Autobiographical Revisions: Photography in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes and Claude Cahun’s Disavowals

Abstract

In this article, the author explores the presence of photography in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes and Claude Cahun?s Disavowals, or Cancelled Confessions. Published almost half a century apart, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes and Disavowals foreground the traffic between verbal and visual self-representation in making lives and selves visible. In both texts, photography is central to the authors? construction of the self: not only through the inclusion of photographic images of the author, but also through a photographic consciousness that pervades their writing. Kim considers how family photographs, both inherited and reconstituted, play a central role in the authors? quest for autobiographical revisioning.