From Work to Text Summary

From Work to Text, Roland Barthes

I. Intro.
A. language has changing over time
1. change is due to current developments in social reforms
- Marxism, psychoanalysis
2. challenges 19th century thiknking that humans are in control with idea of unconscious
mind (id) and not being in control
3. text comes from structuralism
- guiding principle in how we think of the world-unquestionable truth

B. proposition 1
1. the text is not a definitive object
-work is concrete, therefore text is less substantial
2. text is understood differently over time
- text is dynamic and fluid
- work is more static and concrete

C. proposition 2
1. text cant be easily classified
2. text can't be contained into one specific genre-goes beyond literature
- cant analyze other things (culture, etc.)
- creation of culture istelf as an object of study
3. critical analysis
- don't take appearance, process it
4. epistgemology
- framework for knowledge againsgt a particular context of living


D. proposition 3
1. two levels of meaning-literal and concealed (interpretation)
-text is the principles behind the work, the work is the book (actual words, paragraphs)
- book is literal, text is how one interprets it
2. work is "moderately symbolic", text is "radically symbolic"-lacks closure
- work may congtain metaphors but the text itself conveys an idea through an overall
metaphor
- work is artificial, text is more organic
- work is window through which we view text

E. proposition 4
1. text is plural, meaning is spread out
-instead of allowing for interpretation of its meaning, it leads to an "explosion" of
meaning because its composed of a "web of significance" without an "origin or
destination"

F. proposition 5
1. author is a "guest" at the reading of the text
2. text is without a source

G. proposition 6
1. work is object of a consumption
-text narrows the distance btwn reading and writing by replacing consumption with
collaborative reading
- difficulty comes when one attempts to consume text in a traditional sense-then it
becomes "unreadable" and boring

H. proposition 7
1. pleasure of consumption
- losing oneself in pleasure of reading text literally as a story
2. text should be nothing other than text, not to be taken literally
-all text can do is let someone read what it is saying, if taken literally it is a story



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