The Neutral: Lecture Course at the College de France (1977-1978)
Publisher: Columbia University Press
The Neutral is comprised of the written texts from which Barthes lectured and centers around 23 figures, also referred to as traits or twinklings, that are possible embodiments of the Neutral (sleep, silence, tact, etc.) or of the anti-Neutral (anger, arrogance, conflict, etc.). His lectures draw on a diverse set of authors and intellectual traditions, including Lao-tzu, Tolstoy, German mysticism, classical philosophy, Rousseau, Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, and John Cage. Barthes's idiosyncratic appro