Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?
Roland BarthesRead
The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that our thoughts and ideas are interconnected and shaped by various cultural influences.
Roland Barthes implies that all our ideas and expressions are not born in isolation but instead emerge from a complex web of cultural references and quotations. This highlights the importance of understanding the broader cultural context in which we think, communicate, and create, thereby revealing the intricate nature of how knowledge and creativity are inherently collaborative.
In practice
In a lecture about literature, one might quote Barthes to emphasize the interconnectedness of texts.
Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?
If I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)
The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other.
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.
Isnβt the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language β the amorous language? No more βI love youβs.
Where no bondage is, there is no cause and effect.
Death is not an ending, but a symbol of movement along the path upon which we are all traveling. As it may be painful to lose contact with the physical aspect of one we love, the Spirit can never be lost. We have been and always will be a part of each other.
Man's life comes from God: it is his image and imprint, as sharing in his breath of life. God therefore is the sole Lord of this life: Man cannot do with it as he wills.
Welcome, Anne. I thought you'd come today. You belong to the afternoon so it brought you. Things that belong together are sure to come together. What a lot of trouble that would save some people if they only knew it. But they don't...and so they waste beautiful energy moving heaven and earth to bring things together that don't belong.
Were we incapable of empathy β of putting ourselves in the position of others and seeing that their suffering is like our own β then ethical reasoning would lead nowhere. If emotion without reason is blind, then reason without emotion is impotent.
The judgment: You are now before Yama, King of the Dead. In vain will you try to...deny or conceal the evil deeds you have done. ... the mirror in which Yama seems to read your past is your own memory, and also his judgment is your own. It is you yourself who pronounce your own judgment.
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