S/Z

From “S/Z” (0) by Roland Barthes

The goal of literary work (of literature as work) (1) is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text. Our literature is characterized (2) by the pitiless divorce (3) which the literary institution maintains between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its customer (4), between its author and its reader (5). The reader is thereby plunged into a kind of idleness – he is intransitive; he is, in short, serious (6): instead of functioning himself (7), instead of gaining access to the magic of the signifier (8), to the pleasure of writing, he is left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text (9): reading is nothing more than a referendum. Opposite the writerly text, then, is its countervalue, its negative (10), reactive value: what can be read, but not written (11): the readerly. We call any readerly text a classic text.