Barthes Studies
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barthesstudies.bsky.social
Barthes Studies
@barthesstudies.bsky.social
3.4K followers 1.2K following 27 posts
An open-access, independent, peer-reviewed journal for research in English on the work of Roland Barthes. Based at Cardiff University.

https://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/barthes

Pronouns of the person posting here: he/him/his.

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barthesstudies.bsky.social
Barthes Studies @barthesstudies.bsky.social · Oct 30
Volume 11 of Barthes Studies is now available online. As usual, all articles are completely free to read:
sites.cardiff.ac.uk/barthes/volu...
Articles by volume
Visit the post for more.
sites.cardiff.ac.uk
barthesstudies.bsky.social
Toto, I've a feeling we're not in capitalism anymore.
Pair of sparkly red shoes with bows on a small plastic display unit in a shop window. They look very vaguely like Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.* A note tucked into the shoe on the right says ‘Not for sale’. * There is no need to reply to tell me that they are much too pointy and different in various other ways to be Dorothy’s ruby slippers. Do I *look* like I haven’t watched The Wizard of Oz repeatedly?
December 26, 2025 at 7:36 PM
barthesstudies.bsky.social
The television is filled with adverts for post-festive diets and weight-loss products, so here’s Roland Barthes reassuring all of us who roll with the Rubensque that ‘to become thin is the naive act of the will-to-intelligence’:
Sudden mutation of the body (after leaving the sanatorium): changing (or appearing to change) from slender to plump. Ever since, perpetual struggle with this body to return it to its essential slenderness (part of the intellectual's mythology: to become thin is the naive act of the will-to-intelligence).
December 26, 2025 at 9:09 AM
barthesstudies.bsky.social
Roland Barthes on the delicate seasonal art of ‘strewing meringue mushrooms and holly leaves on a traditional log-shaped Christmas cake’:
Ornamentation proceeds in two contradictory ways, which we shall in a moment see dialectically reconciled: on the one hand, fleeing from nature thanks to a kind of frenzied baroque (sticking shrimps in a lemon, making a chicken look pink, serving grapefruit hot), and on the other, trying to reconstitute it through an incongruous artifice (strewing meringue mushrooms and holly leaves on a traditional log-shaped Christmas cake, replacing the heads of crayfish around the sophisticated bechamel which hides their bodies). It is in fact the same pattern which one finds in the elaboration of petit-bourgeois trinkets (ashtrays in the shape of a saddle, lighters in the shape of a cigarette, terrines in the shape of a hare).
December 25, 2025 at 6:26 PM
barthesstudies.bsky.social
Semiologists say it with signs:
Bi-lingual Welsh/English digital sign above a motorway. It says Nadolig Llawen/Merry Christmas.
December 25, 2025 at 9:36 AM
barthesstudies.bsky.social
Christmas Eve, it is said, is a time for rereading classic ghost stories.
Hand holding a copy of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida.
December 24, 2025 at 4:29 AM
barthesstudies.bsky.social
Volume 11 of Barthes Studies is now available online. As usual, all articles are completely free to read:
sites.cardiff.ac.uk/barthes/volu...
Articles by volume
Visit the post for more.
sites.cardiff.ac.uk
October 30, 2025 at 7:44 PM
barthesstudies.bsky.social
An agent in the field texts me the sad news that Michael Jayston has died. To me he *is* Peter Guillam (though I also love Michael Byrne’s performance in Smiley’s People). It is time to revisit the greatest TV series ever made.
Hand holding a copy of the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy DVD.
February 6, 2024 at 6:40 PM