Barthes, Roland. “The Reality Effect.” 1969. The Rustle of Language.

Trans. Richard Howard. Ed. Francois Wahl. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989. 141-148.

The Reality Effect

When Flaubert, describing the room occupied by Mme Aubain,

Félicité's employer, tells us that “an old piano supported, under
a barometer, a pyramidal heap of boxes and cartons” (“A Simple
Heart,” from Three Tales); when Michelet, recounting the death
of Charlotte Corday and reporting that, before the executioner's
arrival, she was visited in prison by an artist who painted her
portrait, includes the detail that “after an hour and a half, there
was a gentle Knock at a little door behind her” (Histoire de France:
La Révolution)-—these authors (among many others) are produc-
ing notations which structural analysis, concerned with identi-
fying and systematizing the major articulations of narrative,
usually and heretofore has left out, either because its inventory
omits all details that are “superfluous” (in relation to structure)
or because these same details are treated as “filling” (catalyses),
assigned an indirect functional value insofar as, cumulatively,
they constitute some index of character or atmosphere and so
can ultimately be recuperated by structure.
It would seem, however, that if analysis seeks to be exhaustive
(and what would any method be worth which did not account
for the totality of its object, i.e., in this case, of the entire surface
of the narrative fabric?), if it seeks to encompass the absolute
detail, the indivisible unit, the fugitive transition, in order to
assign them a place in the structure, it inevitably encounters
notations which no function (not even the most indirect) can
justify: such notations are scandalous (from the point of view
of structure), or, what is even more disturbing, they seem to
correspond to a kind of narrative luxury, lavish to the point of
offering many “futile” details and thereby increasing the cost of
narrative information. For if, in Flaubert's description, it is just
141
 142 From History to Reality The Reality Effect 143
possible to see in the notation of the piano an indication of its is entirely different: it has no predictive mark; “analogical,”
owner's bourgeois standing and in that of the cartons a sign of its
structure is purely summatory and does not contain that trajec-
disorder and a kind of lapse in status likely to connote the tory of choices and alternatives which gives narration
atmosphere of the Aubain household, no purpose seems to the
appearance of a huge traffic-control center, furnished with
justify reference to the barometer, an object neither incongruous a
referential (and not merely discursive) temporality. This is
nor significant, and therefore not participating, at first glance, an
opposition which, anthropologically, has its importance: when,
in the order of the notable; and in Michelet's sentence, we have under the influence of von Frisch's experiments, it was assum
the same difficulty in accounting structurally for all the details: ed
that bees had a language, it had to be realized that, while these
that the executioner came after the painter is all that is necessary insects possessed a predictive system of dances (in order
to the account; how long the sitting lasted, the dimension and to
collect their food), nothing in it approached a description,
location of the door are useless (but the theme of the door, the Thus,
description appears as a kind of characteristic of the so-call
softness of death's knock have an indisputable symbolic value). ed
higher languages, to the apparently paradoxical degree that
Even if they are not numerous, the “useless details” therefore it
is justified by no finality of action or of communication. The
seem inevitable: every narrative, at least every Western narrative singularity of description (or of the “useless detail”) in narrat
of the ordinary sort nowadays, possesses a certain number. ive
fabric, its isolated situation, designates a question which has
Insignificant notation* (taking this word in its stong sense: the
greatest importance for the structural analysis of narrative. This
apparently detached from the narrative's semiotic structure) is question is the following: 1s everything in narrative significant,
related to description, even if the object seems to be denoted and if not, if insignificant stretches subsist in the narrative
only by a single word (in reality, the “pure” word does not exist: syntagm, what is ultimately, so to speak, the significance of this
Flaubert's barometer is not cited in isolation; it is located, placed insignificance?
in a syntagm at once referential and syntactic); thus is underlined First of all, we must recall that Western culture, in one of its
the enigmatic character of all description, about which a word major currents, has certainly not left description outside mean-
is necessary: the general structure of narrative, at least as it has ing, and has furnished it with a finality quite “recognized” by
been occasionally analyzed till now, appears as essentially pre- the literary institution. This current is Rhetoric, and this finality
dictive; schematizing to the extreme, and without taking into is that of the “beautiful”: description has long had an aesthetic
account numerous detours, delays, reversals, and disappoint- function. Very early in antiquity, to the two expressly functional
ments which narrative institutionally imposes upon this schema, genres of discourse, legal and political, was added a third, the
we can say that, at each articulation of the narrative syntagm, epideictic, a ceremonial discourse intended to excite the
someone says to the hero (or to the reader, it does not matter admi-
ration of the audience (and no longer to persuade it); this
which): if you act in this way, if you choose this alternative, this discourse contained in germ—whatever the ritual rules of its
is what will happen (the reported character of these predictions use: eulogy or obituary—the very idea of an aesthetic finality of
does not call into question their practical nature). Description language; in the Alexandrian neo-rhetoric of the second century
* In this brief account, we shall not give examples of “insignificant” notations,
A.D., there was a craze for ecphrasis, the detachable set piece
for the insignificant can be revealed only on the level of an immense structure: (thus having its end in itself, independent of any general
once cited, a notion is neither significant nor insignificant; it requires an already function), whose object was to describe places, times, people, or
analyzed context.
works of art, a tradition which was maintained throughout the
 144 From History to Reality The Reality Effect 145
Middle Ages. As Curtius has emphasized, description in this landscape had the motionless look of a painting”); the writer
period is constrained by no realism,; its truth is unimportant (or here fulfilis Plato's definition of the artist as a maker in the
even its verisimilitude); there is no hesitation to put lions or third degree, since he imitates what is already the simulation of
olive trees in a northern country; only the constraint of the an essence. Thus, although the description of Rouen is quite
descriptive genre counts; plausibility is not referential here but irrelevant to the narrative structure of Madame Bovary (we can
openly discursive: it is the generic rules of discourse which lay attach it to no functional sequence nor to any characterial,
down the law. atmospheric, or sapiential signified), it is not in the least scan-
Moving ahead to Flaubert, we see that the aesthetic purpose dalous, it is justified, if not by the work's logic, at least by the
of description is still very strong. In Madame Bovary, the descrip- laws of literature: its “meaning” exists, it depends on conformity
tion of Rouen (a real referent if ever there was one) is subject not to the model but to the cultural rules of representation.
to the tyrannical constraints of what we must call aesthetic All the same, the aesthetic goal of Flaubertian description is
verisimilitude, as is attested by the corrections made in this thoroughly mixed with “realistic” imperatives, as if the referent's
passage in the course of six successive rewritings. Here we see, exactitude, superior or indifferent to any other function, gov-
first of all, that the corrections do not in any way issue from a erned and alone justified its description, or—in the case of
closer consideration of the model: Rouen, perceived by Flaubert, descriptions reduced to a single word—its denotation: here
remains just the same, or more precisely, if it changes somewhat aesthetic constraints are steeped—at least as an alibi—in refer-
from one version to the next, it is solely because he finds it ential constraints: it is likely that, if one came to Rouen in a
necessary to focus an image or avoid a phonic redundance diligence, the view one would have coming down the slope
condemned by the rules of le beau style, or again to “arrange” a leading to the town would not be “objectively” different from
quite contingent felicity of expression;* next we see that the the panorama Flaubert describes. This mixture—this interweav-
descriptive fabric, which at first glance seems to grant a major ing—of constraints has a double advantage: on the one hand,
importance (by its dimension, by the concern for its detail) to aesthetic function, giving a meaning to “the fragment,” halts
the object Rouen, is in fact only a sort of setting meant to receive what we might call the vertigo of notation; for once, discourse
the jewels of a number of rare metaphors, the neutral, prosaic is no longer guided and limited by structural imperatives of the
excipient which swathes the precious symbolic substance, as if, anecdote (functions and indices), nothing could indicate why
in Rouen, all that mattered were the figures of rhetoric to which we should halt the details of the description here and not there;
the sight of the city lends itselí—as if Rouen were notable only if it were not subject to an aesthetic or rhetorical choice, any
by its substitutions (the masts like a forest of needles, the islands like “view” would be inexhaustible by discourse: there would always
huge motionless black fish, the clouds like aerial waves silently breaking be a corner, a detail, an inflection of space or color to report;
against a cliff ); last, we see that the whole description is constructed on the other hand, by positing the referential as real, by
so as to connect Rouen to a painting: it is a painted scene which pretending to follow it in a submissive fashion, realistic descrip-
the language takes up (“Thus, seen from above, the whole tion avoids being reduced to fantasmatic activity (a precaution
which was supposed necessary to the “objectivity” of the ac-
* A mechanism distinguished by Valéry, in Littérature, commenting on Bau-
delaire's line “La servante au grand coeur .. .”: “This line came to Baudelaire .... count); classical rhetoric had in a sense institutionalized the
And Baudelaire continued. He buried the cook out on the lawn, which goes fantasmatic as a specific figure, hypotyposis, whose function was
against the custom, but goes with the rhyme,” etc. to “put things before the hearer's eyes,” not in a neutral,
 146 From History to Reality The Reality Effect
147
constative manner, but by imparting to representation all the
All this shows that the “real” is supposed to be self-sufficient,
luster of desire (this was the vividly illuminated sector of
that it is strong enough to belie any notion of “function,” that
discourse, with prismatic outlines: ¿llustris oratio); declaratively
its “speech-act” has no need to be integrated into a structure
renouncing the constraints of the rhetorical code, realism must
and that the having-been-there of things is a sufficient principle
seek a new reason to describe.
of speech.
The irreducible residues of functional analysis have this in
Since antiquity, the “real” has been on History's side;
common: they denote what is ordinarily called “concrete reality” but this
was to help it oppose the “lifelike,” the “plausible,”
(insignificant gestures, transitory attitudes, insignificant objects, to oppose
the very order of narrative (of imitation or “poetry”). All
redundant words). The pure and simple “representation” of classical
culture lived for centuries on the notion that reality
the “real,” the naked relation of “what is” (or has been) thus could in no
way contaminate verisimilitude; first of all, because verisi
appears as a resistance to meaning; this resistance confirms the militude
is never anything but opinable: it is entirely subject
great mythic opposition of the true-to-life (the lifelike) and the to (public)
Opinion; as Nicole said: “One must not consider things
intelligible; it suffices to recall that, in the ideology of our"time, as they
are in themselves, nor as they are known to be by
obsessive reference to the “concrete” (in what is rhetorically one who
speaks or writes, but only in relation to what is known
demanded of the human sciences, of literature, of behavior) is of them
by those who read or hear”; then, because History was
always brandished like a weapon against meaning, as if, by some thought
to be general, not particular (whence the propensity, in
statutory exclusion, what is alive cannot not signify—and vice classical
texts, to functionalize all details, to produce strong struct
versa. Resistance of the “real” (in its written form, of course) to ures
and to justify no notation by the mere guarantee of “reali
structure is very limited in the fictive account, constructed by ty”);
finally, because, in verisimilitude, the contrary is never
definition on a model which, for its main outlines, has no other impos-
sible, since notation rests on a majority, but not an absolu
constraints than those of intelligibility; but this same “reality” te,
opinion. The motto implicit on the threshold of all classi
becomes the essential reference in historical narrative, which is cal
discourse (subject to the ancient idea of verisimilitude)
supposed to report “what really happened”: what does the non- is: Esto
(Let there be, suppose . . .) “Real,” fragmented, interstitial notati
functionality of a detail matter then, once it denotes “what took on,
the kind we are dealing with here, renounces this implic
place”; “concrete reality” becomes the sufficient justification for it
introduction, and it is free of any such postulation that
speaking. History (historical discourse: historia rerum gestarum) is occurs
in the structural fabric. Hence, there is a break betwe
in fact the model of those narratives which consent to fill in the en the
ancient mode of versimilitude and modern realism; but
interstices of their functions by structurally superfluous nota- hence,
too, a new verisimilitude is born, which is precisely realis
tions, and it is logical that literary realism should have been— m (by
which we mean any discourse which accepts “speech-ac
give or take a few decades—contemporary with the regnum of ts” jus-
tified by their referent alone).
“objective” history, to which must be added the contemporary
Semiotically, the “concrete detail” is constituted by the direct
development of techniques, of works, and institutions based on collusion of a referent and a signifier; the signified is expel
the incessant need to authenticate the “real”: the photograph led
from the sign, and with it, of course, the possibility of developing
(immediate witness of “what was here”), reportage, exhibitions a form of the signified, i.e., narrative structure itself. (Reali
of ancient objects (the success of the Tutankhamen show makés stic
literature is narrative, of course, but that is because its realis
this quite clear), the tourism of monuments and historical sites. m
is only fragmentary, erratic, confined to “details,” and becau
se
 148 From History to Reality
the most realistic narrative imaginable develops along unrealistic
lines.) This is what we might call the referential illusion.* The
truth of this illusion is this: eliminated from the realist speech-
act as a signified of denotation, the “real” returns to it as a
signified of connotation; for just when these details are reputed
to denote the real directly, all that they do—without saying so—
is signify it; Flaubert's barometer, Michelet's little door finally
say nothing but this: we are the real; it is the category of “the
real” (and not its contingent contents) which is then signified;
in other words, the very absence of the signified, to the advantage
of the referent alone, becomes the very signifier of realism: the
reality effect is produced, the basis of that unavowed verisimilitude
which forms the aesthetic of all the standard works of modernity.
This new verisimilitude is very different from the old one, for
it is neither a respect for the “laws of the genre” nor even their
mask, but proceeds from the intention to degrade the sign's
tripartite nature in order to make notation the pure encounter
of an object and its expression. The disintegration of the sign—
which seems indeed to be modernity's grand affair—is of course
present in the realistic enterprise, but in a somewhat regressive
manner, since it occurs in the name of a referential plenitude,
whereas the goal today is to empty the sign and infinitely to
postpone its object so as to challenge, in a radical fashion, the
age-old aesthetic of “representation.”
Communications, 1968

* Anillusion clearly illustrated by the program Thiers assigned to the historian:

“To be simply true, to be what things are and nothing more than that, and
nothing except that.”