If a consistent theory of criticism emerges in [the] discontinuity of perspectives offered by Barthes … throughout his career, it very probably depends on what might be coined a zero-degree hermeneutics comparable to the concept of zero-degree style which he originally proposed almost three decades ago. As he advocates for literary form, his critical theory seems to be suspended in interspace between the methodologies which dominate it, but without really bringing these into harmony with each other. The critical act verges on each of them, but short of fusion and in a pattern of temptation and quick abandonment which actually seems to have accelerated throughout his career. In Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, for example, he described his rejection of orthodox belief ("doxa") as a mode of "cruising," and in his last book, Camera Lucida, published in 1980, he finally turned to photography for a vision of permanence which eluded his literary methodology. In The Pleasures of the Text Barthes missed the opportunity to arrive at an affective synthesis based on the fundamental and almost self-evident premise that both the bliss and pleasure of literary experience (which he tried to distinguish from each other) are comparable to physical gratification as conscious byproducts of tension reduction—or, in a more global sense, of anxiety reduction as mediated by literary form. If Barthes had tried to explore this connection, he could well have established a basis for integrating psychology and stylistics, and with clear implications relevant to the Marxist theory of alienation—a synthesis which might have suggested a much more coherent theory of explication. But this of course wasn't his intention. Like the obsessive seducer who must keep his mistresses apart from each other, Barthes seems to have drawn upon each of these fields with no expectation of sustaining a close relationship or of letting any of them converge so their coincidental ties might be revealed. Instead, he touched upon each dedicated to the precarious task of keeping them proximate but isolated as "zero degree" involvements. (p. 53)

By far the most obvious rejection of Sartre's theory of engagement … was made by Roland Barthes in his first book, Le Degre Zero de l'Ecriture, published in 1953 and translated in 1967 as Writing Degree Zero…. Barthes proposed here a formal compromise that anticipated the structuralist perspective perhaps a decade before it crystalized and acquired widespread popularity as an intellectual movement. With a typically Gallic mixture of elliptical pronouncements, he delineated a critical theory which stretched in scope from Sartre's notion of political commitment at one extreme to a formal, non-political theory of language and style at the other. Within these rather wide limits he could range as a "critic in motion," never staying at a position long enough to develop its ramifications with any thoroughness, but swiftly and almost imperceptibly shifting to a new orientation, often radically different if not the exact opposite. His political views appear to have remained militant enough to provoke attacks by Dieguez and others, but his real interest came to its focus on language and style, formal dimensions of literature which he found to be independent of history. He was apparently struggling within himself at an initial stage of transition from engagement to structuralism, not fully prepared to accept his apostasy and still somewhat confused about his course of direction as a critic. Anticipating his later concern with a linguistic model of experience, he seems to have been trying to explain Sartre's theory of engagement in terms of Saussure's theory of language, and in lieu of synthesis to have nervously shifted back and forth between the two. His indecisiveness actually prefigured the ambivalence he was later to find essential to the identity of the tragic hero. By means of this vacillation, he progressively reduced the theory of engagement until it lost its impetus as a moral obligation and became instead an impediment to the formal lucidity he considered the primary objective of literature. His uncertainty thus obliged his rejection of engagement, though he often returned to its theme with renewed fascination. Unable to free himself entirely from its demands, he obsessively sought its denial, an engagement to undermine engagement, and this pattern of reaction formation offers, I think, the key to his development as a critic.

If there was any logic to Barthes' pattern of withdrawal, it seems best explained as having been a three-stage transition from commitment to formalism, a flexible "strategy" of detours, retreats, and advancements without any definite progressive sequence except in its cleverness as a texture of argument. He often backtracked upon himself, but only to recover and incrementally move forward, actually modulating his thesis from one stage to the next: (1) conceding the political relevance of language with enough militancy to suggest Sartre's demands for commitment, (2) nevertheless proposing a broader context, a comprehensive theory of form to deal with commitment in its interaction with other influences upon the writer, and then (3) altogether nullifying his original concession to engagement by proposing a theory of non-political commitment more appropriate to this interactive context as "writing degree zero." With these three stages—concessive, tensive and formalist—he first acknowledged with a generous tautology that historic responsibility is an important feature of prose having social implications, which he called ecriture, or, loosely translated, writing as process—a concept which can be traced beyond Sartre to Saussure's definition of parole. At the next step, he eluded Sartre's social imperatives by reifying style and language to be specific influences upon ecriture outside social history, yet loosely connected or "linked" to provide a formal history of literature. Finally, he eliminated mediation from ecriture in the sense intended by Sartre by proposing that "writing degree zero" is ultimately the most satisfactory mode of ecriture for contemporary literature since it provides a perfect balance between journalism and literary style which nullifies each through its compromise with the other. (pp. 55-6)

Both language and style separately influence ecriture according to Barthes, but whatever polarity exists between them, they must primarily be recognized to be permanent dimensions of literature counterbalanced against the ephemeral influence of journalism committed to history. The engagement advocated by Sartre involves a futile imbalance of ecriture as journalism, whereas "writing degree zero" supposedly achieves the perfect but precarious balance between history on one hand and style and language on the other. (p. 56)

Language was depicted by Barthes as the force upon ecriture probably the most secure in its independence from history, again suggestive of the structuralist emphasis upon synchrony which may be traced to the concept of langue proposed by Saussure. Its lexicon of rules and definitions exactly counterbalances parole—and ecriture as well—in either case offering itself as an alternative to the ongoing accumulation of words and locutions in an utterance. According to Barthes, langue is a corpus of habits and prescriptions internalized by the individual as "a reflex response involving no choice," much as it had been defined by Saussure. One may enjoy considerable latitude in making his selection from this lexicon, but in order to be understood he must be able to combine words and locutions in habitual patterns which can be recognized by others of his language group. Barthes accordingly treated language as a "collective preconscious," a vast accumulation of shared linguistic formulas which dominate our ideas and lives much more than we realize. He even went so far as to attribute to this aggregate a sacred truth as the foundation of literature which makes it immune to historic change…. Obviously at the second stage of his strategy, he elevated language to serve as a higher authority which necessarily imposes rules and structures upon the experience of literature. Though the importance of language can hardly be denied, nor the relative durability of syntax, the approach he took obliged an authoritarianism entirely at conflict with Sartre's ideal of responsibility to intellectual freedom. It would also seem to have been in conflict with the judgment of Barthes himself when he elsewhere deplored, at the first level of his strategy, "the eternal repressive content of the word 'order.'" Language had become practically a benevolent deity, an unmoved mover with a structural "ethic" to be imposed upon all experience. (pp. 58-9)

Barthes successfully deemphasized history's effect upon ecriture as diachronic behavior by resorting to both style and language as vertical influences reflective of the axis of simultaneities proposed by Saussure, a synchronic repository of signs, functions, and even biological need. Blind forces or not, language and style could be hypostatized in this manner to provide an escape to permanence from the responsibility of engagement.

But a qualified synthesis was needed, and according to Barthes this could only be attained through literary form which interrelates language and style and then connects them to history in perfect unmediated equipoise. Through form these three elemental forces, language, style, and history, impinge upon each other to bind the writer to society through shared structural expectations. Form is the essential middle term which makes literature possible by relating and integrating the others. It cannot be entirely subordinated to engagement as Sartre recommended for tipping its balance toward history, since this disruption of its equilibrium would merely compound the problems of form without escaping them. Rather, form itself becomes the principal concern of the author,… more essential to literature than any of its ingredients and in fact "the first and last instance of literary responsibility." For this reason Barthes could praise "writing degree zero" for having liberated form from ideology, which he felt to be irrelevant to the literary task except in periods when journalism has usurped "zero degree" symmetry. He construed "writing degree zero" not to be a reaction to political commitment, but the perfect source of equipoise which makes this commitment altogether unnecessary. Without retreating from politics, he was marching in a different direction, toward "zero-degree" balance between journalism and the timelessness of style and language wrought by form. (pp. 59-60)

Barthes found style's departure from classicism to have been regrettable and by implication socially divisive. He attacked realism as an artificial combination of formal signs and "pieces brought in from popular language, strong words or dialect words." He also criticized the literary preterite (passe simple) as much the cause of this artificiality in narration. But he was primarily concerned with the modern shift in emphasis from classical syntax to the connotative "density" of words, the new "dwelling place" of ideation. He claimed that with the increased emphasis upon style, meaning has been conveyed by a "lexical basis" for words approaching complete independence from syntax. Compared with classical purity, modern literary expression has gained a "brute" objectivity in the isolated identity of words loosely strung together in a "parody" of syntax…. Consequently Barthes wanted to reverse priorities by shifting signification to an intra-referential formalism among words, a syntactic dominance best represented by classicism; and he seems to have had reservations about "style" precisely because of its density of personal connotations as explained by the theories of both Merleau-Ponty and Ogden and Richards. The abstract core of one's identity he could accept as the root of style, but not its more inclusive manifestation as personality. He could only abhor the superabundance of personal implications too thoroughly rooted in individual experience, as well, of course, as the social circumstances which situate this experience in the context of history.

As indicated earlier, Barthes proposed that the "stylistic" trend toward non-communication has been brought to its ultimate extreme in "writing degree zero," a synthesis which restored clarity to language through formal "silence."… Through "zero degree" symmetry, he claimed, the excesses of journalism and dense literary style cancel each other out, leaving us with the "absence of all signs," the "style of absence which is almost an ideal absence of style." The "zero-degree" writer is aware of modern disorder but anticipates with trepidation an "absolutely homogeneous state of society," presumably the democratic socialism advocated by Sartre. (pp. 60-1)

Barthes also argued that brief "revolutionary" oases of "zero-degree" style punctuate the presumably non-revolutionary flux of history—a peculiar formalist inversion of the theory of permanent revolution. On this basis he was able to propose that "writing degree zero" is actually more revolutionary than Sartre's concept of engagement since it dispenses with the dialectic effort to mediate social change in order to help bring about whatever oasis one might find desirable. Actually, Barthes' approach must be understood to have been just as much a response to social conflict, though it was necessarily limited to the author's silent observation without fruitlessly committing himself to praxis in the implementation of a social program. On one hand, with engagement, there was optimistic commitment to political objectives, on the other, with "writing degree zero," a pessimistic clarity which transcends involvement. Both might be considered to have been "revolutionary," but with entirely different results, one dialectic and the other formalist…. "Writing degree zero" was consequently justified as a neutral response to politics, a withdrawal to form from social conflicts which apparently defy resolution. It retains the clarity of the best journalism, but without its presumably clumsy objectives. In contrast to the public role of the committed propagandist, the "zero-degree" writer retires from society, as did Camus, to explore with lucid silence his own personal anguish in response to the distraction of endless public crises. Rejecting the ignis fatuus of social mediation, he turns instead to the authority of form, always "the first and last arbiter of literary responsibility." Secure under this authority, he becomes free to experiment with "zero-degree" style to express his politically emancipated vision of life. Social commitment has become inessential to the jobs of literature and criticism. (p. 62)

[In his introduction to Essais Critiques Barthes once again equated] ecriture with silence and form, even describing it as the discovery of the "largest language" and as a "secondary language" detached from the "slime of primary languages afforded him by the world, history, his existence …" Barthes claimed to share this solipsistic transcendence as a critic through a "kind of zero degree of the person"—also through his "secret practice of the indirect" and his ability "to accomplish his project of writing even while eluding it." It would be a mistake to ignore or downgrade the full implications of his confession here, for indeed he wholeheartedly committed himself to this evasive ambiguity. His criticism consistently proposed strategies to escape the demands of engagement, but without really putting an end to the matter. It almost seems as if Barthes spent thirty years denying the obligation imposed by Sartre's theory of engagement by turning first to alternative sources and then to formal structure, always finding safety in paradox yet complex enough in his cryptic honesty to acknowledge his evasiveness without fully exposing himself.

Perhaps the most significant work of Barthes in its range of eclectic borrowings in the service of formalism would be his important study Sur Racinè, published in 1960 and translated in 1964. Here he made what seems to have been a mature reconsideration of his transitional theories in Writing Degree Zero, and with the same basic purpose to elevate form over history, though he now turned from the general topic of ecriture to the more specific investigation of classical French tragedy. He was apparently engaged in the same conflict, but on a different battlefield and with a slightly different strategy. In Writing Degree Zero, he had tangentially suggested the "tragic element" in ecriture to be the struggle against "all-powerful signs" imposed by history. Now he expanded this point by entirely extracting tragedy from history as an absolutely timeless form of art which lacks even the interior features of process and duration. His new task seems to have been to remove time and process from tragedy as well as tragedy from history, establishing an aesthetics of double timelessness. Toward this objective he primarily concerned himself once again, as to be expected, with the question of form.

Not surprisingly, though, he also returned to the concept of "writing degree zero," which he anachronistically discerned in a Racinian transparence "eternally open to signification."… ["Zero degree"] consequently remains the key to On Racine as well as Writing Degree Zero and most of the rest of his books…. Whereas Racine would have been treated in Writing Degree Zero as a classical poet at the origin of style's evolution toward "zero-degree" lucidity to the twentieth century, he was now transfigured into its most consummate practitioner. This coincidence would suggest that the seventeenth century suffered from roughly the same problems as we do today and that "writing degree zero" somehow brought style to its full circle, exactly recreating classical purity in modern prose. As Camus' style restored classical syntax in prose, so the tragic vision of Racine, a renegade from Jansenism, foreshadowed our modern "zero-degree" disengagement. Separated by three centuries of stylistic excesses, both possess exactly the proper balance among journalism, style, and history, the external categories established by Barthes in Writing Degree Zero. In another sense, though, the category of language, essential to classicism in Writing Degree Zero, was given a more fundamental role in On Racine to become the primary source of form in both classicism and modern "zero-degree" ecriture. Meanwhile, history and style could be abandoned as alternatives to engagement because of this new and holistic emphasis upon language. Barthes also ignored the obvious differences between classical and modern "zero-degree" styles on the assumption that they are fundamentally identical in their approximation to syntactic perfection since they are impervious to the accidental influence of any particular epoch. (pp. 65-6)

Eclectic formalism pervades On Racine and gives the impression of a brilliantly disarranged catalogue of new dimensions beyond history, each having been explored to subordinate process to structure in its own unique fashion. With a psychocriticism derived from Mauron, Barthes investigated primordial family jealousies as the matrix for all tragic action. With the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss, he explored unreconciled mythic patterns, for example the antinomy between the powers of the sun and underground which he found to be of central importance in Phedra. And with the critical phenomenology of Bachelard and Poulet, he established a strictly spatial dimension for tragedy in the relationship among three tragic sites, the chamber, antechamber, and outside world. He also invoked his earlier theory of equipoise, but now applied to the phenomenology of the stage as spectacle. He assigned tragedy to the antechamber, the "site of language," a zero-degree threshold caught between the inner chamber, a psychological "abode of power," and the confused social realities of exterior space. Once again his threefold strategy of disengagement is to be detected in which … concrete experience was balanced against its structural sources, while form, the fulcrum between the two, effectively denied his concession through its imposition as a more inclusive consideration. Reductionism was thus even further "reduced" in the sense that all theories of behavior could be treated as questions of form. On this basis Barthes could borrow from a surprising variety of reductive approaches in order to extract tragedy from history through its presumably formal timelessness. (p. 67)

As indicated earlier, Barthes largely concentrated his attack upon process and duration to eliminate from tragedy even the most remote references to history and the responsibilities it might impose. In Writing Degree Zero, he had boldly proclaimed, "What must be destroyed is duration, that is, the ineffable binding force running through existence …" In Elements of Semiology, he similarly tried to eliminate process and density from verbal connotation with an ingenious theory of regressive "planes of expression." Here, in On Racine, he explained tragic action to be timeless by, hence free of history, treating duration as a tautological cancellation of terms which only accidentally occupy time…. He accordingly reduced all tragic processes to logical and mathematical formulations outside the dimension of time…. He viewed Racinian tragedy as an "autonomous object" existing beyond history, process and human frailties in a limbo of aesthetic perfection we must apprehend to appreciate as the final denial of praxis and engagement. In its perfection it finally offers the model he wanted to find of literary commitment which is absolute in its transcendence of engagement and its social imperatives.

The eclectic formalism of Barthes remains unquestionably brilliant despite his analytic extravagances. Attacks upon his consistency by Raymond Picard and others were inconsequential, for consistency was never his particular hobgoblin. Whatever he has sacrificed to contradictions and overlooked exceptions was more than regained in the fertility of his insights. To have abided by stringent tenets of veracity would have largely obstructed his quest for a formalist perspective adequate to explain writers such as Racine, Brecht, and Robbe-Grillet…. But it cannot be ignored that Barthes primarily committed himself to formalist objectives in order to supplant dialectics with a hermeneutics of zero-degree equipoise, and that he fell victim to most of the problems of formalism in his "radical" struggle to eliminate political relevance from consideration. His undeniable contribution to criticism, often justified in its risks, was more than burdened by his determination to minimize the tangible relationship between history and literature, first in Writing Degree Zero by subordinating history to form, and then in On Racine by removing process and duration from tragedy to the extent that these suggest even the vestigial influence of history. It seems to have been his sustained effort to extract process from art in order to eliminate art from the process of history, refining his formalism to the acute edge of what might be coined the Fallacy of Double Timelessness. This provided the single most important source of consistency in his syncretism, and it can be traced without much difficulty to his initial commitment to deny the importance of engagement.

If Sartre elected himself the conscience of France, Barthes epitomizes the endeavor of the modern French intellectual to squirm free from its demands, in his case by subsuming process to equipoise, experience to linguistic categories, and even language to the transcendent concept of silence. He chose to ignore Sartre's organic definition of history, shared with Marx, as simply "the activity of man pursuing his own ends," and instead construed it to be a reification, the abstract dimension of time as an inorganic category somehow inferior to the timelessness of form. But in his pursuit of unmediated equipoise, he neglected his early acknowledgement in Writing Degree Zero, "Now it is when history is denied that it is most unmistakably at work." And this, I think, was his problem, for by trying to escape history he made his acquiescence to it through the Gaullist and structuralist illusion of stability which might let him withdraw to the gratification of form. His commitment to this evasion defined his career as a critic, and successfully enough to guarantee his importance in the history of French criticism. (pp. 68-70)