biographeme

is a partial biographical feature in a writer's life which delights one much like that partial object, the photograph.

Photography allows me to accede to an infra-knowledge... it supplies me with a collection of partial objects and can flatter a certain fetishism of mine: for this 'me' which like knowledge, which nourishes a kind of amorous preference for it. In the same way, I like certain biographical features which, in a writer's life, delight me as much as certain photographs... I have called these features 'biographemes'... Photography has the same relation to History that the biographeme has to biography. Roland Barthes

is a fragment that points to the essence of a life.

is the minimal unit of biographical discourse just as the morpheme is to linguistic analysis and the mytheme to mythical analysis.

is certain biographical features which, in the life of a writer, enchant one like certain photographs.


is that in a biography which reaches out of the text and touches, just as the photo reaches out of the photograph and pricks.


biographeme, n.All

biographeme