Barthes’s Excès: The Silent Apostrophe of S/Z

Abstract

Despite the elaborate coding of a rhetorical analysis exploiting Marxist and Lacanian views of the printed letter in all its materiality, S/Z represses the hidden chi which both generates and destroys the narrative of Balzac’s "Sarrasine." Barthes may omit reference to this character of the text because its energies might violate his systems of interpretation. Based as they are on a privilege of castration, they veil the dumbfounding assault of the letters which would otherwise obliterate his interpretive gesture. Through an alternative reading of "Sarrasine," we imply that the chi purloined from S/Z indicates how Barthes sees as the basis of all écriture at zero-degree a font of repression.