The Seventh Function of Language

by Laurent Binet

  8:24 p.m.: “Roland Barthes … [PPDA pauses] died this afternoon in the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, in Paris. [Giscard stops signing documents, Mitterrand stops grimacing, Sollers stops rummaging around in his underpants with his cigarette holder, Kristeva stops stirring her sautéed veal and runs out of the kitchen, Hamed stops putting on his sock, Althusser stops trying to not yell at his wife, Bayard stops ironing his shirts, Deleuze says to Guattari: “I’ll call you back!,” Foucault stops thinking about biopower, Lacan continues smoking his cigar.] The writer and philosopher was the victim of a traffic accident last month. He was [PPDA pauses] sixty-four years old. He was famous for his work on modern writing and communication. Bernard Pivot interviewed him for Apostrophes: Roland Barthes was presenting his book A Lover’s Discourse, a book that was extremely successful [Foucault rolls his eyes], and in the clip we are going to see now, he explained from a sociological point of view [Simon rolls his eyes] the relationships between sentimentality … [PPDA pauses] and sexuality. [Foucault rolls his eyes.] We’ll listen to that now.” (Lacan rolls his eyes.)

  Roland Barthes (in his Philippe Noiret voice): “I maintain that a subject—and I say a subject in order not to specify the, er, sex of the subject, if you see what I mean—but a subject who is in love would have, uh, a lot more difficulty over … overcoming the sort of taboo about sentimentality, whereas the taboo about sexuality is, today, transgressed very easily.”

  Bernard Pivot: “Because to be in love is to be childish, silly?” (Deleuze rolls his eyes. Mitterrand thinks he should call his daughter, Mazarine.)

  Roland Barthes: “Uh … yes, in a way, that’s what the world does believe. The world attributes two qualities, or rather two faults, to the subject who is in love: the first is that they are often stupid—there is a silliness to being in love that the subject feels—and there is also the madness of people in love—and this is a very popular observation these days!—except that it is a polite madness, isn’t it, a madness lacking the glory of a great, transgressive madness.” (Foucault lowers his eyes and smiles.)

  The clip ends. PPDA says: “So, we’ve seen, er, Jean-François Kahn, er, Roland Barthes was fascinated by everything, he talked about everything, er, we saw him, er, in films … playing roles … recently, er, but would you describe him as a Renaissance man?” (It’s true: he played Thackeray in Téchiné’s Brontë Sisters, a small role that he did not besmirch with his talent, Simon remembers.)

  J.-F. Kahn (very excited): “Well, yes, apparently he is a Renaissance man! Yes, he dealt with, er, er, he wrote about fashion, about ties, or I don’t know what, he wrote about wrestling!… He wrote about Racine, about Michelet, about photography, about cinema, he wrote about Japan, so, yes, he was a Renaissance man! [Sollers chuckles. Kristeva glares at him.] But in fact, it does all fit together. Take his last book! On lovers’ discourses … on the language of love … well, in truth, Roland Barthes always wrote about language! But he found that … his tie … our tie … is a way of speaking. [Sollers, indignantly: “A way of speaking … Oh, come on!”] It’s a way of expressing oneself, fashion. The motorbike: it’s the way a society expressed itself. The cinema: obviously! Photography, too. So that’s to say that Roland Barthes is, at heart, a man who spent his time tracking signs!… The signs a society, a community, uses to express itself. Expresses vague, confused feelings, even if it’s not aware of it! In this sense, he was a very great journalist. He was the master of a science called semiology. That is, the science of signs.

  “And then, of course, he was a very great literary critic! Because, the same thing applies: What is a literary work? A literary work is what a writer writes to express himself. And what Roland Barthes showed is that, essentially, in a literary work, there are three levels: there is the language—Racine wrote in French, Shakespeare wrote in English, that’s the language. There is the style: this is the result of their technique, their talent. But between the style—which is a choice, you know, it’s controlled by the author—and the language, there is a third level, which is the writing. And the writing, he said, is the place … of politics, in every sense of the word. In other words, even if the writer is not aware of it the writing is the thing through which he expresses what he is socially, his culture, his origins, his social class, the society around him … and even if he sometimes writes something because it seems self-evident—I don’t know, in a Racine play, say: ‘Let us retire to our rooms’ or something that seems self-evident—ah, but it’s not! It’s not self-evident, says Barthes. Even if he says it’s self-evident, don’t believe it, because there’s something being expressed beneath it.”

  PPDA (who has not been listening, or has not understood, or simply doesn’t care), earnestly: “Because every word is dissected!”

  J.-F. Kahn (who doesn’t notice): “So, so, as well as that … what’s great with Barthes is that this is a man who has written things that are very … mathematical, very cold in style, and who, at the same time, has produced veritable hymns to the beauty of style. But to conclude, let’s say that he is a very important man. Who I think expresses the spirit of our age. And I’m going to tell you why. Because there are ages that are expressed through the theater, you know, really. [Here, Kahn makes an untranslatable gurgling sound.] Others through the novel: the 1950s, for example, Mauriac, er, Camus, er, et cetera. But I think the 1960s … in France … France’s cultural spirit is expressed through the discourse on the discourse. On the marginal discourse. We’re probably aware that we haven’t produced any truly great novels … maybe not, or great plays; the best thing we have produced is a way of explaining what others have said or have done and, by better explaining what they’ve done or said or other things, revitalizing an ancient discourse.”

  PPDA: “In a few moments, soccer. At the Parc des Princes, France will play the Netherlands [Hamed leaves his apartment, slamming the door and hurtling down the stairs]: a friendly match that is much more important than you might think [Simon turns off his television], because the Dutch were the losing finalists, as we know, in the last two World Cups [Foucault turns off his television], and also, crucially, because France and the Netherlands are in the same qualifying group for the next World Cup, in 1982, in Spain. [Giscard starts signing documents again. Mitterrand picks up his phone to call Jack Lang.] You can watch a recording of that match after tonight’s late news, which will be presented by Hervé Claude, at around ten fifty p.m.” (Sollers and Kristeva sit down to eat. Kristeva pretends to wipe away a tear and says: “Rrreal life goes on.” In two hours, Bayard and Deleuze will both watch the match.)

  25

  It is Thursday, March 27, 1980, and Simon Herzog is reading the newspaper in a bar full of young people sitting at tables with cups of coffee they finished hours ago. I would situate the café on Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, but, again, you can put him wherever you like, it doesn’t really matter. It’s probably more practical and logical to put him in the Latin Quarter, though, to explain all the young people. There’s a pool table, and the sound of the balls colliding clicks like a pulse beneath the hubbub of late-afternoon conversations. Simon Herzog is also drinking coffee, because it still seems a bit early—given the expectations of his social class and individual personality—to order a beer.

  The main headlines on the front page of Le Monde dated Friday, March 28, 1980 (it is always already tomorrow with Le Monde), concern Thatcher’s “anti-inflationary” budget (setting out—surprise, surprise—a “reduction in public spending”) and the civil war in Chad, but in the bottom of the right-hand column there is also a small mention of Barthes’s death. The famous journalist Bertrand Poirot-Delpech’s obituary begins with these words: “Just twenty years after Camus breathed his last in a glove box, literature has paid the chrome goddess a rather harsh price!” Simon rereads the phrase several times, and glances around the room.

  Around the pool table, two boys of about twenty are facing off, watched by a girl who looks barely legal. Simon automatically identifies w
hat’s going on: the more smartly dressed boy desires the girl, who desires the more disheveled-looking boy, with his long hair and slightly grubby appearance, whose faintly arrogant detachment makes it difficult to tell whether he is interested in the girl—and is simulating a tactical indifference as a mark of his superiority, a statutory indifference linked to his condition as the dominant male who takes it for granted that the girl will be his by right—or if he is waiting for another girl, more beautiful, more rebellious, less shy, more suited to someone of his standing (the two hypotheses obviously not being incompatible).

  Poirot-Delpech goes on: “If Barthes, along with Bachelard, is one of those who have done most to enrich criticism during the last thirty years, it is not as a theoretician of a still-hazy semiology but as the champion of a new pleasure in reading.” The semiologist in Simon Herzog emits a grunt. Pleasure in reading, blah blah blah. Still-hazy semiology, my arse. Even if, well … “More than a new Saussure, he would have been a new Gide.” Simon slams his cup into its saucer and the coffee spills over onto his newspaper. The noise is drowned out by the sound of the pool balls, so no one notices, except for the girl, who turns around. Simon meets her eye.

  The two boys are both obviously bad pool players, but this does not prevent them from using the table as a sort of stage, frowning, nodding, bending to bring their chins close to the balls, phases of intense thinking leading to innumerable circuits of the table, technical and tactical calculations regarding the white ball’s point of impact on the colored ball (itself chosen according to changeable criteria), repetition of practice shots with hard, jerky, too-fast movements evoking both the game’s erotic stakes and the players’ inexperience, followed by a shot whose speed cannot mask its clumsiness. Simon turns back to Le Monde.

  Jean-Philippe Lecat, the minister of culture and communication, declared: “All his work on writing and thought was motivated by the deep study of mankind in order to help us know ourselves better and to live better in society.” Another, better-controlled slamming of the cup into the saucer. Simon checks to see if the girl turns around (she does). Apparently no one at the Ministry of Culture could be bothered to come up with anything better than this platitude. Simon wonders if it is based on some sort of formula that, with minor variations, can be applied to any writer, philosopher, historian, sociologist, biologist … The in-depth study of mankind? Oh yes, bravo, my good sir, what a sterling effort! And you can trot it out again for Sartre, Foucault, Lacan, Lévi-Strauss, and Bourdieu.

  Simon hears the smartly dressed boy contesting a rule: “No, you don’t get two penalty shots if you pot a ball with your first shot.” Sophomore law student (though he probably had to repeat his first year). Analyzing his clothes, jacket, shirt, Simon would plump for Panthéon-Assas University. Emphasizing each word, the other boy replies: “Okay, no problem, cool, whatever you want. I don’t care. It’s all the same to me, man.” Sophomore psychology (or repeating his first year) at Censier or Jussieu (he’s on home turf, clearly). The girl gives a faux-discreet smile that is intended to be knowing. She has two-tone Kickers, electric-blue turn-up jeans, a ponytail held in place by a scrunchie, and she smokes Dunhill Lights: modern literature, first year, Sorbonne or Sorbonne Nouvelle, probably having skipped a year of school.

  “For an entire generation, he blazed a trail in the analysis of communication media, mythologies, and languages. Roland Barthes’s work will remain in everyone’s heart like a vibrant call to liberty and happiness.” So Mitterrand is not very inspired either, but at least he gestures toward Barthes’s fields of expertise.

  After an interminable endgame, Assas wins haphazardly with an improbable shot (potting the black in off the cushion, following the imaginary rule invented by Breton drunkards to prolong the pleasure) and lifts his arms in imitation of Borg. Censier tries to compose himself with a mocking expression, Sorbonne goes over to Censier and consoles him by rubbing his arm, and all three pretend to laugh, as if it were merely a game.

  The Communist Party also made a statement: “It is to the intellectual who devoted the lion’s share of his work to a new way of thinking about imagination and communication, the pleasure of the text, and the materiality of writing, that we pay tribute today.” Simon isolates the most important element of this sentence immediately: “It is to” that intellectual that we pay tribute, not, the implication being, to the other one: the neutral, uncommitted man who ate lunch with Giscard and went to China with his Maoist friends.

  Another girl enters the bar: long curly hair, leather jacket, Dr. Martens, earrings, ripped jeans. Simon thinks: history of art, first year. She kisses the disheveled young man on the mouth. Simon observes the ponytailed girl carefully. On her face he reads bitterness, suppressed anger, the irresistible feeling of inferiority that rises in her (unfounded, obviously) and manifests itself in the folds of her mouth, the unmistakable traces of the battle within between resentment and contempt. Once again, their eyes meet. The girl’s eyes blaze for a second with an indefinable brilliance. She gets up, walks over to him, leans across the table, stares straight into his eyes, and says: “What’s your problem, dickhead? You want my photo or what?” Embarrassed, Simon stammers something incomprehensible and starts reading an article on Michel Rocard.

  26

  The pretty village of Urt had never seen so many Parisians. They have taken the train to Bayonne. They have come for the funeral. An icy wind blows through the cemetery, the rain hammers down, and the mourners gather in small groups, none having thought to bring an umbrella. Bayard has made the trip too, and brought Simon Herzog with him, and the two of them observe the soaked fauna of Saint-Germain. We are 485 miles from the Café de Flore, and to see Sollers nervously chewing his cigarette holder or BHL buttoning his shirt, you feel that the ceremony had better not go on too long. Simon Herzog and Jacques Bayard are able to identify almost everyone: there’s the Sollers/Kristeva/BHL group; the Youssef/Paul/Jean-Louis group; Foucault’s group, containing Daniel Defert, Mathieu Lindon, Hervé Guibert, and Didier Eribon; the university group (Todorov, Genette); the Vincennes group (Deleuze, Cixous, Althusser, Châtelet); Barthes’s brother, Michel, and his wife, Rachel; his editor, Eric Marty, and two students and former lovers, Antoine Compagnon and Renaud Camus, as well as a group of gigolos (Hamed, Saïd, Harold, Slimane); film people (Téchiné, Adjani, Marie-France Pisier, Isabelle Huppert, Pascal Greggory); two male twins dressed like astronauts in mourning (neighbors who work in television, apparently), and some villagers …

  Everyone in Urt liked him. At the cemetery gate, two men get out of a black DS and open an umbrella. Someone in the crowd spots the car and exclaims: “Look, a DS!” A delighted murmur runs through the gathering, who see in it an homage to Barthes’s Mythologies, published with the famous Citroën on the front cover. Simon whispers to Bayard: “Do you think the murderer is in the crowd?” Bayard does not reply. He looks at every mourner and thinks they all look guilty. To get anywhere in this investigation, he knows that he has to understand what he’s searching for. What did Barthes possess of such value that someone not only stole it from him but they wanted to kill him for it too?

  27

  We are in Fabius’s magnificent apartment in the Panthéon, which as I imagine it has moldings all over the place and herringbone parquet flooring. A group of Socialist Party advisers have met to discuss their candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, in terms of image and—at the time, the term is still a little vulgar—“communication.”

  The first column is almost empty. The only thing written there is Denied de Gaulle a first-round victory. And Fabius remarks that this achievement dates back fifteen years.

  The second column is much fuller. In ascending order of importance:

  Madagascar

  Observatoire

  Algerian War

  Too old (too Fourth Republic)

  Canines too long (looks cynical)

  Loses all the time

  Bizarrely, back then, his Francisque medal, received directl
y from General Pétain, and his functions in the Vichy regime, however modest, are never mentioned, neither by the media (amnesiac, as usual) nor by his political enemies (who perhaps don’t want to upset their own constituency with unpleasant memories). Only the very small group on the extreme right are spreading what the new generation considers a calumny.

  The meeting begins. Fabius has served hot drinks, cookies, and fruit juice on a large varnished wooden table. To indicate the size of their task, Moati takes out an old editorial on Mitterrand by Jean Daniel, which he cut out of a Nouvel Obs from 1966: “Not only does this man give the impression that he believes in nothing: when you are with him, he makes you feel guilty for believing in something. Almost involuntarily, he insinuates that nothing is pure, all is sordid, and that no illusions are allowed.”

  All the men gathered around the table agree that they have a job on their hands.

  Moati eats Palmitos.

  Badinter pleads Mitterrand’s cause: in politics, cynicism is only a relative handicap; it can also suggest shrewdness and pragmatism. After all, compromise doesn’t have to be unprincipled. The very nature of democracy necessitates flexibility and calculation. Diogenes the Cynic was a particularly enlightened philosopher.

  “Okay. So what about the Observatoire?” asks Fabius.

  Lang protests: this murky affair about a faked attack was never cleared up, and it was all based on the dubious testimony of an ex-Gaullist turned right-wing extremist who changed his story several times. And Mitterrand’s car had been found riddled with bullets! Lang seems genuinely indignant.

  “Agreed,” says Fabius. So that’s his shady past dealt with. But there remains the fact that, up to now, he has not come across as especially likable or especially socialist.