ABSTRACT
French writer and critic Roland Barthes (1915-80) remains a figure difficult to categorize because of the range of his output and the shifts in his intellectual position. His output stretched from works of a scientific orientation, such as The Fashion System, to a more fluid style in his fictional and journalistic works. His work was informed throughout by a clear intellectual project, although his theoretical outlook shifted in the course of his career from a slightly unconventional structuralist position to a more overtly poststructuralist perspective in his later works.
