The Return of the Diary in Barthes’s ‘Vita Nova’

This chapter examines a moment when the literary avant-garde returned to diary-writing and the writing subject, by focusing on Roland Barthes’s experiments with the diary (journal intime). These experiments take place in the context of his project for a ‘Vita Nova’ (seeking a unification of his life and writing, and a new, subjective form of literature), and are all related to his mourning for his mother. His Journal de deuil (written 1977–1979) pursues an impossible ideal of diary-writing, in which a univocal, fully present writing subject expresses a valuable interior experience to produce a literary œuvre. The impossibility of this ideal leads Barthes to his reflections on the diary in the article ‘Délibération’, and then to an almost perfectly opposite form of diary-writing project, with Soirées de Paris. These two diaries, exploring opposite extremes of writing, are placed by Barthes as components within his imagined novel (Vita Nova).

Are Spatial Frequencies Integrated from Coarse to Fine?

The existence of a temporal anisotropy in the integration of spatial frequencies, such that spatial frequencies are integrated more effectively if they are available from low to high through time, has been examined in a series of experiments. In the first experiment, the first three harmonics of a square wave were presented in a low-to-high or a high-to-low sequence in a temporal two-interval forced-choice experiment. Subjects were asked to indicate which sequence appeared to resemble a square wave more. A high-to-low sequence of spatial frequencies was judged to more resemble the target than the low-to-high sequence. These results support a temporal anisotropy in the integration of spatial frequencies of exactly the opposite form to that suggested from previous results. Further experiments established that this was not due to task differences or to subjects basing their decision on the final spatial frequency shown. An interpretation is offered in which an isotropic mechanism for spatial-frequency integration is combined with a recency bias.

Reliability of Special Tests in Measuring Personality

This study investigated the reliabilities, cross validations, and patterning of the external validities of five inventories using opposite-form approach. 181 college Ss were tested four times, and their course grades calculated. Various correlations were compared. Results showed that these opposite-form inventories were comparable in internal-consistency reliabilities, in the cross validation of test-retest reliabilities and opposite-form reliabilities, and in the correlation with course grades.