1 Introduction: The Afterlives of Roland Barthes 2 For Henriette’s Tomb: Mourning with Mallarmé 3 Punctum Saliens: Mourning, Film, Photography 4 The ‘Inkredible’ Roland Barthes 5 Bored with Barthes: Ennui in China 6 Hitchcock Hapax: Realism Revisited Postscript: Afterlives’ Afterlives Bibliography Index
Explores the work and thought of Roland Barthes in light of new insights from his posthumously published writings.
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.
An exploration of Roland Barthes’s posthumously published writings,
Neil Badmington’s book offers an important contribution to Barthes
Studies. Badmington’s text, both pedagogically accessible and
convincingly argued, places import on Barthes’s posthumous
literature, which includes Mourning Diary, Travels in China, and
the unfinished Vita Nova, to reappraise the major texts published
during the semiotician’s lifetime … The critical rigour, clarity,
and accessibility of Badmington’s text would be appreciate by
Barthesian scholars and university students working from the
perspective of both French and Anglophone Studies. The wealth of
accompanying end-of-chapter notes offers rich biographical details
and bibliographic references, which further underscore this work’s
dialogic contribution to Barthes Studies. Far from haunting, as
Badmington reminds us, Barthes’s afterlives are very much kept
alive in the interstitial pleasures and boredoms of his prose.
*Modern Language Review*
This book is an important contribution to scholarship on Barthes in
English, and in addition to its detailed and original analyses
there are many interesting asides in the footnotes … It is also a
model of stylish and engaging academic prose.
*The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory*
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*
Badmington succeeds in delivering eloquent and scholarly yet highly
readable prose on one of the most challenging contemporary critics
[…] Badmington’s study is required reading for Barthes scholars,
while non-specialists will also find it an enjoyable read since it
is both a personal record and a scholarly work on the history of
understanding Barthes – the notes sections alone are a feast of
reading!
*Forum for Modern Language Studies*
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