Roland Barthes and Struggle with Angle

Who is Roland Barthes?

What is structuralism?

What is Struggle with Angel by R.Barthes reffering Holy Bible?

Abdullah BEKTAS

Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes was born on 12 November 1915 in the town of Cherbourg in Normandy .He was the son of naval officer , who was killed in the battle of North Sea when Roland was around one year old , between he was 24 years to 33 years old his life was largely spent on obtaining a license in grammar and philology. in 1948 when he was 33 years old he returned to purely academic work instead of taking part of medical studies and struggling with his medical problems (Tuberculosis). He was in institutions in France , Romania and Egypt. During that time , he contributed to the leftist Parisian paper Combat and he gave us his first big work Writing Degree Zero1953 . Later wards Barthes studied lexicology and sociology in Centre National de la recherche Scientifique .

Barthes has spend his time in exploring the fields of semiology and structuralism , early 1960s.Many of his Works challenged traditional academic views of literary critisizm .Barthes gained a teaching post at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1960 , and continued to producing big amount of books and articles and it caused an inflict between him and Prof. Raymond Picard who called the new French theorist .By the late 1960s Barthes has established a reputation for him self.He traveled U.S and Japan , during this time he wrote his best known work ,1967 essasy The Death of the Author , which shows us the influence of Derridas deconstruction .Barthes continued to devoplop his literary criticisim . He developed new ideals of textuality and novelistic neutrality.After that time he published again important books and four years after that receiving his

presigous Chair at the College de France , killed by a truck while crossing the street.

When he was in his academic carrier he was existentianalist which was Jean-Paul Sartre was leading it , he found semiotics study of signs usefull for his works, there we can see some examples at his Mythologies (1975). Roland barthes , incisive criticism contributed to the devoplopment of theoretical schools such as structuralism , semiotics and post structuralism.

Structuralism What is structuralism ? It is the name given to the studying structures of significations .Signification occurs wherever ther is a meaningfull event or in the practice of some meaning full action .We can say that signifying practices.Ameaningfull event may include , writing or reading a text , reading a text, discussing about the problems of the government.If these meaning full events would be documented or exchanged to be documented that we can call it as Text. From the point of view of structuralism : all texts , all meaning full events, and all signifying practices can be analysed for their underlying structures. These structures we can not notices them all the times but they remain unconsciously and necessarily aspects on our whole life. Where does Structuralism come from ? It comes with the Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who developed a branch of linguistics called structural linguistics. Saussure died before he was able to publish his materials but there are several recording of notes by his students made during 2nd course of 1908-1909. Theory is basically at the developing

stage and it stayed in developing stage ever after.His The Course in General Linguistics is essential read for anyone who would like to understand the structuralism and semiotics. An empiricist like John Locke explained language by claiming that words were used to refer to things or to mental images of things.Every word on the world have their objects like : dog , cat , bat , tree , human , men ,woman each has a word in the vocabulary that pertains to them in real life. Problem about this theory is that there are some words that refer to nothing empirical in this world (virtue and crime) and words which they really not exist like (devil , unicorns , goblins). So where can these kind of words comes from ? Saussure s explanation of language as we ll see is quite enough for discussing real things in the world as well as fictional objects and abstract concepts , of course Saussure can explain that language can do . But in this concept my idea is : for explaining the transcendental objects we can go backward in the history so we can see the roots of these words and from the oral age human are using these words . Human imagination is like an unbelievable machine which can create many things inside and express them , in this expression it needs the letters to say them in oral ways and there human first created the signs and than they put them names and than letters came on them , so as we can see these transcendental things as we say they were referring from symbols which are created by thousands year ago . For Saussure sign is basic element of language , meaning has always been explained in terms of the relation between signs and their referents.

Struggle with Angel by Roland Barthes

Struggle with an Angle is a canonical narration or we can call it as a myth .Here is the parts which Roland Barthes makes his analyses in ImageMusic-Text :

(22) And he rose up that night, and took his two wives,and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, andpassed over the ford Jabbok. (23) And he took them, andsent them over the brook, and sent over that he had.(24) And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled aman with him until the breaking of the day. (25) And whenhe saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched thehollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh wasout of joint as he wrestled with him. (26) And he said,Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will notlet thee go, except thou bless me. (27) And he said untohim, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. (28) Andhe said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, butIsrael: for as a prince hast thou power with God andwith men, and hast prevailed. (29) And Jacob asked him,and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said,Wherefore is it thou dost ask after my name? And heblessed him there. (30) And Jacob called the name of theplace Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and mylife is preserved. (31) And as he passed over Penuel thesun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. (32)Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinewwhich shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh,unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew that shrank.

Roland Barthes is making sequential analysis and explaining main types of structural analysis . They are : 1)The inventorization and classification psychological , biographical , characterial and the social attributes of the characters involved in the narrative (age , sex external qualities , social situation or position of importance and etc.) Here we can tell that abilities of Jacob , strength of Jacob and his relationship with his brother Esau .

This what we can call indical anlysis.

2)The inventorization and classification of the functions of characters : we can explain this as what is Jacob and angle doing according to their narrative statuses .

3)The inventorization and classifications of action : We can say that verbs are referances of actions and we can simile plane of verbs . This is sequences of actions and we call it as sequential analysis .So this style is which Roland Barthes has choosen to explain in 3 steps of actions with the schema . a)The Crossing : Barthes starts his schema with rise up . So Barthes says that rise up could be anything and it seems to be like rise up here means the beginning of narration , because if he didnt rose up and take his children and servants and women there wouldnt be any kind of narration like that .Barthes goes with an analysis of what would happen if Jacob sent his people to other side of blank and he stayed there or he just combated at the left side of the flood .Here Barthes asks a question that if he fought in the side where he wants to go or in the side before he is going to pass the flood because these two things means different things . If he fought before he passes it means it would be a protector of the river and the other side but otherwise it would be a religious victory of Jacob.In other hand crossing would tell us the ordeal of Jacob or geographical facts of the story .

b)The Struggle : The person who has the ploy and trick is again defeated in the story and there is inversion of the mark at the story , a man wins an angel , like Jacob did to his brother at the birth he holds the angel and he achieves his aim .At the end angel marks Jackob as Israel that means operational conditions of a new language , the election of Israel being its message . god is a founder of a new language and Jacob is here morpheme (The smallest linguistic unit within a word)of the new language .

c)The Namings : Naming that means promoting of new statuses.Barthes calles it as mutations bears on Names that time , according to the story.There we can make an analysis on the name according to actants , an actand can also be figured by unliving creatures.Here is the 6 formal classes of actands . We can call Jacob as Subject (subject of the demand , the action ) . The Object is : crossing from the guarded and forbidden place , the flood the Jabbok . The Sender : who sets in circulation the stake of the quest ( namely crossing the river) who is obviously God. The Reciever : he is Jacob again . The Opponent : The one or ones who wants to hinder (ignore) the subject in this quest(is God his self) or we can slightly call it as Angel because he is representing us the God s face. The Helper: the one or ones who aids or helps to the subject . Jacob provides a help to his self .

Conclusion : As a conclusion we have seen that view of Roland Barthes from his side in his Image-Music-Text analyzing of Struggle with the angel . By analyzing this story which is based on Bible Genesis 32:22-32 and the analyzing system of Roland Barthes we can compare this story with another stories in our lifes . Meaning of the texts would lead us to achieve to our aims .Because all texts are different worlds in their selfs , to

understand clearly and in different ways , Roland Barthes shows us different criticizing ways to analyze texts. References:
Jacob and struggle with the angel. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob>. Barthes, Roland. Image,Music,Text , Struggle with the angel. 14th ed. London: Fontana Press, 1977. EX: 130 , 146. Print. James G. Williams, The Bible, Violence & the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence, San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991, pp. 46-54.