Exclusion?

Upon finishing reading two short works of Roland Barthes earlier this week (linked here and here), and after hearing the complaints of others who, like myself, were continuously balked by the difficulty of reading the passages, I have decided that these two works offer a wonderful example of the principle of exclusion via language.

One recent example of this principle are the complaints that the SAT and ACT college preparatory examinations were biased and that the choice of language (well-articulated American English that you might find in a dictionary or published work) unfairly favored comprehension by (and therefore the scores of) white, middle or upper-class children, who had grown up speaking it, over the comprehension of others who, for one reason or another, had not.

Ignoring the loaded issues present in that debate, we awaken to the possibility that a work or writing could be written, either deliberately or accidentally, in such a way that only a select audience could hope to understand the passages very easily at all. This idea comes back to us with all the subtlety of a concrete barrier upon re-reading the works of Barthes.

The major complaints that I heard from the other students were that the language used was both extremely vague and very copious in amount, that the literary references were obscure and without notation, and that the good Mr. Barthes could have used a good tap or two of the spellcheck key, if not the full-on interference of an outside editor.

The feeling one gets is that the author of these works intended for the audience of readers to have an astonishing background in literature and language, as well as a deep familiarity and agreement with the topic of his discussion. There are not many other possible reasons for the extreme amount of vague words with even more vague and wordy explanations accompanying them. It is most puzzling, considering that being paid by the pound for one's writing has generally gone out of fashion.

The other concern is whether or not this style of writing was done purposefully, or with what intent. Did the author seek to exclude from his meditiations those readers not sufficiently advanced for his taste? Was this accidental, merely the author's natural tone, and if so, what horror must a typical spoken conversation with this man be? In the end, given the title of that first work of his, I must find it ironic that his writing style has contributed to so much discussion of an author that, supposedly, has entered "into his own death."