In search of getting rid of meaning

Rlan Bart , of course, is not Lenin, but the citation index also had a rather high one at one time. Read authority, predictably brilliant, always bringing the joy of recognition. Unless the earliest books inspired by the reading of Sartre and Marx ("Zero degree of Letter" of 1953) or psychoanalysis in the spirit of the Bashlyar ("Michel" of 1954) still store the resources of unexpected readings. The rest is molestage in university courses and sacred stories. And the exposure of mythologies, and scientific semiology, and slow reading, and unintelligible sapientia with its apology of vitality 1 , each of the stages of a large path, cherishes biographers in the interests of the notorious unity, whose original bourgeoisie did not miss the chance to share. In this tireless exposure of the dox, there was some kind of stoicism: to know that the efforts are in vain and the canonization is ahead, but still bend its own. The stubborn commitment to the avant -garde with all its poorly recruited and that captivating naivety turned Bart into a sad classic of modernism, which was sequentially walking along the path of disappointment from the boundless knowledge of the language through its total mastery to the bewildered look at the only photograph, as happens in the “bright chamber”, the most dumb among his common talkative books.

His activity is an example of converting a scientific idea into a fashionable product, in addition to the will of convertible. So, by the mid-1960s, Semiology finally went into circulation and ceased to exist for Bart as a project . As a result, she worked for him until her death, but the object of passion, especially as a source of pleasure, was never. The delay with the publication of the Fashion System, written in 1963, and published in 1967, is quite appropriate: the scientific community at this point is already familiar with the "Fundamentals of Semiology" (1965), where Bart interprets the essence of its approach. For him, the science of signs inevitably deals with the language, in connection with which it is declared part of linguistics and loses its specific subject, as if demistifying itself 2 . There is nothing more to do on this territory. The triumph of self -sufficient scentism in the "Fashion System" looks like a realized utopia of "exhaustive formalization", which Bart speaks of in the nodal work of 1967 "from science to literature." Here he also formulates the alternative to which he intends to adhere to: "to become completely inconsistent with his object through a total letter" 3 .

The threshold behind which the science of signs (as, indeed, the science in general) turned into literature for Bart was crossed in the 1970 Empire of Signs . Farewell to semiotics took the form of travel impressions here - the form is actually win -win, due to the imaginary naturalness of the motivation, the unity of the character and the narrator, finally, the lack of external restrictions, except for the experienced events. The traveler is the hero of Par Excellence, a passionarium and a scout whose habits were formed in the era of great geographical discoveries. The anxiety experienced by the traveler is caused by a foreboding of the impossible, so many treat the past by traveling and calling for the future, note the change of fate. The invitation to make lectures in Japan was a real success for Bart in this sense, because in the eyes of a European it is this country that embodies another, a clash with which requires self -denial.

Bart sees on his trip an opportunity to illustrate the perfect system created "from the contrary" in the minds of the European as a result of the polarity of his thinking. In other words, everyone thinks for himself some Japan as a maximum structure. Real Japan makes a specialist in signs in experiencing the impossible: if the European reality is wider than the concept that describes it, then Japanese reality realizes an abstraction of an even higher level than the one that was designed as obviously unattainable. At the same time, it is strongly impossible to correlate with this highest abstraction the absence of any meaning outside the specific elements from which this abstraction is composed. Things in Japan are not repressed integrity (crumbly rice, puppet movements, lack of addresses) and create the impression of blanks. Another understanding of functionality does not require the transmission of meaning from them. The signifiers dominate this culture not because an eccentric intellectual like Bart wants it, but because they are sufficient means of knowing the measure . The structure of the sign, accessible to the understanding of the European, is scattered here to dust, since it loses the function of replacement. The Japanese sign does not work as a carrier of meaning, but as an elegant, but an irresistible obstacle.

This is due to the fundamental difference (damned European phraseology!) With the fact that truth is not in this case the main value. She is not somewhere, she is here; In comprehension of this thesis, the practice of Zen is not knowing the ultimate grace. In view of immorality, turning a prayer from doing into bargaining. It seems that there, in Japan, imaginary or real, there are no values ​​at all except borrowed (liberal or technological) ... Axiological indifferent Indifferentity of Japanese semiotics delights Bart, makes it neophytus: sticks are not like aggressive forks, these "predatory deputies" of the hands (P. 28). In Japan, sexuality is only in sex, “in the United States, on the contrary, sexuality is everywhere, but not in sex itself” (p. 43), etc. 4 Bart more than once falls into his own, but “sin” inevitable for the traveler, confidently allowing him not in favor of Europe. The transient historical justice of this assessment is still confirmed by the evolution of European consciousness, actively mastering ideas, which are hardly born in Japan, but which Bart recorded more than thirty years ago as signs of this particular country. The disappearance of the center, the weathering of the meaning of things, the cry of Marshall Mc-Luena "Medium is the Message", "Rizom" by the delusa-gvattari, tolerance, fractionality, facts, preference, given to cute little trinifies in beautiful packaging, is a list of modern more or less vulgarized retractions with barter motifs notice notes You can continue about Japan. On the one hand, this contributes to despondency (the fact of losing authenticity is undeniable), on the other hand, awakens a real interest in the book, the author of which found Japan even before decisive expansion to the world market.

The fact that “fate and case rules the world” remained for the European an empty maxim in the spirit of Voltaire's heresies. For Japan, entrusting itself to an occasion is an organic condition of existence. The fact of the matter is that, in contrast to modern Europe, shaken by constant auto-training, Japan does not force itself to admit the need for anything-at least Bart is so seen. Here, a fleeting, captured by perception, the fact attracts more attention than its lengthy interpretation (this purely European manner will not be deprived of polite attention, but only). Unshakable, solid, definite - all these unambiguously positive signs of European mentality are made in such a context excessive and brutal, like a more -armed and unbridled European travee next to the actors of the Kabuki Theater . The symbols of the theater are important explanatory tools: with their help, Bart seeks not to understand and not describe, but to convey the feeling of a bond convention permeating Japanese society. A living actor of Kabuki or a puppet Bunraca is equally carriers of the idea: therefore, there can be no question of any inconsistency of the 80-year-old actor, just as no one sees the bunraq wrapped in black puppeteers. Everything is decided by the distance that ignores the message, but the beating code. Bertold Brecht intuitively came closer to this principle: “There is quoting, a pinch of writing, a fragment of code, because none of the creators of the game can relate exclusively to themselves that they never write to them alone” (P. 71). This is diametrically the privatization of feelings that the European Theater seeks, exploring the "depths of psychology."

If the theater is an illustration of conventionality, then the hockey, already without illustrating anything at all, realizes the uniformity of “like this” that you can try to liken “aha-relebnis” (aha-cross), as the gestalt psychologists denoted the effect of primary perception, minimal contact with the environment. "Without describing or defining, hockey (as I will ultimately call any brief feature, every event of Japanese life, which it appears to be my reading), is thinner, in the end to only a pure instruction" (P. 107-108). If it were not for the ubiquitous sin of analogies, then one could set to multiply the similarity between the ritual of cooking and eating, greeting, the principles of urban layout 5 , leisure for slot machines and the struggle of the sumo. Everywhere or another, one -time manifests itself - or is it manifested by the affected and enthusiastic narrator? Japan opens in the book as a country of fleeting facts, before which the mind is silent, and pure entities that are experienced with the fullness of feelings. If European signs replace, hide and displace feelings, then the signs of Japan, on the contrary, suggest them. You won’t get anywhere from the unity, what can I do ... Sergei Zenkin somehow paid attention to the characteristic substitution that happened when translating the book by Jean Bodriyar “The Seduction”: the film of Nagisa Osima “Empire of feelings” turned into the “Empire of Signs”, and the actual mistake confirmed the appeality of the association .

By the way, about the language of this translation. When the book is read not just without hesitations, but sometimes with a bated breath, we can assume that the translator has done his work to conscience. Perhaps here it was not without the intervention of the editor of the book of S. Fokin , but it is still nice that after S. Zenkin someone dares to do such things. I must say, unsuccessfully. So, after the "Empire of Signs" can be considered Russian Bart equipped more or less exhaustively. For only the considerations of bibliographic hooking, one can recall the Eiffel Tower and other mythologies (1964), the “writer Sollers” (1979) or posthumous “insights” (1987), but against the background of a deficiency of translated literature, it is ridiculous to call for their immediate publication. Maybe, of course, the enthusiasts of the French theory shut off the Russian reader Bart, however, it is like inadvertently sinking the Kurvoisier cognac: a sin to complain, life was a success.

Notes:

1 This word Bart completes the inaugural lecture at the college de France, in the spirit of questioning the very possibility of institutionalizing intellectual work. Sapientia in the end, is designed to satisfy the four conditions: "... no power, a little knowledge, a bit of wisdom and as much fragrant juiciness as possible" (Bart R. Lecture (1977) // Bart R. Selected Work. Poetics. 2nd ed. M., 1994. P. 569).

2 Bart R. Fundamentals of Semiology (1965) // French Semiotics: from structuralism to poststructuralism. Per. with fr. And entered. Art. G.K. Kosikova. M., 2000. S. 248-249.

3 Bart R. From science to literature (1967) // Bart R. Selected works. S. 383.

4 Later, Bart is fragmentary, but quite clearly reflected that his reasoning about Japan, built as a chain of metaphors pulling each other, was precisely the result of this ideal attitude: "Japan is a positive value," babble "is negative. But the Japanese are babbling. It does not matter: enough to say that this babble is not negative." The body of the Japanese "perfectly owns codes", and "Japanese babble should not be aggressive because the Japanese are attractive" ( Rolan Bart about Roland Bart . / Comp., Per. From Fr. and post -industry. S. Zenkina. M., 2002. P. 170).

5 The sociologist of urbanism Bernhard Valdenfels in the article “ The Simultaneous of the heterogeneous. The modern order in the mirror of the big city ” noted, referring to Bart, that in the modern city “movement itself becomes a stay”, which is brightly realized by the Tokyo subway, where passengers are not Vis-a-Vis, which is associated with a etiquette prohibition of looking at the interlocutor. And further: “Here is a instructive comparison with the Japanese city, which is organized not around any one central place (area), such as, for example, Agora, forum or market square, and the silhouettes of which are not initially marked with such visual dominants as the tower and palaces rising above the other Kyoto are not growing to the sky.”