I want a History of Looking. For the Photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity. Even odder: it was before Photography that men had the most to say about the vision of the double. Heautoscopy was compared with an hallucinosis; for centuries this was a great mythic theme.

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.