Sep 19, 2025
Don’t bleach language, savour it instead. Stroke it gently or even groom it, but don’t “purify” it.
Roland Barthes, The Neutral
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Portugal
seen from Argentina
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Austria
seen from United States
seen from São Tomé & Príncipe
seen from Vietnam
seen from China
seen from France
seen from United States
seen from Argentina
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from Portugal
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Chile
Don’t bleach language, savour it instead. Stroke it gently or even groom it, but don’t “purify” it.
Roland Barthes, The Neutral
My new Scug oc
(Might be the last rw post for awhile, I don’t prioritize rw as much as I do with my other interests) (The Neutral will come back however, as I am getting mildly attached to em)
To mourn is to be alive.
— Roland Barthes, from The Neutral, as quoted in Kate Zambreno’s Appendix Project
Outlaw Star (1998)
“I don’t know,” “I refuse to judge”: as scandalous as an agrammatical sentence: doesn’t belong to the language of the discourse. Variations on the “I don’t know.” The obligation to “be interested” in everything that is imposed on you by the world: prohibition of noninterest, even if provisional.
Roland Barthes, The Neutral
Language is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech.
Roland Barthes, The Neutral
Where there is meaning, there is paradigm, and where there is paradigm (opposition), there is meaning ... elliptically put: meaning rests on conflict (the choice of one term against another), and all conflict is generative of meaning: to choose one and refuse the other is always a sacrifice made to meaning, to produce meaning, to offer it to be consumed.
Roland Barthes, The Neutral