Professor Barthes Adrift: from the Ethics of Neutral to the Amazonian Epistemologies

Abstract

This is an essay concerning Professor Roland Barthes’ plural writings, unique ethics and poetical didactics. First, it is aimed to demonstrate that in his work in Collège de France, Barthes does not convey only semiological contents and methods, but rather a true ethics of the signs. From an ethical dimension, it is highlighted the notion of Neutral, developed by the author according to distinct topics, images and variations. Second, we propose, by means of a transdisciplinary approach between literature, anthropology and philosophy, an interlocution between the ethics of the neutral and the shamanic perspectivism founded on the experience of the Amazonian peoples. Through this second movement, our goal is to experience the encounter between the Barthesean ethics and the cosmopoetics of the shamanism as the starting point for the desire to write. It is concluded by a set of potential affinities and possible approximations between knowledges that, insubordinate to the language propositional dimension, float to the encounter of a body intransitive of sensations.