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Roland Barthes: The Last Days of a Literary Genius
On February 25, 1980, Roland Barthes had just attended a “big shot” party organized by the later French President François Mitterrand. After lunch, Bart walked back to the French Academy. When he was about to cross the zebra crossing, he was knocked to the ground by a speeding pickup truck. The ambulance personnel who arrived at the scene did not find any documents on the injured person, only the work card of the college. When the police went to the academy to inquire, someone notified Michel Foucault, and Foucault went to confirm that the injured was Bart. As Herve Algararondo wrote in the book “The Last Days of Roland Barthes”:…
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Becoming the Protagonist at the End of Life: The Wish of an Old Lady Before Death
One month before the end of the school year, everyone in the class received a letter, all handwritten and mailed to the department in an envelope, from an old lady. The old lady is an American citizen of Chinese descent, surnamed Liu. I wanted to throw the letter away, but when I saw the photo of the old lady attached to the letter, I couldn’t help but take a second look. In the photo is an old lady with a Chinese face, wearing ordinary clothes, sitting in the background of daily life, not at all like the photos used by actors, and there is no sense of drama at all.…
