Barthes throughout his text in “The pleasure of the Text” written in 1973, continuously is comparing ‘the text’ to ‘the human body’, more so the human body of pleasure. By reading a text we derive a certain pleasure from it just like when watching a striptease we derive a certain pleasure and a continuous desire. I would like to give my boyfriend as an example. When looking at him I am attracted to him, to how he looks like as well to what I cannot see. That what I cannot see is what makes me desire him more and I derive pleasure from imagining things, this is according to Barthes. “The pleasure of the text is not the pleasure of the corporeal striptease or of narrative suspense. In these cases, there is no tear, no edges: a gradual unveiling the entire excitation takes refuge in the hope of seeing the sexual organ or in knowing the end of the story.” (Barthes 108) When I see a ‘gap’ of bare skin on my boyfriends body I desire to see and imagine more of it. As for a text we derive that pleasure that ‘gap’ of what is not said in a text. A text is compared to our human form but of our erotic body. “The pleasure of the text is irreducible to physiological need.” (Barthes 111) He mentions two different kind of texts – the texts of pleasure and the text of bliss. The text of pleasure gives us a comfortable practice of reading. It is a text that grants us euphoria whereas a text of bliss makes us uncomfortable. Texts that are sometimes boring to us (or that we do not completely follow) can unsettle, as Barthes says, our ‘historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of our tastes, values, memories, bring to us a crisis to our relation with language.
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