Resumen de Kritik aus affektiver Fülle. Roland Barthes’ späte ‚écriture‘
Proceeding from and in contrast to contemporary efforts to re-model the concept of criticism within philosophy and social theory, the following paper seeks to develop a concept of discrete criticism along the lines of Roland Barthes’ later writings. This concept is presented not in a mode of positing, negation, disclosure or risk, but rather as an aspect of pleasure, of experiencing abundance and of affectivity. I will show how Barthes’ écriture (established as a “critical principle” in The Pleasure of the Text and developed further in later books and lectures) forms criticism not as a confrontation (and therefore positioning), but as a neutralization of and desistance from all sorts of hegemony and verbally expressed arrogance. Through a manifold self-perception-within-relationships (i. e. the writing son in relation to his mother or in relation to the environment of his writing), écriture becomes affectively loaded and, through this, creates affective insistencials [affektive Insistenziale], which instantly neutralize the masculine principle of dominant (self-)positing. Thus, a non-hegemonic and non-masculine form of subjectivity become visible in the aesthetic and cultural discourse of Barthes’ later writings.
