Hervé Guibert and Roland Barthes, and Their Mothers

The Death of the Author after Photography

Abstract

After a somewhat turbulent epistolary correspondence, the relationship between Roland Barthes and Hervé Guibert came to rest on a complex “compassionate protocol”, in which writing and, later, photography functioned as modes of contact. This bridge – despite being elevated and very clearly fixed between works, ideas, and concepts –has never been properly traversed within image studies. The untimeliest point of contact between the two forms of writing – and modes of desire – emerges in the figure of the mother as a spectral “m/other”, and in authorship itself, of texts and images, as a gesture of erasure, effacement, or death. Maternity, desire, authorship, and writing are central themes that will ultimately allow us to see Barthes and Guibert as two sides of the same coin.