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y Forthewriter,theproblemofstu-
pidityoccupiesa placeofdeliberatelatency;everontheprowlforyour
momentofgreatestvulnerability, itpreparesanothersneakattack.Un-
lessyoureally hiowwhatyou're doing- andthen it's inyour face,all
overyou,infact,showingnopity.Itseizesyourautobiographicaleffort,
taking the place ofyour "I," henceforth enfeebled, dominated by
shame. Thus Barthes, delicate and watchful, writes ofhimself when
he'sonhimselfinthethirdperson:"Itiscuriousthatanauthor,having
to speak about himself, is so obsessed byStupidity, asthough it were
theinner thing hemost feared: threatening, everreadytoburst out, to
assert its right to speak(why shouldn't I havethe right to bestupid?];
inshort.TheThiry." Attemptingtoexordseit,Barthes,inhisLacanian
phaseofdreading theThing, plays thefool: "Heputs himselfinside it.
... In a sense this whole little book, in a devious andnaive way,plays
withstupidity- notthestupidityofothers(thatwouldbetooeasy],
butthatofthesubjectwhou abouttowrite.Whatfirstcomestomindis
stupid. 20IfBarthesputshimselfinthethirdperson,thenstupidityis
the first person, what happens first, whathashappened agelessly, at
thetime, whichisallthetime, whenthesubjectisaboutto write,en-
deavoringsymbolically torepairthelesioninducedbytheThing.
Stupidity is so radically, pervasively inside("threatening to burst
out, Barthes "puts himselfinside it"), thatit isprior to theformation
ofthesubject. Flaubert, theothersubjecteveraboutto write, recog-
aizedwritingas"1'actepurdeberise, " arguingthatwritingwasalways
an immersion in stupidity. So what's new? We suffer from only one
thing Flauberthasdecisivelyasserted,labetue-aninsightandexperi-
encethatBarthes repeats andrepeats. 21Stupidity, theindelible tagof
modernity, is our symptom. Marking an original humiliation ofthe
subject, stupidity resolves into the low-energy, everyday life trauma
with which we live. /

21-Anothertext'"Images," repeatsBarthes'sobsessiveanxietyoverStupidity:
Inthearenaoflanguage,constructedlikea footballfield,therearetwo
extremesites,twogoalsthatcanneverbeavoided:Stupidityontheone
end,theUnreadableattheother....Stupidityisnotlinkedtoerror.Al-
waystriumphant (impossible toovercome), it derives itsvictory from an
enigmaticpower:it is'Dasein inall itsnakedsplendor.Whencea terror
anda fascination, thatofa corpse.(Corpseofwhat?Perhapsoftruth:truth
asdead.)... Smpidity 'isthere/ obtuseasdeath.Exordsmcanonlybe a
formaloperationwhichconfrontsit'enbloc/fromoutside.. ..HereI am
backatthesamepanicthatStupidityinspires:Isitme?Isittheother?Isit
theotherwhoisunreadable(orstupid)?AmI theonewhoislimited,in-
ept,amI theonewhodoesn'tunderstand?" (RolandBarthes,TheRustleof
tangwige,trans.RichardHoward[Berkeley:UniversityofCaliforniaPress,
198?],351-52).