Notebook
Excerpts from my daily laboratory can be found at www.querozenn.blogspot.com
'They are not “mythologies” but rather reports on a few incidents that make an impression every week on my consciousness, as it receive stimulations or blows from the world: my own scoops, which are not directly those from the news. Why then offer them? Why present what is meagre, futile and insignificant, why risk the accusation of saying “nothing”? The idea behind this attempt is as follows: the events which interest the press seem to be a very simple thing; I mean: it always seems obvious that there is “event”, and that the event is powerful. But what if there were also “weak” events, whose meagreness nevertheless can constantly offer meaning.
I know my language is small, but this smallness may be useful; because it is from it that I in turn sometimes realise the limits of the other world, of the world of others, of that “big” world; and it is to express this embarrassment, maybe even suffering, that I write: these days shouldn’t we give voice to the greatest number possible of “little worlds”? Shouldn’t we attack “the big world” with an indefatigable division into particularity?'
Roland Barthes, on the subject of his “Chroniques”, published in the 'Nouvel Observateur’ in 1978-79.