Rub Your Language Against Mine

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is "I desire you," and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure.

(taken from Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse: Fragments)

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Rub your language on me, and make me feel your words.

Barthes as an Educator Educating other Educators on how to Educate

According to Roland Barthes, there are three major phases in the life of a professor.

First, teaching what "I" know. "I" referring to the professor.

Second, teaching what "I" don't know, pertaining to research.

Third, the process of unlearning what was been learned. Though this phase contains little knowledge; it, however, presents much flavor in one's life.

(Taken from A Barthes Reader, 1982)


Unfortunately, most of the professors I've met have not reached the third and most important phase.

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For those who do not know who Barthes is and think that the name is a brand of a detergent, here's a bit of an introduction. Roland Barthes is a French theories, critic, philosopher and, semiotician. If you still don't get the big picture, google him.