French Literature Reviews - 2026

C. Bident, Le Geste théâtral de Barthes
Theatre and Performance

Christophe Bident, Le Geste théâtral de Barthes

Paris: Hermann, coll. "Le Bel aujourd'hui", 2012.

160 p.

EAN 9782705682521

24.00 EUR

Publisher's Overview:

Roland Barthes did not initially focus on the question of theatricality, nor did he become a theorist of it in the strict sense. However, he pushed his reflections far beyond conventional categories, fields, and objects. His initial interest was in the theater—both performed, staged, and produced theater, and the theater of signs that any cultural practice adopts in order to exist, transform itself, and gain recognition. His analysis of practices began with literature, continuing on to theater and mythology. This means that when Barthes interrogated theater, he interrogated theater itself—a self-reflexive doubling that he sometimes referred to as theatricality. It also implies that this theatricality is to be found everywhere. But is it always identical to itself wherever it appears? In other words, is theatricality indifferent to the medium it shapes? Can it be given an exclusive definition? What is the stake, the function, and the value of its stubbornly heterogeneous application? What specific concept of theater does it presuppose? What contribution does it make to aesthetic thought?

Professor of Theater at the University of Picardy Jules Verne, where he heads the Arts Department, Christophe Bident is the author of Maurice Blanchot, partenaire invisible (1998), Bernard-Marie Koltès, Généalogies (2000), and Reconnaissances – Antelme, Blanchot, Deleuze (2003).

The study of theatricality occupies a distinctive place within French literary and aesthetic theory, intersecting with semiotics, cultural critique, and the philosophy of representation. Figures associated with structuralism and post-structuralism frequently examined how cultural practices function as systems of signs, extending their inquiries from narrative texts to performance and visual culture. Within this broader intellectual landscape, the theatrical gesture is often understood not merely as a convention of the stage, but as a fundamental mode of self-reflexivity and cultural enactment present across diverse artistic mediums and everyday rituals.

Christophe Bident explores Roland Barthes's engagement with theater, staged performance, and the theater of signs. The volume outlines Barthes's reflections on theatricality, its heterogeneity, its presence across various mediums, and its contributions to aesthetic thought. Readers interested in twentieth-century French literary theory, semiotics, and the evolution of aesthetic concepts may find this work relevant to their inquiries into modern criticism.