From: "Peter Engelschmidt" <smoothspace-AT-mail.tele.dk>
Subject: 
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 23:59:31 +0200


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Dear list subscribers,

I post this message from one of my friends;

I have a question: I have been reading Barthes' "Le degre zero de l'ecriture" these days, and was struck by a passage, which of course is important, because it shows why at least the early Barthes could hardly be considered a structuralist in the strict sense of the term - but puzzling, as it coincides perfectly with the relation between structure and kinematics, that I am trying to develop for my own thesis - but there is no reference in Barthes' text as to where the genealogy of the quote arises.

It is a parenthesis, saying merely

"[w]e must remember that the structure is a deposit of the duree)"
(p.18 in the French edition)

As if this was a matter of fact - and the "remember" indicates, one must suppose, that this has been developed elsewhere. Hardly in Barthes' own writing, as this text is too early for that, written between 1947 and 1952, published in 1953 - and it could hardly be Deleuze's influence, for the same reasons. But who, then? Bergson? has Barthes been influenced directly by Bergson - the choice of the word duree could point at that. But it is not explicited any further. And if it is Bergson, where does he go into this relation between the structure as a charnal deposit of the movement, and the movement, or duree, in itself? Can anybody help me on this?

Kindly,

Oleg Koefoed
Roskilde University, Dept. of Philosophy.

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