Although Le Degré zéro de l'écriture (Zero Degree of Writing) is presented by its author, Roland Barthes, as a working hypothesis, it has a dogmatic tone. (p. 185)

According to Roland Barthes, "writing is in no way a means of communication." As the opposite of spoken language, it is by nature a counter-communication. Its particular ambiguity is in that it is at the same time language and coercion. Since all paradoxes, however laden with truth they may be, are capable of being turned around, one could say just as correctly that it is speech that aims to remove adherence by intimidating means, and one attribute to writing the opposite character of a balanced, delicately shaded, essentially honest act. To the extent to which "it improperly combines the reality of acts to the ideality of ends" political writing is, however, by all evidence, coercive. Roland Barthes devotes a...