The Three Paradoxes of Roland Barthes

Revolution must of necessity borrow, from what it wants to destroy, the very image of what it wants to possess.—Roland Barthes In the field of contemporary literary studies, Roland Barthes remains an inestimably influential figure—perhaps more influential in America than in his native France. The Three Paradoxes of Roland Barthes proposes a new method of viewing Barthes’s critical enterprise. Patrizia Lombardo, who studied with Barthes, rejects an absolutist or developmental assessment of his ca