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Introduction — Is There Such a Thing as Colorless Writing? Can writing ever truly be neutral? The question appears simple, almost naïve, yet it has haunted modern literature with remarkable persistence. From the desire to strip language of ornament to the ambition of eliminating ideology, writers have repeatedly pursued a form of expression that might stand free of historical burden. But what if this effort were misguided from the outset? What if the attempt to remove ideology and style only produces another kind of ideology and style? The concept of “degree zero,” developed by Roland Barthes, emerges precisely at this tension. Rather than designating a pure origin of language, it names a moment in which writing confronts its own limits: the impossibility of escaping form, history, and signification. To grasp this claim, one must begin not with literature, but with linguistics, before passing through Jean-Paul Sartre and arriving at Barthes’ decisive reconfiguration of the problem....

Panopticon Introduction What happens when the self is no longer master of itself? Across the twentieth century, philosophers and theorists repeatedly confronted this unsettling question. Whether through existential anxiety, psychological fragmentation, or mechanisms of institutional control, thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault each explore how subjectivity unravels when exposed to forces beyond comprehension or mastery. This article traces how these figures—each in his distinct idiom—articulate the destabilization of identity in the presence of what is alien, indifferent, or watchful. From Nietzsche’s abyss to Foucault’s surveillance machine, a shared insight emerges: the self is not a sealed interiority, but something shaped, split, or constructed through its encounter with the Other. Nietzsche: Gazing into the Abyss In Beyond Good and Evil , Nietzsche famously warns: “He who fights with monsters should look ...