The Literary Theory of Barthes and Derrida

Barthes and Derrida developed their reputations as thinkers along very different tracks: Barthes from a literary and rhetorical perspective, Derrida within the philosophical tradition. Both posed persistently and explicitly the question of literature. For Barthes, this involved putting literary texts to the test of new forms of analysis based on structuralist and semiological research, while arguing for a discipline that exposed “the place and energy of the [reading] subject.” Derrida often used literature to challenge traditional philosophy, and play a double-agent role within his sense of “writing,” while also analyzing its resources on their own terms, revealing criticism’s lack of both rigor and adventure, and relating literary questions to high stakes political and ethical questions. We will study a representative series of texts by Barthes and Derrida that continue to provide important models for a critical approach to literary writing.