Thinking the body as a basis, provocation and burden of life

Walter Cenci

Representation and Scene

Mimesis and Vertigo of the Body

In an author’s lexicon, will there not always be a word-as-mana, a word whose ardent, complex, ineffable, and somehow sacred signification gives the illusion that by this word one might answer for everything? Such a word is neither eccentric nor central; it is motionless and carried, floating, never pigeonholed, always atopic (escaping any topic), at once remainder and supplement, signifier that occupies the place of all signified. This word appeared in his work little by little; at first hidden behind the instance of the Truth (that of History), then by Validity (of systems and structures); now, it sprouts and expands; this word-as-mana is the word “body”.Roland Barthes by ...