In an abandoned autobiographical fragment written on July 17, 1974, Roland Barthes described the year of his birth as “insignificant”: 1915, he explained, had the misfortune of being “lost in the war”, with no event to make it stand out.
The same could hardly be said of 2015. As Michael Sheringham observed recently at a conference in Leeds, we are in the whirling middle of a centenary “Barthes-athon”. By the end of the year, celebratory events will have taken place in Paris, Bordeaux, Orthez, London, Providence, Lisbon, Tartu, Leeds, Cardiff, La Paz, Londrina, São Paulo, Bucharest, Bayonne, Kaslik, St Petersburg, Buenos Aires and Zagreb. In May, meanwhile, the fashion house Hermès unveiled a silk scarf inspired by A Lover’s Discourse – a garment which could come in handy for keeping the Parisian chill at bay during the “Nuit Roland Barthes” at the city’s Maison de la Poésie on November 12 (the day on which the author would have reached his century).
Then there are the publications: a large, elegant volume of previously unpublished writings entitledAlbum: Inédits, correspondances et varia, along with new editions of La Préparation du roman andL’Empire des signes; Fanny Lorent’s Barthes et Robbe-Grillet: Un dialogue critique; Magali Nachtergael’s lavishly illustrated Roland Barthes contemporain; Chantal Thomas’s Pour Roland Barthes; and Philippe Sollers’s L’Amitié de Roland Barthes.
more here.