The Philosophy Book

290

LANGUAGE

IS A SKIN

ROLAND BARTHES (1915–1980)

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Philosophy of language

APPROACH

Semiotics

BEFORE

380 BCE Plato’s Symposium

is the first sustained

philosophical discussion

of love in the West.

4th century CE St Augustine

of Hippo writes extensively on

the nature of love.

1916 Ferdinand de Saussure’s

Course in General Linguistics

establishes modern semiotics

and the study of language as

a series of signs.

1966 French psychoanalyst

Jacques Lacan looks at

the relationship between

Alcibiades, Socrates, and

Agathon in his Écrits.

AFTER

1990s Julia Kristeva explores

the relationship between love,

semiotics, and psychoanalysis.

are no characters, and there

is nothing in the way of a plot.

There are only the reflections

of a lover in what Barthes calls

“extreme solitude.”

At the very beginning of the

book, Barthes makes clear that a

plot is not possible, because the

solitary thoughts of a lover come in

outbursts that are often contradictory

and lack any clear order. As a lover,

Barthes suggests, I might even find

myself plotting against myself. The

lover is somebody who might be

The lover’s language

“trembles with desire.”

All philosophy about love

is addressed toward a

particular object of desire.

When I write or speak

about love, my language

“rubs against” the secret

object of my desire.

Language affects the other

like skin-on-skin contact.

Language

is a skin.

T

he strangest, but most

popular, book written by

philosopher and literary

critic Roland Barthes is A Lover’s

Discourse. As the French title,

Fragments d’un discours amoureux,

suggests, this is a book told in

fragments and snapshots, somewhat

like the essay One-Way Street by

the German philosopher Walter

Benjamin. A Lover’s Discourse is

not so much a book of philosophy

as it is a love story; but it is a love

story without any real story. There