Texts as Bodies/Bodies as Text: The Barthes-Gass Connection.

Abstract

Postructuralism is epistemologically built around notions such as instability, openness and fluidity, and so it is an almost inevitable theoretical frame to explain the cultural phenomenon of postmodernism. William Gass’s work consolidates some of the main tenets of the poststructuralist programme, and in particular, those of Roland Barthes; both authors write against the dogmatic construction of all forms of knowledge, and they enhance the sensuous potential of language when treated not as a vehicle but as an end in itself. For Gass, texts can be “bodies” –texts of “jouissance” or “bliss” for Barthes– when their most sensual verbal qualities are realized; but bodies can be “texts” –texts of “plaisir” or “pleasure” for the French theorist– when they are translated into the language of consumption and collective control. It is the aim of this article to show that Barthes and Gass earnestly speak up for the eroticism of writing, and that they likewise converge in their wish to expose both pleasure and popular artistic creation as cultural constructions.