The Seventh Function of Language

8:23 p.m.: “And the interview with François Mitterrand in La Croix, with these little phrases that will go down in history [Mitterrand smiles with pleasure]: ‘Giscard remains the man bound to a clan, a class, and a caste. Six years of stagnation, belly-dancing in front of the Golden Calf. And pshit, said Ubu.’” (“That is François Mitterrand saying that,” PPDA makes clear. Giscard rolls his eyes.) “So that is what he said about the president. About Georges Marchais and his gang of three, well … ‘When he wants to be,’ says François Mitterrand again, ‘Marchais is a world-class comic.’ [In his apartment on Rue d’Ulm, Althusser shrugs. He shouts to his wife, in the kitchen: “Did you hear that, Hélène?” No response.] Finally, François Mitterrand, in response to a question about a possible Mitterrand-Rocard ticket for the Socialist Party, he pimply … [PPDA gets his words muddled, but continues impassively] simply replied that this American expression had no French equivalent in our institutions.”

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.