Barthesbaudrillardconceptionofthought PDF

The Embrace of Radical Philosophical Emptiness as a Liberating Conceptualization of
Thought in Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard

Author(s): Gerry Coulter
Source: Frontiers of Philosophy in China, Vol. 9, No. 2 (June 2014), pp. 194-212
Published by: Brill
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Front. Philos. China 2014, 9(2): 194-212
DOI 10.3868/S030-003-014-0017-5
Gerry Coulter
The Embrace of Radical Philosophical Emptiness

as a Liberating Conceptualization of Thought in
Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard
Abstract Among the challenges of poststructuralist thought has been the

demand that we acknowledge a kind of philosophical emptiness which many feel
accompanies the perceived decline in foundationalist thought. By looking more
closely at Barthes and Baudrillard's writing on meaning, writing, language, truth,
and the real, we can come to a better understanding of the emergence and
implications of the poststructural challenge. The paper argues that Barthes' and
Baudrillard's writing on these five key concepts can lead us to a more liberating
conception of thought and contribute to our individual effort to become more
challenging thinkers. This paper also (unavoidably) points to several points of
convergence and divergence between Barthes and Baudrillard.
Keywords poststructuralism, Barthes, Baudrillard, writing, language, meaning,

truth, real
1 Introduction
I felt a great affinity with Roland Barthes precisely to the extent th

evinced a desire to surround what he said with an extraordinary protect
so that you could approach it only in a kind of reflectiveness, a ki
contemplation - and not at all an affiliation. Feeling so close I assu
defensive distance. (Baudrillard [2001a] 2004, 10)
An embrace of a radical form of philosophical emptiness has been an im

part coming to terms with poststructuralist thought over the past twenty y
This means more than living without the assumptions of foundati
philosophies, namely, truth, and the "real." Our ability to achieve some
Received September 4, 2013

Gerry Coulter (El)
Sociology Department, Bishop's University, Quebec, JIM 1Z7, Canada
E-mail: gcoulter@ubishops.ca
The Embrace of Radical Philosophical Emptiness 1 95
comfort with radical uncertainty would seem to have serious i

our ability to continue to enjoy thinking and writing in the conte
While I have read widely among authors who are understood
poststructuralist, it is toward Barthes and Baudrillard tha
affection. This has to do with my own particular interests as a wr
which have led me to read the entire oeuvre of both thinkers
past ten years. In this paper I assess their joint influence on wh
very widespread series of poststructural conditions of knowledge.
of Barthes and Baudrillard there exists a shared sensibility d
number of vital concepts with which we continue to grapple.
Barthes and Baudrillard each made an important contribution to
of writing, language, meaning, truth, and the "real." These c
organize the next five sections of this paper. It is my position tha
Barthes and Baudrillard seriously on these concepts will learn t
the liberating aspects of poststructuralism. Barthes and Baudril
more credit for their role in providing a kind of [cold] comf
unsatisfying and uncertain world.
2 Writing
Barthes looked upon a text as an object of pleasure, the bliss of

to be found in its style. Little was more depressing for him than
simply as an intellectual object. The pleasure we receive from a tex
arrives through its transmigration into our life (Barthes [19
preferred a violent form of writing which exceeds the law
philosophy, and ideology establish for themselves to agree upo
"trasgressive excess" is what leads to the best writing (Barth
10).
Baudrillard largely accepted Barthes' views on writing, to the point of taking
them as a personal challenge. He met this challenge quite well, especially in
terms of being attentive to Barthes' demand that writing does not turn a deaf ear
to present history and that the writer should acknowledge the vast novelty of the
present world (Barthes [1971] 1976, 86). Barthes approached writing as a
semiotic methodologist, and a literary critic who knew history. Baudrillard
approached writing as a writer and theorist concerned with the very implications
of the poststructuralist moment Barthes inhabited. Certainly writing gave Barthes
pleasure, as Baudrillard says of himself: "Writing has always given me pleasure,
one recourse seems to me to have been open - never to abandon language but to
guide it in the direction where it can still utter without having to signify, without
letting go what's at stake, bringing illusion into play" (Baudrillard 1993, 179).
196 Gerry Coulter
He later added: "I writ

of a person who ha
Among the lessons o
process of disturbing
Barthes asserts that "
mode" and that realis
naturalism" (Barthes
far from natural: "it
fabrication" (Barthes
and writing depend
1978, 98), but that r
derived through the
noted how "French soc
bourgeois realism, mec
(Barthes [1953] 1967
Neither Barthes nor
of speaking for othe
produce positive solu
He added many years
very Utopian, it is the
such thing as self-re
view to Barthes' expl
de France (Barthes [1
only the "... well-beh
to create forthwith
believe that writing c
any sort of "truth" fo
to answer the world'
is not presupposed
literature, says Barth
time designates and
sum up the role of th
Baudrillard is very c
discourse is not truth
48) [it is the languag
with little politics ...
53). Both thinkers th
which thought find
poststructuralist writi
Barthes' writing on
proceeds through the
"meaningless" (Barthes [1975] 1977, 80). Of his own writing

entirety it limps between an appearance of Manichaeism (wh
strong) and an appearance of Pyrrhonism (when its exempti
(Barthes [1975] 1977, 140). And of himself in this autobiograph
dreams of a world which would be exempt from meaning ... the a
sign . . . and understands that meaning is the product of History,
(Barthes [1975] 1977, 87). Barthes admits: "I would be nothing
qualifying this statement by adding: "I am elsewhere than wh
write. I am worth more than what I write" (Barthes [197
Baudrillard agrees with this notion, adding that no writer should
the games of writing and theory (Baudrillard [1999a] 2001, 151
Baudrillard and Barthes both found excellent writing to be
Baudrillard is very much a literary and poetic philosopher, a
references are from these sources (Coulter 2008). While he i
compare his own writing to Barthes' (Barthes 1993, 104) the v
Baudrillard the writer, and many of the contemporary literar
prove Barthes wrong concerning the view that we had reach
passion for writing. Barthes anticipates deconstructionism w
"writing is in no way an instrument for communication. It is
through which there passes only the intention to speak" (Bar
19); and, "writing ... appears symbolical - whereas speech
empty signs, the movement of which alone is significant" (Ba
19). For him, "any intellectual mode of writing can onl
para-literature, which no longer dares to speak its name . . . and c
complicity or impotence, which means in either case, to alie
[1953] 1967, 28).
Baudrillard was also deeply unimpressed by intellectual mo
"Intellectuals," says Baudrillard, "are trying their best to sa
meaning" (Baudrillard 2005, 80). He also decries intellectuals
speak for others, as he does the efforts of the political class to
(Baudrillard 1993, 79). Indeed, for Baudrillard, the person who
of an intellectual "plumbs the very depths of stupidity" (Ba
1990, 201). Barthes is not as opposed to the status of "intellect
great pleasure "in disturbing their impeccably clear conscience
1987, 98). Both Barthes and Baudrillard believed that all writin
an art form and that "art should work to deconstruct its own
[1983a] 1990, 118). As such, both thinkers did much to advance a
poststructuralist philosophy of writing.
What Barthes struggled toward, especially in Criticism and Truth , were the
poststructural conditions of reading, thinking, and writing which Baudrillard
takes for granted two and three decades later. From Racine, Barthes reminds us
198 Gerry Coulter
that to write is to je
He felt that in politi
143-50). Barthes liked
the writer has no ri
possession - his langu
1972). Barthes preferr
of the reader to ree
subject position. To se
bring a crisis on the r
made the many reader
toward the texts of both Barthes and Baudrillard.
In his writing on modern literature, Barthes alerts us to many aspects of
modern writing that also came to inhabit Baudrillard's work. Of particular appeal
to Barthes are writers like Velan, Sollers, and Fourier, who call upon each of us
to challenge our own values. This is precisely one of the qualities of
Baudrillard's writing that is so striking. Although Baudrillard writes from Paris,
his work speaks as if located outside the Western world (and its philosophical
norms). He adds that "writing is the invention of another antagonistic world, it's
not the defense of a world that might have existed" (Baudrillard [1997a] 1998,
32). Barthes' discussion of Queneau reads as if it were a description of
Baudrillard's fatal theory: "In his hand-to hand-combat with literature, he leaves
the edifice of written form standing, but worm-eaten and dilapidated. ...
Something new and ambiguous is elaborated ... rather like the beauty of
ruins. ... As each element of the universe solidifies, Queneau dissolves
it - everything is given a double aspect, made unreal" (Barthes [1964] 1972,
117-18). Barthes ends this piece with the beautiful (and very Baudrillard-like)
observation: "... it is because the world is not finished that literature is possible"
(Barthes [1964] 1972, 137). Insert the word "theory" in place of "literature" and
these words could be Baudrillard's.
Many of Barthes' ideas concerning method find more freedom to roam in
Baudrillard's thought, which is not as committed to structure (see also Gane 1991,
39). However, as Barthes becomes increasingly poststructuralist, he comes to
see his texts quite like Baudrillard sees his own: "... my texts are disjointed, no
one of them caps the other; the latter is nothing but a further text, the last of the
series, not the ultimate in meaning . . . text upon text, which never illuminates
anything" (Barthes [1975] 1977, 120). Sentiments like this echo on in many later
poststructuralist writers, and endlessly in Derrida. Baudrillard says a good deal
about one of the most significant implications of poststructuralism for writing
when he says of his own work: "behind all my theoretical and analytical
formulations, there are always traces of aphorism, the anecdote, and the fragment,
one could call that poetry" (Baudrillard 1993, 166). In poststructuralism the
literary and poetic take on important places in theory. Baudrillar

to say that theory is never as good as when it takes the form of
(Baudrillard 2006, 11).
Writing about writing in both Barthes and Baudrillard pushes t
poststructuralism ever outward into ever more personal, poe
spaces where the author writes for himself and the reader rea
The feeling their writing on writing evokes is not unlike Gi
notion of a politics which hovers in a transient or floating
politics-to-come. This transience, combined with a feeling of susp
without end, is a central evocation of the poststructural which f
as well as Barthes and Baudrillard in their thought on writing.
3 Language
"Everyone is a prisoner of his language..." (Barthes [1953] 1967, 81). For

Barthes "language is a horizon, and style is a vertical dimension of it" (Barthes
[1953] 1967, 13). Language for him has multiple meanings: "it is never innocent:
words have a second order memory which mysteriously persists in the midst of
new meanings" (Barthes [1953] 1967, 16). For Baudrillard, who deeply valued
alterity, "all languages are beautiful precisely because they are foreign to one
another" (Baudrillard [1990a] 1993, 140), and the "dispersion of languages is a
disaster only from the point of view of meaning and communication"
(Baudrillard [1995a] 1996, 90). Illusion, he says, is the very movement of
language (Baudrillard [1995a] 1996, 98). Baudrillard's poststructuralist
sensibilities manifest themselves perhaps most clearly when he says that while
language belongs to the domain of illusion, it also allows us to play with that
illusion (Baudrillard [1997a] 1998, 44). For him, "a duel lies at the heart of
language, the duel between language and meaning" (Baudrillard [1990a] 1993,
127). Where Barthes is less happy with the contemporary state of poetry,
Baudrillard says that the poetic represents the insurrection of a language against
its own laws (Baudrillard [1976] 1993, 198). Here Baudrillard presses, as he
sometimes does, on into territory which even Barthes, in his time, was less
comfortable exploring. From Lacan, Baudrillard borrows the beautiful notion
that "language does not convey meaning, it stands in the place of meaning"
(Baudrillard [1992] 1994, 92). So much of Barthes' anguish concerning language
finds a more peaceful place in Baudrillard's thought. This is, I think, a case of the
advance of poststructuralist ideas and the fact that Baudrillard had more time to
digest them than did Barthes, who was among a select group of thinkers trying to
formulate them in their earliest manifestations.
Language for Barthes is the very site of the institutionalization of subjectivity
200 Gerry Coulter
(Barthes [1964] 197

language to attempts
ambiguity" (Barthes
basis of Baudrillard's
noted that literature
the world though th
As writers we have
world (Barthes [1964
Reading Barthes wit
of poststructuralist c
find the post-founda
reason we can never
belong to us" . . . "w
(Barthes [1973] 1975,
a happy one, to the
Language possesses a
commitments other th
liberation we may eve
of knowing, which to
"do we absolutely ha
point is precisely th
intolerable, but it
definitive meaning"
4 Meaning
"The word's stone has been cast for nothing, neither waves nor flow of meaning"
(Barthes [1970b] 1982, 84). Meaning, as we see in the discussion of writing and
language above, is a central concern of Barthes and of Baudrillard. Indeed, the
lack of certainty and the ways in which writing and language thwart meaning
motivates, and to some extent liberates, both thinkers. For Barthes, any literature
is a meaning advanced, and at the same time, a meaning withdrawn (Barthes
[1963] 1983, viii). Baudrillard, who is deeply concerned with appearances and
the real, notes that "... it is difficult to produce both meaning and appearances"
(Baudrillard 1997b, 33). Meaning at the systemic level can take on a frightening
dimension for both - Barthes refers to "the terror of meaning" (Barthes [1977b]
1978, 222) and Baudrillard refers to "the terrorism of meaning" (Baudrillard
[1979] 1990, 137).
Barthes' structuralism-cum-poststructuralism recognizes constraints of which a
traditional approach to literature remains unaware. He notes that the day of
finding the "infallible" meaning of a text is over. Irony is also very important to
Barthes, and there are few concepts more important to Baudrillar

reversibility). Baudrillard says that irony is "the absolute necessit
hope" (Baudrillard [1983a] 1990, 153), and, in place of "univers
substitutes the fatal power of a singular object" (Baudrillard
He says we are today in an ironic stage of technology, h
(Baudrillard [2004] 2005, 85). Irony is for Baudrillard the "only
the modern world" (Baudrillard [1995a] 1996, 73) and asserts th
within things themselves, it is an irony which belongs to the sys
from the system which is always functioning against itself' (
52; he also gives the example of the computer virus which t
networks against themselves, Baudrillard 1993, 158). As
understood that irony in a text makes a system work against
1987b, 41). He believes in "objective irony: the strong probabi
certainty, that systems will be undone by their own systematicit
only for technical structures but for human ones as well. The mo
social, economic systems advance toward their own perfectio
deconstruct themselves" (Baudrillard 2000a, 78). Meaning, onc
a key part in its own undoing. One of the implications of Barthe
on meaning is that the structuralist system of meaning has d
through its very effort to function as a system. According to th
and Baudrillard, as well as the likes of Foucault, Derrida, Dele
are the vehicles through which an ironic desystematization of str
to a very difficult-to-define "post" structural period.
What set Baudrillard apart from many of his contemporaries w
to both meaning and ideology. Baudrillard successfully pushe
of poststructuralist thought to its extremes. No other major cont
is as comfortable with statements such as the following as is Baud
a world that is unintelligible and enigmatic, our task is clear: we
world even more unintelligible, even more enigmatic" (Baud
For Baudrillard, theory "precedes the world: things appear to us o
meaning we have given them" (Baudrillard [2001a] 2004,
arrived at his own post-Barthesian location with the understandin
theory's end to be but a reflection of the real (Baudrillard [19
such he remains committed to "renounce the truth and
verification, to remain as long as possible in the enigmatic,
reversible side of thought" (Baudrillard 2000a, 68). For him:
... this is how theory proceeds. ... The object of theory i

account of the system which follows out its internal logic to
adding anything, yet which, at the same time, totally inve
revealing its hidden non-meaning, the Nothing which haunts
202 Gerry Coulter
at the heart of the s

the world is to resp
which, for its part,
nothing to be said of
exchanged for, while
is without this exch
This is the tone and

world which values th
or shared from this ac
Baudrillard, like Bart
an authors' intended
there is a vertigo of
bombing in Italy are
and terrorists] (Baud
for Baudrillard, and h
and further from
interpretation (Baud
principle [Heisenberg
reality and the mean
impossibility of dis
process - of distinguis
(Baudrillard [1999a]
suspicious of "the su
1983, 161).
For Barthes, as we see in Empire of Signs , it is the Zen tendency toward the
preemption of meaning in Japan that he finds most appealing (Barthes [1970b]
1982, 74). By way of an example he points to the Japanese art of Haiku, which
he understands to be a "counter-descriptive art." By contrast, Western art, in his
view, transforms impressions into description (Barthes [1970b] 1982, 77).
"Nothing" is what lurks behind the beguiling surface of Barthes' Japan. The
haiku's task is to achieve exemption from meaning (Barthes [1970b] 1982, 81).
As Baudrillard said of pleasure: we find it "neither in appearances nor in
meaning" (Baudrillard [1987c] 1990, 6).
The horizon of appearances is a sacred one for Baudrillard (Baudrillard [1979]
1990, 53-59). He presses us to accept that we have no passion for truth that
compares with our passion for appearances (Baudrillard [1987c] 1990, 11), and
to understand that appearances are the only way we know the world - it is how it
betrays itself (Baudrillard [1995a] 1996, 1). Baudrillard possesses a clearer
understanding of something which I think remained a strong suspicion for
Barthes: that it is the neutralization of meaning, not its increase, that provides
The Embrace of Radical Philosophical Emptiness 203
pleasure (Baudrillard [1978] 1983, 36). For Baudrillard, th

beautiful enigma which "perpetually eludes the investiga
(Baudrillard [1995a] 1996, 18).
Barthes and Baudrillard play vital roles in the destabilizat
Foucault described "a general feeling that the ground was crumb
feet, especially in places where it seemed most familiar" (Fo
6). Within two decades, Baudrillard had replaced notions such
which to stand" with "illusion." For him the "whole world is
of the senses and the sensory trace of that disappearance" (B
1997, 116). The impact of Barthes' and Baudrillard's tho
language, and meaning is felt nowhere more acutely th
concerning "truth" and the "real."
5 Truth
Barthes played a central role in the emergence of a poststructura

destabilization of the well-established notion of truth (see especially Ba
[1963] 1983, 171). He wrote that one "who wants the truth is never ans
save in strong, highly-coloured images, which nonetheless turn ambigu
indecisive, once he tries to transform them into signs: as in any mant
[divination], the consulting lover must make his own truth" (Barthes [
1978, 215). On his own efforts in this area he added: "What I claim is to
the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcas
condition of truth" (Barthes [1957] 1972, 12).
Baudrillard argued that "Western rationality has always been based, as rega
discourse, upon the criteria of truth and falsehood" (Baudrillard 2001b,
However, in consumer society the "neo-language of advertising" lies be
truth and falsehood, where it increases in codes and models rather than
reference or veracity. Today, in politics, economics, and all aspects of
relations and advertising, it is ambiguity that controls discourse (Baud
[1983a] 1990, 109). He also pointed to what has become a significant
accomplishment of poststructuralism when he writes: "the absence of truth if it
were revealed to us, would be more precious even than truth" (Baudrillard 2002,
117). For Baudrillard, truth remains eternally veiled (Baudrillard [1997a] 1998,
116) and can only "come into being in theoretical space, and there is no
theoretical space where verification is possible" (Baudrillard [1995b] 1997, 125).
This has stark implications for how a theorist approaches the world. As truth no
longer affords a solution, "perhaps," says Baudrillard, "we can aim at a poetic
resolution of the world" (Baudrillard 2000a, 68). "Thought," he adds, "is part of
the world it attempts to analyze; there will never be any truth" (Baudrillard
204 Gerry Coulter
[2001a] 2004, 80). Bau

but in "trying to reco
Baudrillard also pr
concerning philosop
transform the enigma
leaves no room for a
(Baudrillard [1990b
philosophical thought:
they are catastrophic
accelerates these te
well-aware that it is
"enigmatic, ambivale
He acknowledged tha
with it - which would be to live in a kind of fundamentalism as did Marxist
thought for most of the twentieth century. Barthes and Baudrillard are two long
spans of the bridge which departs from a neo-Marxist terrain only to arrive on a
poststructural shore.
Barthes noted that "there is no truth that is not tied to the moment" (Barthes
[1977a] 2005, 13). For Baudrillard, this is a taken for granted but, for him,
"real time" now inhabits the moment. Real time, for Baudrillard: "abolishes
every real dimension of time, it's the time of the immediate realization, of global
dissemination, which abolishes any present-past-future sequence, and hence any
consequentially" (Baudrillard [1997a] 1998, 30). For him, "events no longer
take place, precisely by dint of their production and dissemination in real time;
where they disappear into the void of news and information" (Baudrillard [1999a]
2001, 133). "Real time," he adds, "is a kind of black hole into which nothing
penetrates without losing its substance, in fact, the extermination camps
themselves become virtual in real time, the real holocaust is doomed to that other
extermination which is the virtual, this is the true final solution" (Baudrillard
[2000b] 2002, 109). One of Baudrillard's definitions of "real time" is "CNN"
(the 24 hour news network) - "instant news, the opposite of history" (Baudrillard
[1992] 1994, 90). He added that the closer we approach the real time coverage of
an event: "the more we fall into the illusion of the virtual" (Baudrillard [1991]
1995, 49). In our time of meticulously stage-managed events subjected to
advance polling, and news coverage of the event before the event, we understand
his notion that "real events will no longer even have time to take place,
everything will be preceded by its virtual realization" (Baudrillard 2000a, 66-67).
Baudrillard's thought on real time and truth is an excellent example of how he
adds his own assessment of contemporary technology and media to a
Barthes-inspired reading of a vital concept, and how, in so doing, he advanced
poststructuralist thought.
Baudrillard possessed a particular gift for describing k

poststructuralist moment. He said that "we no longer have any s
or objectivity, but a scale of probability" (Baudrillard [2000
"meaning, truth, the real, cannot appear except locally, in a
they are partial objects ..." (Baudrillard [1981] 1994, 108). If
has a heart, such statements are the sound of it beating.
6 The Real
"Welcome to the desert of the real" (Baudrillard [2004] 2005, 27)

poststructuralism long-established understandings of the real ha
evacuated, and, not surprisingly, Barthes and Baudrillard have played k
in this development. I think it fair to say that, concerning this concept, t
spirit of Barthes and Baudrillard has coloured much of the poststruc
landscape. Barthes' and Baudrillard's embrace of poststructural empt
left the real a devastated concept. It is interesting to observe how each pre
to be aware of the more liberating implications of this discovery.
Barthes, like Baudrillard, was troubled by the naturalness with wh
media dress up a reality that is very much a product of history - "I resent
Nature and History confused at every turn" (Barthes [1957] 1972, 11
Barthes complained about the naturalization of history (taking theory for
Baudrillard also has to wrestle with an advancing hyperreal: "a doma
you can no longer interrogate the reality or unreality, the truth or f
something, and here the media is once again of central importance" (Ba
1993, 146). We cannot compare the hyperreal with surrealism (which
solidarity with the realism it contested) because the hyperreal represents a
more advanced phase, even the contradiction between the real and the imag
is effaced in the hyperreal" (Baudrillard 1983b, 142). Televison is
medium of a hyperreal world (Baudrillard 1993, 69) because it is s
based, and between reality and the image exchange is impossible (Bau
1999b, 147).
One of Baudrillard's declared purposes in writing is "to put the rea
spot" (Baudrillard 1987b, 46). For him, the world today is characterize
conflict between the real and its double - between the real and the virtual
(Baudrillard [2000b] 2002, 202). "There is not enough room for the world and
double" says Baudrillard, "so there can be no verifying the world, this is inde
why reality is an imposture" (Baudrillard [1999a] 2001, 3). Any "real" we ca
posit, he says, "is always the reality of the system" (Baudrillard [1976] 1993, 3
We draw our energy today from the difference between the real and simulati
(Baudrillard 2005, 109). But in a world controlled by the principle of simulatio
206 Gerry Coulter
as ours now is, the "

122). The real is bein
are steadily vanishin
11). For Baudrillard w
[1983a] 1990, 59), an
even "history has sto
where things are bei
his most devastating
alive today know the
(Baudrillard [1995b]
2006, 37).
What then do we know of the "real" after Barthes and Baudrillard? We never
know it except in the form of effects (physical world), functions (social world),
or fantasies (cultural world); in short, the real is never anything but an inference
(Barthes [1964] 1972, 159). When we declare we are copying reality (realism),
this means that we choose a certain inference and not other ones (Barthes [1964]
1972, 159), realism cannot be the copy of things, it will explore as profoundly as
possible the unreal reality of language (Barthes [1964] 1972, 160). Barthes
thoughts on the "real" are not far from Baudrillard's and precede them in the
same spirit. Baudrillard asks the question Barthes might have: "is there anything
but a discourse of the real and the rational?" (Baudrillard [1995a] 1996, 13) and:
"If the world is real, how is it that it did not become rational long ago? How can
a discourse of the real and the rational even arise?" (Baudrillard [1995a] 1996,
13). Reality, says Baudrillard, "is the easy solution" (Baudrillard [2001a] 2004,
80) - it is "is the product of stupidity's fornication with the spirit of calculation"
(Baudrillard [1995a] 1996, 3). In his best fighting spirit he proclaims: "we must
now wrest the world from the reality principle" (Baudrillard [2004] 2005, 37).
We need not fear the emptiness of the end of the real; indeed, we can embrace
the "force five conceptual storm" which today blows over the devastated real
(Baudrillard [1995b] 1997, 42). We can take a sincere interest in "whatever
subverts rational or real systems," including embracing the enigmatic
(Baudrillard, 1997b, 41). Thanks to the combined implications of Barthes and
Baudrillard specifically, and poststructuralism generally, we no longer have to
consent to the real (Baudrillard [1995a] 1996, 11). The job of a theorist need not
be an endless chase after facts and data, but rather poetic encounters with
anything that challenges notion of the real (Baudrillard [1987a] 1988, 98).
And so we find ourselves today immersed in a consciousness of the world as
discourse in which one more discourse is that concerning the real (Baudrillard
[1995a] 1996, 13). Beyond this discourse we cannot claim to know the real. As
Barthes put it: "I, in no way, claim to represent or to analyze reality itself'
(Barthes [1970b] 1982, 3). "Today," Baudrillard writes grinn

disappearance of the real which fascinates people" (Baudrill
118), and the lack of "distinction between the real and t
Baudrillard, "is the obsession of our age" (Baudrillard 2006, 9
thus obsessed, and it was very much, as it turns out, semiotics t
Baudrillard extends Barthesian semiotic thought to a concern f
the sign. For Baudrillard, signification has merged with prod
[1976] 1993, 115). In a system of production which can only r
argues that only ambiguous signs can be revolutionary (Baud
Baudrillard understands that the sign and reality exist
antagonism, but our system depends upon taking the
(Baudrillard 1987b, 48) - the ridiculous traditional Western
could refer to a depth of meaning (Baudrillard [1981] 1994,
linkage to Barthes here is Baudrillard's claim that the signifier a
become joined by uncertainty, and meaning itself is left to the
This is Baudrillard's extension of Barthes' death of the author.
Contemporary society, which is dominated by signs (Baudrillard [1972] 1981,

120), is one in which the sign "is passing into the pure speculation and
simulation of the virtual world, the world of the total screen" (Baudrillard [1999a]
2001, 5). Baudrillard outlines the intricate complexity of all of this when he
writes: "we live in a world of simulation, in a world where the highest function
of the sign is to make reality disappear, and at the same time to mask this
disappearance" (Baudrillard 1997b, 12). As such, he sees that the "whole system
of media and information is a gigantic machine for producing the event as sign,
for producing non events" (Baudrillard [1999a] 2001, 132), and states that
"nothing has the function of signifying anymore, everything's just there to fill up
the empty space of language, which has become the random site of all
promiscuities, the site of non-discrimination and obscenity of the formula"
(Baudrillard [1997a] 1998, 115). When the real object becomes a sign, this is, for
Baudrillard, simulation (Baudrillard [1999a] 2001, 129). The "task of signifying
has fallen to material signs" (Baudrillard [1968] 1996, 84). And in this society
everything "stands under the sign of uncertainty" (Baudrillard [1999a] 2001, 18).
For Baudrillard, Barthes did most of his writing during a "structural stage
(sign-value)," but now we are in "a fractal stage" where there is no point of
reference at all and "value radiates in all directions" (Baudrillard [1990a] 1993,
5). Today every value stands under the sign of entropy (Baudrillard [1997a] 1998,
4). He says: "we lost use-value, then good old exchange value, obliterated by
speculation, and we are currently losing even sign value for an indefinite
signaletics" (Baudrillard [1997a] 1998, 3-4). Now, with "hyperreality, the space
of the screen, mental space, and so on, illusion serves as a sign for anything else"
208 Gerry Coulter
(Baudrillard [2000c] 2
a non event), where
1994, 62).
Baudrillard argues that since "reality" is the result of discourse, which is all it
can be for us, then its very principle is based on a non-reality (Baudrillard 1987b,
51). A striking poststructuralist thought manifests itself in Baudrillard's
understanding that the very existence of semiology is contrary to belief in reality
- "the sign and reality are in fundamental antagonism, the sign works against
reality, not for it" (Baudrillard 1987b, 48). And today, objects have become
signs - this is simulation (Baudrillard [1999a] 2001, 29). Likewise, Barthes notes:
"Semiotics makes a careful distinction between the signifier, the signified and the
thing (the referent). The signified is not the thing. This is one of the great
acquisitions of modern linguistics" (Barthes [1977c] 1987, 58). The world is not
directly a collection of things but a field of things signified, says Barthes
(Barthes [1977c] 1987, 59). This is perhaps the very key to the shared spirit
between Barthes and Baudrillard. Barthes deploys semiology to understand
contemporary discursive culture and, in so doing, sets the tone for undermining
our faith in the real. Baudrillard hitches this idea to his well-established
Nietzschean notion that the real world becomes myth and that truth is an illusi
which we do not understand to be illusion. Truth cannot be regarded as t
highest power for either Nietzsche or Baudrillard. Baudrillard points to a wi
semblance, to illusion, to deception, to becoming, to change, and regards these a
deeper powers (Baudrillard [1995a] 1996, 9).
For poststructuralist thought, and this is very clear in the writing of Barthe
and Baudrillard, the real cannot coexist with the kind of intensive semio
analysis that has developed in the postmodern world. Barthes says: "Realism
always timid, and there is too much surprise in a world which mass media
the generalization of politics have made so profuse that it is no longer possible t
figure it projectively: the world, as a literary object, escapes, knowledge des
literature. ..." (Barthes [1975] 1977, 119). Baudrillard points to Barthes on t
point: "At bottom, says Barthes, we are faced with an alternative: either
suppose a real that is entirely permeable to history (to meaning, to the idea
interpretation, to decision) and we ideologize or, by contrast, we suppose a
that is ultimately impenetrable and irreducible and in that case we poetic
(Baudrillard [2004] 2005, 63). This is precisely why Baudrillard did not attem
to empirically understand the world but to resolve it poetically (Coulter 20
As Barthes said it so well: "In choosing one's language, one chooses one's r
(Barthes [1977a] 2005).
I think that Baudrillard, inspired as he was by a spirit of enquiry similar
Barthes', offers us one of the finest and most satisfying insights of
poststructuralist thought: that the world we see (which is usually called the "rea
actually hides behind appearances (Baudrillard [1995a] 199

which I am writing appears smooth and cold and flat and m
physicist can easily repeat a widely understood and beautif
concerning its swirling atomic structure which brings the table
had previously not imagined. Indeed, the physicist will point
in between the swirling atomic field, which make the tabl
smooth and cold and motionless, occupy more of what we
than do the atoms themselves. There is, in any table, m
something! As Baudrillard so poetically said: "objectively
illusion: it can only appear to us" (Baudrillard 2006, 62). "...
function, the real is out" (Baudrillard [1983a] 1990, 134).
7 Conclusion
It is a concern for the technical and accelerated character of life that disti
many of Baudrillard's insights from those of Barthes. Barthes died ju
personal computer began to appear in academe. At the time of Barthes' pas
1980, Baudrillard had dealt with his more Barthesian "structuralist" c
(the system of objects, consumer society, Marx, the political economy of t
fashion, symbolic exchange, death, and seduction), was only just for
Foucault, was pondering the silent majorities, and was fatally drafting Sim
and Simulation. It is quite possible that no other thinker (except perhaps D
who expanded the deconstructionist possibilities of Barthes' thought
touched by the spirit which inhabited Barthes' writing as muc
Baudrillard. Baudrillard's concern for technicity, the virtual, and simulatio
a body of work that Barthes might have achieved had he lived anoth
decades.
With Barthes' "Death of the Author" (Barthes [1968] 1977), the structuralist
trail disappears into many paths which lead towards poststructuralism.
Henceforth, both as writers and readers, "we must move faster than identity"
(Barthes [1977c] 1987, 56). Baudrillard similarly found identity to be an
extremely problematic concept: "...the equivalent of deep sleep" (Baudrillard
[1997a] 1998, 98); "it is continually falling apart, always dying" (Baudrillard
[1976] 1993, 159); and it "...is a dream, pathetic in its absurdity" (Baudrillard
[1997a] 1998, 49; Baudrillard [1999a] 2001, 52). He understands the
contemporary quest for identity to be a response to living "in an ultra-protected,
ultra integrated world" ... a "desperate fantasy of the whole technical, rational
enterprise" (Baudrillard [1997a] 1998, 49). Identity is the obsession of beings
"liberated in sterile conditions" (Baudrillard [1999a] 2001, 52).
According to Baudrillard many have forgotten or ignored Barthes' admonition
210 Gerry Coulter
and have become hos

which "requires that e
that he should exorci
circuits that should h
for Baudrillard, desp
search, identity is "p
will never know who
The outcome of Bar
meaning, truth, and t
central privilege to th
seeks a fixed identit
signify the author, but should radically express and encourage
thought - including thoughts which run against the direction of the author or
which have never entered into the mind of the author.
Poststructuralist thought, as it emerges from Barthes and Baudrillard, points to
a "dialectic of being and appearances" (Baudrillard [1970] 1998, 164). The
"illusion of appearances is the vital illusion" (Baudrillard ([1992] 1994, 94), and
"we live on the basis of this vital illusion, on the basis of an absence, an unreality,
an immateriality of things" (Baudrillard [1995a] 1996, 7). We do inhabit
Baudrillard's world, and Barthes' world (gone a little more ludic). And if we can
embrace all of its emptiness, as Barthes begins to do, and Baudrillard does ever
more so, we may find ourselves rather poetically contented inhabitants of the
poststructuralist universe of appearances. "The marvelous thing about the present
period is that appearances so long reduced to a voluntary servitude, have now
become sovereign" (Baudrillard [1990a] 1993, 153).
A statement such as: "You will never know who you are" (Baudrillard [1990a]
1993, 165) is, after all, a rather liberating notion. We are in Barthes' and
Baudrillard's debt for aiding us in our struggle to live and think with this
circumstance. This, of course, depends on our reading of these authors, and this
paper has shared my reading of Barthes and Baudrillard with you. As for my
"intended meaning" - it is only that I have found great pleasure both in the
embrace of emptiness and in tracing two of the brilliant scoundrels who led me
here. The joint contribution of Barthes and Baudrillard (as concerns writing,
meaning, language, truth and the real) to cultural studies in and beyond the
Francophone world may have little more than just begun.
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The Embrace of Radical Philosophical Emptiness as a Liberating Conceptualization of

Thought in Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard

The Embrace of Radical Philosophical Emptiness

Abstract Among the challenges of poststructuralist thought has been the

Keywords poststructuralism, Barthes, Baudrillard, writing, language, meaning,

I felt a great affinity with Roland Barthes precisely to the extent th

An embrace of a radical form of philosophical emptiness has been an im

Received September 4, 2013

comfort with radical uncertainty would seem to have serious i

Barthes looked upon a text as an object of pleasure, the bliss of

He later added: "I writ

"meaningless" (Barthes [1975] 1977, 80). Of his own writing

literary and poetic take on important places in theory. Baudrillar

"Everyone is a prisoner of his language..." (Barthes [1953] 1967, 81). For

(Barthes [1964] 197

Barthes, and there are few concepts more important to Baudrillar

... this is how theory proceeds. ... The object of theory i

at the heart of the s

This is the tone and

pleasure (Baudrillard [1978] 1983, 36). For Baudrillard, th

Barthes played a central role in the emergence of a poststructura

[2001a] 2004, 80). Bau

Baudrillard possessed a particular gift for describing k

"Welcome to the desert of the real" (Baudrillard [2004] 2005, 27)

as ours now is, the "

(Barthes [1970b] 1982, 3). "Today," Baudrillard writes grinn

Contemporary society, which is dominated by signs (Baudrillard [1972] 1981,

actually hides behind appearances (Baudrillard [1995a] 199

and have become hos

Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang.

Baudrillard, Jean. [1990

Baudrillard, Jean. [199

Baudrillard, Jean. 1999b. Photographies . Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje-Cantz.

Gane, Mike. 1991. Baudrillard 's Bestiary. London: Routledge.

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