In Gentle Praise of the Neutral

Cover of the audio CD MP3 (Seuil, 2002)

 

 

I. 

 

In a recent post, I described the excluded middle as the evil realm of fuzzy logic, dark limpidity, and what Nietzsche terms dangerous knowledge [1].

 

But it's also of course, far less dramatically, the zone of what Roland Barthes termed the Neutral ...

 

 

II. 

 

Le neutre was the title and theme of a lecture course delivered by Barthes at the Collège de France in 1977-78 [2]. He defined the concept as that which bafflles the paradigm, i.e., that which both bewilders and frustrates the system of binary opposition that structures and determines our thinking.  

 

For Barthes, to gently mock the above system and throw a velvet spanner in its works - thereby disrupting its smooth operation - has significant philosophical implications. For opening a gateway to the excluded middle and the possibility of speaking the world differently, also allows one to imagine new ways of relating to others. 

 

Thus, the Neutral has vital ethical and political import, which is why we should embrace Barthes's ideas - drawn from a diverse set of writers and intellectual traditions - on those figures, traits, and twinklings which illustrate or embody the Neutral; such as silence and uncertainty, for example.

 

Better these things, I think, than the arrogant loud conviction of those who would bully with the anti-Neutral blackmail of Either/Or. 

 

I may not always achieve the degree of neutrality [3] in my writing that Barthes dreamed of - I may at times fall back into the kind of violent and assertive language full of judgement and doxa that he loathed - but I do my best on Torpedo the Ark to find a rhetorical form of fiction-theory that avoids imposing its meaning on the reader.

 

  

Notes

 

[1] See the post entitled 'On Traversing the Excluded Middle' (22 Mar 2025): click here. 

      What I'm attempting to do here is further illustrate how the excluded middle might be thought of as a small space for nonpolarised phenomena. 

 

[2] Barthes's lecture course was published in book form as Le Neutre: Cours au Collège de France (1977–1978), ed. and annotated by Thomas Clerc (Seuil/IMEC, 2002). It was published in English as The Neutral, trans. Rosalind Krauss and Denis Hollier (Columbia University Press, 2007). 

 

[3] I use the term neutrality with reservation; for Barthes was keen to stress that the Neutral - or what I'm referring to as the excluded middle - doesn't simply refer to a space of impartiality or indifference, but, rather, to a space for destabilising and experimental activity. The desire for the Neutral is, as Barthes says, born of an intense passion.     

 

 

Readers interested in this topic might like to see a post published on TTA entitled 'Sing if You're Glad to be Grey (On the Desire for the Neutral)' (16 Oct 2015): click here. 

Sing if You're Glad to be Grey (On the Desire for the Neutral)

Last night, at dinner, a woman told me I was a colourful character. She meant it as a compliment (I assume), but if there's one thing I don't wish to be it's a character. 

People who have character, don't need to be characters; in the same way that people who have a certain vital intensity don't need to be seen to be larger than life. Characters, and individuals who are larger than life, are invariably just dullards behaving in a loud and boorish manner; the sort of people I try to avoid. 

As for being colourful, even that's something I find troublesome. These days, I aim for a certain achromatic neutrality or greyness and to be a man without qualities, like the mathematician Ulrich, in Robert Musil's (appropriately unfinished) novel; ambivalent, indifferent, lacking any essential self and viewing the world in all its vulgar excess of colour and violent enthusiasm with cool analytical passivity.

Those of a philosophical disposition have always appreciated that grey is the most beautiful - for most noble - of colours. During the Renaissance, it played an important role in fashion and art; Rembrandt, for example, had a palette made up almost entirely of complex shades of grey. 

Those who associate grey with boredom and conformity and perceive only an absence of colour, lack sophistication and subtlety. Let them wear their blues and browns in order to display their character; men in the know and men of style still favour a grey suit (light in summer, dark in winter) and understand like Roland Barthes that it is the Neutral alone which escapes and deconstructs the black-and-white binaries that structure meaning and produce the arrogance of certainty in Western thought and discourse.