Table Of ContentPERFORMANCE DEGREE ZERO:
ROLAND BARTHES AND THEATRE
Throughout his career, famed critical theorist Roland Barthes (1915–
1980) had a complex and often uneasy relationship with theatre and
performance. From his early theatre criticism, through his abrupt and
enigmatic silence on theatre, to the theoretical ‘stagings’ of his thought
in the 1970s, Barthes committed several stunning reversals with his
opinions on theatrical performance.
InPerformance Degree Zero, Timothy Scheie argues that Barthes’s body
of work must be considered a lifelong engagement with theatre.
Exploring his changing critical methodologies, Scheie provides a new
understanding of the rapid shifts in critical modes Barthes traverses,
from a Sartrean Marxism in the 1950s, through semiology, to French
post-structuralism and the mournful introspection of his later years.
The theatrical figure illuminates Barthes’s accounts of the sign, the text,
the body, homosexuality, love, the voice, photography, and other
important and contested terms of his thought.
Performance Degree Zero offers the first comprehensive account of
Barthes’s enduring fascination with theatre and performance and fills a
significant gap in Barthes criticism. It is essential reading for all Barthes
scholars, theatre historians, and performance theorists.
timothy scheie is an associate professor in the Eastman School of
Music at the University of Rochester.
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TIMOTHY SCHEIE
Performance Degree Zero
Roland Barthes and Theatre
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2006
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-9071-3 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-8020-9071-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-9387-5 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8020-9387-6
Printed on acid-free paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Scheie, Timothy
Performance degree zero : Roland Barthes and theatre / Timothy Scheie.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-9071-3 (bound)
ISBN-13: 978-8020-9387-5 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-8020-9071-0 (bound)
ISBN-10: 0-8020-9387-6 (pbk.)
1. Barthes, Roland – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Theater. I. Title.
PN1708.B37S34 2006 791 C2006-903789-2
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to
its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the
Ontario Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for
its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
For Craig
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations and Note on Translations xi
Introduction 3
1 Tragic Utopia: Barthes’s Theatre Criticism, 1953–1960 21
2 Performance and Its Double: The ‘Live’ and the
Structuralist Abstraction 65
3 Staging Theory: Theatricality and the Displacement of Desire 97
4 Mourning Presence: Performance at the Crossroads 136
Notes 187
Works Cited 209
Index 217
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Acknowledgments
I have been fascinated with theatre for as long as I can remember, and
more than twenty years have passed since I first began exploring
Barthes’s work. These interests came together to inform part of my
doctoral dissertation, and a few years ago they converged again as I
began work on the present study. The long history of this book makes it
impossible for me to thank individually all the friends, colleagues,
students, professors, and others who showed me kindness, care, and
support over the years; my gratitude is none the less heartfelt.
There are individuals and institutions whose support has been
decisive. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison I had the privilege to
work with some truly remarkable professors: Elaine Marks and Mary
Lydon, both of whom are sorely missed; Peter Schofer; Jill Dolan; and
especially Judy Miller, whose unfailing generosity as a mentor remains
an inspiration to me. The Eastman School of Music, of the University of
Rochester, has generously supported my research for this book, and I
thank Dean Jim Undercofler for his interest in this project. I wrote much
of the third chapter at Princeton University as a National Endowment
for the Humanities Summer Fellow; I thank the NEH, seminar director
Carolyn Abbate, and the participants for their helpful comments. I
would like to recognize the support of the Susan B. Anthony Institute
for Gender and Women’s Studies for my research on sexuality in
Barthes’s writings. I thank the University of Toronto Press and my
editor, Jill McConkey, with whom it has been a delight to work.
It would be impossible adequately to express my gratitude to my
parents, Mary and Carl Scheie, for all they have done for me, but I
would like to thank them here specifically for the time at their cabin
near Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where I both began and finished this
