bow when referring to the body of Japanese,body and the movements of body became a text writing process,as a kind of empty symbol,which digested western culture which was logocentric.Barthes showed his concern for the body of other in this book.Meanwhile "S/Z" was the concern for the gendered body,Sarrasine tried to find ego and subject in the perfect women,but the symbolic body(women)did not represent the gendered body(eunuchs),Zambinella's eunuch status shocked Sarrasine's subject,Sarrasine considered Zambinella as a perfect readable text,however,Zambinella was a writable text."Castration" overthrows the "father" order and authority in the traditional works.Chapter 4 explores the hedonic turn of Roland Barthes' body theory.In Roland Barthes' later work on behalf of morality,"The Pleasure of the Text",Roland Barthes synthesized body and text,the concerns about body had been specified to the level of pleasure,the pleasure of opening belonged to body as well as text.The individual got pleasure in the writing and reading.Writing was not an expression of authority,but a way to explore the pleasure of body,reading was not a kind of consumption,but a sense of production.At this stage,what he stressed was the physical body,fully demonstrated his opinions on post-structuralism.Conclusions:1.The main work of Roland Barthes revolves around "langue" and"body".In the structuralism stage,body was excluded by langue,but in the stages of mythology and textuality,the two were intertwined and argued mutually.2.Roland Barthes' attention to the body is constantly detailed and internalized.From the body of the community to the body of the other,then to the gendered body and the individual body,he explores and changes step by step,and ultimately stresses the physical body.This is related to changes in his own physical experience,ideological system and historical background,at first the body is the language of the argument tool,but finally body and text achieve the same level,the pleasure of the body and the text is of the same importance.3.Roland Barthes' emphasis on the body and difference is a special way of the textual practice,it is Barthes' response to the social,academic,and philosophical traditions of the west.He thus reveals the myth of the bourgeoisie ideology,digests the structuralism and the authority of the logistic centralism.4.The body is a key element in driving structuralism turn to post-structuralism,so Roland Bart's thinking about the body is universal.