For Death must be somewhere in a society; if it is no longer (or less intensely) in religion, it must be elsewhere; perhaps in this image which produces Death while trying to preserve life. Contemporary with the withdrawal of rites, Photography may correspond to the intrusion, in our modern society, of an asymbolic Death, outside of religion, outside of ritual, a kind of abrupt dive into literal Death.

In 1948 he returned to purely academic work gaining numerous short-term positions at institutes in France Romania and Egypt. e. Barthes continued to contribute with Philippe Sollers to the avant-garde literary magazine Tel Quel which was developing similar kinds of theoretical inquiry to that pursued in Barthes' writings.

Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism semiotics social theory anthropology and post-structuralism.