To begin The Pleasure of the Text Barthes “posts” a quote from Hobbes that is translated: And my mother was then filled with so much fear, that she simultaneously gave birth to twins, both me and fear.” Here is Barthes remembering, but of course not remembering, this trauma of fear on the part of his mother. Bliss will be part of this fear as he writes on page 14 that it “brings to crisis his relationship with language,” or the text and writing of which it too is a part.
Birth is an event of both fear and joy. Here is my daughter being born at our home in Clemson, SC, a memory that makes me feel anxiety and relief at the unaccountability of the situation. Pleasure accompanies certain controllable situations. Bliss cannot be accounted for, and yet, like birth, it cannot be suppressed.
