dmariel, Saussure/Barthes

As I was reading the Barthes assignment, I found myself briskly reading through sentences, picking and choosing which I thought were most important. Funny enough, I then came to realize that the reading was describing exactly that: “we do not read everything with the same intensity of reading; a rhythm is established, casual, unconcerned with the integrity of the text; our very avidity for knowledge impels us to skim or to skip certain passages in order to get more quickly to the warmer parts of the anecdote”. As a college student, I find myself do this more often than not. Not only do I do this when reading school books, but as well as books that I read for pleasure. I can even remember when I was younger, I would start a book and skip to the last few pages in anticipation to find out the ending of the book.
I found that the difference between text of pleasure and text of bliss to be very interesting. Text of pleasure encapsulates ones mind, providing a sense of euphoria and comfort to the reader. On the other hand, text of bliss causes discomfort to the reader by unsettling ones values, causing a state of loss. The comfort and discomfort stem from ones culture and the boundaries and values that are attached. After differentiating between pleasure and bliss, I had to read the following sentence numerous times to attempt to understand it: “..He enjoys the consistency of his selfhood (that is his pleasure) and seeks its loss (that is his bliss)...He is a subject split twice over, doubly perverse”. After breaking it down, this sentence perfectly explains the difference between the two types of text.
In retrospect to both the Saussure and Barthes readings, the connection that I was able to make is that every culture has their own system of values, therefore its own language. On another level, every individual has their own “avidity of knowledge” compelling one to read and process words on a unique level. As our first readings, I had to go over them multiple times to get a good chunk of meaning out of it. By examining each sentence as a whole the meaning of the theorists began to fall together., much like Barthes describes, it is important to be an aristocratic reader.