Empire of Signs

by Roland Barthes, Richard Howard (Translator)

Overview

With this book, Barthes offers a broad-ranging meditation on the culture, society, art, literature, language, and iconography—in short, both the sign-oriented realities and fantasies—of Japan itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374522070
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/01/1983
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.95(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Roland Barthes was born in 1915 and studied French literature and the classics at the University of Paris. After teaching French at universities in Romania and Egypt, he joined the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, where he devoted himself to research in sociology and lexicology. He was a professor at the College de France until his death in 1980.

Editorial Reviews

If Japan did not exist, Barthes would have had to invent it—not that Japan does exist in Empire of Signs, for Barthes is careful to point out that he is not analyzing the real Japan, there is no terrible innerness as in the West, no soul, no God, no fate, no ego, no grandeur, no metaphysics, no 'promotional fever' and finally no meaning . . . For Barthes Japan is a test, a challenge to think the unthinkable, a place where meaning is finally banished. Paradise, indeed, for the great student of signs.” —Edmund White, The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher