Abstract
In What's Literature?, Sartre put forward the literary viewpoint of engagement, suggesting that writers should engage with the social life by writing actively, and express their own positions for social or political issues, so as to protect the freedom of individual existence. Roland Barthes, then a young literary figure, criticized seriously Sartre's viewpoint in Writing Degree Zero, contending that such writing not only was polluted by arbitrary ideology, but also burdened itself with the weight of ethics. In order to liberate literature, Barthes tried his best to propose the writing at degree zero or the neutral writing, and to establish a colorless literature. In fact, Barthes' s ideas had come into being before Sartre published his What's Literature?, only that the debate facilitated their maturity. In Writing Degree Zero, Barthes not only criticized Sartre, but also started his experiment of structuralism, which anticipated the coming of post-structuralism. In other words, this henceforth reflected the complexity of Barthes's thought, which also means that the boundary between structuralism and post-structuralism were not so absolute, and they were mixed.
First Page
182
Last Page
189
Recommended Citation
Jin, Songlin. 2018. "Engaging or Not: The Theoretical Divergence between Roland Barthes and Jean-Paul Sartre." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 38, (2): pp.182-189. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol38/iss2/6
