The idea of “readerly” and “writerly” texts has stuck with me despite class ending hours ago. Although I do not have a coherent and fully fleshed out idea of these concepts, I do have some ideas, problems, even provocations to offer. And in a form akin to Barthes’ style of jumping around from topic to topic nonetheless.

Perhaps one interesting implication for the distinction is in the classroom. How might a classroom become a readerly or writerly text? Is one of these setups better than the other? What does it mean to be a “writerly” classroom, where students “write” their own learning experiences? And what, if any, tensions could arise out of this type of classroom?

Barthes’ distinction between readerly and writerly seems, to me, to be a much more social attitude towards language than that of say, Derrida, who essentially seems to view us all as prisoners of linguistic play. After briefing talking about Barthes and Derrida in class, I’m starting to view them as having more differences than similarities in terms of their understandings of language.

The only other time I have encountered the term “jouissance” is in psychoanalysis, and particularly with Lacan. In fact, I learned about this in the same Literary Theory class where I first heard about Barthes. Barthes uses jouissance to talk about the “bliss” of a writerly text. For Lacan, jouissance is the experience of intense pleasure mixed with intense pain (physical, emotional, or both) that leaves a permanent imprint on the psyche (a classic example, of course, being childbirth). There seems to be a similarity between these two uses that could perhaps be productive. And, just to throw this out there as well, it is also (maybe) worth remembering that in French, jouissance has the distinct second meaning of the pleasure of the orgasm—which is fitting for the erotic nature of The Pleasure of the Text—and the French refer to an orgasm as “the little death,” so perhaps a connection between the pleasure/pain aspect of Lacan could also be used in Barthes.

Lastly, it seems that Barthes can be very vague about how one truly determines what is a readerly and a writerly text. Sure we know what those terms mean, but how do we recognize which is which? But, this might just precisely be what Barthes intends.