Overview

Roland Barthes – the author of such enduringly influential works as Mythologies and Camera Lucida - was one of the most important cultural critics of the post-war era. Since his death in 1980, new writings have continued to be discovered and published. The Afterlives of Roland Barthes is the first book to revisit and reassess Barthes’ thought in light of these posthumously published writings. Covering work such as Barthes’ Mourning Diary, the notes for his projected Vita Nova and many writings yet to be translated into English, Neil Badmington reveals a very different Barthes of today than the figure familiar from the writings published in his lifetime.

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9781350066991

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Barthes-like Heidegger and Foucault-has had a prolific posthumous publishing career. Badmington (Cardiff Univ., UK) undertakes to situate this diverse posthumous work. With remarkable concision, he not only explicates this work but also contextualizes it within Barthes's better-known published work. For instance, Badmington's exploration of the Mourning Diary in essence shows one the genesis of Camera Lucida. It is precisely this careful critical balancing-of the exegesis of the new and the anchoring in the well known-that makes this study so valuable. Accomplished with Badmington's scholarly care, this critical balance serves ultimately not to provide origin stories to texts that are now part of the theoretical-critical canon, but rather to open up the originary force of Barthes's thinking, to remove it from the danger of overfamiliarity. Badmington concludes his study with an intriguing consideration of Barthes and Hitchcock-a figure noted for his conspicuous absence in Barthes's work. A final, Barthesian note: Bloomsbury is to be commended for making a book that feels nice in one's hands. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE * Badmington is at his best when his inquiry is personal and playful ... A chapter on the neglected history of boredom in Barthes is the book's most engaging and original contribution. * Times Literary Supplement * Badmington's mode of address, across these diverse topics, is engaging and nuanced, and supported by a wealth of textual, theoretical, and biographical detail. * French Studies *

Barthes-like Heidegger and Foucault-has had a prolific posthumous publishing career. Badmington (Cardiff Univ., UK) undertakes to situate this diverse posthumous work. With remarkable concision, he not only explicates this work but also contextualizes it within Barthes's better-known published work. For instance, Badmington's exploration of the Mourning Diary in essence shows one the genesis of Camera Lucida. It is precisely this careful critical balancing-of the exegesis of the new and the anchoring in the well known-that makes this study so valuable. Accomplished with Badmington's scholarly care, this critical balance serves ultimately not to provide origin stories to texts that are now part of the theoretical-critical canon, but rather to open up the originary force of Barthes's thinking, to remove it from the danger of overfamiliarity. Badmington concludes his study with an intriguing consideration of Barthes and Hitchcock-a figure noted for his conspicuous absence in Barthes's work. A final, Barthesian note: Bloomsbury is to be commended for making a book that feels nice in one's hands. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE * Badmington is at his best when his inquiry is personal and playful ... A chapter on the neglected history of boredom in Barthes is the book's most engaging and original contribution. * Times Literary Supplement *

Author Information

Neil Badmington is Professor of English at Cardiff University, UK. His previous books include Hitchcock's Magic (2011) and Alien Chic: Posthumanism and the Other Within (2004) and he is the co-editor (with David Tucker) of The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory.

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