1971 Roland Barthes Gets Heckled

 

For the academic year 1971 – 72, Roland Barthes offered a lecture series on the history of semiology. The École Pratique des Hautes Études, aware of his popularity, assigned him a public theatre. There was an evening production running and the static set on stage included a sign with the words “Le Petit Cirque”.

Rather than stand at the front of the stage and lecture, Barthes installed himself behind a plain desk and sat on a hard chair. During the second or third lecture, someone in the gallery audience got up and denounced him for still thinking in Binary terms when the world had move on to Ternary, etc etc. Ludicrous, of course, but not so for Barthes who never returned to the theatre. He moved himself to an ordinary seminar room, kept semi-secret so that the audience size dwindled down from a couple of hundred to twenty or thirty. He was my director of studies, so I was one of those who kept going.

[ This anecdote also appears in my book The Best I Can Do (2016) ]