Abstract
Many of Barthes' books are collections of articles and prefaces commissioned by book clubs in the years 1950-60. Sur Racine is a case in point. This constraint partly explains his paradoxism and radicalism. But Barthes, influenced by Lacanian theories, could see in the request a maternal injunction, to which he could not refuse, even though the book-club public was the object of his criticism in Mythologies. It was in an academic journal, the Annales, that he published an article in which he reacted to the framework of the commission. And he would later confess that he didn't like Racine. On the other hand, he did want to write a preface to Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe, but this never came to fruition.
Claude Grégory, who commissioned Sur Racine, created theEncyclopaedia Universalis (1964) as a continuation of the book clubs. Barthes provided him with the article " Texte ". Gradually, in fact, the pre(/post)faces he wrote were more faithful texts than " pure command ". Barthes even provided prefaces that were no longer commissioned, but " commando ", for example, in defense of Pierre Guyotat's Éden, Éden, Éden.
