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Artificiality Without Apology - Barthes is

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It wearies to hear once more that Barthes' "The Empire of Signs" is an example of hypocritical cultural imperialism. It's been said too many times, and further it's an inaccurate assessment of the actual text to begin with. I don't see the need to apologize for this book before recommending it - simply a need to introduce it in terms of what it actually pretends to accomplish as well as what it never imagined it could do. In a word, it's hardly as though Barthes was a Heidegger.

As the reviewer mentions, Barthes' shows his hand from the very beginning and does not attempt in the least to produce an objective or scholarly account of Japan. Who could imagine that Barthes, no stranger to genuine historical and anthropological analysis (though he wrote none of his own) would ever have imagined to himself that, here, he could have produced, spontaneously, a passable work of scholarship in a slim volume containing no documentation or critical notes whatsoever?

If Barthes is working within any genre at all here, it's not that of scholarship but rather of the essay as first established by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne's writings on indigenous Brazilians were in no way expected to provide an objective picture, much less construction, of life amongst the cannibals. Montaigne rather finds in the accounts he has heard of the Caribbeans an occasion to reflect on the concerns of his own culture, in particular epistemology, history and the value of the values of civilization. Montaigne was well aware of what he was about, as was Barthes.

There is clearly no need to question the merit of thorough anthropological and historical research. However, those disciplines do not exhaust the possibilities of writing on other cultures. That we possess the methods necessary for the production of objective accounts of cultures, does not mean we no longer have a need for more subjective (or perhaps more non- or pre-objective) forms of investigation. Reason and the understanding cannot take from the imagination what is its proper due.

It strikes me that the kind of phenomenological reverie evinced in Barthes' encounter with Japan (his "love affair" with chopsticks, which is openly fetishistic and evokes a dual, maternal phallus which is not-one, which does not slice but rather unswaddles or snuggles a dumpling) is highly indebted not only to Montaigne's writings but also to Bachelard's later critiques of objective science. This sort of literary entry into a "paradis artificiel" does not come without a price. And certainly the cost of entry to, or residence in, this world of maternal jouissance was one which not only Baudelaire himself, but also numerous other writers, as antique as Augustine or as recent as Barthes himself, were perfectly willing to admit, and indeed make the problematical focus of entire books and careers.

Barthes' "The Empire of Signs" is not only a welcome complement to more conventional scholarly writing, but is in fact conditioned and called for by it - as Barthes says elsewhere, the only proper response to writing is more writing. If Barthes had not written this book, someone else would have had to write it instead.

How to look at a different culture

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Barthes tells us about Japan but I would recommend his exploration into another culture as a pattern to follow in your next travelling. Signs and meanings behind the surface.

An emptiness of language

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Barthes talks of an emptiness of language necessary to reach enlightenment, but occasionally emptiness is just emptiness. Exhibit A: "Empire of Signs."

That might be a little harsh. It might be better to say that Empire of Signs is an example of art for art's sake. Barthes claims to be attempting to isolate a number of features, treat them as signs, and create a system called Japan. Barthes does indeed make good on his promise (or is it a threat?) and paints a very vivid, creative system he calls Japan. He admits that he has little knowledge of Japan to begin with, and so his observations are primarily reflections of his own imagination and not the country that actually is called Japan.

At this point red lights should be flashing and loud alarms should be going off in the reader's head: what Barthes admits to doing is exactly what he claims to abhor--Orientalism. Empire of Signs is a beautifully written, intelligent book (which is why I give it two stars instead of one), but by no means is it anything more than an essay on Japan According To Roland Barthes. Furthermore, although Barthes claims to have an indifferent opinion toward Japan, it become clear right away that he is in love with Japan when he starts his odes to pachinko and his love poems for the chopstick. The good news is that Barthes doesn't seem to be taking himself too seriously: the tone of the book is light, almost stream-of-consciousness in style. I just can't help but shudder to think that there are people out there who are trying to think of Japan and the Japanese in terms of the ephemeral realms of the sukiyaki pot.

For anyone interested in the Japanese perspective and analysis of the "signs" of Japan, I would recommend Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's "In Praise of Shadows" or books by Alex Kerr ... Edward Said's "Orientalism" is an interesting (if not a little dense and controversial) look at orientalism ... but if you really want to know a little more about this "Empire of Signs" that is Japan, pick up a travel guide. Better still, read some Japanese literature by Soseki, Tanizaki, Oe, or the contemporary writer Haruki Murakami.

Roland Barthes' "Empire of Signs" is like a very rich chocolate cake: pretty to look at, but very difficult to finish without becoming slightly nauseous.

a modest, brilliant, and underestimated essay

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The translation omits several of the illustrations in the original (perhaps they cost too much). As often in English translations from the French, the traps set by cognate words (faux amis) are not always avoided: respectable as "respectable" (p. 63; should be "worthy of respect"); vicieux as "vicious" (p. 68; "defective" would be better; on the same page "The Form is Empty" should be "Form is Empty"), s'inventer as "invent oneself" (p. 30; "find oneself"). Barthes offers a string of short zuihitsu-style essays, impressionistic flashes, confessing that his Japan is a fictive theoretical construct. The recurrent theme is that Japan teaches us to liberate the play of signifiers from the tyranny of the signified. The influence of Jacques Derrida's early essays, published shortly before this book, is apparent. Barthes's view of Japan is by no means as shallow or inaccurate as captious critics make out. The sure guiding hand of his friend Maurice Pinguet of Tokyo University, author of "La mort volontaire au Japon," preserves Barthes from major errors. Japan as a dance of signs referring to other signs, in a perpetual foreplay, a delicious lightness of being, may not be much in evidence in the horrible cityscapes of the present (thanks to the voracious construction and real estate industries), but that image does correspond to an aspect of the culture, going all the way back to The Tale of Genji.

Barthes' Fantasy of Japan

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The first two chapters of Roland Barthesf Empire of Signs read like a wickedly irreverent farce on the dangerous of Orientalism. However, by the following chapter it becomes apparent that Barthes made the unfortunate mistake of believing his own rhetoric. Although a highly inventive and therefore wildly misinforming interpretation of Japan, the book can serve as an informative document in a historiographical study on Western reception of the fictive Other, in this case signified by gJapan.h