Abstract
The self-contradicting title of this monograph itself refers to the ambiguity of Barthes's analyses, against which I have lodged a deconstructive claim. A prominent passage is devoted to polemics with Barthes's conception of the superiority of reading, which I have interpreted as a rhetorical move to engage the reader, and in this case also to occupy the reader with his own writing.
In several places it is also possible to show that Barthes understands reading in an opposite manner to the way he declares it to be, i.e. not as free activity, but as enslavement. Using the example of Camera Lucida, I intended to prove the point that Barthes has an inclination towards metonymies and that in this last work published before his death there is no radical turnaround in his thinking, but only an extension and continuation of this literary gesture, which still retains his thematic framework, while merely amending evaluations of certain indicatives, with "realism" at the core.