DESIRE IN LANGUAGE A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art

Euro pean Persp ectives: A Series of the Columbia University Press

DESIRE IN LANGUAGE A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art by JULIA KRISTEVA Edited by Leon S. Roudiez Translated by Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez

Library of Congress Catag in Publication Data Kristeva, Julia, 1941Desire in language. (European perspectives) Eight of the 10 essays included were originally published (in French) in the author's Polylogue and two in the author's :1:11µtiwTi')(i/: Recherches pour une semanalyse. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Criticism-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Semiotics-Addresses, essays, lectures. guistics-Addresses. essays. lectures. essays, lectures.

I. Title.

PN98.S46K7413

3. Lin­

4. Art-Addresses,

II. Series.

808'.001'41

80-1 06 89

ISBN 0-2 31-04806-8 ISBN 0-231-04807-6 (pbk) Columbia University Press New York Copyright© 1980Colurnbia University Press Polylogue Copyright© 1977 f:ditions du Seuil �.,,µtiwTix_�: Recherches pour une semanalyse copyright© 1969 Editions du Seu ii

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6

CONTENTS

Preface

vn

Acknowledgments

xii

Introduction by Leon S. Rou diez 1. The Ethics of Linguistics 2. The Bounded Text

23

36

3. Word, Dialogue, and Novel

64

4. How Does One Speak to Literature? 5. From One Identity to an Other

124

6. The Father, Love, and Banishment 7. The Novel

as

8. Giotto's Joy

Polylogue

92

148

159

210

9. Motherhoo d According to Giovanni Bellini LO. Place Names Index

295

271

237

PREFACE

The essays th at h ave been collected here for Engl ish-language readers were written ove r a span of some ten years; to the extent th at their aim does not presuppose the writer's neutral ity b ut, on the contrary, her involveme nt, presenting them to day amou nts to a test of memory for me. Fu rthermore, as they e m body a form of research t h at recasts several disciplines tradi­ ti o n al l y kept apart a n d therefore pro ceeds with e ffort, tensio n , and a k i n d o f p ass i o n fam i l i a r to p i o neers-presenti n g the m i n another l a n g u age, within a di fferent cu ltu re , s urel y leads one to m easu re, m ore than o ne o rdi ­ n a r i l y w o u l d, the difference in ment a l and i ntellectual hab its that persist in spite o f recently increased cultural exch anges between the United States a n d Europe. The m e m o r y I a l l u ded t o is of course a perso nal o ne, b ut it i s also h is­ tori cal. Fol l o wi ng u po n the p henome n o l ogical a n d ex istentialist shock of th e postwar peri od, the si xties witnessed a theoretical e b u l l ience th at co u l d roughly be summ arized as leading to the discovery of the determi­ n a tive r o l e o f language in all h u m an sciences. I f it be true th at the light t h r o wn on the eni g m a constituted by meaning as wel l as by society came from t he relatio nsh i ps discovered between them and the structu res of l a n ­ gu age ( t o t he extent t h at it i s an object o f l inguistics), o ne did neverthe­ less, from then on and in p arallel fashi on, question the metap hysical premises on which rest not only the sciences o f l a n g u age b ut t heir exportatio n to other do m a i ns. Thus, n ext to str u ctu ralism, a cri tique of Hege l i an, Hei deggeri an, M ar x i an, or Freudian derivation j o l ted its o cca­ sion a l l y simpl isti c elegance an d carried t heo reti cal thought to an i n te nsity o f wh ite heat that set categories and co n cepts a b l aze-sparing n ot even disco u rse itse l f. Semanalysis, as I tried to define it and put it to wo r k in

°l:71µElwr1x�.

m eets

t h at

requirement

to

desc r i be

the

si g n i fying

p henomenon, o r signifying phenomena, w h i l e analyzing, criticizi n g , an d dissolving "pheno menon," "me anin g," a n d "si gnifier . "

viii

P R EFACE

Two radical instrumentalities occurred to me as being germane to such a proj ect in analytical sem i ology. The first, located within that selfsam e theor etical thought, involved a qu estioning o f m eaning and its structu res, giving heed to th e u nd erlying speak ing subject . Such an insertion of subj ectivity into matters of lan­ guage and m eaning unfailingly led one to confront a semiology stemm ing from Saussure or Peirce with Hegelian logic and with Husserl's phenom enology as well; in a m ore specifically linguistic fashion, it resum ed Benven iste's m a sterly undertak ing and necessarily l ed to a lin­ guistics of enunciation. Finally, mindful of th e splitting of subj ectivity implied by th e discovery of the u nconsciou s , and tak ing advantage of the breakthrough acco m plished by Lacan in French psychoanalysis, sem analysis attem pted to draw out its consequ ences with respect to th e different practices of discou rse (in literatu re and particu larly in the novel and in the contem porary novel). That m eans that references to "dia­ lectics, " "practic e," "subject," etc., are to be understood as mom ents within an analytical process, one involving the analysis of meaning, struc­ ture, their categories and relationships-not at all in the purity of th e source from which they sprang. I envision ed the second instrum entality of th is analytical project as having to be m ade up of the specific object it needed to assign itself in order to emphasize the limits of a positivist knowledge o f language and to induce research, harried by the specificity that the subj ect of th e theory believes it can detect in that obj ect, to attempt to m od i fy its very theoretical apparatus. That u ncanny object, pre-text and fo il, wea k link in hu m an sciences and fascinating oth ern ess fo r ph ilosophy, is none other th an art in general, m odern art and literature even m o re particularly. The essays of 1;71µE1wr1x� ( 1 969) and even more so those o f Polylogue ( 1 977) are comm itted to it (and to works by Celin e, Beckett, and Sollers among others). One will perhaps better u nderstand, now, why the essays presented here, even though th ey often deal with literature or art, do not a m ount to either "art criticism " or "literary criticism . " Their concern rem ains intrath eoretical : th ey are b ased on art and literature, or m ore precisely on a d esire for art and literature on the part of their writer, in order to try to subvert the very theoretical, philosophical, or semiological apparatus. I h ope the reader will also perceiv e, in this ambitious clarifi-

P R EFACE

ix

cation, a confession of humility: considering the complexity of the signi­ fying process, no belief in an all-powerful theory is tenable; there rem ains the necessity t o pay attention t o the ability to deal with the desire fo r lan­ guage, and by this I m ean paying attention t o art and literature, and, in even m ore poignant fashion, t o the art and literature of our time, which remain alone, in our world of t echnological rationality, to impel us not toward the absolute but t oward a qu est fo r a little more truth, an impossible truth, concerning the m eaning of speech, concerning o u r con­ dition as speaking beings. That, a ft er all, is in m y opinion the fu n da­ mental lesson taught us by Roman Jakobson, who reached one of t h e h i g h point s o f language lea rning in this century b y never losing sight o f R ussian futurism's scorching odyssey through a revolution t hat ended u p strangling it. Read ers will also notice t hat a change in writing takes place as t h e work progresses. Th e sta rker style, tending toward a kind of form a liza­ ti on, of the earlier essays, chang es progressively as a psychoan a lytic trend is accentuated (as wel l as interest in litera ry and artistic practices), m aking way for a m ore personal style. And yet, this does not go so fa r as ident ifying th eoret ical discou rse wit h that of ar t-causing theory to be writ t en as literary or para-literary fict ion. I f there is a strong post­ Heideggerian t emptat ion leading i n t h at direction, the choice I have m ade is entirely d ifferen t . I t assumes the necessity o f adopting a stance involving othern ess, distance, even lim itation, on the basis of which a structure, a logical dis­ course is sutured, h ence dem onstrab le-not in a b anal sense but by giving serious consideration t o the new post- Freudian r at ionality t hat takes two stages into accoun t, the conscious and the u nconscious on es, and two cor­ responding types of p erformances. Such a theoretical stance could well be termed metaphysical. Still, if contem porary t hought is oft en reluctant to adopt it, one must recognize that such a stance is the only guarantee of ethics, that of k nowledg e a s well a s o f a l l discou rse. Why should this be so? The m ost telling answer to that q uestion is provided by what will also b e the second argument in favor of such a th eoretical discourse, on e rest­ ing on the brink of fiction without ev er completely toppl ing over into it : it is provided by my experi ence as analyst. The daily att ention given to the discourse of the other confirms, i f need be, that t h e speaking being

x

P R l:l' ACE

m aintains himself or herself as such to the extent that he/she allows for the presence o f two brink s . On the one hand, there is pain-but it also m ak es one secure-caused as one recognizes oneself as subj ect of (others' ) discourse, hence t ributary o f a universal Law. On the other, there is pleasure-but it k ills-at finding oneself different, irreducible, for one is borne by a simply singular speech, not m erging with the others, but then exposed to the black thrusts of a desire that borders on idiolect and aphasia. I n other words, if the overly constraining and reductive m eaning of a l anguage m ade up of u niv ersa ls causes us to suffer, t he call o f the unnamable, on the contrary, issu i ng from those bord ers wher e sig­ nification vanish es, hurls us into t he void of a psychosis that appears h enceforth a s the solidary rev erse of our universe, satura t ed with i nt erpretation, faith, or truth. Within that vise, our only chance to avoid being n either m aster nor s lave of m eaning lies in our ability to insure our m astery of it (through t echnique or k n owl edge) as w ell as our ag e through it (through play or practice). I n a word, jouissance. Having recourse t o psychoanalysis, as I attem p t to do, i n this work, in order to shed light on a num ber of borderline-practices of m eaning and signification (practices of art and l it erature), bears, I h ope, no r elation t o that " plagu e" that Freud, once m ore t he proph et, promised America when he brought his discov ery of t he u nconscious to its shores. Graft ed on t o semiology, analysis here is not restricted to themes or phantasms; rather, it scrut inizes the m ost subtle, the m ost d e eply buried logic o f those u nities and ultim at e relations that weav e a n identity fo r subj ect, or sign, or sent ence. What was n ecessary was undoubtely a desire for language (is this another way o f saying, "sublimation"?), a ion fo r ventures with m eaning and its materials (ranging from colors to sounds, beginning with phonem es, syllables, words), in order t o carry a theoretical experience t o t h a t poi n t wh ere apparent abstraction is rev ealed a s t h e apex o f archaic, oneiric, n octurnal, or corporeal concreteness, to that point wh er e m ean­ ing has not y et appeared ( t he child), no longer is (the i n sane p erson), or else functions as a restructuring (writing, art). I t was perhaps also necessary to be a woman to attem pt to take u p t h a t exorbitant wag er o f carrying t he rational proj ect t o t he out er borders of t he signifying venture of men . . . . But that is another m att er, of which t h i s volume neverthel ess bears t he discreet trace. In short, the problem o f truth, truth of laJlguage but also of the dis-

xi

P R E FACE

course that attem pts to for it, makes up the fundamental epistomelogical concern of a j ourney a portion of which Am erican readers can see today. Such a "scienti fic" t ruth i n general, and more so in the presence of language, comes to u s from m astery. Saint Augustine knew t h at already wh en he n ot ed t hat the possibility for language t o speak t h e truth could not come from outside, but it "governs t h e i n ner workings o f the mind itself." I n 3 89 (D e Magistro) he cont inu es, "Now, t h e one we consult in such a m anner, he is th e master, the one of whom it is said that he dwells within t h e inner m an, Christ, that is, the immu tabl e Power of G od and eternal wisdom . " Such "magistrality" u pholds faith as m uch as sci ence and int erpretat ions-that is what strikes the ear of the semiot ician psychoanalyst who t ries to articulate an utt erance of truth (one should say a style) wit hou t censoring what has been learned o ver a period o f two thousand years, but wit hout being confined to it ei ther. Without censoring: for there is language there, and d evices dependent on scientific t h ought can describe it more or l ess m a st erfully. But without being confined to it: for t here is more than a language object in the heterogeneous process of signifi ance. The conjunction of t hose two p ropositions has a dramat ic i m pact on t hought and, m ore generally, on the speaking subject . Analytic discourse, by holding to it, is perhaps the only o ne capable of addressing this u nt enable p lace where our s peaking species resides, threa t en ed by m adn ess beneath the em ptiness of h eaven. Julia Krist eva

TRANSLATORS' N O T E Julia Kristeva's work a t once dem ands and defies t ranslat ion. I n responding t o t h at challenge, o u r prim a ry concern h a s been t o mak e her work as accessibl e as possible to an English-speaking audience. I t m ay be that i n spi t e of our efforts a number of awkwardnesses rem ain. I f our undertaking has proved t o be a t all successful, it is in n o small part d u e t o t h e edi t orial sensibility of Leon S. Roudiez. W e would like t o thank him and J u lia Krist eva herself for th eir continued encourag ement and in bringing this project to com p letion. Tom Gora and A lice Jardine

A CKNOWLED GMENTS

For a ssistance given, in mat t ers large or small, scriptural or factual, m uch appreciation is due to the following friends and colleagues who cheerfully gave wh atev er inform ation or t im e was requested : R obert Aus­ terlitz, J a m es A . Cou lter, Robert D. Cumm ing, A rthur C . Da nto, H oward M. Davis, Richard F. Gustafson, William T. H. J ackson, Bert M - P . Leefm ans, M arie- Rose Logan, Sidney M orgenbesser, Luciano Rebay, Alan Roland, M eyer. Schapiro, and Ma rsha Wagner. Particular gratitude goes to Julia Krist eva for taking t i m e to respond to m any questions and for going over the t ranslation of a number of h er essays; quite a few erron eous int erpretations were thu s avoided. I must , o f course, bear responsibility for a n y t h a t rem ain a n d for a l l other in­ fe licities as well . L S. R .

DES IRE IN LANGUAGE

A Semiotic Approach to Literature and A rt

INTRODUCT!ON For norhing is secrer, rhar shall nor be made manifesr: nei rher any rhing hid, rhar shall nor be known and come abroad. Luke 8:17

At

a c o l l o qu i u m

on

psychoanal ysis a n d pol i t i cs held

in

Mil a n i n

Decem b er o f 1973, Ju l i a Kr istev a responded t o a quest i o n concerni n g her own p a per by say i n g, " I never i nten ded to fo l lo w a correct Marxist l i ne, and I h ope I am n o t correctly fol l o w i ng any o t her l i ne wh atsoever . " 1 I n deed, w he n dea l i n g with concepts b orrowed fro m vario us disciplines, b e t hey

c a l led

Marxism ,

l i ngu isti cs,

ph i l osop h y,

phychoan a l ysis,

or

sem i o l o gy ( wit h t he l a t ter t w o n o w t he m ain der ivatio ns), s h e h as fitted t hem to t he object o f her investi gations. No t " applying" a t heo ry, but allowing pract i ce to t est t heo ry, lett ing t he t wo e nter i n to a di alectical relatio nsh i p . S he c a n n o t claim o rigi n al i ty in fo l l o w i ng s u ch a procedu re; just the same, h e r approach is, i ntel lect u al l y spe a k i ng, t he o n l y fru itful way leading to origi n al discovery . I su spect Roland Bar thes h a d in m i n d som ethi n g o f t he s o r t when h e credited her with delivering a new k n owledge; he wrote, in 1970, " Ju l ia Kristeva always destro ys t he l atest precon ception, t he one we t h o u ght we co u l d be c o m forted b y, the o ne of which we could be prou d . "2 The im p act her articles and books h ave had in (and a r e begi n n ing t o h ave elsewher e) testi fies to t he effective­ ness of her strategy . Bo rn i n Bulgaria in 194 l to a m id d le-cl ass fami ly, she received her early schoo l i n g fr om French n u ns. Then came t he i nevit abl e C o m m u n ist Party chil dren's groups, and, l ater, t he party y o u t h organizat i o ns . As Kristev a put i t in a n i n tervie w pu b l is hed b y Le Nou vel Observateur, "I learned [Le n i n 's] Materialism and Empiriocriticism at the same tim e as I d i d t he square of t he h y potenuse. "3 A t o ne po i n t, she w an ted to p u rsue a

2

INTRO DUCTI O N

career in astronomy or physics, but the main research and training center was in t he Soviet U nion, and only children of party cadres could aspire to enroll there . As it turned out , the first job she h eld was that of j ournalist ; sh e work ed on a newspaper for com mun ist youth while pursu­ ing literary studies at the university. This happened at a tim e when Eastern Europe was still reaping benefits fr om the "thaw" that followed the Twen tieth Congress d enunci ation of th e late Stalin by Krushchev, and as a result sh e was able to meet n ews paper correspond ents from m any cou ntries , receiv e books fr om abroad, and d i scuss those idea that came from the West. It was, however, as a doctoral-fellowsh ip h older that she went to Paris early in 19 66-and stayed . Tzvetan Tod oro-v, who had em igrated from Bulgaria a few years earlier, steer ed h er t o Lucien G oldm ann's sem inar; there began a research and writing process that has alr eady resu lt ed in publication o f a n impressive array of theoretical work s. H e r first (although n o t t h e first to be publish ed) was Le Texte du roman ( 1970), an analysis of the birth of the novel in late m edieval tim es. U sing Antoine de La Sale's L e Petit Jehan de Saintre (1456) as em blematic paradigm , and drawing fr om what she calls the "post form alism" of M ikhail Bakhtin, Kristeva present s an original view of the concept of "g enre"; putting t h a t t radi­ tional concept aside, she sees what we call the novel as a narrative t ex­ t u re, wov en togeth er with strands borrowed from other verbal practices such as carnivalesque writing, courtly lyrics, hawk ers' cries, and scholastic t reat ises. She also showed, am ong other things, how this t ex­ ture is intertwined with som ething akin to what M i chel Foucault has called epis tem e, for which sh e coined t h e neologism "id eologe m e . " The t exture of the novel, as it s lowly evolved, managed to b ecom e free of the "id eologem e" of sym bolism (within which the m edieval epic had fl ou rished); in t hat process, however, it b ecam e caught up in the "ideolog em e" of signs, which sh e sees as weighing heavily on its entire h istory; it has resu lted in a gradual and nonconscious elaboration of con­ cept s such as "author" (a person having fina l "authority" over the "m eaning" of his achievem ent), "lit erature," "reading public," and "oeu vre" ; such concepts, together with adher ence t o the sign-system, tied it to bourgeois class valu es-all of which reached t he apex of their d evelopm ent or acceptance in the nineteenth century. Her essay, "Th e

I N T R ODUCT ION

3

Bounded Text," a translation of which is included here, develops a number of t hese points. Kristeva arriv ed in Paris when literary "structuralism" was m os t fas hionable i n avant-garde circles and a l s o ( a s J ean Piaget rem arked) a t cocktail parties. 4 T h e term , where literary crit icism is concerned, does belong within invert ed comm as, for I agr e e with Piaget's observation, m ade in th e late sixties, that "one can only be disturbed by the current m odishness of structuralism , which wea kens and distorts it. "5 Kristeva's bent o f mind, which I emphasized at the very outset, together with an experience of Russian postform alism dating back t o h er Sofia days, pr es erv ed h er fr om uncritical accept ance of that fashionable t rend . Rather than cocktail parti es, she fr equ ented t h e Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, and the C entre National de R ech erch e Scientifiqu e; sh e h eld the position of research assistant at Clau d e Levi-Strauss's Labora­ tory o f Social Anthropology. Possibly, too, Goldmann's example played a part ; his own "gen et ic structuralism" m anag ed to m aintain th e presenc e of factors such as g enesis, history, and subject (i.e., the writing ag ent), which m any lit erary " structuralists" ignored. At any ra te, the volume of essays publish ed in 1 969, 'i:,11µEiwTiX7' / Recherches pour une semanalyse, m an i fests both the pres ence of genu ine structuralist t hought and h er own critical distance fr om its literary distortions. This book, app earing with t he Tel Que/ im print, also emphasized an associat ion wit h that group t hat actually began two years earlier wh en h er "Pour une semiologie d es paragramm es" appeared in t he Spring, 1 967, issu e of Tel Que/. The review, u nd er the forc e ful editorship of Philippe Sollers, had by the end o f the sixties becom e quite influential among avant-garde writ ers and intellectuals. 6 From th e title o f Kr isteva's collection o f essays, it is. now clear that semiotics, t he science of signs, provided h er with an important research tool. This cam e about, it would seem, b ecause of an awaren ess of t he role, both necessary and insu ffi­ cient, played by linguistics in a scient ific approach to the text. Necessary, becau se a writer obviously works with and within language; insu fficient, b ecause he is involved in a signifying process that operates through lan­ guage and cann.ot be assimilated t o its ev eryday fu nction as instru m en t o f sim ple com munication. Th e t erm "semiotics" (and its Greek cou nterpart as u sed in the title) com es from Charles S. Peirce; "sem iology" was

4

INTRODUCTION

defined by Ferdinand de Saussure; and Roland Barthes had first published his " Elem ents de semiologie" in the November, 1 964, issue of Communications. But K rist eva did not m erely follow a path t hat had been cleared by others. C haracteristically, she in troduced a new word into the second half of her title-"sem analyse," defined as a "critique of m eaning, of i t s el em ents and i t s laws. " 7 Two essays from that collection have been t ranslated for the present volume; the already m entioned "Bounded Text, " and "Word, Dia logue, and Novel, " in which sh e expands on ideas introduced by M ikhail Ba khtin and presents the often m i sund erstood concep t of " i ntertextuality . " Perhaps m ore t h a n m od i sh "structuralism , " what m arked t h e year o f Kristeva's arrival i n Paris was t h e appearance of t h e nine-hundred-page volume of J acques Lacan's Ecrits. And indeed, in conjunction with M arxism and linguist ics, psychoanalysis was to have a determ ining influence in the developm ent of her t heories. She considered it so im portant that, som e y ears later, i n order to provide a m aterial b asis for her speculations, she un derwent psychoanalytic t raining and started a practice t hat she fitted in wi t h her obligations as a m ember of the faculty at the U niversity of Paris V I I . Earli er, in Le Texte du roman, her m aj or refer ences were M arx, Engels, Lukacs, Saussure, J a kobson, B enveniste, Chomsky, P eirce, Bakht i n ; Lacan is only m entioned once, in ing. I n 1;71µE1wr1x� h e is, with Freud, the object o f frequ ent footnotes. That she was headeif in t hat direct ion m ight well have been deduced from a read­ ing of the previously m ent ioned essay, " P our u ne s em iologie des para­ grammes , " writ t en a t the same time as her Tex te du roman. Her emphasis on Saussure's anagram s, which were virtually unknown until J ean S t arobinski b rough t them t o light in the early sixties, 8 clearly reveals a convergence with Lacan's linking of language to the uncon­ scious. Lacan referred to the dua l plan es o n which language o perat es, t o t h e possibili ty w e have " o f u sing i t in order t o sign ify something quite other t han what it says . " 9 M at t ers are m ore com plex t han the simple ambiguity suggested here, but briefly stated , that duality is such as to m ak e i t possible for sem analysis to be a critique of meaning (assum ing that m eaning is part of a fix ed, symbolic system). Put another way, it is what enables inst inct s to chall eng e au thority without producing anarchy-what enab les aut hority to con tain instinct s without res orting to concent ration cam ps.

INTRODUCTI O N

5

Testifying to Kristeva's early training in the sciences, there are i n �71µE1w-r1x1, a number of references, metaphors, a n d formulas borrowed from m athematics. While t h ey are pertinent to her argument, they do tend to complicate or even obscure matters for those readers who do not share her intellectual background. Fortunately for the latter, surface displays of mathem atical k nowledge subside in subsequent works, while the sci entific urge to m ake t he secret m a n i fest rem ains ever present. In a m aj or work , La R evolution du langage poetique ( 1 974), sh e brings together m any of the strands that run t hrough earlier th eoretical essays. While her specific aim is to analyse t he alteration, alr eady noted by F ou cault i n The Order of Things and previously d iscussed in detail b y M au rice B lanchot fr om a l iterary point of view, t h a t m arked several writers' relation to language during the lat e ninet eenth century (and she does exam ine, in detail, work s by Lau treamont and Mallarme), the m os t valuable port ion o f this b o o k , in m y opinion, l ies in its first t w o hundred pages entitled " Prelim inaires theoriques ." The object of h er investigat ion in t h es e pages is not called lit erature, for this is an ideologically l oaded t erm t hat enables one to exclude any number of writings ( for ethical, political, social, or even medical reasons) and exalt others by placing them in an u n t ouchable category (something like "masterpieces of all time"): rat her, she starts from the concept of "poetic language" as introduced by Russian formalist s. Poetic language is dist inct fro m lan­ guage as u sed for ordinary commun icat ion-bu t not because it may involve a so-call ed depart ure from a n orm; i t is alm ost an otherness of l anguage. It is the language of materiality as opposed to t ransparency (where the word is forgot t en for the sake of the object or concept designated), a language in which the writ er's effort is less to deal rationally with those obj ects or concept s words seem to encase than t o work , consciou sly o r not, whith t h e sounds a n d rhyt hms of words i n t ransrat ional fashion ( i n Ossip Brik 's phrase) a n d effect ing what Victor Shk lovski called "sem antic displacem ents . " 10 Poet ic language includes t h e language of Shak espeare, Racine, or M allarme; it also includes that of the M arquis de Sade, A nt onin Artaud, Louis Wolfson, and of psy­ chotics as well; and, of course, m any m ore in between. Su m m a rizing the contribut ion Kristeva has m ade in La R evolu tion du langage poetiq u e is beyond the scope o f this introduction. Still, one of the basic w orking concepts of that volum e needs to be present ed; I shall do

6

INTR ODUCTIO N

so briefly, and readers should be cautioned that brevity necessarily entails a modicum of distortion . Here, as in other essays, she often refers t o the " speaking subj ect. " O n e should always bear in mind t h a t t h i s is a split subject-divided between unconscious and conscious mot ivations, thati s, between physio­ logical processes and social constraints. It can never be iden t i fied with anything lik e Husserl's transcendental ego. The activities and per­ forma nces of the speaking subject are the result of a dialectical process, something previous lingu istic theori es, as sh e examines them , tended to ign ore by em phasizing eit her one at the expense of the other. Linguists, by and large, have elaborated systems where one should analyze a process (and t h ose who do, like Chomsky, t end to preserv e a C artesian or phenom enological subj ect); they have described stability where one should ackn owledge m obility, unity where t here is contradict ion. On the one hand, what we have been offered so far are systems of meaning depending on consciousness; on the other, sh e proposes to a nalyze a sign ifying process, which presupposes a split subject-h ence two heterogeneous levels. To state this in d ifferent t erm s, the object of her investigations is no longer la nguage (as in structuralism), or discourse (as phenom enology would have it), or even enunciation; rather, it is the dis­ cou rse of a split subject-and this again involves her in psychoa nalysis. A llowing her to accoun t for such splitting, Krist eva has posited two types of signifying processes to be analyzed within any production of m eaning: a " sem iotic" one and a "sym bolic" one. The sem iotic process relates to the chora , a t erm meaning "receptacle , " which she b orrowed from Plato, who describ es it as "an invisible and form less being which receives all things and in some m ysteri ou s way partakes of the intelligi­ ble, and is m o s t incom prehensible." 11 It is also anterior t o any space, an economy of primary processes articula ted by Freud's instinct u a l drives ( Triebe) through cond ensation and displacement, and where s ocial and fam ily structures make t heir im print through the mediation of the maternal body. While the chora's articulation is uncertain, undeterm ined, while it lacks thesis or position, u nity or ident ity, it is the aim of Kris­ teva's practice to remove what Plato saw as "mysterious" and " incom prehensible" in what he called "m other and receptacle" of al l things-and the essays presented in this collection also proceed in the direct ion of such an elucidation. The symbolic process refe rs to the

INTRODUCTION

7

esta blishment of sign and syntax, paternal function, gram matica l and social constraints, symbolic law. In short, the signifying proc ess, as increasingly m anife s t in "poetic language," results from a part icular art i culation between sym boli c and sem iotic dispositions; it could be t erm ed "catastrophe, " given t he meaning the word has in Rene Thom's theory. Th e speaking subject is engendered as belonging to both the sem iotic chora and the symbolic device, and that s for its eventual split nature. The signi fying process may b e analyzed t hrough two features of the text, a s constituted by poetic langu age: a phenotext, which is the lan­ guage of comm u nication and has been t he object of linguistic analysis; a genot ext, which may be detect ed by m eans of certain aspects or elements of language, even though it is not linguistic per se. Different k inds o f writing are variously affect ed b y t h i s heterogen eou s process. A t heoretical treatise in mathem atics is almost pure phenotext; some of A rtaud's pages display a genotext that i s nearly visible to t he naked eye; fiction, in its t raditional narrative guis e, was dominated by the symbolic (it was m ainly a phenotext), but in recent tim es it has i ncreasingly been affect ed by the sem iotic (i.e., the genot ext plays a greater role; see K ris­ teva's discu ssion of a Sollers text, in "The Novel as P olylogue, " and o f Celine's writing, i n " From O n e Identity t o a n Other, " b o t h translated here); and poet ic la nguage covers that wide b ody of t exts where t he signi­ fying process can be seen at work-provided one uses t he p roper t ools o f analysis. In t he m eantime, Kristeva had ed t h e editorial board o f Tel Que/ where h er name appeared on t he masth ead for t he first tim e in t h e sum­ m er i ssu e of 1 970. In the pu blic eye, she can no longer be considered apart from t he philosophical and political stances assum ed by the review, especially t h ose of Phi lippe Sollers, who, for practical purposes, is t he review. In fact, I beli eve m at t ers are a b i t m ore com plex; for if o ne can obviously not dissociate h er from Tel Que/, one cannot com pletely iden t i fy h er with it either, and t here is a const ant dialectical process at work, one of int ellectual action and int eraction. Thus, in t he late sixties, she was as involved as other memb ers of the group (which t hen in­ cluded Jean-Louis Baudry, J ean Pierre Faye, M a rcelin P leynet, J ean Ricardou, J acqueline Risset, Denis Roche, Pi erre Rottenberg, and Jean Thibaudeau) in a dialogue with t he Fr ench Communist Party; t here was

8

INTR ODUCTION

the possibility that such a party, having developed within the political and cultural framework of French democracy, would be m ore open t o interior discussions o r e v e n chall enges, and would not fo llow t he path taken by East European parties. U nlike others, however, Kristeva had a direct experience of East ern communism; t h is may have been a factor in t he arguments that must have t aken place at t he time. At any rate, a fter developm ents t h at were u ncom fortably rem iniscent of the Surrealists' affair with com m u nism forty years earlier, the break cam e in 1 9 7 1 , caus­ ing a split within th e ranks of Tel Que/. Th e break was abundantly publicized when an independent-minded I talian communist, M aria­ A n tonietta M acciochi, published De la Chine late in 1 97 1 , a b ook ignored by the pro-U S S R Fr ench Com m u n is t Party but heralded by Tel Que/. Apparently the Italians were m ore like what the Fr ench were sup­ posed to b e: one recalls t h a t, two decades earlier or so, Jean-P au l Sartre had fou nd it possible t o h ave open discussions with I t alian comm unists but not with Fr ench ones. Rejection o f t he Communist Party sig naled for Tel Que/ t h e beginning of a period of considerab le interest in, occa­ sionally verging on enthusiasm for, M ao Zedong's version of commu­ nism; this lasted until t he Chinese leader's d eath in 1 97 6 . I n 1 974 Krist eva wen t t o C h i n a w i t h Philippe Sollers, Roland B arthes, M arcelin P leyn et, and Franyois Wahl. What strikes me m ost, in h er writ­ ings about that j ourney , is her sense of total estrang em en t . A l a rge crowd i s seated in the sun; they a r e wait i n g for us without a w ord, wit hout a moti on. Their eyes are calm, not rea lly inquisitive but slightly amused or un easy, p iercing at a n y rate, and sure of belon ging to a commu nity with w hich we shall never have a nything i n commo n . They do n o t st are at t he man o r at t h e woma n i n o u r group, a t t h e you ng or t he old, a t t he blond o r t he brunet te, a t s ome specific feature o f face or body. I t is a s t hough they h a d di scovered bizarre a nd amusi n g a n imals, ha rmless but mad.12

Questions about the rel evancy of the Chinese experim ent, relevancy t o Europeans t h at i s, undoubtedly fo und a way into t he m editat ions. Andre M al rau x, in 1 926, had a lready u nderstood that t he West could n ot hope to apply Chinese practice or concepts t o solving its problem s . That one can learn from China only in a com p lex, mediated fa shion m ay well h av e been t h e postulate she t o o k with h e r on h er journey. I n specific t erms, she was cu rious to find out what happen ed w hen the anarchist and Taoist strands of Chinese culture (she was t her e a t t he heig h t of the anti-Con fu-

INTRODUCTION

9

cius cam paign) were grafted on a Chinese version of M arxism . I n other words, she went to China as a sem analyst. A fter M ao's death, when one considers the alm ost imm ediat e reaction of the party apparatus, an im pression was m ade (or confirm ed) that com­ m u nists the world over, differences between national parties notwith­ standing, had merely succeeded in replacing the oppressive regim es they overthrew wit h others equally or m ore opp ressive and "concentra­ tionary. " Such at least, was Sollers's reaction: he spoke of a Chi nese "dram a" (an Am erican might have said "tragedy") and ask ed whether this was what " M arxism " (his quotation m ar k s) always added up t o . 13 Krist eva, h owever, owing to her Bulgarian experi ence, probably did not fe el the shattering disillusion som e former M aoists went through in 1 977. Som e of t hose who called them selves "new philosoph ers" had turned M arxism into an ideal or a mystique. For her, I beli ev e it was m ore a conceptual tool t owards social truth, and now it was blunted. As with the French Commu nist Party a few years earlier, a sort of honeymoon with socialism was over. Nevertheless, she h eld on to M ao's saying about going fr om defeat to defeat until vict ory is won-modifying it to read, " U nt i l truth is attained." Some fo rm of Socialism is also t o be preferred, in her view , over practical alt ernatives available to the French people; an i nt ell ectual, howev er, can no longer be counted on as un critical ally o f t he Left, a n d h i s o r her position should b e one o f dissent . Dissenting from all polit ical power groups, be t hey in the government or in the opposition, t he i n tellectual's position should b e one of continuously challenging all orthodoxies. He or sh e is in exile, "am ong which I include m ysel f: exiled from s ocialism and a M arxist rationality but, without bitterly rej ecting these, attempting to analyse t hem, to dissolve t hem-assuming t h at they are the forceful id eas, t he very strength of our times." 1 4 Late in t he same y ear that saw h er i n China, Kristeva published Des Chinoises--the first book o f hers to h ave been translated into English (A bou t Chinese Wom en, 1 9 7 7) . It is no doubt significant t hat she focused on t h at aspect of t he situation in China; subsequ ently she explain ed that "the history of C hinese com m unism is at o n e with a history of women's libera t i on . " 15 To u nderstand this, w e need both historical and cultura l perspective; w e need to realize on t h e one hand h o w little Western wom en have in com mon with Chinese wom en from a social and cultural standpoint, and on t he other what it must have m eant fo r Chinese women

10

INTR ODUCTIO N

to emerg e o u t of a feudal age, of which bound fe et and forced m arriages were t he m ost visible symbols. And M a o h i m sel f is reported to have said that "man could not be free unless woman was also liberated . " 1 6 Kristeva's feminist position is no m ore orthodox than her other stands. Since this is a domain through which I am hardly qualified t o roam, I shall l et h er speak for hersel f: I am qu ite dedicated t o the femin ist movement but I think femin ism, or any other mo veme n t, need not expect unconditional back ing on the part of an int ellectual woman. I think the t ime has come to emerge out of the " for-women­ on ly" practice, out of a k i n d of myt hicizi ng of feminin ity. [ . .. ] I have the impressi on [some femi n ists] are relying too much on an existentialist concept of woman, a concept that attaches a gu i l t c omplex to the maternal function. Eit her one has children, but that means one is not good for anythi ng else, or one does n ot, and then it becomes possible to devote oneself to serious undertakings. As far as I am concerned, childbearing as such never seemed i n con sistent with cultural act ivity, and that is the point I try t o ma k e when talk ing t o femin ist groups. [ . .. ] Mallarme asked, "What is there to say concerni n g childbirth?" I find that question much more pungent t han Freud's well- k n own, "Wha t does a woman want?" Indeed, what does it mean to give birth to a child? P sych oan alysts do not much talk a bout i t. [ ... ] The arrival of a child is, I believe, the first and often t he only o pport un ity a woman has to ex perience the Other in its radical separation from herself, that is, as an object of love.17

Essays writt en between 1 973 and 1 97 6 and collected in Polylogue ( 1 977) add the problem o f sexual di ffer ence and that o f child develop­ m en t (especially its language-learning aspect) to t he concerns that were present in the earlier ones. The scope of her investigation also wid ens, as analyses of paintings are added to t h o se of writt en t exts. Of the seventeen essays in Polylogue, eight a re included h ere. Th e essay on Bellini dea l s with a m an ' s relationship to the m o t her and to wom an as m ot her my m eans of an original analysis of that painter's M adonnas. I n "Giotto's J oy , " Kristeva examines painting as she did poet ic t exts in La R evolu tion du langage poetique-at least in part. As phonic effects were seen to contribute, in n onconscious fashion, to the signifying process in t h e t exts of Lautreamont and M allarme, likewise the ret inal perception of the various colors of light (e. g . , which color is perceived first as darkness reced es, which fi rst as the child develops) is taken into considerat ion when ing for the significance o f Giotto's frescoes. Not that alone, of course: read ers will soon be aware of the

INTRODUCTION

11

com plex, interrelated fashion in which different fields of knowledge are brought to bear, and necessarily so, on literary and artistic exegesis . I believe each one of the t en essays I sel ected for t his volume sheds light not only on the obj ect of analysis but on Kristeva's method as well . The discussion of Roland Barthes's criticism , in particular, gives her the opportunity to stress what, t o her, are the positive aspects of his approach; in so doing, she provides us with a summ ary of her own poin t of view . For a capsuled statement of the basic princi ples that underlie h er critical theory, I would go t o t h e "triple t hesis" set fo rth in t h e subsec­ tion entitled "Two Channels of Discovery: Dialectics and Sociology . " Krist eva brings t o o u r own crit ical practice a n d textual theory some­ t hing that is u nm istakably alien but also, if one is willing to give this som e thought, absolutely necessary. The article Roland Barthes devot ed t o her first coll ection of essays was given an am biguous title; it cou ld be translated either as "The Stra nger" or "The Alien" (French language, with its m ore restricted vocabulary, sometimes allows fo r pregnant polysemy). Barthes's specific r efe rence is to sem iotics, a feminine noun in French, whose "historical role presen tly is t o be t h e intruder, the t hird elem en t, the one that disturbs . . . . "18 His implicit reference is also to Kristeva 's own stat us, for which the t rivial notion of nat iona lity i s lit tle m ore t han emblema t ic. ( I on esco and Adamov, Todorov and G reim as, Tzara and Beckett, Gris and Picasso, to name a few, are or were practically i ndigenous to the F rench scene.) She is the stranger because her writing d oes not conform to standard Fr ench t heoretical writing (j ust as it is m arkedly di fferent from other contem porary versions of i t , like Foucault ' s or Derrida's), and because she confronts Fr ench writing practice with t h ose emanat ing from other cultures, French theory with that issuing from other cou ntries. Her status as stranger proved to have been an asset in ; it should be an asset in t h is country as well. Engl ish-language critics have, until recently, been reluctant t o confront literary t exts with theory; rath er, the em phasis has been on practical criticism (to borrow I. A. Richards's classic t i t l e) or on taxonomy ( Northrop Frye); in our occasional fo rays into theory, we have been inclined to look for models (as Angu s Fletcher did, for his study on alle­ g ory, in Freud's Totem and Taboo ). To theory, we often prefer m et hod, as t h e lat t er bears a greater likelihood of practical application-for­ gett ing, perhaps, that this can lead to sclerosis.

12

INTR ODUCTION

Now, however, there are signs point ing to a possible change in this state of affairs . A perusal o f articles published in a periodical such as Diacritics does reveal an increasing int erest in t heoretical writing;19 and t here are other journals m oving in t he same direct ion. At this juncture, lest such a growing appeal turn into fa scination and l ead to purely abstract specu lation, K risteva's work rem inds us t hat theory is insep ara­ ble from practice-that th eory evolves out of practice and is modified by further practice; and that t he disciplines that enable us to undertak e a scien tific investigation of written text s, t hat will m ake t heir secret m anifest, can never exclude t he writing subject who undertakes t he inves­ t igation from t he results of that investigation.

N O TE S ON THE

TRANSLATION

A ND

ON TE R M I N O LOGY

Wel l, here it is, t he result of much labor. What else can translators say a fter w orking away at a set of original, groundbreaking essays? There were days, perhaps only euphoric hours, wh en, contemp lating t he work t hat lay ah ead, t hey m ight have ent ertained hopes of h aving Julia Kristeva com e out, in English, reading like Edmund Wilson. Obviously she does not; t he chances are that she never wil l-and probably should not anyway. If the translation is faithful, and that much, I believe, has been accom plished, t he next thing to wish is that it be r eadable (even t hough not always easy to read) and still preserv e some of t he particular flavor that charact erizes t he French original. I should emphasize that, in m ost inst ances, K rist eva's writing is not a " tex t" in t he strong sen se the word has acquired in recent (m ainly F rench) critical th eory. It was not conceived as "poetic language," i t is not a b ody of words in a state of fe rment and working, like " beer when t he barm is put in" (Bacon, as quoted in Webster 2). And yet, t here are sequences here and t here that com e pretty close to it. I n t h e main, neverthel ess, it is a form o f expository prose that has something specific to com mu nicat e. Concepts, a method, and, q u i te sig­ nifica ntly, a choice of position, situation, or place from which t o speak (or writ e). She is nearly always, if ever so slightly, off-centered in relation to all establi shed doctrin es ( M arxian, F reudian, Saussurian, Chomskian,

INTRODUCT I O N

13

fo r instance). T o put i t another way, while she may borrow term inology from several disciplines and theoretical writers, her discourse is not the orthodox discourse of any one of them : the vocabulary is t heirs but the syntax is her own . Such a stance carries inevitable consequences in return for the t erm inology, which at first gives the im pression of having been t hrown off balance by the shift in discou rse-and related di fficulties crop up for the translators, who m ay be tempted to render matters m ore conventionally logical, more comm onplace. The following glossary was not really prepared with a view to solving such problems; the point is rather to identify some of them and explain why a particular word or phrase was ch osen in tra nslating an ex pression used by Kristeva. One should keep in m i nd that, with few exceptions, these are not neologisms; t hey are also, on occasion, used with their everyday m eanings. Unusual words that are defined within the essays where t hey appear have not, as a rule, been listed here; nor have t h ose that are part of accepted t echnical or scientific vocabularies-such as, to name but a few, base, superstructure ( M arxism); power of the con­ t inuum , next-larger (set t heory); catast rophe, fo ld (cat astrophe t heory); signifier/ signified, deep structure (linguistics); prim al scene, cathexis (psychoanalysis); for psych oanalytic , the t ranslation is that given by J . Laplanche and J . - B . P ontalis, Vocabulaire de la psychar:alyse ( Paris: Presses Universitaires de , 1 9 67; revised ed . , 1 976). ' ANAGRAM

(anagramm e) . See

GRAM.

(au teur) . When used, it means that the discussion takes place within a specific ideological context wh ere the writer is seen as endowed with "authorial" att ributes, such as full conscious control of the writing process and "aut hority" over the m eaning of what has b een written. Whenever possible the t erm has been avoided and replaced with the m ore neutral "writer. " AUTHOR

BOUNDED (clos). The verb clore is rather formal and even slightly ar­ chaic; in everyday u sage it has survived in a num ber of set phrases such as clore /es debats (form ally bring a discussion to an end) or huis-clos ("in camera"). Our verb " t o close" corresponds t o the French fermer; "to bound" is less usual and its connotations are not far from those of clore, while "to l i m i t " would convey (es pecially in the past participle) the u nwanted connotation of something lacking. Wi lliam Faulk ner, recalling how he wrote As I Lay Dying, gave his description of what Kristeva calls

14

INTR ODUCTION

a "bounded" n ovel: "Before I ever put pen t o paper and set d own the first word, I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last peri od would fa l l. " BEING, BEINGS (etre, etant). Translating such phi losop hical distinction as conveyed in G erm an by Sein vs. Seiende is easy for the French who can talk of etre v s . etant but rather awkward when i t comes t o English . Translators of Heidegger apparently ag ree that Sein should be rendered as (capitalized) " Being"; t h ere is less agreement as to Seiende. R ather than "entity, " it would seem prefera ble to choose, as in German and French, another form of the verb "to be"-here practically the sam e form, "beings," but l ower-case and s et in t h e plural t o avoid any possible confusion with the ordinary u se o f "being . "

(dialectique). Those u n fami liar w i t h M arxist theory should keep in m ind t h at M arx's " di al ect ics" is the opposite of Hegel's, and that K risteva refers both t o M arx and H egel in h er essays. ( M a rx : " M y dia­ lectical m ethod is not only different from the H egeli an, but is its direc t opposite.") I n a nutshell, and considering only one aspect of dialectics as emphasized by Lenin, with Hegel t h ere i s thesis, then antithesis, and finally synthesis; with M arx there is contradict i on inherent in all t hings, which results in a cleavage, a struggle between the two elements of the cont radiction, elimination of the weak er element, and then, within the victorious one, t here is a contradiction, etc. (Lenin: "The splitt ing of a single whole and the cognition of i t s contradictory parts . . . is the essence . . . of dialectics . " ) M arx o ften stressed that he was giving a natu­ ralistic or mat erialistic of d ialectical d evelop ment. One should note t hat Kristeva also takes into a p ost-Heideggerian critique of dialectics, introducing t h e concept of heterogeneity and referring t o catastrophe t heory. DIALECTICS

(pulsion). This corresponds to Freud's Trieb, which has been m istranslated, in the Standard Edition, as "instinct ." For those accustomed t o the latter, in order to ease the t ransition, I have often qualified "drive" with "instinctual . " T o t ranslate pulsionnel, h owever, since "drive" does not have an appropriate adjectival fo rm, I have had t o u s e "instinctual" ( a s opposed to "instinctive") in a num ber o f instances. As there are no refe rences to "instinct" a s such in t hese essays, tha t should not cause a n y confusion. DRIVE

(gramme). From t h e G reek gramma, that which is written. U sed, especially in K risteva's earlier essays, to designate the basic, m aterial ele­ ment of writing-the m a r k ing, the t race. I t is t he r oot of both the

GRAM

! N T R O D U CT!ON

15

fam iliar "gram m ar" and the m ore recen t "grammatology, " the science of writing, defin ed as such by I . J . Gelb (A study of Writing, 1 952). Both "gram" and "gram mat ology" have been giv en wide dissem ination by J acques Derrida. M ore significantly for Kristeva ' s work, the same root is at the basis of Ferdinand de Saussure's "anagram s, " which he thought he discovered in ancient Latin Saturnian verse (Cf. Jean Starobinski, L es Mots sous /es mots), and which was the st art ing point for her essay, "Pour une semiologie des paragramm es" ( Tel Que/, Spring 1 967). This was an early statement of her concern for the n onrational, nonsymbolic operation of signifying practice in poetic la ngu age. "Paragrams" refer not merely to changing letters ( Webster's definition) but to the in finit e possibilities of a text seen as an open network of indicial connect ions.

(ideologie). The t erm is used in th e contemporary M arxist sense. Th e concept, posited by M a rx and Engels, was used by them in a variety of interconnected senses. Louis Althusser has defined "id eology" as a system of representations (im ages, myths, ideas, or concepts) endowed with a specific historical context and fu nct ioning within a given society . It is re lated to t he cu lture (in its sociological rather than huma­ nistic sense) o f that society , and to the sum of its prejudices and precon­ ce ptions. In m ost cases "ideology" is tra nsm it ted on a preconscious level , since i t i s u sually taken for granted, considered a s "natural, " hence neither repressed (unconscious) nor intentionally propounded (conscious). " Dominant ideology" is the id eology existing and operating within the dominant class of a given society so as to further the economic and political int erests o f that class . IDEOLOGY

(intertextualite) . Thi s French word was originally introduced by Krist eva and m et with imm ediate success; it has since been m uch u sed and abused on both sides of the A t lantic. The concept, however, has been general l y m isunderstood. It has nothing to do with m atters of i n fluence by one writer upon another, or with the sources of a lit erary work ; it does, on t he other hand, involve the com ponents of a tex tual system such as the n ovel, for instance. It is defined in La R evolu­ tion du langage poetique as the transposition of one or m ore systems of signs into another, accom panied by a new articulation of the enunciative and denota tive position. Any SIGNIFYING PRACTICE (q. v.) is a field (in the sense of space t rav ersed by lines of force) in which various signifying system s u ndergo such a transposition. INTERTEXTUALITY

(jouissance). The English word "jouissance" rests in dic­ tionaries , forg otten by all save a few Renaissance scholars. The OED

JOUIS SANCE

16

INTRODUCTION

att ests that it was still used by eighteenth-century poets-e.g . , William Dodd, i n a 1 767 poem . In Webster 2, one of t he words u sed to define "j ouissance" is "enjoym ent . " I ndeed, t he t w o words share a common etymology, and a few centuries ago both F rench and English cognates had similar denotations cov ering t he field of law and t he activity of sex . While the English term has lost m ost of its sexua l connotations, t he Fr ench o ne has kept all of i t s earlier m eanings. Krist eva gives "j ouissance" a m eaning closely related to that given the word by J acqu es Lacan, who discussed it in his 1 972-73 sem i nar, which, wh en publi shed i n , bore a phot ograph of Bernini's scu lpture, the Ecstasy of St. Teresa, on its cover. What is significant is the totality of enj oym ent t h a t is cov ered by t he word "j ouissance, " both i n common usage and i n Lacan; what distinguishes common usage fr om Lacan's u sage (and Kristeva's as well) is that i n the former t he several m eanings are kept separate and precipitat ed, so to sp eak , by t he context, whereas in t h e l atter t hey are simultaneous-"j oui ssance" is sexual, spiritual, physical, conceptual at one and t he sam e time. Lacan speaks of jouissance sexuelle and of jou issance phallique, but in each cas e "j ouissance" is both gram m atically and conceptually quali fied; and that sort of "j ouissance" "does not involve the O ther as such , " for it merely deals with t he OTHER (q . v.) and its (her/his) sexual attributes. The "j ouissance" of t he Other "is fostered only t h rough infinitude" (ne se prom eu t que de /'infinitude). In Krist eva' s vocabulary, sensual, sexual pleasure is covered by plaisir; "j ouissance" is t ot a l joy or ecstasy (without any m y stical connotation); also, t h rough t he working of t he sig­ n i fier, t hi s implies the pr esence of m eaning (jouissance j'oui"s sens I h eard m eaning), requiring it by going beyond it. =

=

MATERIALI S M (materialisme). A br ief rem inder: j u st about ev ery one k n ows that there are various fo rms of m at erialism, but wh en d ealing with Krist eva ' s essays (and even t hough she also deals with Greek m ateri­ alism) two of these should be kept in m in d . First, t here is dialectical materialism, t h a t of authentic M arxism ; second, there is m echanistic m at erialism , which is rel at ed t o determ inism, argu es fr om cause t o effect in linear, nonreversible fashion, and is som etimes called vulgar M arxism .

(negativite' ) . A Hegelian concept. "The dissim ilarity that obtains in consciou sness between t he ego and the substance constituting i t s object is their inner distinction, t he factor of negativity in general . . . i t i s t heir very soul, t h eir m oving spirit" (from t he Preface t o The Phenomenology of Mind). It needs t o be distinguished from both "nothNEGATIVITY

I N T R O D U CT I O N

17

ingness" and "negation"; it is concrete mediat ion of what it reveals as m ere stases-the pure abstractions of Being and nothingness; it can be seen as characterizing the very m otion of heterogeneous matter, an "affirm ative negativity , " a "productive dissolving . " Kristeva has rein­ t er preted such H egelian notions in La R evolu tion du langage poetique. OTHER (au tre, A u tre), The distinction between the capitalized and the n oncapitalized "oth er" is about the sam e in Kristeva as in Lacan . The "oth er" has eith er com monplace or philosophical m eaning (e. g . , what ex ists as an opposite of, or exclud ed by, som ething else) . When capitalized, t h e "Other" refers to a hypothetical place or space, that of the pure signifier, rat her than to a physical entity or m oral cate­ gory. Lacan: "The unconscious of the subject is t he discourse of th e oth er" versus "The Other is, therefore, the place in wh ich is constituted the I who s pea ks with him who hears ." This, however, does not apply to early essays such as "The Bou nded Text . " OTH ER,

(lieu ) . Th e word "place" has been p refe rred over the m ore mathematical "locus" (lieu geometrique), for it does not convey the lat­ ter's precise localizat ion. K risteva' s lieu is a h ypothetical place, even though constrained by actual forces or presences. PLACE

PROCESS (proces). Both the E nglish t erm and its F rench equivalent cover two areas of meaning. On the one hand, they convey the idea of a continued forward m otion possibly accom panied by transformations; on the other, t hey have a legal m eaning that has rem ained strong in F rench (proces: a legal suit or proceedi ngs), while in English surviving m ainly in a few phrases such as "due process" or "process serve r." Since, in Kris­ teva's text , the word is used with varying nuances, an attem pt has been made to render such nuances according to the context, either by using the word " process" alone or qualifying it with eit her or both "unsettling" and "qu esti onable"-especially when the subject is in "process." For the subj ect is "questionable" (in the l egal sense) as to its identity, and the process it undergoes is "unsettling" as to its place within t he sem iotic or sym bolic d isposition. S EMIOTIC, S EMIOTICS (sem iot ique). The French la nguage has had for centuries the possibility of shifting an abstract word's m eaning t o its concrete counterpart by m erely changing gend er. Thus la physiq ue, m eaning the science of physics, becom es le physiqu e, m eaning bodily or physical att ributes. In similar fashion, la semio tique is "semiotics , " the science of signs, a fashionable and som ewhat overworked term (what

18

I N T R O D U CT I O N

sem iotics is m ay be discovered in works such as U m berto Eco ' s A Theory of Sem iotics; Kristeva's concerns have sometimes l ed her t o prefer "sem analysis" t o "semiotics"-owing to t h e etym ology o f "analysis" : analyein, to dissolve; dissolving the sign, taking i t apart, opens u p new areas of signi fication); le semiotique refers to the actual organization, or disposit ion, within the body, of inst inctual drives (hence the "semiotic disposition") as t hey affect language and its practice, in dialectical conflict with le symbolique, i.e., the S YMBOLIC (q . v . ) . See also the introduct ion to this volu m e.

(signifiance). " M eaning" corresponds t o sens and "significa­ tion" to sign ification; "significance" thus b eing avail able for signifiance, it m ight seem unnecessary to resurrect the obsolete "signifiance, " espe­ cially since "signi ficance" carries the connotation of covert rather than ostensible m eaning ("The Rubicon . . . was a very insignificant stream t o l o o k a t ; i t s significance lay entirely in certain invisible conditions"­ George Eliot, as quoted in Webster 2). "Sign ifiance, " nevertheless, has been retained, partly to avoid other connotations of "significance," partly because of its very obsoleteness. Signijiance, as Kristeva u ses this term, refers t o operat ions t h at are both fluid a nd archaic-with t h e latter word restricted to its Freudian sense (See Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Lecture 1 3 ) . It refers t o t h e work performed in language (through the het erogeneous articu lation of semiotic and symb olic disposi­ tions) t h a t enables a t ext t o signify what representat ive and com m u nica­ tive speech does not say. S I GNIF IANCE

S IGNIF YING PRACTICE (pra tique signifiante). "I shall call signifying practice the est ablishm ent and the counterva iling of a sign system . Establishing a sign syst em calls fo r the identity of a speaking subject within a social framework, which h e recognizes as a b asis for that identity. Countervailing t h e sign system is done by having t h e subj ec t un dergo an un sett ling, questionable process; t h i s indirectly challenges t h e social framework with which he h a d previously identified, and i t thus coincides w i t h t i m e s of abrupt changes, renewal, or revolut ion in societ y ." (Julia Kristeva, i n La Traversee des signes . ) S PLIT (clive'). Cliver is u sed m ostly i n m i nera logy, and it m eans t o split m ica, for instance, into th in leaves-or a diamond according t o its cleavage planes; in eit h er case the division is inherent and natural. All this i s important for the m etaphorical m eaning it has in Kristeva's work where clive is applied m os t ly (but not exclusively) to the S U BJECT (q . v.). "Split" is t herefore, in theory at least, not the m ost appropriate render-

I NT R O D U C T I O N

19

ing of that term ; it has been adopted, nevertheless, because of widespread psychoanalytic usage (the G erman Spa/tung translates both "cleavage" and "splitting" ) . Primal repression, in founding the subject, also effects its first "splitting" into t he conscious and the unconscious, and i t institutes the signifier /signified distinction. Both, in Kristeva's theory, are overridden by the dialectical opposition between the S EM I OTIC and the S Y MBOLIC (qq . v. ) . S Y MBOLICS (sym bolique). See general rem arks under For Kristeva, le sym bolique ("the sym bolic") is a domain of position a n d judgment. Genetically speaking, it comes into being l ater tha n the semiotic, at the time of the m irror stage; it involves the thetic phase, the identi fication o f subj ect and its distinction fr om objects, and the establishment of a sign system . Synchronically speaking, it is always present , even in the sem iotic disposition, which cannot exist without const antly challenging th e symbolic one. S Y MBOLIC, S EMIOTIC.

S UBJECT (sujet). H ere, •.h i s word i s constantly u sed with the meaning it has in psychoanalysis, linguistics, and philosophy, i . e., the thinking, speaking, acting, doing, or writing ag ent . It is nev er used to suggest the topic or t hem e of a work . TEX T,

GENOTEX T,

PHENOTEX T

(tex te, genotexte, phenotexte). See the

I n troduction to this volum e. UNARY S UBJECT (sujet unaire) . The "un ary subj ect" is closely related t o traditional concepts of consciousness, where the sel f is seen as a homo­ geneous, consi s tent whole. I t is the subject implicitly posit ed by sci ence, societ y, and m ost political t heory and pract ice. Marx still accepted that notion of t he subject, which he inherited fr om Feuerbach. The phrase, however, was introduced by Kristeva in the wake of Freud's theory of the unconscious and Lacan's elaboration of the sam e. The "unary subj ect" is thus not an ou tdated notion, but it is seen as a mo m entary st asis or dam­ m i ng up of instinctual drives and the transverbal process; the concept is opposed to t hose o ( "split subj ect" and "subject in process. "

(ecriture). This word must u n fortunately convey two dist inct meanings as it corresponds both to ecrit and to ecriture (in the recent, stronger sense of the latter term ). The situat ion is somewhat confusing in French, but worse in English. Ecriture is what produces "poetic lan­ guage" or "text" (in the strong sense of that word; see the prefatory statement to this glossary). One could possibly use the word "scription" to convey t he sense of contem porary ecriture. But other t ranslators seem W RITING

20

INTR ODUCTI O N

to have stood by the word "writing , " we h ave here enough unusual voca­ bulary as it is, and "writing , " in t h a t special sense, is used m ainly in the essay on Barth es. Wherever it is used, the context should make the m ean­ ing clear. Edm u nd Wilson once complained that the novels of J.Q.b.n Steinbeck were not "written" : he cam e close to using that verb wit h the meaning described here. Leon S. R oudiez

Notes I. 2.

3.

A rm ando Yerdiglione, ed . , Psychanalyse et politique ( Paris: Seu i l , 1 974), p . 73. Ro land Barthes, " L' E t rangere," Q u inzaine L itteraire, M ay 1- l S, 1 970, pp. 1 9-20. J ean-Paul E n thoven, I nterv iewer. " J u l i a K risteva: a quoi servent les i ntellectuels?"

Le Nou vel Observateur, J u n e 20, 1 977, p . 99. 4. Jean P i aget, Structuralism ( N ew Y o r k : B a sic B o o k s , 1 970), p. 3 . S . Ibid., p . 1 37. 6. For further details concer ning Sollers and Tel Q u e/ see the two l a s t chapters o f Leon S. R o ud iez, French Fiction Today ( N ew B r u n swick: R u tgers U niversi t y Press, 1 972) and a subsequent article, "Twelve P o i n t s from Tel Quel," L'Esprit Createur, (Winter 1 974),

1 4(4):29 1 -303 . 7. J ul i a K r isteva, !,71µuwnx�/ Recherches pour u n e semana/yse ( Paris: Seu il 1 969), p. 1 9. 8 . C f. J ean Starobi n s k i , Les Mots sous /es mots ( Paris: G allimard, 1 97 1 ). 9. J acques Lacan, Ecrits/A Selection (New Yor k : Norton, 1 977), p. I SS. 1 0. Essays b y B ri k a n d Shklo vski are included in Tzvetan Todorov, ed. , Theorie d e la litterature ( Paris: Seuil, I 96S); phrases quoted are on p p . 1 S 1 and 1 84. 1 1 . Plato, Tim aeus, S I . I used t h e J owett t ranslat i o n . 1 2. K r isteva, Des chinoises ( Paris: Editions des Femmes, 1 974), pp. 1 3-14. My translat i o n.

1 3. 14. 1 S. 17. 1 8. 1 9.

Let ter to Le Monde, Oct. 22, 1 976, p. E n t ho ven, " J u lia Kristeva," p . 1 30.

3.

Qu oted in H a n Suyin, The Morning Deluge ( Boston: Little, Brown, 1 972), p. SS. E n t h o v en, "J u l i a Kristev a," pp. 1 06 a n d 1 08. B a rthes, " L ' E trangere, p. 1 9. See, for instance, the Fall 1 974 issue o f Diacritics, which also i ncl udes a n excellent essay by P hilip E . Lewis on K ri s tev a, entitled " R evolu tionary Sem iotics."

TH E

ESSAYS

N ote A l l t ransla tions a r e published here for the fi rst ti me, w i t h t h e two fo llowing except ions: ( I ) a port ion o f t h e essay "The Novel a s Polylogu e" w a s t ranslated b y C a r l R . Lovitt a n d A n n R e i l l y a nd published a s "Polylogu e " in Conremporary Lizerazure (Su mmer 1 978), 1 9( 3 ) : 3 3 6- 5 0 ( t he present t r a ns la t ion was done i ndependently); and (2) An earlier version of " P l ace N ames." appeared in Ocr ober ( Fall 1 9 7 8), 6:93-1 1 1 .

1.

T H E ETHICS OF LING U I ST I C S

Sh ould a linguist, t oday, ever happen t o pause a n d qu ery t h e ethics of his own discou rse, he m ight w ell respond by doing som ething else, e.g., engaging i n political activity; or else, he m ight accomm odate ethics to the ingenuousness of his g o od conscience--seeking socio-historical m otives for the ca teg ories and rela t ions inv olved in his m odel. One cou ld thus acc ou n t for th e Janus-like behavior of a prominent m odern gram marian; in his linguistic theories he s ets fo rth a logical, n ormative basis for the speaking subj ect, while in politics he claim s t o be an anarchi s t . Th en there are sch olars, quite num erous but not so well kn own, who squ eeze into m odern linguistic theory a few additional considerations on t he role of id eology; or who go no fu rther than to lift t heir examples out of leftist newspapers when illustrating linguistic propositi ons. N ow, since t he end of the nineteenth century, there have been intellectual, political, and, generally sp eaking, social ventures t hat h ave signaled the out break of something quite new within Western society and d iscourse, which is subsum ed in the nam es of M arx, Nietzsch e, and Freud, and their prim ary g oal has been to refo rmulate an ethics. Ethics used to be a co ercive, custom ary m anner of ensuring t he cohesiveness of a particular group through th e repetition of a code-a more or less accepted apologue. Now, h owever, the issue of ethics cr ops up wh erev er a code (m ores, socia l con tract) must be shattered in order to giv e way to the free play of negativity, need, desire, pleasure, and j ouissance, b efo re being put t ogether again, although tem p orarily and with full k nowledg e of what i s involved. Fascism and Stalinism stand fo r t he barriers that the new adjustment between a law and its transgression com es against. F i r s t publish ed in Critique 3 2 2 ( M arch, 1 9 74), v o l . X X X ; reprinted i n Polylogu e ( Paris: Seuil, 1 9 77).

24

T H E ET HICS

OF

L I N GUI STI C S

Meanwhile, linguistics is still bathed in the aura o f systematics that prevailed at the time of its inception. I t is discovering the rules governing the coherence of o u r fundamental social code: language, either system of signs or strategy for the transfo rmation of logical sequences. The ethical foundations for this belong to t h e past: in their work, contemporary lin­ guists think like seventeenth century men, while structuralist logic can be m ade t o work only with primitive societies or their surviving elements. As wardens of repression and rationa lizers of the social cont ract in its m ost solid substratum (discourse), linguists carry the Stoic tradition to its conclusion . The epistem ology u nderlying linguist ics and the ensuing cognitive processes (structuralism , for examp le), even though constituting a bulwark ag ainst irrational destruction and sociologizing dogm at ism , seem helplessly anachronistic when faced with the contem porary m uta­ tions of subj ect and society. Even though "formalism " m ight have been right, cont rary to Zhdanov, neither can think the rhythm of M ayakovsky through t o his suicide or Khlebnikov's glossolalias t o his disintegra­ tion-with the young Soviet state as backdrop. For, as soon as l i nguistics was est ablished as a science (through Saussure, for all intents and purposes) its field of study was thus hemmed in [su turel ; the problem o f tru th i n l inguistic discour se b ecame dissociated from any notion of the speaking subject . D et er mining truth was reduced to a seek ing out of the obj ect-utterance's internal coherence, which was predeterm ined by the coherence of the particu lar m etalin­ guistic theory within which the search was conducted . Any attem pt at reinserting the "speaking subj ect , " whet her under the guise of a Cartesian subj ect or any other subject of enunciation m ore or less akin t o t h e transcendental ego ( a s linguists m a k e u s e of it), resolves nothing a s long as that subj ect i s n o t posited a s t h e place, n ot only of structure and its regulated transform at ion, but especially, of its loss, its outlay. I t follows that form ulat ing the problem of linguistic ethics m eans, above all, compelling l i nguistics to change its object of study. The speech practice that should be its object is one in which signified structure (sign, syntax, sig nification) is defined within bou ndaries that can be shift ed by the advent of a semiotic rhythm that no system of lingu istic com m u n ica­ tion has yet been able to assimilate. It would deflect linguistics t oward a consideration of language as articulation of a heterogeneous process, with the speaking subj ect leaving its im print on the dialectic between the

THE

E T l-l l C S

OF

LINGUISTICS

25

articulation and its process. In short, this would establish poetic language as the obj ect of linguistics' attention in its pursuit of truth in langu age. This does not necessarily m ean, as is often said today, that poetic lan­ guage is su bject to more con straints than "ordinary langu age. " It does mean that we must analyze those elements of the complex operat ion that I shall call po etic language (in which the dialectics of the subject is inscrib ed) that are screen ed out by ordinary langu age, i . e. , social constraint . I shall then be talking about something other than lan­ gu age-a pract ice for which any particular language is the margin. The term "poetry" has meaning only insofa r as it m akes this k ind of studies acceptable to various educational and cultural i nstitutions. But t h e stakes it entails are t otally different; what is im plied is that language, and thus sociability, are defin ed by bou ndaries itting of upheaval, disso lution , a n d transform ation. Situating o u r discourse near such boundari es m ight enable us to endow it with a current ethical impact. In short, the et hics of a linguistic discourse may be gauged in proportion to t he poetry that it presupposes . A m ost eminent modern li nguist believed that, i n the last hundred years, t here had been only two significant linguists in : M al larme and Artau d . As to Heidegger, he retains currency, in spite of everything, becau se of his attentiveness to language and "poetic langu age" as an opening up of beings; as an openn ess that is checked but nonethel ess occurs; as a struggle between world and eart h; artistic creations are all conceiv ed in t he im age of p oetic language where t he " Being" of "beings" is fulfilled and on which, as a consequence, " History" is grounded . I f modern art, which i s post-H egelian, sou nds a rhythm i n language capable of stymieing any subjugated work or logic, this discredits only that closure i n Heidegger's reflections that system atizes Being, beings and their hist orial veracity. But such discredit does not j eopardize poetry's logical stake, inasmuch as p oetry is a practice o f t he speaking su bj ect, consequently im plying a dialectic between limits, both signified and signi­ fying, and t he setting of a pre- and trans-logical rhythm solely within this limit . Simi larly, m odern art's odyssey nevert heless rem ains t he field where the possibility of Hist ory and dia lectic st ruggl e can be played out (before t hese becom e a particular history and a concrete struggle), since this artistic practice is the laboratory of a minimal signifying structure, its maximum dissolution, and the eternal return of both.

26

THE

E Hll C S

OF

LIN G U ISTICS

One might subm it that Freud' s discovery of the unconsci ous provided the necessary conditions for such a reading of poetic language. This would be true for t he history of though t, but not for the history of poetic practice. Freud himself considered writers as his predecessors. Avant­ garde m ovements of the twentieth cent ury, m ore or less u n aware of Freud's discovery, propounded a practice, a n d sometimes ev en a knowledg e of langu age and its subj ect, t h at kept pace with, when they did not precede, Freudian breakthroughs. Thus, it was entirely possible to remain alert t o this avant-garde laboratory, t o perceive its experim ents in a way that could be qualified only as a "love" relat ionship-and t herefore, while bying Freud, to perceive the high stakes of any lan­ guage as always-already p oetic. Such, I believe, was the path taken by Roman Jakobson. I t should n o t b e surprising, th en, that it is his dis­ course and his conception o f linguistics, and those of no other linguist , that could contribute to t he t heory o f t he u nconscious-allowing us to see it being m ade and unmade-poiein [11"01eiv ]-like t he language of any subject. There is no denying J a k obson' s contributions t oward establishing phonology and structural linguistics in gen eral, t oward Slavic studies and research into language acqu isition, and t oward epistem ology and t he his­ t ory of linguistic discourse in its relati onship to contem porary or past philosophy and society: But beyond these contributions lies forem os t t h e heed given b y J ak obson t o poetic language; this constitut es t h e u nique­ ness o f his research, providing its ethical dim ension, while at t he sam e t ime maintaining t he op enn ess o f present-day linguistic discourse, point­ ing out, for example, t hose blockings that cause it t o have problems with semantics. Consequently, by virtue o f its equally historical and poetic concern, J ak ob son' s linguistics appears to bracket the technical nature of some contem porary t endencies (such as generative gram mar), and to leap from t h e beginning of our century, when linguistics was not y et hem m ed in, to the cont emporary period when it must open u p in order to have som ething to say about t he speaking subj ect. Precu rsor and predecessor, J a k obson nevertheless also accepted the t ask of providing a concrete and rigorous description, thereby m aintaining science's lim itative require­ m ents; in t h i s way, he defined the origin and t he end of t he linguistic episteme, which in recent y ears has t aken upon itself to oversee all think -

THE

E T H I CS

OF

LI N G U I ST I C S

27

ing, although, in fa c t , it is m erely a symptom o f the drama experienced by the Western subject as it attempts to master and structure n o t only the logos but also its pre- and t rans-logical breakouts. Irony, alone, piercing through the linguist's metalanguage, is the t i m id witness t o this dram a. There is, however, an other, m odestly filed away am ong the "obj ects" of research, as i f t o safeguard the sovereignt y o f the scholar­ warden, standing watch over the structures of com munication and sociality; th ere is an other besid es the irony of the learned m an; th ere is the poem, in the sense that it is rhythm , dea th, and fu ture. The li nguist proj ects h imself into it, identifies with it, and in the end, extracts a few concepts necessary for building a new m odel of l anguage . But he also and fo rem ost com es away suspecting that the signifying process is not lim ited to the la ngu age system, but that there are also sp eech , discourse, and, within them, a causality other than linguistic: a het erogeneous, destruc­ tive causality. I t is quite an experi ence t o listen t o Harvard U n iversity's recording of Roman Jak obson ' s 1967 lecture, " Russian Poetry of my Gen era­ tion"-he gave a reading of M ayakovsky and Khlebnikov, imitating their voices, with the lively, rhyt hmic accents, t hrust out t h roat and fu lly militant t one of the first; and the softly whispered words, sustained swish­ ing and whistling sounds, vocal izations of the disintegrating voyage t oward the mot her constituted by t he "trans-m ental" ("zaum ") language of the second. To understand the real conditions needed for producing scien t i fic m odels, one should listen t o the story of t heir youth , of the aesth etic and always political batt les of Russian society on the eve of the Revolution and during the first years of victory, of the fr iendships and sensitivities t h a t coalesced into lives and life projects. From all t h is, one m ay perceive what initiates a science, what it st ops, what decept ively ciph ers its m odel s. No lo nger will it be possible to read any trea tise on phonology wit hout deciphering within every phoneme the statement, " H ere lies a poet . " The linguistics professor doesn't know this, and that is another problem , allowing him blithely to put forward his m odels, never to invent any new notion of language, and to pres erve the sterility of theory. I shall not , then, sum m a rize the linguistic models, much l ess the tools o f poetic analysis, proposed by Jak obson. I shall only review a few

28

THE

E T H I C S OF L I N G U ISTI C S

themes, or mythemes, inherent in his listening to fu turist poetry, insofar as they are hidden recesses-silent causality and ethics-of the linguistic process.

THE

S T R U G G LE

B E TW E E N

POET

AND

SUN

Two tendencies seem to dominate M ayakovsky's poetic craft : rhythmic rapture a n d the simultaneous affirmation of t he "ego . " Rhyt h m : " I w a l k along, waving my arms a n d m u m bling alm ost word­ lessly, n ow shortening m y steps so as not to i nterrupt m y mumb ling, now m u m bling m ore rapidly in t ime with m y steps. So the rhythm is t rim med and t akes shape-and rhyt h m is the basis of any poetic work, res ou nding through the whole thing. Gradually i ndividual words begi n to ease themselves fr ee of this dull roar . . . . When the fu ndam entals are already t here, o ne has a sudden sensation that the rhythm is strained: there's som e little syllable or sound m issing. Y ou begin to shape all the words anew, and the work drives you to dist raction. I t ' s like having a toot h crown ed . A hundred times ( o r so i t seems) t he dentist t ries a crown o n the tooth, and it's the wrong size; b u t at last, a fter a hundred attempts, h e p resses one down, and it fits. T h e analogy is all the m ore apposite in m y case, because when at l ast the crown fits, I (quite l i terally) h a ve tears i n my eyes, from pain and rel ief. Where this basic dull roar of a rhythm com es from i s a mystery. I n m y case, it's all k i nds of repetitions in my mind of noises , rocking m otions or in fact, of any phenom enon with which I can associate a sound. T h e sound of t he sea , endlessly repea ted, can provide m y rhythm, or a servant who slam s the door ev ery morning, recurring and int ertwining with itself, trailing t hrough my consciousness; or even the rotation of the earth, which in my case, as in a shop full o f v isual aids, gives way t o , a n d inext ricably connects w i t h , the whistle of a high wind . " 1 On the one hand, t hen, w e have this rhyt hm; this repetitiv e sonority; this thrusting t ooth pushing upwards before being capped with the crown o f l anguage; this struggle between word and forc e gushing with t he pain and relief of a desperate d elirium; the repetition o f this growth, o f this gushing fo rth around the crown-word, like t he earth com pleting its revo­ lution around t he sun.

THE

ETHICS

OF

29

L I N G U I STI C S

On the other hand, we have the "ego, " situated within the space o f lan­ guage, crown, system : no longer rhy �hm, but sign, word, structure, contract, constraint; an "ego" decla ring itsel f poetry' s sole interest (cf. the poem " I Am A lone"), and comparing it sel f to N apoleon (" Napoleon and I": "Today, I am N apoleon / I am the chief of armies and m ore. / Com­ pare / him and m e ! " ) . Trotsky called this erection of the poetic "I" a " M ayakom orphism , " which h e opposed to anthropom orphism (one can think of other word associations on the b asis of mayak "beacon" ) . Once the rhythm has been centered in t h e fixed position o f an all powerful "ego", the poetic " I " thrusts a t the sun-a paternal im age that is covet ed but also feared, m u rderous, and sentenced t o die, a legislative seat which m u st be usurped . Thu s: " one more m inute / and you will m e et / the m onarch of the skies / if I want, I ' l l kill him for you, the sun ! " ( " N apol eon and I " ) ; "Sun ! / M y fath er ! / Won't you m el t and stop torturing me! / M y blood spilled by you runs along the road" ("A F ew Words about M yself'). I could giv e m any references, evoke L autream ont, Bataille, Cyrano, o r Schreber; t h e struggle between poet and sun, which J a k obson brought out, runs through such text s . We should und erstand it as a summary leading from t he poet ' s condition to poetic formulation. Sun: agency of languag e since it is the "crown" of rhythmic t hrust, lim iting structure, paternal law abrading rhyth m , destroying it to a large degree, but also bringing it t o light, out of its earthy revolutions, to enunciate itself. In­ asmuch as the " I " is poetic, inasmuch as it wants to enunciate rhythm, t o socialize i t , t o channel i t i nt o linguistic structure i f only to break the structure, t his " I " i s bound t o the sun. It is a part of this ag ency because it m ust m aster rhyth m , it is threatened by it because solar mast ery cuts off rhythm . Thus, there is no choice but to struggle eternally agai nst the sun; t he " I " is successively the sun and its opponent, language and its rhyth m , never one without the oth er, and poetic formu lation will continue as long as the struggle d oes. The essential point t o note is that there would be no struggle but for the sun's agency. Without it, rhythm incapable of formu lation, w ou ld flow forth, grow l ing, and in the end would dig itself in. Only by vyin g with the ag ency of limit i ng and structuring language does rhythm b ecom e a contestant-form ulating and transforming. K h lebnikov evok es another aspect of this solar contest; a m oth er, com=

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ing t o the aid of her children in their fight against the su n. " T he otter's children" are squ ared off against th ree suns, one white, one purple, the other dark green. In "The G od of the Virgins," the protagonist is "the daughter of the sun prince." The poem "Ka" calls forth the "hairy­ armed sun of Egypt . " All of Khlebnikov's pagan mythology is underlain with a contest against the sun ed by a fe m i nine figure, all-power­ ful m other or forbidd en virgin, gathering into one representation and thus substantifying all that which, with M ayakovsky, hammered in sonorous t h rusts within and against the system of language-that is, rhythm . Here, pagan mythology is probably nothing m ore than rhythm becom e substant ive: this other of the linguistic and/ or social contract, this ulti­ m ate and prim ordial l eash h olding the body close t o the m other before it can becom e a social speak ing subject. In any case, what in Khlebnikov Tynanov called "infa ntilism" or "the poet's pagan attitude regarding words" 2 is essentially m a ni fest in the glossolalias unique t o Kh leb nikov . H e invent ed words b y onomat opoeia, w i t h a great deal of allit eration, demanding of him an acute awareness of t he articu latory base and instinctual charge of that articulation. This ent ire strategy b roke u p the lexicon of the Russian la nguage, drawing it closer to childhood s ol iloquy. But above all, it t h read ed through m et a phor and metonymy a network of m eaning supplem entary t o the normative sign i fying line, a network of phon em es or phonic grou ps charged with instinctual drives and meaning, constituting what for the author was a num erical code, a ciphering, underlying the verbal signs: for exam ple, " Veterpenie / k ogo i o chem ? / net erpenie-mecha stat' mjachom" (Wind-song / o f whom and for what? / I m patience / of the sword t o become a bullet ) . J akobson not es the phonic displacem ent m ech-mjach (sword-bullet) dom inating several lines of K hlebn ikov ' s poetry, wh ere one notices also a tend ency toward infa ntile regression and/ or toward lessening of tension on the level of pronunciation as well as on the more general level of sexualized sem antic areas . ) The vocalization o f language thus becomes a way of deflecting t h e censorship that, for rhythm , is constituted by the structu ring agency. H av ing becom e "trans-mental" Khlebnik ov' s instinctual, ci phered language proj ects i t sel f as prophetic and seeks for hom ologues within this tradition: for exam ple, "Through Zarathustra's golden m outh let us swear / Persia shall becom e a Soviet country, thus has the prophet spoken" .3

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D E ATH

"But h ow do we speak about t h e poetry of M ayakovsk y, now that what prevails is not rhythm but the poet ' s death . . . ?" asks Jak obson in "The Genera ti on That Wasted Its Poets. " 4 We tend to read this article as if it were exclusively an indict m ent of a society fou nded on t h e mu rder of its poet s . This is probably t rue; when t he article first appeared in 193 1 , even psychoanalysts were not all convi n ced that "society was now based on com plicity in the common crim e," as Freud had written in Totem and Taboo . 5 On the basis of h i s work on M ayakovsky, J ak obson suggested that the crime was m ore concretely the murder of poetic language. By "society," he probably meant m ore than just Russian or Soviet society; there are frequent and m ore general allusions to the "stability of the un­ changing presen t," to "life, hardened a long narrow and rigid m odels," and to "daily existence. " Consequently we have this Platonistic ackn owledgm ent on the eve of Stalinism and fascism : a (any) society may be stabilized only if it excludes poetic language. On the other hand, but s imultaneously, poetic language alone carries on the strugg le against such a death, and so harries, exorcises, and invokes it. J ak obson is fascinated by murder and suicide as t hemes with poets of his generation as well as of all t i m e. The question is unavoidable: if we are not on the side of those w h om society wastes in order to reproduce itself, where are we? M urder, death, and unchanging society represent precisely the i nability to hear and understand the signifier as such -as ciphering, as rhyt h m , as a presence that precedes the signification of object or em otion. The poet is put to death because he wants to turn rhythm into a dominant element; because h e wants to make la ngu age perceive what it doesn't want to say, provide it with its matter independently of the sign, and fr ee it from denotation. For it is this em inently parodic gest ure that changes the system . The word is experienced as word and n ot as a simple substitute for a named object nor as the ex plosion of emotion[ . . . ] beside t he immediate consciousness of the identity existing bet ween the object and its sign (A is A), the immedia t e conscious· ness of t he absence of this identity (A is not A) is necessary; t his ant i nomy is in evit able, for, wit hout cont r a dict ion, t here is n o i n terplay of concepts, no inter· play of signs, the relat ionsh i p between t he conce pt and t he sign becomes auto­ matic, the progress o f events c omes to a h alt, and all consciousness of reality dies

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[ . . . ) Poetry pro tects us from this autom atizati on, from the rust that t h reatens ou r formulation o f l ove, hate, revolt and reconcil iation, faith and negation.6

Today, the a nalyst boasts o f his ability to hear " pure signifiers. " Can he h ear them in what is k n own as "private life"? There is good reason to believe that th ese "wasted poets" are a lone in m eeting the challenge. Whoever understands t hem cannot " practice linguistics" without ing t hrough whole geographic and discursive continen t s as an i m pertinent traveler, a " faun in the h ouse" [faune au /ogis phonologie-Ed . ] . =

THE

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F U TU R E

According t o Jakobson, M ayakovsky w a s in terested in resur rect ion. It is easy, at t ha t , t o see t h a t h i s poems, like t h ose of Khlebnikov and other futurists, take up the t hem e of M essianic resurrection, a privileged one in R ussian M edieval poet ry. Such a t heme is a very obvious and direct descendant of the cont est against t h e sun m yt h that I mention ed earlier. The son assumes from his sun-father t he task of com p leting t he "self' and "rhythm" d ialect ic within the poem. But the i rruption of semiotic rhythm within t he sign i fying system of language will never be a Hegelian A ujhebung, that is, it will not truly b e exp erienced in the present. The rigid, i m perious, immediat e prese nt kills, put s a sid e, and fritters away t he poem. Thus, the irruption within t he order of la nguage of t he ante­ riority of language evok es a lat er t im e, that is, a fo rever. The poem ' s time fram e i s som e " fu ture anterior" t h a t will never t a k e plac e, never come about as such, but only as an uph eaval of present place and mean­ ing. Now, by thus sus pending t he present m om ent, by straddling rhythm ic, m eaningless, a n terior m emory with meaning intended for later or forever, poetic languag e struct ures itself a s t he very nucleu s of a m onumental hist oricity. Futurism succeeded in making this poetic law ex plicit solely because it extended further t h an anyone else t he signifier's autonomy, rest ored i t s i nstinctual value, and aimed at a "trans-mental languag e." Consequently attuned to a scene preceding the logical system aticity o f communication, Futurism m anaged to do so without withdrawing from its own historical period; instead, i t paid st rong atten­ tion to t he explosion of the October R evolu t i on . It heard and understood t he R evolu tion only because its presen t was dependent on a futu re.

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M ayakovsky and Khlebn ik ov's pro-Soviet propos'a ls and leaps into mythology cam e from a nonexistent p lace in the future. Anteriority and fu ture together to open that historical axis in relation to which concrete history will always b e wrong: murderous, limiting, subj ect to regional im peratives (econom ic, t actical, political, familial. . . ) . Although, con fronted with such regional necessities, poetic language's future ant erior i s an im possible, "aristocratic" and "elitist" dem and, it is noneth eless the only sign ifying strategy allowing the speaking animal to shi ft the limits o f its enclosur e. In " A s for the Self, " Khlebnikov writ es: Short pi eces are important when t hey serve as a b reak i n t o t he future, like a shooting star, l eaving behind a t rail of fire. They should move rapidly enough so that they p i erce the prese nt . While we wait, we can not yet defi ne the reason for this speech . But we k n ow the pi ece is good when, in its role as a piece of t he fut ure, it set s the presen t ablaze. [ . . . ] t he homeland of creat ion is the fu t ure. The wi n d of the gods of t he word blows from that di rection.7

Poetic discourse m easures rhyth m against t h e m eaning o f la nguage structure and is thus always eluded by m eaning in t he present while con­ t inually postponing it to an i m possible t i m e-to-come. Conseq uently, it is assuredly t he m os t appropriate historical discou rse, i f and only if we attribut e t o this word its new resonance; i t is neither flight in the face of a supposed metaphysics of the notion of "history," nor mechanistic enclosure o f this notion within a proj ect oblivious t o the violence of t h e social cont ract and evolut ion's being, above a l l , a refinem ent of the various forms of dissipating t he tension we have been calling "poetic lan­ guage." It should com e as no surprise t h a t a m ovem ent such a s t he Oct ober Revolution, striving to rem ain ant i feu dal and antibourgeois, should call forth the sam e mythemes t h at dom inated feudalism and were suppressed by the bourgeoisie, in order to ex ploit solely their dynamics producing exchange value. Bey ond t hese m yt hem es, h owever, futurism st ressed equally its participation in t h e anamnesis of a culture as well as a basic feature of West ern discourse. " Y ou have t o bring the poem to the highest pitch of expressiven ess" ( M ayakovsky, " H ow are Verses M ade"). At that point t he code becomes receptive to t he rhythmic body and it forms, in opposition to present m eaning, another m eaning, but a futu re, impossible m eaning. The i m portant element of this " fut ure anterior" of

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language is "the word perceived as word , " a phenomenon in turn induced by the contest between rhythm and sign system . M ayak ovsk y's suicide, Khlebn i k ov ' s d isinteg ration, and Artaud' s inca rceration prove that this contest can be prevented . D oes this m ean there is no future (no h ist ory) fo r this discourse, wh ich found its own "a nteriority" within the " poetic" experi ence o f the twentieth century? Linguistic ethics, as it can be und erstood th rough J ak obson's pract ice, consists in foll owing the resu rgence of an " I " coming back to rebuild an ephem eral structure in which the constituting st ruggle of language and soci ety would be spelled out . Can contem porary linguistics hear this concept ion o f langu age o f which Jak obson ' s work i s the m aj or t oken? The currently dominant cou rse, generative gram m ar, su rely rests on m a ny of J ak obson's approaches, notably phonological, in the study of the linguistic system . Nonetheless, it is hard t o see how notions of elision, m etaphor, met onymy, and parall elism (cf. his study on biblical and Chinese verse) could fit into the g enerative apparatus, includ ing gen era­ tive semantics, except perhaps under the rubric of "addit i onal rul es," necessitating a cut o ff point in the s pecific generation of a la nguage. But the dramatic notion of language as a risky practice, allowing the speak ­ ing animal to sense the rhythm o f the body as well as the u pheavals of history, seems tied t o a n o t i o n o f sign ifying proc ess t h a t contem porary t heories do not confron t . J a kobson's linguistic ethics th erefo re u n m is­ takably dem ands fi rst a h is torical epis temology of linguistics (one won­ ders which Eastern or Western th eories linked with what ideol ogical corpus of Antiquity, t he Middle A ges, or the Renaissance were able t o formulate the problematic o f language a s a place o f st ructure a s well a s o f i t s bodily, subjective, a n d social outlay). Secondly, i t demands a sem iology, understood as m oving beyond sim ple linguistic stud ies toward a typology of signifying system s com posed of semiotic ma terials and va ried social functions. Such an affirm ation of Saussurian sem iological exig encies in a period dom inated by generative gram mar is far from archaistic; rather, it is integrated into a t radit ion where linguistics is inseparable from concepts of subject and society . A s it epitom izes the experi ences of language and linguistics of our entire European century, it allows u s to fo resee what the discou r se on the signi fying process might be in times to come.

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Notes I . V l a d i m i r M ayako vsky, H o w A re Verses Made? G . M . Hyde, t r a n s . ( L ondon: J . Cape, 1 970), pp. 3 6 - 3 7 . T h e o t h e r M ayak ovsky quotations a re from Electric Iron , J ack H irsch man and Victor Erlich, trans (Berkeley: M aya, 1 9 7 1 ), p. 46. 2. From the preface of Velimir K hlebnikov, Sobranie Sochinenij ( M oscow, 1 927- 1 93 3). 3. Velimir K h l ebnikov, Oeu vres, L . Schnitzer, trans. (Paris: Oswald, 1 967). 4. I n Tzvetan Todorov. ed . . Questions depoetique, (Paris: Seu i l , 1 97 3 ) . F i rst appeared as "O pokolenii rastrativshem svo i k h poetov," i n Smert' V1adimira Majako vskoga ( Berlin, 1 9 3 1 ), pp. 7-4 5 . This essay w i l l appear i n English translation i n a fut ure v ol u m e of J a kobson's Selected Writings, published by Mouton in The H ague. 5 . Totem and Taboo i n The Standard Edition of the Complete Works ofSigm und Freud ( London: H ogarth & The Institute of Psych o-Analysis, 1 9 53), 1 3 : 146. 6. 7.

"Qu'est-ce q u e l a poesie, " i n Questions d e poetique, pp. 1 24-2 5 . K h lebnikov, Oeu vres.

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U TTE R A N C E A S ID E O LO G E M E

l. Rather t h a n a discourse, contem porary sem iotics takes as its object several semiotic practices which it considers as translinguistic; that is, they o perate through and across language, w hile remaining irredu cible to its categories as t h ey are presently assigned. In this perspective, he text is defined as a trans-linguistic apparatus that redistributes the order o f langu age by relating com mun icative speech, which aims to i n form directly, to different kinds of anterior or synchronic utterances;i !��t_j§._ t��!_eX�!�_ li productfvity, and this means: first, t h at its relationship to the language in which it is situated . is· redist ributive (destrucjjye � constructive), and hence can be b etter · approached th rough l ogical categories rather than linguistic ones; and ·second, that it is a permutation of t exts, an intertextuality: i n the space of a given text, severa) utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neu­ tra lize one another. 2 . One of t he problem s for semiotics is to replace the fo rmer, rhe­ t orical division o f genres with a typology of texts; that is, to defi ne the specificity of d i fferent t extual arrangements by placing t hem within the general t ext (cultu re) o f which they are part and which is in turn, part of them . 1 The ideologeme i s the intersection o f a given textual arrangement (a s em iotic practice) with the utterances (sequences) that it either assimi­ lates into its own space or to which it refers in the space of exteri or texts (sem iotic practices). The ideologeme is that intertextual function read as "m aterialized" at the different structural levels of each t ex t , and which stretches along the entire length of its traj ectory, giving it its historical and s ocial coordinates. This is not an interpretative step coming after

0

__

·

F i r s t pu blished in �71µ E iwTiX. � ( Paris: S e u i l , 1 969), p p . 1 1 3-42.

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analysis in order to explain "as ideological" what was first "perceived" as "linguistic." The concept of text as ideologem e determ ines the very procedure of a sem iotics that, by studying the text as intertextuality, considers it as such within (the text o f) society and history. The ideologeme of a text is t he fo cus where knowing rationality grasps the transformation of ut terances (to which the text is irreducible) into a tot ality (the text) as well as the insertions of this totality into the his­ torical and social text . 2 3 . The no vel, seen as a text, is a semiotic practice in which the synthesized patterns of several utterances can be read . For me, the u t terance specific to the novel is not a minimal sequence (a definitely set entity). I t is an op eration, a motion that lin ks, and even m ore so, constitu tes what m ight be called the argumen ts of the operation, which, in the study of a written text , are either words or word sequences (sentences, paragraphs) as semem es . 3 Instead of analyzing entities (sememes in t hemselves), I shall study the function that incorporates them within the text. That fu nction, a dependent variable, is determined along with the independent variables it links t ogether; m ore simply put, there i s univocal correspondence between words or word sequences. I t is therefore clear that what I am proposing is an analysis that, while deal­ ing with linguistic u nits (words, sentences, paragraphs), is of a t ranslin­ gu istic order. Speaking m etaphoricall y, linguistic units (and especially sem antic u nits) will serve only as springboards in establishing different k inds of no velistic u tterances as functions . By bracketing the question o f semantic sequences, one c a n bring o u t t h e logical practice org anizing t hem, thus pr oceeding at a sup rasegmental level . N o velistic utterances, as they pertain to this suprasegmental level, are linked up within the totality of novelistic production. By studying t hem as such, I shall establish a typology of these utterances and then proceed to investigate, as a second s tep, their origins outside of the novel. Only in this w ay can t he novel be defined in its unity and/ or as ideologeme. To put it anot her way, the functions defined according to the extra-novelistic textual set (Te) take on value within the novelistic textual set (Tn ) . The ideologeme of the novel is precisely this intertextual function defined according to Te and having value within Tn. Two k inds of analyses, sometimes difficult to distinguish from each other, m ak e it possible to isolate the ideologem e of the sign in the novel:

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first, a suprasegmental analysis of the utterances contained within the novel 's framework will reveal it as a bounded tex t (with its initial progra m m i ng, its arbitrary ending, its dyadic figu ration, its deviations and t h eir concatenation); second, an intertextual analysis of these utterances w i l l reveal the relationship bet ween writing and speech i n the text o f the novel . I will show that the novel's textual order is based m ore on speech than on writing and then proceed t o analyze the t opol ogy of this " phonetic order" (the arrangement o f speech acts in relation t o one another). Since the novel is a t ext d ependent on the ideologem e o f the sign, let m e first briefly describe the particularities of the sign as ideol ogem e.

F R O M S YM B O L T O S I G N I . The second half of t h e M iddle Ages (thirteenth t o fi ft een th centuries) was a period of transition for European culture: thought based on the sign replaced that based on the sym bol. A sem iotics of the symbol characterized European society until around the thirteenth century, as clearly manifested in this period's literature and painting. It is, as such, a semiotic practice of cosm ogony: these elements (sym bols) refer back t o o n e ( o r s everal) u nrepresentable a n d unk nowable u niversal t r anscen­ dence(s ); uni vocal connections link these t ranscendences to the units evoking them ; the sym bol does not "resem ble" the obj ect i t symbolizes; the two spaces (sym bolized-sym bolizer) are separate and do not com­ m unicate. The sym bol assu m es the sym bolized (un iversals) as irreducib le t o th e symbolizer (its ma rkings). M yth ical thought operates within the sphere of the symbol (as in the epic, folk tales, chansons de geste, et cetera ) through sym bolic units u nits of restriction in relation t o t h e sym ­ bolized universals ("heroism , " "cou rage, " "nobility," " vi rt ue," " fear," "treason," etc. ) . The sym bol's function, in its vertical dimension (universals-m arkings), is t hus one o f restriction. The sym bol's fu nction in its h orizontal dimension (the articulation o f signifying units a m ong themselves) is one of esca ping parad ox ; one could even say that the symbol is horizontally antiparadoxical: within its logic, two opposing units are exclusive.4 The good and the bad are incom patible--as are the -

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raw and the cooked, honey a n d ashes, et cetera. The contradiction, once it appears, immediately demands resolution. I t is thus concealed, "resolved , " and t herefore put aside. The k ey to symbolic sem iotic practice i s given from the very beginning of sym bolic discourse: the course of sem iotic developm ent is circular since the end is program m ed, given in embryo, from the beginning (whose end is the beginning) because the sym bol's fu nct ion (its ideologeme) antedates the sym bolic utt erance itself. Thus are implied the general charact eristics of a symbolic semiotic practice: the quan titative lim itation of symbols, t heir rep etition, /im itation, and general nature. 2. From the t hirteenth to the fifteenth century, the sym bol was b ot h challenged and weakened, b u t i t did n o t completely disappear. R ather, during this period, its age (its assim ilation) into the sign was assured. The transcendental unity su pport ing the sym bol-its otherworldly casing, its t ransm i tting focus-was put into qu estion. Thus, until the end of the fi ft eenth century, t heatrical representations of Christ ' s life were ba sed on both t h e canonical and apocryphal Gosp els or t h e G old en legend (see the M ysteries dated c . 1400 published by A chille Jubinal in 1 83 7 and based on the m anuscript at t he Library of Saint e-Gen evieve). Beginning i n the fi ft eenth century, the theater as well as art in general was invaded by scenes devoted to C h rist's public life (as in the Cathedral of Evreux) . The t ranscendental foundation evoked by th e symbol seemed to capsiz e. This heralds a n ew signifying rel at ion between two elements, both loca ted on the s ide o f the "real" and "concret e." I n t hirteenth-century art, for example, the prophets were cont rast ed with the apostles; whereas in the fifteenth century, the four great evangelists were no longer set against the four prophet s, but against t he four fat hers of the Latin Church (Saint A ugustine, Sai n t Jerome, Sa int Amb rose, and G regory the G reat a s on the altar of Notre Dame of Avioth). Great architectural and lit erary compositions were no longer possible: the miniature replaced t he cat he­ dral and the fifteenth century became t he century of the m iniaturists. The serenity of the symbol was replaced by the strained ambivalence of the sign's connect ion, which lays claim to resemblance and identification of the elem ents it holds together, while first postulating their radical dif­ ference. Wh ence t he obsessive insist ence on t he them e of dialogue between t w o irreducible but sim ilar el em ent s (dialogue-gen erator of the pathetic and psychological) in this transitional period. For exam ple, the

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fourteenth and fifteenth centuries abound i n dialogues between God and the human sou l : the Dialogue of the Crucifix and Pilgrim , Dialogue of the Sinful Soul and Christ, et cetera . Through this m ovement, the Bible was m oralized (see the fam ous moralized Bible of the Duke of Bur. gundy's library) . It was even replaced by pastiches that brack eted and erased the transcendental basis of the sym bol (the Bible of the Poor and the M irror of Human Salvation.5 3 . The sign that was outlined t hrough these mutations retai ned the fu ndamental characteristic of the sym bol: irreducibility of t erms, that is, in the case of t he sign, of the referent to the signified, of the signified to the signifier, and, in addition, all the "units" of the signifying st ructure itself. The ideologeme of the sign is therefore, in a general w ay, like the ideologeme of the sym bol: the sign is dualist, h ierarchical, and h ierar­ chizing. A difference bet ween the sign and the sym bol can, however, be seen vertically as well as h orizontally: within its vertical function, the sign refers back to entities both of lesser scope and m ore concretized than t h ose of the sym bol. They are reified universals becom e objects in the strongest sense of the word. Put into a relationship within the structure of sign, the entity (phenomenon) u nder consideration is, at the same time, transcendentalized and elevated to the level of th eological unity. The sem iotic pract ice of the sign thus assimilates the metaphysics of the s ym b ol and proj ects it onto the " i m m ediately percept ible." The "immediately perceptible, " valorized in this way, is then transfo rmed into an objectivity-the reigning law of discourse in the civilizat ion of the sign. Within t heir horizontal function, the units of the sign's semiotic practice are articulated as a m etonym ical concatenation of deviations from the norm signifying a progressive creation of m etaphors. Opposi­ tional t erms, always exclusive, are caught within a network of m u l tiple and always possible deviations (surprises in narrative structures), giving the illusion of an open structure, impossible to finish, with an arbitrary ending. I n literary discourse the semiotic practice of the sign first clearly appeared , during the Renai ssance, in the adventure novel, which is struc­ tured on what is unforeseea ble and on surprise as reification (at the level of narrati ve st ructure) of the deviation from the norm specific to every practice of the sig n . The it in erary of this concatenation of deviations is pract ically infinite, whence the impression of the work's arbitrary ending.

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This is, i n fact, the illusory im pression which defines all "literature" (all "art" ) , since such itinerary is program med by the ideologem e constitut­ ing the sign. That is, it is program m ed by a closed (finite), dyadic process, which, first, institutes the referent-signi fied-signifier hierarchy and secondly, interiorizes these oppositional dyads all the way to the very level of the articulation of term s, put together-like the symb ol-as resolution of contradict ion. In a semiotic practice based on the symbol, contradiction was resolved by exclusive disju nction (nonequivalence) .= - or by nonconjunction I -; in a sem io tic practice based on the sign, con tradiction is resolved by nondisju nction - V -. -

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THE I D E O LO G E M E OF THE N OVE L : N O VE L I S T I C E N U N CI A T I O N Every li terary work part aking of the semiotic practice of t h e sign (all " liter ature" before the epistem ological break of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries) is therefore, as ideologem e, closed and terminated in its very beginnings. It is related to conceptualist (antiexperimental) t h ought in the same way as the sym bolic is to Platonism . The novel is one of the characteristic m anifest ations of this am bivalent ideologem e (closure, nondisj u nct ion, linking of deviations)-the sign . Here I will examine this ideologeme in Antoine de La Sale's Jehan de Saintre. Antoine de La Sale wrote Jehan de Saintre in 1 456, after a long career as page, warrior, and tutor, for educational purposes and as a lament for a departure (for puzzling reasons, and after fo r ty-eight years o f service, he left the Kings of Anjou to become tutor of the Count of Saint Pol's t hree sons i n 1 448). Jehan de Saintre is the only novel to be found a m ong La Sale's writings, which are otherwise presented as compilations of edi­ fying narratives (La Salle, 1 448- 1 4 5 1 ), as "scientific" t racts, or as accou nts of his tr avels (Let tres a Jacques de Luxembourg sur /es tournois, 1 4 59; R econfort a Madam e de Fresne, 1 4 5 7)-all o f these being constructed as historical d iscourse or as het erogeneous m osaics of texts. H istorians of French literature have neglected this particular work-perhaps the first writing in prose t hat could be called a n ovel (i f one labels as such those works that depend on the ambiguous ideol ogeme

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of the sign). The few studies that have been devoted t o it 6 concentrate on its references to the m ores of the time, attem pt to find the " k ey" to the characters by identifying them with personalities La Sale m ight have k nown, accu se the author of underestimating the historical events of his time ( the Hundred Years War, et cetera) as well as o f belonging-as a true reactionary-to a world of the past, and so on . Literary history, imm ersed in refe rential opacity, has not been able to bring to light the transitory struc ture of this t ext, which situates it at the threshhold of the two eras and shows, through La Sale's naive poetics, the articulation of this ideologem e of the sign, which continues to dominate our intellectual horizon.7 What is m ore, A nt oine de La Sale's narrative confirms the nar­ rative of his own writing: La Sale s peaks but also, writ ing, enunciates himse(f The st ory of J ehan de Saintre m erges with the book 's st ory and becom es, in a sense, its rhetorical representation, its other, its inner lin­ ing. l. The text opens with an introduct i on t h at shapes (shows) the entire itinerary of the novel: La Sale knows what his text is ("t hree stories") and for wha t r eason it exists (a m essage to J ehan d ' A nj ou). H aving thus utt ered his purpose and named its addressee, he m arks out within twenty lines the first loop8 that encloses the t extual set and programs it as a means of exchange and, therefore, as sign : this is the loop u tterance (exchange obje c t)/ addressee (the duke or, sim ply, the reader). All that remains is to t ell, that is, t o fill in, to detail, what was already concep­ tualized, known, before any con tact between pen and paper- "the story as word upon word it proceed s . " 2 . T h e title c a n n o w b e presented: " A n d first, the story o f t h e Lady of the Beautiful Cousins (of whom I have already spoken) and of Saintre," which requires a second loop-this one found at the them atic level of the m essage. La Sale gives a shortened version of J ehan de Saintre's life fr om beginning to end ("his ing away from this world," p. 2). We thus already know how the st ory will end: the end of t h e narra­ tive is given before the narrative itself even begins. All anecdotal interest is thus elim inated: the n ovel will play itself out by rebuilding the distance between life and death; it will be nothing o ther than an inscription of deviations (surprises) that d o not destroy t h e certainty of the t hematic loop (life-death) holding the set t ogether. The t ex t turns on a them atic axis: the interplay between two exclusive oppositions, whose names might

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change (vice-virtue, love-hate, praise-criticism ; fo r exam ple, the A pology of the widow in the Roman t exts is directly followed by the m isogynist rem arks of Saint J erome) . But t he semic axis of these oppositions remains the same (positive-negative); they will alternate according to a traj ectory lim ited by nothing but the initially presupposed excluded m iddle; that is, the inevitable ch oice of one or the other t erm (with the "or" being exclusive). Within the ideologeme of th e novel (as with the ideologeme of the sign), the irreducibility of opposite is itted only t o the extent that the empty space of rupture separating them is provided with ambiguous semic combinat ions. The initially recognized opposition, set­ ting u p the n ovel ' s traj ectory, is i m m ediately repressed within a before, only to give way-within a now-to a network of paddings, to a con­ catenation of deviations oscillating bet ween two opposite poles, and, in an attempt at synthesis, resolving within a figure of dissim ulation or mask . N egation is thus repeated in the affirm ation of duplicity. The exclusiveness of the two term s posited by the n ovel ' s thematic loop is replaced by a doub tful positivity in such a way that the disjunction which both o pens and closes the novel is replaced by a yes-no structure (nondis­ junction). This fu nction does not bring about a para-thetic silence, but com bines carnivalistic play with its nond iscursive logic; all figures fo u nd in the novel (as heir to the carnival) that can be read in two ways are organized on the m odel of this fu nction: ruses, treason, foreigners, an­ drogynes, u t t erances that can be doubly interpreted or have double desti­ nations (at the level of the novelistic signified), b lazonry, "cries" (at the level of the n ovelistic signifier), and so on. The trajectory of the novel would be i m possible without this nondisjunctive function this dou­ ble which program s it from its beginning. La Sale first introduces i t through the Lady's doubly oriented utterance: as a m essage destined to the Lady's female companions and t o the Court, this utterance connotes aggressivity t owards Saintre; as a message dest i ned to Saintre himself, it connotes a "tender" and "test ing" love. The nondisju nctive function of the Lady's u t terance is revealed in st ages that are quite interesting to follow. A t first, the m essage's duplicity is known only t o the speaker hersel f (the Lady), to the author (subject o f the n ovelistic ut terance), and to the reader (addressee o f the novelistic utterance). The Court (neu ­ trality obj ective opinion), a s well as Saintre (ive object o f the -

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m essage), are dupes of the Lady's univocal aggressivity towards the page. In the second stage, the duplicity is displaced : Saintre becomes part of it and accepts it; but in the same gesture, he ceases to be the obj ect of a m essage a n d b ecomes the subj ect of utterances for which h e assumes authority. In a third stage, Saintre forget s t he nondisjunction; he com­ pletely transforms into som ething positive what he knew to be also nega­ tive; he loses sight of the dissimulation and is taken in by the game of a u nivocal (and t herefore erroneous) i n terpretation of a m essage that rem ains double. Saintre's defeat-and the end of the narrative-are due to this error of substituting an utterance accepted as disj unctive and uni­ vocal for the nondisjunct ive function of an u t t erance. Negation in the novel thus operates according to a double m odality: a/ethic (the opposition of c ont raries is necessary, possible, contingent, or i m p ossible) and deontic (the reunion of cont raries is obligatory, permissi­ ble, indifferent , or forbidden). The novel b ecomes p ossible when the a/ethic m odality of opposition j oins with the deontic m odality o f reunion.9 T h e novel covers the traj ectory of deontic synt hesis i n order t o condemn i t and to affirm , in the alethic m ode, the opposition of contraries. The d ouble (dissimulation, m ask), as fu ndamental figure of the carnival,10 thus becom es the pivotal springboard for the deviations filling up the silence i m p osed by the disjunctive function o f the novel's thematic-progra mmatic loop. In this way, the novel absorbs the duplicity (the d ialogism) of the carnivalesque scene while submitt ing i t to the u ni­ vocity (monologism) of the symbolic disjunction guaranteed by a transcendence-the author-that subsu mes the totality of t he novelistic utterance. 3. It is, in fact, precisely at this point i n the textual traj ectory-that is, after the enunciation of the t ext's t oponymical (message-addressee) and t hematic (life -death) closure (loop)-that the word "ac tor" i s inscribed. I t reappears several times, introducing t h e speech of he w h o i s writing the n arrative a s being t h e utterance of a charact er in t h i s drama of which he is also the author. Playing upon a hom ophony ( La t i n : actor­ auctor, French: acteur-auteur), La Sale t ouches upon the very point where the speech act (work) tilts t owards discu rsive effec t (product), and thus, upon the very constituting process of the "lit erary" object. For La Sa le, the writer is both actor a�d �!l_t�_gr.; t h at m eans t hat he conceived the text of the n ovel as both practice (actor) and product ( author),

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process (actor) and effect (author), play (actor) and value (author); and yet, the already set notions o f oeuvre (m essage} ancf owner _ (author) do not succee
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therefore internuclear. As translative, they transfer an ut terance from one textual space (vocal discourse) into another (the book), cha nging its ideologeme. They are thus i ntranuclear (for exam ple, the transposition of hawkers' cries and blazons into a written text). 13 These inferential agents im ply the juxta position of a discourse invested in a subject with another utterance di fferent from the author's. They make possible the deviation of the novelistic utterance from its subject and its self-presence, that is, its displacem ent from a discursive (informa­ tional, communicat ive) level t o a textual level (of productivity). Through this inferent ial gesture, the author refuses to be an obj ective "wit­ ness"-possessor of a truth he sym bolizes by the word-in order t o inscribe himsel f as reader o r list ener, structuring h i s t ext through and across a permutation of o ther uttera nces . H e does not so much speak as decipher. The inferential agents allow him to bring a refe rential utterance (narration) back to textual prem ises (citations) and vice versa. They est ablish a sim i litude, a resemblance, an equalization of two di fferent dis­ courses. The ideologeme of the sign once again crops up here, at the level of the n ovelistic enunciat ion's inferential m ode: it its the existence of an other (discourse) o n l y to t h e ext ent t h a t it m akes it its own . This split­ ting of the mode of enunciation did not ex ist in the epic: in the chansons de geste, the speaker's utterance is univocal; it names a referent (" real" obj ect or discourse); it is a signifier symbolizing transcendental objects (universals). Medieval lit eratu re, dominated by the symbol, is thus a "signifying, " " phonetic" l it erature, ed by the m onolithic presence of signified transcendence. The scene of the carnival introduces the split speech act: the actor and the crowd are each in turn simultaneously sub­ ject and addres see of discou rse. The carnival is also the bridge between the two split occurrences as well as the place where each of the is acknowledged : the author (actor + spectator). It is this third m ode that the novelistic inference adopts and effects within the author's utterance. As irreducible to any of the prem ises constituting the infe rence, the m ode of novelistic enunciation is the invisible focus where the phonetic (refe rential utterance, narration) and written (textual premises, citation) intersect. I t is the hollow, un representable space signaled by "as," "it seems to me," "says thereupon," or other infe rential agents that refer back, tie together, or bound. We thus u ncover a third programm ation o f t h e novelistic text which brings i t t o a close before t h e beginning of the

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actual story: novelistic enunc1at10n turns out to be a nonsyllogistic inference, a compromise between testim ony and citation, between the voice and the book. The novel will be performed within this em pty space, within this unrepresentable trajectory bringing together two types o f utterances with t h e i r different a n d irreducible "subj ects. "

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1 . The novelistic u tterance conceives o f the opposition of a s a nonal ternating and absolute opposition between two groupings t hat are competitive but never solida�y. never complem entary, and never recon­ cilable through indestruct ible rhythm. In order for this nonalternating disj unction to give rise to the discursive traj ectory of the novel, it must be em bodied within a negative function: nondisju nction . I t is this n ondis­ junctive function that intervenes on a secondary level and instead of an infinity complem en tary to bipartition (which could have taken shape within another conception of negation one might term radical, and this presu pposes that the opposition of term s is, at the sam e time, thought of as communion or sym metrical reunion) it introduces the figure o f dissimulation, o f am bivalence, of the double. The initial nonalternating opposition thus turns out to be a pseudo-opposition-and this at the time of its very i ncept ion, since it doesn't integrate its own opposition, namely, the solidarity of rivals. Life is opposed to death in an absolute way (as is love to hate, virtue to vice, good to bad, being to nothingness) withou t the op posit ion's com plementary negat ion that would transform biparti­ tion into rhythmic totality. The negation remains incom plete and unfinished unless it includes t his doubly negative m ovement that reduces the difference between two term s to a radical disjunction with permuta­ tion of t hose ; that is, t o an em pty space around which they m o ve, dying out as entities and turning into an altern ating rhyth m . By positing two opposing without a ffirming t heir identity in the same gesture and simul taneously, such a negation splits the m ovement of radical nega­ tion into two phases: disjunction and nondisjunction. 2 . This division int roduces, first of all, time: temporality (history) is the spacing of this splitting n egation, i.e. , what is introduced between two isolated and nonalternating scansions ( opposition-conciliation). I n other

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Roland and the Round Table Cycles, hero and traitor, good and evil, duty and love, pursue one another in irreconcilable hostility from begin­ ning t o end, without any possibility of com prom ise. The "classical" epic, by obeying the law of nonconj unction (symbolic), can t herefore engender neither personalities nor psychologies. 15 Psychology will appear along with the nondisju nctive function of the sign, fi nding in its ambiguity a terrain conducive t o its meanderings. I t would be possible, however, to t race the appearance of the double as precursor to the conception o f per­ s onality within the evolution of the epic. Near the end of the t welfth century-and especially in t h e thirteenth a n d fourteenth centuries-there spreads an ambigu ous epic: em perors are ridiculed, religion and barons become grotesque, heroes are cowardly and suspect ("Charlem agne's Pil­ grimage"); the king is worthless, virtue is no longer rewarded (the G arin de M onglan Cycle) and the t raitor becom es a principal actant (the D oon de M ayence Cycle or the " Raoul de Cam brai" poem ). Neither satirical, laudatory, stigmatizing, nor approving, this epic is witness to a dual sem iotic practice, fou nded on the resemblance of contraries, feeding on mi scellany and ambiguity. 4 . The cou rtly literature of Southern is of particular interest within this transition from symbol to sign. Recent studies have demonstrat ed the analogies between the cult of the Lady in these t exts and those of ancient Chinese poetry. 16 There would be evidence showing influence of a hieroglyphic semiotic practic ba sed on "conj unctive dis­ junction" (dialectical negat ion) upon a semiotic practice based on nondis­ j unctive opposition (Christianity, Europe). Such hieroglyphic semiotic practice is also and above all a conj u nctive disjunction o f the two sexes as irreducibly differentiated and, at the same t ime, alike. This explains why, over a long period, a maj or semiotic pr actice of Western society (courtly poetry) attributed to the O ther (Wom an) a prim ary structural role. In our civilization-caught i n the age from the symbol to the sign-hymn to conjunctive disjunction was transformed into an apology for only one of the opposing term s: the Other (Woman), within which is proj ected and with which is later fused the Sam e (the Author, M an). A t the same time there was produced a n exclusion of t h e Other, inevitably present ed as an exclusion of woman, as nonrecognition of sexual (and social) opposition. The rhythmic order of Orient al texts organizing the sexes (differences) within conjunctive disju nct ion (hierogamy) is here

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replaced by a cent ered system (Other, Wom an) whose center is there only so as to perm it those m a king up t he Sam e to identify with it. I t is therefore a pseudo-center, a mystifying center, a blind spot whose value is invested in the Same giving the Other (the center) t o itself in order to live as one, alone, and unique. Hence, the exclusive positivity of this blind center (Woman), s tretching out t o infinity (of "nobility" and " qualities of the heart "), erasing disj u nction (sexual difference), and dissolving into a series of im ages ( from the angel to the Virgin). The unfini shed negative gesture is, t herefore, already theological : it is stopped before h aving designated the Other (Wom an) as being at the sam e time op posed and equal to the Sam e ( M a n, Author), before being denied through the cor­ relation of contraries (the identity of M an and Woman simultaneous to t heir disjunction). I t eventually iden t i fied with religious attitudes, and in its incompletion it evokes P lat onism. Scholars have interpreted the theol ogization of courtly literature as an attempt to save love poetry from the persecutions of the lnquisition ; 17 or, on t he contrary, as evidence o f the i n filt ration in Southern French society of the I nquisiti on Tribu nals' activity, or that of the D ominican and Fran­ ciscan orders, a fter the debacle of t he A lbigenses. 18 Whatever the empi­ rical fa cts m ay be, the spiritualization o f courtly literature was already a given within the structure of this sem iotic practice characterized by pseu do- negation as well as n onrecognit i on of the conj unctive disj u nction of sem i c term s . Within such an ideologeme, the idealization of woman (of the Other) signifies the refusal of a s ociety to constitute itself through the recognition of the differential but nonhierarchizing status of opposed groups. It also signifies the structural necessity for this society to give itself a permut ative center, an Other ent ity, which has n o value except as an o�ject of exchange a m ong mem bers o f the Sam e. Sociology has described h ow women came to occupy this permutational center (as obj ect of exchange). 19 This devalorizing valorization prepared the terrain for, and cannot be fundam entally distinguished from, the explicit deval­ orization of women beginning with fourteenth-century bourgeois literature (in fabliaux, soties, and farces). 5 . Antoine de La Sale' s novel, situated halfway between these two types of uttera nces, contains both: the Lady is a dual figure within the novel's structure. She i s n o longer only the deified mistress required by the code of courtly poetry, t h at is, the valorized term of a nondisj unctive

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connection. She is also disloyal, ungrateful, and infamous. I n Jehan de Sain tre, the two attributive are no longer semically opposed through nonconjunction as would be required in a sem iotic practice dependent on the symbol (the courtly utterance); rather, they are nondis­ junctive within a single ambivalent unity connoting the ideologeme o f the sign . Neither deified nor ridiculed, neither mother nor mistress, neither enam ored of Saintre nor faithful to t h e Abbot, the Lady becom es the nondisjunctive figure par excellence in which the novel is centered. Saintre is also part of this nondisju nctive function: he is both child and warrior, page and hero, the Lady's fool and conqu eror of soldiers, cared for and betrayed, lover of the Lady and loved either by the king or a comrade in arms-Boucicault (p. 1 4 1 ). N ever ma sculine, child-lover for the Lady or comrade-friend sharing a bed with the k ing or Boucicault, Saintre is the accomplished androgyne; the sublimation of sex (without sexualization of the sublime). His homosexuality is m erely the narra­ tivization of the n ondisj u nctive function peculiar t o the semiotic process of which he is a part . He is the pivot-mirror within which the other argu­ ments of t h e novelistic function are projected in order to fuse with them selves: the Other is the Same for the Lady (the man is the child, and therefore the woman herself finds there her self-identity nondisj oined from the Ot her, while rem aining opaque to the irreducible d(f/erence between the two). He is the Sam e who is also the Other for the k ing, the warriors, or Boucicault (as the man who is also the woman who possesses him ) . The Lady' s nondisjunctive fu nction, to which Saintre is assimi­ l at ed, assures her a role as obj ect of exchange in male society. Sain tre's own nondisj unctive function assures him a role as obj ect of exchange between the m asculine and feminine of society; together, they tie up the elements of a cultural text into a stable system dominated by nondisju nc­ tion (the sign).

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The novel's nondisj unctive function is m anifested, at the level of the con­ catenation of its constituent utterances, as an agreement of deviations: the two originally opposed arguments ( forming the thematic loops life-

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death, good-evil, beginning-end, etc . ) are connected and m ediated by a series of utterances whose relation to the originally posited opposition i s neither explicit n o r logically necessary. They a r e concatenated without any m ajor im perative putting an end to their j uxtaposition. These utterances, as deviations in relation t o the oppositional loop fram ing the novelistic utterance, are laudatory descriptions of either objects (clothes, gifts, and weapons) or events (the departu res of t roops, banquets, and combats); such are the descriptions of commerce, purchases, and apparel (pp. 5 1 , 63, 7 1 -72, 79) or of weapons ( p . 50), etc. These k i nds of utterances reappear with obligatory m onotony and make of the text an aggregate of recurrences, a succession of closed, cyclical utterances, com­ plete in themselves . Each one is centered in a certain point, which can connote space (the tradesman's shop, the Lady's chamber), time (the troops' departure, Saintre' s return), the subject of enunciation, or all three at once. These descript ive u tt erances are minu tely detailed and return periodically according to a repetitive rhythm placing its grid upon the novel's tem porality. I n deed, La Sale does not describe events evolv­ ing over a period of t i m e. Whenever an u t terance assumed by an Actor (Author) intervenes t o serve as a temporary connecting device, it is extremely laconic and does nothing m ore t han link t ogether descriptions that fi rst place the reader before an army ready to depart, a shopkeeper's place, a costume or piece of jewelry and then proceed to praise t hese obj ects put t ogether according to no causality whatsoever . The imbrica­ tions of these deviations are apt to open u p-praises could be repeated indefinitely. They are, h owever, term inated (bounded and determined) by the fundamental fu nction of the n ovelis tic u tterance: nondisj u nction. Caught up within the novel's t otality-that is, seen in reverse, from the end o f the novel where exaltation has been transformed into its contrary (desolation) before ending i n death-these l audatory descriptions become relativized, am biguous, deceptive, and double: their u nivocity changes to duplicity. 2 . Besides laudatory descriptions, another k ind o f devia tion operating according to nondisjunction appears along the n ovel's trajectory: Latin citations and m oral precepts. Exa m p les include Thales of M iletus, Socrat es, Timides, Pittacus of M isselene, the G ospels, Cato, Seneca, Saint Augustine, Epicurus, Saint Bernard, Saint Gregory, Saint Paul, Avicenna, etc . ; in addition to ackn owledged borrowings, a considerable number of plagiaris ms h ave also been pointed out .

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I t is not d i fficult t o find t h e extranovelistic sources of these t w o k inds of deviations: the laudative description and t he citation. The first comes from the fair, marketplace, or public square. I t is the utterance of the m erchant vau n ting his wares or o f the herald announcing com bat. Ph onetic speech, oral ut terance, sound itself, become t ex t : less than writing, the novel is thus the transcription of vocal communication . An arbitrary signifier (the word as phone) is transcribed onto paper and present ed as adequate to its signified and referent. It represents a "reality" t h a t is already there, preexis tent to the signifier, duplica ted so as to be integrated into the circuit of exchange; it is therefo re reduced to a representamen (sign) that is m anageable and can be circu lated as an element assuring the cohesion of a communicative (com m ercial) struc­ ture endowed with m eaning (value). These laudatory utterances, known as blazons, were abundant in during the fourteenth and fi fteenth centu ries. They come fr om a com m unicat ive discourse, shouted in public squares, and designed t o give direct inform ation to the crowd on wars (the num ber of soldiers, their direction, arm ament s, etc .), or on the m a rketplace (the quality and price of m erchandise) .20 These solem n , tumultuous, or monumental enumera­ tions b el ong to a cu lture that might be called phonetic. The cu lture of exchange, definitively imposed by the European Renaissance, is engen­ dered th rough the voice and operates according to the structures of the discursive (verbal, phonetic) circuit, inevitably referring back t o a reality with which it identified by duplicating it (by "signifying it"). "Phonetic" literature is characterized by this kind of laudat ory and repetitive u tterances-enum era tions. 21 The blazon later lost its u nivocity and became ambiguous; praise and blame at the same time. In the fi fteenth century, the blazon was already the nondisju nctive figure par excellence. 22 Antoine d e La Sa le' s text captu res the blazon just befo re this splitting into praise and/or blame. Blazons are recorded into the book as uni­ vocally laudat ory. But they b ecom e am biguous as soon as they are read from the point of view of the n ovel istic t ext's general function: the L ady's t reachery skews the laudatory tone and shows its ambiguity. The blazon is transform ed into blame and is thus inserted into the novel's nondis­ j unct ive function as noted above: the fu nction est ablished according t o t h e extratextual set (Te) changes within t h e novelistic textual set (Tn) and in this way defines it as ideol ogem e.

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T h i s splitting of the ut terance ' s univocity i s a typically oral phen omenon which can be found within the entire discursive (ph onetic) space of the M iddle Ages and especially in the carnival scene. The split­ ting that makes up the very nature of the sign (object/sound, referent / signified/sign i fier) as well a s the t opology o f the commu nicative circuit (subject-addressee, Same- pseudo O ther), reaches the ut ter ance' s logical level (phonetic) and is present ed as n ondisju nctive. 3. The second kind of deviation-the citation-comes from a written tex t . Latin as well as other books (already read) penet rate the novel ' s text either as directly copied (citations) or as m n esic t races (mem ories) . They are carried intact from t heir own sp ace in to the space of the novel being written; they are transcribed within quotation m arks or are plagiarized. 23 While emph asizing the phonetic and introducing into the cultural text the (bourgeois) space of the fair, m arketplace, and street , the end of the M iddle Ages was also characterized by a m assive infilt ration of the writ­ ten tex t : the book ceased to be the privilege of n obles or scholars and was democra tized .24 As a resu lt, phoneti c culture claimed to be a scriptural one. To the ex t ent that every b ook i n our civilization is a t ranscription of oral speech, 25 citation and plagiarism are as phonetic as the blazon even if their ext rascriptural (verbal) source goes back to a few books before Antoine de La Sale' s . 4 . N evert heless, t h e reference t o a writ ten t ext upsets the laws imposed on the text by oral t ranscription: enu meration, repetition, and therefore tem p orality (cf. supra). The introduction of writing has two maj or consequences. First , the temporality o f La Sale's text is less a discu rsive t em porality (the narrative sequences are not ordered according to the tem poral laws of the verb phrase) than what we might call a scrip tural t em porality (the narrative sequences are oriented towards and rekindled by the very activity of writing). The succession of " even ts" (descriptive u tterances or citations) obeys the m otion of the hand working on the empty page-the very economy of inscript i o n . La Sale o ften interrupts the course of dis­ cursive time to introduce the present time of his work on the text: "To return to my poin t , " "to put it briefly," "as I will tell you," and "here I will stop speak ing for a bit of M adame and her Ladies t o return to little Saintre," etc. Such junct ives signal a tempora lity ot her than that of the discursive (linear) chain : the massive present of inferential enu nciation (of the scriptural work).

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Second, the (phonetic) u tt erance having been transcribed onto paper and the foreign text (citation) having been copied down, both of them form a written t ext within which the very act of writing shift s t o the background and appears, in its totality, as secondary: as a transcription­ copy, as a sign, as a "lett er, " no longer in the sense of inscription but of exchange obj ect ("which I send to you in the manner of a letter"). The novel is thus structured as dual space: it is both phonetic utterance and scriptural level , overwhelmingly dom inated by discursive (phonetic) order.

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F I N ITUD E l . All ideological activity ap pears i n the form o f utterances com posi­ tionally completed. This com plet ion is to be distinguished from the structural finitude to which only a few philosophical system s ( H egel) as well as religions h ave aspired. The structural finitude characterizes, as a fundamental trait, t he obj ect that our culture consumes as a finished product (effect , im pression) while refusing to read the process of its productivity : " li terature"-within which the novel occu pies a privileged posi tion. The notion of literature coincides with the notion of the novel, as much on of chrono logical origins as of st ructural bounding. 2 6 Explicit comp letion is often lacking, am bigu ous, or assumed in the t ext of the novel. This incom pletion nevertheless underlines the text's structural finitude. Every genre having its own particular structural finitude, I shall try t o isolate t hat of Jehan de Saintre. 2. The initial program m i ng of the book is already its structural finitude. Within the figures described above, t he traj ect ories close upon t hemselves, return to t heir point of departure or are confirmed by a censoring elem ent in such a way as t o outline t he limits of a closed dis­ cou rse. The book's com positional com pletion nevertheless reworks the structural finitude. The novel ends with the utterance of the author who, a ft er having brought the story of his character, Saint re, to the point of t he Lady's punishment, i nterrupts the narrative to announce the end: "And here I shall begin the end of this st ory . . . " (p. 307). The story can be considered finished as soon as t here is completion of one of the loops (resolution of one of the oppositional dyads) the series of

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which was opened by the initial programming. This loop is the condem­ nation of the L ady, signifying a condem nation of am biguity. The narra­ tive stops there. I shall call this completion of the narrative by a concrete loop a reworking o f the structural finitude. But the structural finitude, once more m a ni fested by a concretization of the t ext's fundamental figure (the oppositional dyad and its relation to nondisj u nct ion) is n o t su fficient for t h e b ounding of t h e author's dis­ course. Nothing i n speech can put an end-except arbitrarily-to the infinite concatenation o f loops. The real arresting act is performed by the appearance, within the novelistic utterance, of the very work that produces it, here, on the actual page. Speech ends when its subj ect dies and it is the act of writing ( o f work) that produces this m urder. A new rubric, the "actor," sign als the second-the actual-reworking o f the ending: " A nd here I shall give an ending t o t h e book of t h e m os t valiant k night w h o . . . " ( p . 308). A b r i e f narrative o f t h e narrative follows, terminating the n ovel by bringing the utterance back to the act of writing ("Now, m ost high, and m ost powerful and excellent prince and my m os t feared lord, if I have erred in any way either by writing too m uch or too little [ . . . ] I have made this book, s a i d Saintre, which I send t o you in the manner o f a letter" -p. 309, emphasis m i n e) and by substituting the present of script for the past of speech ("And in conclu­ sion, fo r the present, my m ost feared lord, I write you nothing else" [p. 309)-emphasis m ine). Within this dual surface o f the text (story of Saintre-story of the writ­ ing process)-t he scriptural activity having been narrated and the narra­ tive having been o ft en interrupted to allow the act of production to sur­ face-(Saintre's) death as rhetorical im age coincides with the stopping of discourse (erasure of the actor). Nevert heless-as another retraction of speech-this death, repeated by the text at the m omen t it becomes silent, cannot be spoken . I t is asserted by a (tombli ke) writing, which writing (as t ext of the n ovel) places in q uotation marks. In addition-another retrac­ tion, this time of the place of language-this citation of t h e tombstone inscription is produced in a dead language ( Latin). Set back in rel ation t o · French, the Latin reaches a standstill where i t i s n o longer t h e narrative t h at is being com pleted ( having been terminated in the preceding para­ graph: "And here I shall b egin the end of this story . . . ") but rather the discourse and its product-"literature" /the "letter" ("And here I shall give an ending to the book . . . ") .

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3. The narrative could again take up Saintre's adventures or spare us several o f t hem . The fact remains nevert heless that it is bou nded, born dead : what terminates it structurally are the b ounded fu nctions o f the sign's ideologem e, which the narrative repeats with variation. What bounds it com positionally and as cu ltural artifact is the expliciting of the narrative as a written text. Thus, at the close of the M iddle Ages and t herefore befo re consolida­ tion of "literary" ideology and the society of which it is the superst ruc­ ture, Antoine de La Sale d oubly term inated his novel : as narrat ive (structurally) and as discourse (compositionally). This compositional closure, by its very naivete, reveals a major fact later occul ted by bourgeois literature. The novel has a double semiotic status: it is a linguistic (narrative) phenomenon as well as a discursive circuit (letter, literature). The fact that it is a narrative is but one aspect-an anterior one-of this particu­ larity: it is "literature." That is the difference characterizing the n ovel in relation t o narrative: the novel is already "literature"; t hat is, a product of speech, a (discursive) o bj ect of exch ange with an owner (author), value, and consumer (the pu blic, addressee). The narra tive's conclusion coincides with the conclusion of one loop's trajectory.27 The n ovel's finitude, however, does not stop at this conclusion. An instance o f s peech, o ften in the form o f an epilogue, occurs at t he end to slow down the nar­ ration and to demonstrate t hat one is indeed dealing with a verbal construction u nder the cont rol of a subj ect who speak s.28 The narrative is presented as a story, the n ovel as a discourse (independent of the fact t hat the author-m ore or less consciously-recognizes it as such). I n this, it constitutes a decisive stage i n the deve lopment o f the speaking subject's critical consciousness in relat ion to his speech. To t erminate the novel as narrative is a rhet orical problem consisting of rew orking t he bounded ideologeme of the sign which opened it. To com plete the novel as literary artifact (to understand i t as discourse or sign) is a problem of social practice, of cultural text, and it consists in confr onting speech (the product, t he Work) with its own death-writing (textual productivity). It is here that there intervenes a third conception o f the b ook as work and n o longer as a phenomenon ( narrative) or as literature (discourse). La Sale, o f cour se, never reaches this stage. The succeeding social text elim inates all notions of production from its scene in order to su bstitute a product (effect, value): the reign of literature is

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t h e reign o f m arket value occulting even what La Sale practiced in a confused way: the discursive origins of the literary even t . We shall have to wait for a reevalu ation of the bourgeois social text in order for a reevaluation o f "literature" ( o f discourse) to take place t hrough the advent of scrip tural work within the text .29 4. In t he meantime, this fu nction o f writing as work destroying literary repres entation (the literary art i fa ct) remains latent, misunder­ stood, and unspoken, although often at work in the text and made evident when deciphered. For La Sale, as well as for any so-called "realist" writer, writing is speech as Jaw (with no possible transgression). Writing is revealed, for him who thinks o f himself as "author , " as a function t hat ossifies, petrifies, and blocks . For the phonetic conscious­ ness-fr om the Renaissance to our tim e30-writing is an artificial limit, an arbitrary Jaw, a subjective finitude. The intervention of writing in the text is o ften an excuse used by t he author to justify the arbitrary ending of his narrative. Thus, La Sale inscribes himself as writing in order to justify t h e end of his writing: his narrative is a Jetter whose death coin­ cides with the end of his pen wor k . In versely, Saintre's death is not the narration of an advent ure: La Sale, o ften verbose and repetitive, restricts himself, in annou ncing this m aj or fact, to the transcri ption from a tomb in two languages-Latin and French . There we have a paradoxical phenom enon that dominates, in di fferent form s, the entire history of the novel: the devalorization of writing, its categorization as pej orative, paralyzing, and deadly. This phenom enon is on a par with its other aspect : valorizat ion of the oeuvre, the Author, and t he literary art i fa ct (discourse). Writing itself appears only to bound the book, t hat is, discourse. What opens it is speech : "of which the first shall tell of the Lady of the Beautifu l Cousins. " The act of writing is the differential act par excellence, reserving for the text the status of other, irreducible to what is different from it; it is also the correlational act par excellence, avoiding any bounding of sequences within a finite ideolo­ gem e, and opening them u p to an infinite arrangement. Writing, h owever , has been suppressed, evo ked only to o ppose "object ive reality" (utterance, phonetic discourse) t o a "subj ective artifice" (scriptural practice). The opposition phonetic/scriptural, utterance/text-at work within the bourgeois novel with devalorization of the second term (of the scriptural, tex tual)-misled the Russian Formalists. It perm itted them to

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interpret t he insertion of writing into narrative as proof of t h e text's "arbitrariness" or of the work's so-called "literariness." It is evident that the concepts of "arbitrariness" or "literariness" can only be accepted within an ideology of valorization of the oeuvre (as phonetic, discursive) to the detriment of wri ting (textual productivity); in other words, only within a b ounded (cultural) t ex t . 1 966- 1 967

Notes 1 . W h e n considering sem iotic practices i n relation t o t h e sign, o n e c a n distinguish t hree types: first, a systematic sem iotic practice founded on the sign, therefore o n meaning; con­ servative and l i m ited, its elements are oriented toward denotata; it is l ogical, explicative, inter changeable, and not at all destined t o tran sform the other (the addressee). Second, a transformative sem iotic practice, in which t h e "signs" are released from denot a t a and orien t ed toward the other, whom t hey modify. Third, a paragram matic semiotic practice, in which t h e sign i s e l i m i nated by t he correlative paragram m atic seq uence, which could be seen as a tetralem m a -each sign has a denotat u m ; each sign does not h ave a denotatum; each sign has and does not have a denot a t u m ; it is not t r u e that each sign has and does not have a denota t u m . See my "Pour u n e sem i o l ogie des paragr ammes," i n 1;71µEiwTix.h: recherches pour une semanalyse ( Paris: Seu i l , 1 969), pp. 1 96ff. 2. " L iterary sch olarship is one branch of t h e study of ideologies [which] . . . embraces all areas of m an's ideological creativity." P . N. M edvedev and M . Bakhtin, The Formal Method in L iterary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, Albert J . Wehrle, t r ans. ( Ba l t i more: Johns H opkins U niversity Press, 1 978), p . 3 . I have borrowed the term " ideologeme" from t h i s work. 3. I use t h e t e r m "sememe" as i t appears i n the t er m i n o l ogy o f A . J . Greimas, w h o defines it as a combination of t h e s e m i c n u c l e u s and con t ex t u al semes. H e considers it a s belonging t o the l e v e l of manifest a t i on, as opposed to t he l evel of i m m an ence, w h i c h is t h a t of the s e m e . S e e A . J . Greimas, Semantique Structurale ( P a r i s : Larousse, 1 9 66), p . 4 2 . 4 . W i t h i n West ern scient ific t h i n k i ng, t hree fu ndamental currents break a w a y from t h e symbol's dominat ion, o n e after another, m o v i n g t hrough the s i g n t o t h e v a r i a b l e . These three are P latonism, conceptualism, and n o m i nalism . See V. Willard Q u i ne, " R e i ficat ion of U n iversals," i n From a Logical Point of View (Cambr idge: H arvard U niversity P ress, 1 9 5 3 ) . I have borrowed from this study the di fferent iation between two m ean ings of signify­ i ng u n its: one within the space of the sym bol, the other w i t h i n that of the sign. 5 . Emile M ale, L' Art religieux de la fin du Moyen Age en (Paris: A . Colin 1 90 8 ) . 6. T h e following are among t he most i m portant: F. Desonay, " L e P e t i t J e h a n de Saintre," i n R evue du Seizieme Siec/e, ( 1 92 7 ), 1 4 : 1 -48 & 2 1 3-80: "Comment u n ecrivain se corrigeait au X V e siecle," in Revue Beige de Phi/o/ogie et d'Histoire, ( 1 927). 6 : 8 1 - 1 2 1 : Y . O t a k a , " Etabl issement du t e x t e defi n i t i f du P e t i t Jehan de Saintre," i n Etu des d e Langue et

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L ittera ture Frant;aises (Tokyo, 1 96 5 ), 6: 1 5 -28; W. S . Shepard, "The Syntax o f A n t oine de La Sale," in PM LA ( 1 905), 20:435 -50 1 ; W. P. S oderhjelm, La Nou velle franr;aise au X Ve siec/e ( Paris: H . Champion 1 9 1 0 ); Notes sur A ntoine de La Sale et ses o eu vres ( H elsingfors: E x o fficina t ypographica Societ atis Litterariae fen nicae, 1 904). All my referen ces are to t h e t e x t edi t ed by J ean M israhi ( Fordham U n iversity) and Charles A . K n udson ( U n iversity of I l linois) and published by D roz ( G eneva 1 96 5 ) . 7 . A n y contemporary novel t h a t str uggles w i t h t h e problems o f "realis m" and "writ­ ing" is r e lated to the structural ambivalence of Jehan d e Saintre. C ont emporary realist literature is situ ated at the other end of the history of t h e novel, at a point where i t has been reinvented i n order t o proceed t o a script ura I productivity that k eeps close t o narrat ion without being repressed by it. I t evokes the task of organizing disparate utter a nces that A n t oine de La Sale h ad u ndert a k en at the dawn of t h e novelistic j ourney. The relationship between t h e t w o is obvious and, as Louis Aragon i ts, desired in the case o f h i s own n ovel, L a Mise a mort ( 1 965), where the Author ( A n t oine) sets h i mse l f apart from the Actor (Alfred), going so far as to take the nam e Antoine de La Sale. 8. This term i s used by Victor Shklovski in the chapter o f h i s book, 0 teorii prozy ( M oscow 1 929), that was translated into French as " La Construct ion de la n ouvelle et du roman" in Tzvetan Todorov, ed. , Theorie de la litterature ( P ar is: Seuil, 1 965), p. 1 70. 9. See Georg Henrik von Wright, A n Essay on Modal Logic ( A m sterda m : North­ H olland, 1 9 5 1 ). 1 0 . I am indebted to M i k ha i l Bakhtin for his notion of t h e double and am biguity as the fu ndamental figure i n t h e no vel l i n k i ng it t o the oral carnivalesque trad i t i on, t o the m echanism o f laughter and the mask, and t o t h e structure o f M en i ppean s a t ir e . See his Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (Ann Ar bor: Ardis, 1 97 3 ) , Rabelais and his World (Cam bridge: M IT Press, 1 968), and my essay, "Word, D i a l ogue, and N ovel," i n this volu m e . 1 1 . The n o t i o n o f "author" appears i n R om ance poetry about t h e beginning o f the twelfth century. A t t h e t i m e , a poet would publish his verse and entrust them to the m em ory o f m i nstrels o f whom he demanded accu racy. The s m allest change was i m m ediately n oticed and criticized: "J ograr bradador" ( R a m o n M enendez-Pidal, Poesia juglaresca y origines de las literaturas romdnicas [ M adrid: I ns t i t u t o de Est udios P o l i t icos, 1 95 7] , p. 1 4, note I . ' " Erron o j uglar ! ' exclamaba condenatorio el t r ovador gallego y con eso y con el cese de! canto para l a poesia docta, el juglar queda exclu'ido de la vida liter aria; q u eda como simple m u sico, y aun en este oficio acabe siendo sustituido par el m i n i s t r i l , tipo de! m u sico ejecutante venido de! extranjero y q u e en el paso de! siglo X I V al XV, convive con el juglar" (Ibid., p. 3 80). Jn this way, t h e age fr om m i nstrel as Actor ( a c haracter i n a dramatic production, an acc-cf. i n juridical Lat i n : actor, the acc, the con­ troller o f the narrative) t o m instrel as Author (founder, m aker o f a product, t he one who m a kes, i m p lements, organizes, generates, and creates an object o f which h e n o l onger i s the producer b u t t h e salesman-cf. i n j u r idical Latin: auctor, salesman). 12. See my book L e Texte d u roman (The Hague: M outon, 1 970), a sem i o t i c a p proach to a transfo rmat ional discursive s t ructure. 1 3 . For t hese borrowed from struct u r a l syntax, see Leon Tesniere, Esqu isse d'une syntaxe structurale (Paris: Klincksieck, 1 95 3 ). 1 4. M ichel Granet, La Pensee chinoise ( Paris: A l b i n M ichel, 1 968), ch a p t e r 2, " Le Style," p. SO. (Originally published in 1 934.) 1 5 . In t h e epic, m an's individuality is l i m i t ed by h i s linear relationship to o n e o f two categories: the good or t h e bad people, t hose w i t h positive or neg a t i v e a t t r i b u t e s .

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Psyc h ological states seem to be " free or personalities. Con sequ ently, t h e y are free to change with e xtraordinary rapidity and to attain u n believable dimensions. M a n may be t ransformed from good to bad, c h a nges i n h is psyc hological state happening in a flas h . " D. S . Lichac hov, Chelovek v lirera1ure drevnej R usi [Man in t h e Literature or O l d Russia] ( M oscow- Len ingrad 1 9 58 ) , p. 8 1 . 1 6 . S e e Alois R ichard Nykl, Hispano-Arabic Poerry and !rs Relarions wi1h 1he Old Proven�:al Troubadours (Ba ltimore: J. H. Fu rst, 1 946). This study de monstr ates how, without m echanically " i n fluencing" P rovem;:al poe try, Arabic poetry conrribured by with Pro venyal discourse to the form at ion a n d development or courtly lyricism i n re gards to both its content a n d types, as well as its rhyt h m , rhyme scheme, internal division , and so on . T h e Russian academician Nik o l a i Konrad has demonstrated that the A rab world was in , on t h e o t h e r side or Isl a m, with t h e Orient and C h ina (in 75 I , on t h e b a nks o r t h e river Talas, the army o r t h e H a l i fat of' B agdad m e t t h e a r m y or t h e T ' a n g E mpire). Two C h i n ese collec tions, " Yiie h-ru " and " Y ii -t'ai hsin-yu ng, " which date rrom t h e third a n d fo u r t h ce nturies A . D . , evok e t h e th em e s and organization o r c o u r t l y P roveni;:al poetry o r t h e t welrt h th rough t h e fi fteenth c e n t u ries. C h i nese songs, on the o t h e r h a n d , const i t u t e a dis­ rinc1 series and stem from a diffe r e n t world or thought. Noneth eless, and contami­ n ation a r e a fact or t hose two c u ltu res-the A r abic and t h e Chin ese ( lsla m ization or China, followed by i n filtration of Chinese signi f"ying structure [art a n d literature] i n to A rabic rhetoric and, conseq u ently, into M editerranean culture). See Nik olai Konrad, "Con te mpo­ rary P ro bl e ms in Com parative L i t erature," in lzvesrija A kademii nauk SSSR, " L iterature a n d L a n g u a ge" series ( 1 9 59 ) , 1 8: lase. 4, p. 3 3 5. 1 7 . J. Cou let, Le Troubadour Gui/hem Monrahagal (Tou louse: Bibliorhi?que Merid­ ionale, 1 928), Series 1 2, I V . 1 8 . Jose ph Anglade, Le Troubadour Guiraulr R iquier: £rude s u r la decadence de l'ancienne poesie provent;ale ( P a ris : U . de P aris , 1 90 5 ) . 1 9 . A ntoine Fra n orois C a m p a u x , " La Q uestion d e s rem m es a u X V e siecle," in Revue des Cours Lirreraires de la er de l'Erranger (P aris: I. P., 1 8 64), p. 4 5 8 ff. ; P. Gide, £rude sur la condilionprivee de la femme dans le droir ancien er moderne ( Paris: Du ran d et Pedo n e-Laurie!, 188 5), p . 38 1 . 20. Such are, for i nstance, t h e fa mou s " P arisian h awkers' cries"-repetitive u t t e ra nces and laud atory e n um e r a t ions that fo lfilled the pu rposes or adve rtise m e n t in the society o r t h e time. S e e A l fred Frank lin, Vie privee d'aurrefois: I . L'Annonce e r la reclame (P aris: Plon ­ Nou r r i t , 1 897- 1 902); and J . G. Kast ner, Les Voix de Paris: essai d'une hisroire /i11eraire er musicale des eris populaires ( Paris : G . B r a n du s , 1 8 57 ) . 2 1 . S e e Le Mys1ere d e Vieux Tesramenr ( fi rteenth c e n tury), in w h i c h t h e officers o r N e b u c h adnezzar's a r m y e n u me r a t e forty- t h re e k i nds or weapons; a n d L e Marryr d e sainr Canren (late fift e e nth c en tury), in which the leader or the Roman t roops e n u merates forty. rive we apons ; and so o n . 2 2 . Thus, in Grim melshausen's D e r Saryrische Py/grad ( 1 666), th e re rirst appear t we nty semantic ally positive u t t e r a n ces that are l ater restated as sem a ntically pejorative and, fi nally, as double ( n e i t h e r posit i ve nor pej orative). T h e blazon appears rreq u e n t ly i n myst eries a n d sa tirical farces. S e e A n a tole de M onta iglon , R ecueil de poesies frant;oises des X V er XV!e siecles ( P a ris: P . J a n n e t-P. D a ms, 1 8 65- 1 878), 1 : 1 1 - 1 6, a n d 3: 1 5- 1 8 ; and Dirs des pays, 5: 1 1 0- 1 6 . In the matter or blazons, see H. Gaidoz and P. S e billot, Blason popu­ laire de la ( P aris: L. Ce rr, 1 884) an d G. D ' Ha u co u rt and G. Du rivau lt, Le Blason ( P aris: P resses Universitaires de , 1 9 60 ) . 2 3. Concerning borrowings a n d plagiarisms b y A n toi n e d e L a S ale, s e e M . Le cou rt,

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"Antoine d e L a S a l e e t S i m o n de Hesd i n , " in Melanges offerts a M . Emile Ch
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Poe tics: Formalist a n d Structuralist Views [ A n n Arbor: U n iversity o f M ichigan P ress, 1 978 ) , pp. 2 3 1 - 3 2 ) . 2 8 . T h e poetry of tr oubadours, l i k e popu lar t a les, stories of voyages, and o t h e r k i n ds o f narratives, o ften introduces a t t h e e n d t h e spea k er a s a wit ness t o o r participant i n t h e nar­ rated " fact s . " Yet, in novelistic conclusions, t h e author speaks not as a wit ness to some "event" (as in folk t ales), not to express his "feel ings" or his "art" (as i n troubadour poetry); rather, he speaks in order t o ass u m e ownersh i p of the discourse t hat he appeared at first t o have given t o someone else (a character ). He envisions himself as t h e actor o f speech (and not of a sequence of events), and he follows t hrough t h e loss of t h a t speech ( i t s death), after a l l int erest i n the narrated events has ended (the deat h o f the m ai n character, for instance) . 29. An example of this would be Phili ppe Sol lers's book, The Park, A. M. Sheridan­ Smith, trans. ( N ew York: Red Dust, 1 969), which inscribes t h e product ion of i t s writing before t h e conceivable effects of an "oeuvre" as a phenomenon of (representative) dis­ course. 30. A s to the im pact of phonetism i n Western culture, see J acques D errida, Of Gram­ mato/ogy ( Ba l t i m ore: J ohns H op k i n s U n iversity Press, 1 97 6).

3.

WORD , D I A LOG U E , A N D NOVEL1

I f t h e efficacy o f scien t i fic approach i n "human" sciences h a s always been challenged, it is all the m ore stri k i ng that such a challenge should for the first time be issued on the very level o f the structures being s tudied-structures supposedly answerable to a logic oth er than scien­ t ific. What would be involved i s t h e logic o f language ( and all the m ore so, o f poetic language) that "writing" has had the virtue of bringing to light. I have in m in d that particular literary practice i n which the elaboration o f poetic m eaning em erges as a t angible, dynamic gram . 2 Confronted w i t h t h i s situation, then, literary semiotics can either abstain and rem ai n silent, or persist in its efforts to elaborate a m odel t h a t w o u l d be isomorphic t o this o ther logic; th at is , isomorphic t o t h e elaboration of poetic m eaning, a concern o f primary im port ance t o contem porary sem iotics. Ru ssian Form alism , i n w hich contem porary structural analysis claim s t o have its source, was i tsel f faced with identical alternatives when reasons beyond literature and science h alted its endeavors. R esearch was nonetheless carried on, r ecently com i ng to light i n the work o f M ik hail Bakhti n . His work represents o n e of t h a t m ovement's m ost rem ark able accom plishments, as well as one of the m ost powerful attem pts to t r anscend its limitations. Bakhtin shuns the linguist's technical rigor, wielding an impulsive and a t t i m es even prophetic pen, while he takes on the fundamental problems presently confronting a structural analysis of n arrative; this alone would give currency to essays written over fo rty years ago. Writer as well as "scholar," Bakhtin was one of the first to replace the stat ic h ewing out of texts with a m odel where liter ary structure does n ot simply exist but is generated in relation First published in

2:71µ uwr1x� ( Par i �:

Seuil, 1 96 9), pp. 1 4 3 -7 3 .

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t o another stru cture. What allows a dynamic dimension to structu ralism is his conception of t h e "literary word" as an intersection of textual sur­ face� rather than a point (a fixed meaning), as a dialogue among several writings: t hat of the writer, the addressee (or the character), and the contemporary or earlier cu l tural context. By introducing the s tatus of the word as a m i n imal structural unit, Bakhtin situates the text within history and society, which are t hen seen as texts read b y the writer, and into which he inserts him self by rewriting them . Diachrony is transformed into synchrony, and in light of this transform ation, linear history appears as abstr act i on . The only way a writer can participate in history is by t ransgressing this abstraction through a process of reading-writing; that is, t hrough . the: pi:�ct!Ce of a signifyin� y ru_cture in relation or opposition t o another structure. His­ t ory and m orality are written and read within the infrastructure of texts. The poetic word, polyvalent a n d m u lt i -determ ined, adheres to a logic exceeding that of codified discourse and fully comes into being o n ly in the m argins of recognized culture. Bakhtin was the first to study this logic, and he l ooked for its roots i n carnival. Carnivalesque discourse breaks t hrough the laws of a l anguage censored b y gram m a r and sem an­ tics and, at the same time, is a social and political protest . There is no equivalence, but r ather, identity between challenging official linguistic codes and challenging o fficial law.

THE

WO R D

WITHIN

THE

SPACE

OF

TEXTS

Defining the specific status of the word as signifier for d i fferent m odes of (literary) intellection within d i fferent genres or texts puts poetic an alysis at the sensitive center of contem porary "human" sciences-at the intersection of language (the true p ractice of thought)3 with space (the volume within which signification, t h rough a j oining o f differences, articulates itself). To investigate the status of the word is to s tudy its articulations (as semic complex) with other words in the sentence, and then t o look for the same functions or relationships at the articulatory level of larger sequences. Con fronted with this spatial conception of lan­ guage's poetic operation, we must first defi ne the three dimensions o f textual space where various semic sets and poetic sequences fun ction.

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NOVEL

These three dimensions or coordina tes of dialogue a r e writing subject, addressee, and exterior text s . The word's status is thus defined hori­ zon tally (the word in the text belongs to both writing subj ect and addressee) as well as vertically (the word in the t ext is orien ted toward an anterior or synchronic literary corpus.4 The addressee, however, is included within a book's discu rsive universe only as discourse itself. He thus fu ses with this other discou rse, this other book, in relation to which the writer has written his own t ext. Hence horizontal axis (subj ect-addressee) and vert ical axis (text-context) coin­ cide, bringing to light an im portant fact : each word (text) is an intersec­ tion of word (texts) where at least one other word (text) can be read. I n Bakhtin's work, these t w o axes, which he calls dialogu e and ambivalence, are not clearly distinguished. Yet, what appears as a lack of rigor is in fact an insight first introduced into lit erary theory by Bakhtin: any t ext is constructed as a m osaic of quotations; any text is th� absorption and transformation of another . The notion of intertextua ll{!:5f eplaces that of i ntersubjectivity, and poetic language is read as at least 'd6uble . T h e word a s m inimal textual u n i t thus t u r n s o u t to occu py the status of m ediator, linking structural m odels to cultu ral (his torical) environment, as well as that of regulator, controlling mutations from diachrony to synchrony, i . e . , to literary structure. The word is spatialized ; through the very notion of status, it fu nctions in three dimensions (subj ect-addressee­ context) as a s et of dia/ogical, semic elem ents or as a set of ambivalent elem ents. Consequently the task of liter ary sem iotics is to discover other formalisms corresponding to different m odalities of w ord-j oining (sequ ences) within the dial ogical space of texts. Any descript ion of a word's speci fic operation within different literary genres or texts thus requires a translinguistic procedure. First, we must think o f literary genres as im perfect sem iological system s "signifying b eneath the surface of langu age but never without i t " ; and secondly, dis­ cover relations among larger narrative units such as sentences, questions­ and-answers, dialogues, et cetera, not necessarily on the basis o f lin­ guistic m odels-justified by the principle o f semantic expa nsion. We could thus posit and demonstrate the hypothesis that any e volution of literary genres is an unconscious exteriorization of linguistic s tructures at their different levels. The novel in particular exteriorizes linguistic dia­ l ogue. 6

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67

W O R D AND D I A LO G U E Russian Formalists were engrossed with the idea of "linguistic dialogue." They insisted on the dialogical character of linguistic communication7 and considered the m onologue, the "em bryonic form" of common lan­ guage ,8 as subsequent t o dialogue. Some of them distinguished between m onological discourse (as "equivalent to a psychic state")9 and narrat ive (as "artistic im itation of m o nological discourse") . 10 Boris Eikhenbaum's fam ou s s tudy o f Gogol's The Overcoat is based on such premises. Eik henbaum notes that Gogol's text actively refers to an oral form of narra tion and to its linguistic characteristics (in tonation, synt actic construction of oral discourse, pertinent vocabulary, and so on). He thus set s u p two modes o f narration, indirect and direct, studying the relation­ ship between t he two. Yet, he seem s to be unaware that before refe rring to an oral discourse, the writer of the narrative usually refe rs to the dis­ course of an other whose oral discourse is only secondary (since the ot her is the carrier of oral discou rse) . 1 1 For Bakhtin, t h e dialogue-m onologue distinction h a s a m u c h larger significance than the concrete meaning accorded it by the Russian For­ m alist s . I t does not correspond to the direct/ indirect (monologue/ dia­ logue) distinction in narrat ives or plays. For Bakhtin, dialogue can be monological, and what is called m o nologue can be;: dialogical. With him, such t erms refer t o a linguistic infr as tructure t hat m u st be studied through a sem iotics of literary tex ts. This sem iotics cannot be b ased on either linguistic m et hods or logical givens, but rather, must be elaborated fr om the point where they leave off. L i nguistics studies "language" and its specific logic in i t s com monality ("obshchnost") as that fact or which mak es dialogical i ntercourse possible, but it consistently refrains from studying those d ialogical relationships themselves. [ . . . ) D i alogical relationships are not reducible to l ogical or concrete semantic relationships, which are in and o f themselves devoid of any dialogical aspect. [ . . . ) D i alogical relationships are totally i m possible without logical and c oncrete sem antic relat ionships, but they are not reducible to t h e m ; they have t h eir own speci ficit y . 12

While insisting on the di fference between dialogical relationships and specifically lingu istic ones, Bakhtin emphasizes t hat those structuring a narrative ( for exam ple, writer/character, to which we would add subj ect of enunciation/subj ect of utterance) are possible because dialogism is

68

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NOVEL

inherent i n langu age itself. Without ex plaining exactly what m akes up this double aspect o f language, he nonetheless insists that "dialogue is the only sphere p ossible for t he life o f language . " Today we can detect dialogical realtionships on several levels of langu age: first, within the combinative dyad, langue/parole; and secondly, within the systems either of langue (as collective, m o nological contracts as well as systems of cor­ relative value actualized in dialogue with the other ) or of parole (as essentially "combinative, " not pure cr eation, but individu a l form ation b ased on the exchange of signs). On still another level (which could be com pared t o the novel's am bivalent space), this "double character of langu age" has even been demonstrated as syntagma tic (m ade m anifest through extension, presence, and m etonymy) and system atic (manifested t hrough associa­ tion, absence, and metaphor). It would be impor tant to analyze linguis­ tically the dialogical exchanges between t hese two axes of l anguage as basis of the novel's ambivalence. We should also note J akobson's dou ble structures and t h eir over lappings within the code/message relationship, 13 which help to clarify Bakh tine's notion of di alogism as inherent in lan­ guage. Bakhtin foreshadows what Emile Benveniste has i n mind - when he speaks about discourse, that is, "language appropriated by t h e i ndividual as a practice . " A s Bakhtin himself writ es, . . I n order fo r dialogical rela­ t ionships to arise among [logical or concrete sem antic relationships], t hey m u s t clothe t hem selves in t h e word, becom e u t terances, and becom e the positions of various subj ects, expressed in a word." 1 4 Bakhti n , however, born of a rev olutionary Russia t hat was preoccupied with soci a l problem s , does not s e e dialogue o n l y a s language assumed b y a subj ect ; he sees i t , rather, as a writing where o n e reads t h e other (with n o allusion t o Freud). Bakh tinian dialogism identifies writing as both subj ectivity and com­ 1_11 un ication, or better, as intertextuality. Confronted with this dialogi sm, _ ] the n otion or- a: ..-j5et!H'.iii�su b ect o fwriti ng" becomes blurred, yielding to that o f "am�ival�nce of v,r� i �ing . " __

A MBIVA L E N C E

The t erm "am bivalence" implies the insertion of history (societ y ) into a t ext and of this text into h istory; fo r the -y.i riter, t hey are one and the

WORD,

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NOVEL

same. When he speak s of "two paths m erging within the narrative, " Bak htin considers writing as a reading of the anterior literary corpus and the text as an absorption o f and a reply to another tex t . He studies the polyphonic novel as an absorption of the carnival and the monological novel as a stifling of this literary structure, which he calls " M enippean" because o f its dialogism . Jn this perspective, a text cannot be grasped through linguistics alone. Bakhtin- postu lates the necessity for what he calls a trans/inguistic science, which, developed on the basis of language's dialogism , would enable us to understa nd, intertextual relations� rela­ f tionships that the nineteenth century label �d·.-;�cra value" or literat� 's m oral "message." Lautream ont wanted to write so that he could submit himself to a h igh morality. W ithin his practice, this m orality is actu alized as textual ambivalence: Th e Songs of Maldoror and the Poems are a constant dialogue with the preceding literary corpus, a perpetual challenge o f past writing. Dialogue and ambivalence are borne out as the only approach that perm its the writer to enter history by espousing an am bivalent et hics: negation as affirm ation. Dialogue a n d ambivalence lead me t o conclude that, within the interior space o f the text as well as within the space of texts, poetic language is a " doubl e." Saussure's poetic paragram ("Anagram s") extends fr om zero to two: the unit " one" (definition, "truth") does not exist in this field. Consequently, the notions of definition, determination, the sign and the very concept o f sign, which presuppose a vertical (hierarchical) divi­ sion between signifier and signified, cannot be applied to poetic lan81.!age-by definition an infi nity of pairings and combinations. The notion o f sign (Sr-Sd) is a product o f scientific abstraction (identity-substance-cause-goal as structure of the Indo- European sen­ tence), designating a vertically and hierarchically linear divisio n . The notion of double, the result of thinking over poetic (not scientific) lan­ guage, denotes "spatialization" and correla tion of the literary (linguistic) sequence. This im plies that the minimal unit of poetic language is at least double, not in the sense of the signifier/s igni fied dyad, but rather, in of one and other. It suggests that poetic language functions as a tabular model, where each "unit" (t his word can no longer be u sed without quotation marks, since every unit is d ouble) acts as a m ulti­ determ ined peak . The double would be the minimal sequence o f a para­ gram m atic semiotics to be worked out starting from the work of Saussure (in the "Anagram s") and Bakhtin. " = "

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AND

NOVEL

I nstead of carrying these thoughts t o their conclusion we shall concentrate here on one of t heir consequences: the inability of any logical system based on a zero-one sequence (true-false, nothingness-notation) t o accou nt for t h e operation o f poetic languag e. Scientific procedures are indeed ba sed upon a logical approach, itself founded on the Greek ( l ndo-European) sentence. Such a sentence begins as subj ect-predicate and grows by identification, determ ination, and cau­ sality. M odern logic from G ottlob Frege and Giuseppe Peano to Jan Lu kasiewicz, Robert Ackermann , and Alonzo Church evolves out of a 0- l sequence; G eorge Boole, who begins with set theory, produces formulae that are m ore isomorphic with language-all of t hese are ineffec­ tive within the realm of poetic langu age, where l is not a limit. I t is therefore impossible t o formalize poetic language according to ex isting logical (scientific) procedures withou t dist orting i t . A literary semiotics must be developed on the basis of a poetic logic where the co ncept of the power of the continuum would em body the 0-2 interval, a continuity where 0 denotes and 1 is implicitly transgressed. Within this "power of the continuu m " from 0 to a speci fically poetic double, the linguistic, psychic, and social "prohibition" is l (God, Law, Defi nition). The only li nguistic practice t o "escape" this prohibition is poetic discourse. I t is no accident that the shortcom ings of Aristotelian logic when applied t o language were pointed out by, on the one hand, twentieth-century Chinese philosopher Chang Tung-Sun (the product of a different linguistic herit age-ideogram s-where, in place of G od , there extends the Yin-Yang "dialogue") and, on the other, Bakhtin (who attempted to g o beyond the Formalists through a dyna mic t heorization --a acco mplished in revolutionary society). With B a khtiri�- --w-ho s s1m iTates n-;;�� t ive discours e into - epic discourse, narrat ive is a prohibition, a monologism , a subordination o f the code to l , to God. Hence, the epic i s religious a n d theological; a l l "realis t" narrative obeying 0- l logic is dog­ m atic. The realist novel, which Bakhtin calls monological ( Tolstoy), tends to evolve within this space. Realist description, definition of "per­ sonality," "character" creation, and "subject" development-all are descriptive narrative elements belonging to the 0- l i nterval and are t hus m onological. The only discourse integrally to achieve the 0-2 poetic logic is that of the carnival . By adopting a dream logic, it tra nsgresses rules o f linguistic code and social m orality a s well.

WORD,

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AND

N O V E i.

71

I n fact, this " transgression" o f linguistic, logical, and social codes within the carnivalesque only exists and succeeds, of course, becau se it accepts another law. Dialogism is not "freedom to say everything, " it is a dramatic "banter" (Lautreamont), an other im perative than that of 0. We should par ticularly em phasize this specificity of dial ogue as transgression giving itself a law so as t o radically and categorically dis­ tingu ish it fr om the pseud o-transgression evident in a certain m odern "erotic" and parodic literature. The latter, seeing itself as "libertine" and "relativizing," operates according to a principle of law anticipating its:. own transgression . I t thus com pensates for m onologism , does n o t dis­ place the 0 - 1 int erval, nor has anything to do with the architectonics of dialogism, which implies a categorical t earing from the n orm and a rela­ tionship of nonexclusive opposites. The novel incorporat ing carnivalesque structure is called polyphonic. Bakhtin's exam ples include R abelais, Swift, and Dostoievsk i. We m ight also add the "modern" novel of the twentieth century-J oyce, Proust, Kafk a-while specifying that the m odern polyphonic novel, although analogous in its status, where monologism is concerned , to dialogical n ovels of the past, is clearly m arked off from t hem . A break occurred at the end of the n ineteen th century: while dialogue in Rabelais, Swift, and Dos toievski remains at a represen tative, fictitious level, our century's polyphonic novel becom es "u n readable" (Joyce) and in terior to language (Proust, Kafka). Begh:ning with this break-not only literary but also social, political, and philosophical in nature-the problem of i nter­ textuality (intertextual dia logue) appears as such . Bakhtin's theory itself (as well as that of Saussure's "Anagrams") can be t raced historically to this break : he was able to discover textual--�l_
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AND NOVEL

obey t h e logic of being an d a r e thus m onological. Secondly, it is a logic of analogy and nonexclusive opposition, opposed t o m o nological levels o f causality and identifying determination. Finally, it is a logic o f the "transfinite," a concept b orrowed from G eorg Cantor, which, on the basis o f poetic language's "power of the continu u m " (0-2), introduces a second principle of formation: a poetic seq uen ce is a "next-larger" (not causally deduced) to all preceeding sequences of the Aristotelian chain (scientific, monological, or narrative). The n ovel's ambivalent space thus can be seen as regulated by two for mative principles: m onological (each following sequence is determ ined by the preceding one), and dial ogical (transfinite sequences t h a t are next-larger to the preceding causal series ). 15 Dialogue appears m os t clearly in t h e structure o f carnivalesque lan­ guage, where symbolic relationships and an alogy take precedence over substance-causality connections. The n otion of ambivalence pertains t o the permutation o f the two spaces observed in novelistic structure: dia logical space and m onological space. From a conception o f p oetic language as dialogue and ambivalence, Bakhtin m oves to a reevaluation of the novel's structure. This i nvest iga­ tion takes the form of a classificati on of words within the narrative-the cla ssification being then linked t o a typo logy of discourse.

CLA S S I F I CATI O N OF W OR D S WITHIN T H E N A RRATIVE According t o Bakhtin, there are three categories o f words within the nar­ rative. First, the direct word, referring b ack t o its obj ect, expresses the last possible degree of signification by the subj ect of discourse within the limits of a given context. It is the annunciating, expressive word of the writer, t he denotative word, which is supposed to provide him with direct, objective comprehension. It k nows nothing but i tself and its object, to which it attempts to be adequate ( i t is not "conscious" of the influences of words foreign to it).

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73

Second, t h e object-orien ted word is t h e direct discourse of "char­ acters. " It has direct, objective meaning, but is not situated on the same level as the writer's discou rse; thus, it is at som e distance from the latter. I t is both oriented towards its object and is itsel f the object o f the writer's orientation. It is a foreign word, subordinate to the narrative word as object of the writer's com prehension. But the writer's orientation t owards the word as obj ect does not penetrate it but accepts it as a whole, chang­ ing neither meaning nor tonality; it subordinates that word to its own task, introducing no other signification. Consequently, the obj ect­ oriented word, having become the object of an ot her (denotative) word, is not "conscious" of it. The o bject-oriented word, like the denotative word, is t herefore univocal. I n the t hird instance, however, the writer can u se another's word, giv­ ing it a new meaning while retaining the meaning it already had. The result is a word with two significations: it becom es ambivalent. This ambivalent word is t herefore the result of a ing of two sign systems. Within t he evolution of genres, am bivalent words appear in M enippean and carnivalesque texts (I shall return to this point). The forming of two sign systems relativizes the t ext . Stylizing effects establish a distance with regard to the word of anot her-contrary to imitation (Bakhtin, rather, has in m ind repetition), which takes what is imitated (repeated) s eriously, claim ing and appropriating it without relativizing it. This category of ambivalen t words is characterized by the writer's exploitation of another's speech-without running counter to its thought-for his own pu rposes; he fo llows its direction while relativizing it. A second category of ambivalent words, parody fo r instance, proves to be quite d i fferent. Here the writer introdu ces a signification opposed t o t hat o f the other's word. A t hird type of am bivalent word, of which the hidden interior polemic is an ex am ple, is characterized by the active (modifying) influence of another's word on the writer's word. It is the writer who "speaks," but a fo reign discourse is constantly present in the speech that it distorts. Wit h this active kind of am bivalent word, the other's word is represented by the word of the narrator. Examples include auto­ biography, polem ical confessions, questi ons-and-answers, and hidden dia­ logue. The novel is the only genre in which am bivalent words appear; t h at is the specific characteristic of its s t ructure.

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A N D N O V EL

T H E I N H E R E N T D I A L O G I S M OF D EN OTATIVE O R H I S TO R I CA L W O RD S T h e notion o f univocity o r obj ectivity of m onologue a n d o f t h e epic t o which it is assi m ilated, or o f the denotative object-oriented word, cannot withstand psych oanalytic or sem antic analysis of language. Dialogism is coextensive with the deep structures o f discou rse. N otwithstanding Bakht i n and Benveniste, dialogism appears on the level of the Bakhtinian denotative word as a principle of every enunciation, as well as on the level o f the "story" in Benveniste. The story, like Benven iste's concept of "discourse" itself, presu p poses a n intervention b y the speaker within the narrative as well as an orientation toward the other . In order to describe the dialogism inherent in the denotative or historical word, we would have to turn to the psychic aspect of writing as t race of a dialogue with onese i f (with another), as a writer ' s dist ance from himself, as a splitting e writer into subj ect of enunciation and subj ect of u tterance. y the very act of narrating, the subj ect of narration addresses an r; narra t i o n is structured in relation to this ot her . (On the strength of 1 such a commu nication, Francis Ponge o ffers his own variation o f " I think therefore I am " : " I speak and you hear m e, therefore w e are ." H e thus postu lates a shift from subjectivism t o am bivalence.) Con sequently, we m ay consider narration ( beyond the signifier/ signified relationship) as a dialogue between the subject of narration (S) and the addressee (A)­ the o ther. This addressee, q uite sim ply the reading subject , represents a doubly oriented entity: signifier in his relation to the t ext and signified in the relation between the subject of n arration and him sel f. This entity is thus a dyad ( A 1 and A 2 ) whose two t er m s, communicating with each other, constitute a code system . The subj ect of narration (S) is drawn in, and therefore reduced t o a code, t o a nonperson, to an anonym ity (as writer, subject of enunciation) m ediated by a third person , the he/she char acter, the subj ect of u tterance. The writer is thus the subject of nar­ ration transformed by his having included himself within the narrative system ; he is neither nothingness nor anybody, but the possibility of permutation from S to A, from story to discourse and from discourse t o story. He becomes a n anonymity, a n absence, a blank space, thus permit­ ting the structure to exist as such . A t the very origin of narration, at the very moment when the writer appears, we experience emptiness. We see

W ORD,

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75

the problem s of death , birth, and sex appear when literature touches upon this strategic point that writing becomes when it exteriorizes lin­ guistic system s through narrative structure (genres). On the basis o f this anonymity, this zero where the author is situated, the he/she of the character is born. At a later stage, it will becom e a proper nam e (N). Therefore, i n a literary text, 0 does not exist; emptiness is quickly replaced by a "one" (a he/she, or a proper nam e) that is really twofold, since it is subject and addressee. It is the addressee, the other, exteriority (whose object is the subject of narration and who is at the same tim e represented and representing) w h o transforms t h e subject i n t o a n au thor. That is, who has the S through this zero-stage of negation, of exclu­ sion, const i tuted by the au thor. In t his coming-and-going m ovemen t between subject a n d other, between writer (W) a n d reader, the author i s structured as a signifier a nd the text a s a dialogue o f t w o discourses . The constitution o f characters ( o f "personality") also permits a dis­ junction of S into Sr (subject of enunciation) and Sd (subject of utterance). A diagram of this m u tation would appear as diagram 1 . This s ----

_......s . --. W (zero) -. he --. N

=

S

' sd

Diagram I

diagram incorporates the structure of the pronom inal system 16 that psychoanalysts repeatedly find in the discourse of the obj ect of psych oanalysis (see diagram 2). At the level o f the text (of the signifier)-in the Sr-Sd relationship-we find this dialogue of the subj ect with the addressee around which every narration is structured . The subject of ut terance, in relation to the subj ect s N

(some) one Diagram 2

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o f enunciation, plays the role o f addressee with respect to the subj ect; it inserts the subject of enunciation within the writing system by m a king the latter through emptiness . M a llarme called this operati on "elocu­ tionary disappearance . " T h e subject of u tterance is b oth representative o f the subject of enun­ ciation and represented as object of the subject of enunciation. I t is t herefore com mutable with the writer's anonymity. A character ( a per­ sonality) is constituted by this generation of a double entity starting fr om zero. The subject of utterance is "dialogical," both S and A are disguised within it. The procedure I have j u s t described in confronting narration and the novel n ow abolishes distinctions bet ween sign ifier a n d signi fied. It renders these concepts ineffective for that literary practice operating uniquely within dialogical signifier(s). "The signifier represents the sub­ ject for another signifier" (Lacan). N arration, t herefore, is always constituted as a d ialogical m at rix by the receiver t o whom this n arration refers. A n y narration, including his­ t ory and science, contains this dialogical dyad formed by the narrator in conj u nction with the other. I t is translated through the dialogical Sr/Sd relationship, with Sr and Sd filling the roles of signifier and signified in turns, but constituting m erely a permutation o f two signifiers. It is, h owever, only through certain narrative structures t h at this dia­ logue-this hold on the sign as double, this am bivalence of writing-is exteriorized in the actual organization of poetic discourse on the level o f textual, literary occurrence.

T O W ARD A T Y P O L O GY OF D I S C O U R S E S Bakhtin's radical undertaking-the dynamic analysis o f texts resulting i n a redistribution o f genres-calls upon u s t o b e just a s radical i n develop­ ing a typology of discourses . As it is used by the Formalists, the term " narra tive" is too ambiguous to cover all of the genres it supposedly designates. At least two different types of narrative can be isolated. We h ave on the one hand m onological discourse, including, first, the represen tative m ode of description and narration (the epic); secondly, his-

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torical discourse; a n d thirdly, scientific discourse. I n a l l three, t h e subject both assum es and subm its to the rule of I (God). The dialogue inheren t in a l l discourse is smothered by a prohib ition, a censorship, such t h at this discourse refuses to turn b ack upon itself, to enter int o dialogue with itself. To present the m odels o f this censorship is to describe the n ature of the differences between two types of discourse: the epic type (history and science) and the M enippean type (carnivalesque writings and n ovel), which transgresses prohibition. M onological discourse corresponds to J akobson's system atic axis of language, and its analogous relationship to gramm atical affirmation and negation has also been noted. On the other hand, dialogical discourse includes carnivalesque and M enippean discourses as well as the polyphonic novel. In its structures, writing reads another writing, reads itself and constructs itself through a process o f destructive genesis.

E P I C M O N O LO G I S M The epic, structu red a t t h e limits of syncretism, illustrates t h e double value of words in their post syncretic phase: the utterance o f a subj ect ( " I " ) inevitably penetrated by language as carrier of the concrete, universal, individual, and collect ive. But in an epic, the speaker (subj ect of the epic) does not make use of another's speech . The dialogical play of language as .correlation of signs-the dialogical permutation of two sig­ nifiers for one signified-takes place on the level of narration (through the denotative word, or through the inherency of the text). It does not exteriorize itself at the level of textual manifestation as in the structure of novels. This is the schem e at work within an epic, with no hint as yet of Bakhtin's problem atic-the am bivalent word . The organizational prin­ ciple o f epic structure thus remains m onological. The dialogue of lan­ guage does not m anifest itself except within a narrative infrastructure. There is no dialogue at the level of the a pparent textual organization (his­ torical enunciation/discursive enunciation); the two aspects of enuncia­ tion remain limited by the narrator's absolute point of view, which coin­ cides with the wholeness of a god or com munity. Withi n epic m onologism , we detect the presence of the "transcendental signified" and "self presence" as highlighted by J acques Derrida.

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It is the system atic m ode of language (sim ilarity, according to J akobson) that prevails within the epic space. Metonym ic contiguity, specific to the syntagmatic axis of language, is rare. O f course, associa­ tion and m etonymy are there as rhetorical figures, but they are never a principle of st ructural organization. Epic logic pursues the general through the specific; it thus assumes a hier archy within the structure of substance. Epic logic is therefore causal, that is, theological ; it is a belief in the literal sense of the word.

T H E CARNIV A L : A H O M O L O G Y B ETWE E N T H E BODY,

DREAM,

S TR U CTU R E S

OF

LIN G U I S T I C S T R U CTU R E , AND D E SIRE

Carnivalesque structure is like the residue of a cosm ogony t hat ignored subst ance, causality, or identity outside of its link to the whole, which exists only in or through relationship. This carnivalesque cosm ogony has persisted in the form of an antitheological (but not antimystical) an d deeply popular m ovement. It rem ains present as an often m isunderstood and persecuted substratum of official Western culture thr oughout its entire history; it is most noticeable in folk games as wel l as in M ed ieval theater and prose (anecdotes, fables, and the Roman de R enart). A s composed of distances, rela tionships, analogies, a n d nonexclusive opposi­ tions, it is essentially dialogical. It is a spectacle, but without a stage; a game, but also a daily u ndertaking; a signifier, but also a signified. That is, two t exts m eet , contradict, and relativize each other . A carnival par­ ticipant is both actor and spectator; he l oses his sense of ind ividuality, es through a zero point of carnivalesque acti vity and splits into a subject of the spectacle and an object o f the game. Within the carnival , the subject is reduced t o nothi ngness, while the structure o f the au thor em erges as anonymity that creates and sees itself created as self and other, as m an and m ask . The cynicism o f this carnivalesque scene, which destroys a god in order to impose its own dialogical laws, calls to m in d Nietzsche's Dionysianism . T h e carnival first exteriorizes the structure of reflective literary productivity, t h e n inevitably brings to light t h i s struc­ ture' s u nderlying u nconscious: sexuality and death . Out of the dialogu e t h a t is est ablished between them , the structural dyads of carnival appear:

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high and low, birth and agony, foo d and excrem ent, praise and curses, laughter and tears. Figures germ ane to carnivalesque language, including repetition , "i nconsequent " statem ents (which are nonetheless "connected" within an infinite context), and n onexclusive opposition, which fu nction as em pty sets or disjunct ive additions, produce a m ore flagrant dialogism t h an any o ther discourse. D isputing the laws of language based on the 0- 1 int erval, the carnival challenges G od, authority, and social law; insofar as it is dialogical, it is rebellious. Because of its subversive discou rse, the word "carnival" has understandably acqu ired a strongly derogatory or nar­ rowly burlesque m eaning in our society. The scene of the carnival, where there is no stage, no "theater , " is thus both stage and life, game and dream, discourse and spectacle. By the sam e t oken, it is proffered as the only space in which language escapes linearity (law) to live as drama in t hree dimensions. At a deeper level, this also signifies the contrary: drama becomes located in language. A major principle thus emerges: all poetic discourse is dram atization, dra­ m atic permutation (in a m athematical sen se) of words. Within car­ nivalesque discourse, we can already adu m brate that "as to mental con­ dition, it is like the m eanderings of drama" ( M allarm e). This scene, whose symptom is carnivalesque discourse, is the only dimension where "theater m ight be the reading of a book, its writing in operation . " I n other words, such a scene is t h e o n l y place where discourse attains its "potential in finity" (to use D avid Hilbert's term), where prohibitions (representation, "m onologism " ) and t h eir transgression (dream , body, "dialogis m " ) coexist. Carnivalesque t radition was absorbed into M enip­ pean discourse and put into practice by t he polyphonic novel. On the omn ified stage of carnival, language parodies and relativizes itself, repudiating its role in representation ; in so doing, it provokes laughter but remains incapable of detaching itself from represen tation . The syntagmatic axis of language becom es exteriorized in this space and, through dialogue with the systematic axis, constitutes the ambivalent structure bequeathed by carnival t o the n ovel. Faulty (by which I mean am bivalent), both representative and antirepresentative, the carni­ valesque structure is anti-Christian and antirationalist. All of the m ost important polyphonic novels are inherit ors of the M enippean, car­ nivalesque structure: those of Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, Sade, Balzac,

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Lautreamont, Dostoievski, J oyce, and Kafk a . Its history is the history of the struggle against Christianity and its representation; t his m eans an exploration of language ( o f sexuality and death), a consecration of am bival ence and of "vice . " T h e word "carnivalesque" lends itself t o a n ambiguity one m u s t avoid. In contem porary society, it generally connotes parody, hence a strengthening of the law. There is a tendency to blot out the carnival's dramatic (murderous, cynical, and revolutionary i n the sense of dia­ lectical transformation) aspects, which Bak htin emp hasized, and which he recognized in M enippean writings or in Dostoievski. The laughter o f t he carnival is n o t sim ply parodic; i t is no m ore comic than tragic; it i s b o t h a t once, o n e m ight s a y t h a t i t is serious. This is t h e only w a y that i t c a n avoid becoming either t he scene of l a w or t h e scene o f i t s parody, i n order t o become t he scene o f i t s o ther. M odern writing o ffers several striking exam ples of this omnified scene that is both law and ot her where laughter is si lenced because it is not parody but m urder and revolution (Antonin Artaud). The epic and the carnivalesque are the two currents that fo rmed European narrative, one ta king precedence over the other according to the times and the writer. The carnivalesque t radition of the people is still apparent in personal literature of late antiqu ity and has remained, to this day, the life source reanimating literary t h ought, orienting it t owards new perspectives. C lassical humanism he lped dissolve the epic m onologism that speech welded t ogether so well, and that orators, rhetoricians, and politicians, on the one hand, tragedy and epic, on the other, im plem ented so effectively. Before another m onologism could take root (with the triumph of formal logic, Christianity, and Renaissance hum anism), 17 late antiquity gave b irth to two genres that reveal language's dialogism . Situated within the carnivalesque tradition, and constituting the yeast of the European novel, these two genres are Socratic dialogue and M enipp ean discourse. -

S O C R A T I C D IA L OG U E : D IA L O G ISM A S A D E STRUCTION OF THE PERSON Socratic dialogue was widespread i n antiquity: Plato, Xenophon, Antisthenes, Aeschines, P haedo, Euclid, and ot hers excelled in it,

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although only the dialogues o f Plato and X enophon have come down t o us. N o t as m u c h rhetorical i n genre a s popular and carnivalesque, it was originally a kind of memoir (the recollections of Socrates's discu ssions with his students) that broke away from the constraints of history, retain ­ ing only the Socratic process o f dialogically revealing truth, a s well as the structure of a recorded dialogue fr amed by narrative. N ietzsche accused Plato of having ign ored Dionysian tragedy, but Socratic dialogue had adopted the dialogical and defiant stru cture of the carnivalesque scene. According to Bakhtin, Socratic dialogues are characterized by opposition to any o fficial m o nologism claiming to possess a ready- made truth. Socratic truth ("meaning") is the product of a dialogical relationship among speakers; it is correlational and its relat ivism appears by virtue of the observers' au tonomous points of view. Its art is one of articulation of fa ntasy, correlation o f signs. Two typical devices for triggering this lin­ guistic network are syncrisis (confronting different discourses on the same topic) and anacrusis (one word prompting another). The subj ects of discourse are nonpersons, anonyms, hidden by the discourse constituting them. Bakhtin reminds us t hat the "event" o f Socratic dialogue i s o f the nature of discourse: a questioning and testing, through speech, of a definition. This speech practice is therefore organically linked to the man who created it (Socrates and his students), or better, speech is m a n and his activity. Here, one can speak o f a practice possessing a synthetic character; t he process separ ating the word as act, as apodeictic practice, as articulation of difference fr om the image as represent ation, as k nowledge, and as idea was not yet com plete when Socratic dialogue took form . But t here is an i m p ortant "detail" to Socratic dialogism; it is the exclusive p osition of a subject of discourse that provokes the dia­ logue. I n the Apology of Plato, Socrates's trial and the period of await­ ing judgment determine his d iscourse as the confessions of a m an "on the threshold." The exclusive situation liberates the word from any u nivocal objectivity, from any representative fu nction, opening it up to the sym­ bolic sphere. Speech affronts death, m easuring itself against another dis­ course; t his dialogue counts the person out. The resemblance between S ocratic dialogue and the ambivalent word o f the novel is obvious. Socratic dialogue d i d not last long, but it gave birth to several dialogical genres, i ncluding Menippean discourse, whose origins also lie in carnivalesque folklore.

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M E N IP P E A N D I S C O U R S E : T H E T E X T A S S O CI A L A CT I VITY I . M enippean discourse takes its name from M enippus o f Gadara, a philosopher of the third century B. C. His satires were lost, but we know of their existence through the writings of Di ogenes Laertius . The term was u sed by the Romans to designate a genre of the first century s . c . ( M arcus Terentius Varro's Satirae Menippeae). Y et, the genre actually appeared much earlier; its first representative was perhaps A ntisthenes, a student of Socrates and one of the writers of Socratic dia logue. Heraclitus also wrote M enippean texts (according to Cicero, he created an analogous genre called /ogistoricus); Varro gave i t definite stability. Other exam ples include Seneca the Y ounger's Apoco­ /ocyn thosis, Petronius's Satyricon, Lucan's satires, Ovid's Meta­ morphoses, Hi ppocrates' Novel, various samples of Greek "no v els, " classical utopian novels, a n d Roman ( H oratian) satire. Within the M enippean sphere there evolve diatribe, soliloquy, and ot her minor genres of cont roversy. It greatly i n fluenced Christian and Byzantine literature; in various forms, it survived through the M i ddle Ages, the R enaissance, and the Refor m ation through to the present (the novels of Joyce, Kafka, and Bataille). This carnivalesque genre-as pliant and variable as Proteus, capable o f insinuating itself into other genres-had an enormous i n fluence on the development of European literat ure and especially the formation of the novel . M enippean discourse is both comic and tragic, or rather, it is serious in the same sense as is the carnivalesque; through the status of its words, i t is politically and socially disturbing. It frees speech from historical constraints, and this entails a thorough bo ldness in philosophical and imaginative inventiveness. Bakhtin em phasizes that "exclu sive" situa­ ti ons increase freedom of language in M enippean discourse. Phanta­ sm agoria and an often mystical sym bolism fuse with macabre natu­ ralism . A dventures u n fold in brothels, robbers' dens, t averns, fair­ grounds, and prisons, am ong erotic orgies and during sacred worship, and so fort h . The word has no fear of i ncrim inating itself. I t becomes free fr om presupposed "values" ; without dist inguishing between virtue and vice, and without distinguishing itself fr om them , the word considers them its private domain, as one of its creations. Academic problems are

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pushed aside in favor of the "ultim ate" problem s of existence: this dis­ course orients liberated language t owards philosophical u niversalism . Without distinguishing ontology from cosm ogony, i t unites them into a practical philosophy of life. Elements of the fant astic, which never appear in epic or tragic works, crop forth here. For example, an u nusual perspective fro m above changes the scale of observation in Lucan's lcaro-m enippea, Varro's Endym ion, and later i n the works of Rabelais, Swift , and Voltaire. Pathological states of the soul, such as madness, split personalities, daydream s , dreams, and death, become part of the narrative (they a ffect the writ ing of Shakespeare and Calderon). Accord­ ing to Bakhtin, t hese elem ents have m ore structural t han t hematic signifi­ cance; t hey destroy m an's epic and tragic unity as well as his belief in identity and causality; they indicate that he has lost his totality and no longer coincides w i t h himself. A t the same t i m e , they o ften appear as a n exploration o f language and writing: in Varro's Bimarcus, the t w o M arcuses discuss whether or n o t o n e should write in t ropes. M en ippean discourse tends t owards the scandalous and eccentric in language. The "inop portune" expression, with its cynical frankness, its desecration of t h e sacred, a n d i t s attack on etiquette, is quite characteristic. This dis­ course is m ade up of contrasts: virtuous courtesans, generous bandits, wise men that are both free and enslaved, and so on. It uses abrupt tran­ sitions and changes; high and low, rise and fall, and misalliances of all kinds. I ts language seems fascinated with the "double" (with its own activity as graphic trace, doubling an "outside") and with the logic o f opposition replacing t h a t of identity in defining term s. I t is an all-inclu­ sive genre, pu t t ogether as a pavem ent of citations. It includes all genres (short s tories, letters, speeches, m ixtures of verse and prose) whose structural signi fication is to denote the writer's distance fr om his own and other texts. The multi-stylism and multi-tonality of this discourse and the dialogical status of i ts word explain why it has been im possible for classicism, or for any other authoritarian society, to express it self in a novel descended fr om M enippean discou rse. Put t ogether as an exploration of the body, dream s, and language, this writing grafts onto the topical: it is a kind of political j ournalism o f its time. Its d iscourse exteriorizes political and ideological conflict s o f the m oment . The dialogism of its words is practical philosophy doing battle against idealism and religious metaphysics, against the epic. It con-

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stitutes t h e social and political thought of a n era fighting against theology, against law. 2. M enippean discourse is thus structured as ambivalence, as the focus for two tendencies of Western literature: representation t hrough language as staging, and exploration of langu age as a correlative system of signs. Language in the M enippean tradition is both represent ation of exterior space and "an experience that produces its own space . " I n this ambiguous genre appear, first, the prem ises of realism (a secondary activity in relation to what is lived, where m an describes himself by mak ­ i n g of himself an exhibition, finally creating "characters" and "per­ sonalities"); and secondly, the refusal to define a psychic universe (an i m mediately present activity, characterized by im ages, gestures, and word-gestures t h rough which man lives his limits in the impersonal). This second aspect relates M enippean structure to the structure of dreams and hieroglyphic writing or, possibly, to the theater of cruelty as conceived by Artau d . His words apply equally; M enippean discourse "is not equal to individual life, t o that individual aspect of life where characters t riumph, but ra ther to a kind o f liberated life that sweeps away h u m an indi­ viduality and where man is no m ore than a reflected image." Likewise, the M enippean experience is not cathartic; it is a festival of cruelty, but also a political act. It transmits no fixed m essage except that itself should be " t he eternal j oy of becom ing, " and it exhausts itself in the act and in t h e present. Born after S ocrates, Plato, and the Sophists, it belongs t o an age when t hought ceases t o be practice; the fact t hat i t is considered as a techn e shows t hat the praxis-poiesis separation has already t a k en place. Similarly, literature becom ing "thought" b ecomes conscious of itself as sign. M an, alienated from nature and society, becomes alienated from himself, discovering his " interior" and "reifying" this discovery in the a mbivalence o f M enippean writing. Such t o kens are the harbingers of realist represen tation. M enippean discourse, however, k nows nothing o f a theological principle's monologism (or of the Renaissance m an-God) that could have consolidated its representat ive aspect. The " tyranny" i t i s subj ected t o is that of t ex t ( n o t speech a s reflect ion o f a preexisting universe), or rather its own structure, constructing and understanding itself t h rough itself. It constructs itself as a hieroglyph, all the while remaining a spectacle. It bequeaths this a m b ivalence t o the novel, above all to t he polyphonic novel, which k nows neither law nor hierarchy, since

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it is a plurality of linguistic elem ents in dialogical relationships. T h e con­ junctive principle of the di fferent parts of Menippean discourse is cer­ t ainly sim ilitude (resem blance, dependence, and t herefore "realism"), but also contiguity (analogy, juxt aposition, and therefore "rhetoric"-not in Benedetto Croce' s sense of ornament, but rather, as justification through and in language). M enippean ambivalence consists of communication between two spaces: 18 that of the scene and that of the hieroglyph, that of representation by language, and that o f experience in language, system and phrase, m etaphor and m etonymy. This am bivalence is the novel's inheritance. In other words, the dialogism of M enippean and carnivalesque dis­ courses, t ranslating a logic of relations and analogy rather than of substance and inference, stands against Aristotelian logic. From within the very interior o f formal logic, even while skirting it, M enippean dia­ logism contradicts it and points it t owards other forms of t h ought. I ndeed, M enippean discourse develops in tim es of opposition against Arist o telianis m , and writers of polyphonic novels seem to disapprove of t h e very structures of official thought fou nded on formal logic.

THE

S U BV E R S IV E N O V E L

1 . I n the Middle Ages, M e nippean tendencies were held in check by the authority o f the religious text; in the bourgeois era, they were contained by the absolutism of individuals and things. Only modernity-when fr eed of "God"-releases the Menippean force of the novel. Now that m odern, bourgeois society has not only accepted, but claim s to recognize itself in t he novel, 19 such claim can only refe r to t h e category of m on ol ogica l narratives, known as realistic, t hat censor all car­ nivalesque and M enippean elements, whose structu res were assembled at the time of the Renaissance. To t he contrary, the M enippean, dialogical novel, t ending to refuse representation and the epic, has only been tolerated; t hat is, it has been declared unreadable, ignored, or ridiculed. Today, it shares the same fate as the carnivalesque discourse practiced by students during the M iddle Ages outside of the Church. The novel, and especially t he modern, polyphonic novel, incorporating M enippean elem ents, embodies the effort of European thought t o break

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o u t of the framework o f causally determined identical substances and head t oward an other m odality of thought that proceeds through dialogue (a logic of distance, relativity, anal ogy, nonexclusive and transfinite opposition). It is therefore not surprising that the novel has been considered as an inferior genre (by neoclassicism and other similar regimes) or as subversive (I have in mind the m aj or writers of polyphonic novels over m any centuries- Rabelais, Swift, Sade, Lautreamont, Kafka, and Bataille-to mention only t hose who have always been and still remain on the fringe of official cu ltu re) . The way in which European t hought transgresses its constituent characteristics appears clearly in the words and narrative structures of the twentieth-century novel . Identity, subst ance, causality, and definition are transgressed so that others may be adopted: an alogy, relation, opposit ion, and therefore d ialogism and M enippean am bivalence .20 Although this entire historical inventory that Bakhtin has undertaken evokes the im age of a m u seum or the task of an archivist, it is nonethe­ less rooted in our present concerns. Everything written today unveils either the possibility or im possibility of reading and rewriting history . This possibility i s evident i n t he literature heralded b y the writings o f a new generation, where the text is elaborated as theater and as reading. M allarme, one of the first to understand the Menippean qualities of the novel (let it be emphasized that Bak ht in's term has the advantage of situating a cert ain kind o f writing within history), said that literature "is nothing but the flash of what should have been produced previously or closer to the origi n . " 2 . I would n o w suggest two m odels for organizing narrative significa­ tion, based on two dialogical categories : ( l ) Subject (S) ;::::? Addressee (A); and (2) Subject of enu nciation ;::::? Subject of u tterance. The first m odel implies a dialogical relationship, while the second presupposes m odal relationships within this dialogical form ation. The first m odel determines genre (epic poem , novel) while t h e second determ ines generic variants. Within the p o lyphonic structure of a n ovel, the first dialogical m odel (S ;::::? A ) plays itself out entirely within the writing discou rse; and it presents itself as perpetually challenging this discourse. The writer's interlocutor, then, is the writer himself, but as reader of another text. The

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I t does not strive t owards transcendence b u t rather t oward harmony, a l l the while im plying an idea of rupture (of opposition a n d analogy) as a m odality of transformation . Dialogism situates philosophical problems within language; m ore precisely, within language as a correlation of texts, as a reading-writing that fa lls in with non-Aristotelian, syntagm atic, correlational, "car­ nivalesque" logic. Consequently, one of the fundamental problem s facing contem porary sem i otics is precisely to describe this "other logic" withou t denaturing it. T h e term "ambivalence" lends itself perfectl y to t h e current transitory stage of European literature-a coexistence (an ambivalence) o f "the double of lived experience" (realism and the epic) and "lived experience" itself (linguistic exploration and M en ippean discourse)-a literature that will perhaps arrive at a for m of thought similar to that of painting: the t ransmission of essence through form , and the configuration of (literary ) space a s revealing (literary) t h ought without "realist" pretensions. This entails the study, t hrough language, of the n ovel's space and of its tra nsm utations, thereby establishing a close relationship between lan­ guage and space, compelling us t o analyze them as m odes of thought. By examining the am bivalence of the spectacle (realist representation) and of l ived experi ence (rhetoric), one m ight p erceive the line where the rupture (or junction) b etween them takes p lace. That line could be seen as the graph of a motion through which our culture forsakes itself in order to go beyond itself. The path charted between t h e two poles of dialogue radically abolishes problem s of causality, finality, et cet era, from our philosophical arena. I t suggests t h e im portance o f t h e dialogical pri nciple for a space of t h ought much larger than that of the novel. M o re than binarism , dialogism may well become the basis of our time's intellectual stru cture. The predomi­ nance of the novel and other ambivalent l iter ary structures; the com­ munal, carnivalesque phenomena attracting young people; q u antum exchanges; and current interest in the correlational symbolism of Chinese philosophy-to cite only a few striking element s of m odern t hought-all confirm this hypothesis. 1 96 6

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G od

Pr act ice " Discourse" D i a logism Correla ti onal L ogic P h rase Carnival ......

NOVEL

" H istory"

M onologism A r i stotelian Logic System Narrative

"'v"

,,,,,,,

A m bivalence M enippean Discou rse Polyphonic Novel Figure I

(on the status of the word, dialogue, and am bivalence), as well as on the importance of certain new perspectives opened up through them . By establishing the status o f the word as m inimal unit o f the text, Bakhtin deals with structure at its deepest level, beyond the sentence and rhetorical figures. The not i on of status has added to the im age of the text as a corpus of atoms that of a text m ade u p of relationships, within which words function as quantum units. I f there is a m odel for poetic language, it no longer involves lines or su r fa ces, but rather, space and infinity-concepts amenable to form alization through set theory and the new m athematics. Contem porary analysis of narrative structure has been refined to the point where it can delineate functions (cardinal or catalytic), and indices (as such or as information); it can describe the elaboration of a narrative according to particular logical or rhetorical patterns. Without gainsaying the undisputed value of this kind of research,21 one m ight wonder whether the presuppositions of a m et alan­ guage that sets up hierarchies or is heterogeneous to narrative do not weigh too heavily upon such studies. Perhaps Bak htin's naive procedure, centered on the word and its unlimited ability to generate dialogue (com­ mentary of a quotation) is both sim pler and m ore productive. The notion of dia logism, which owes m uch to Hegel, m ust not be confused with Hegelian dialectics, based on a triad and thus on struggle and proj ection (a m ovement of transcendence), which does not transgress the Aristotelian tradition founded on substa nce and causality. Dialogism replaces these concepts by absorbing them within the concept of relation .

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·N otes I . The point o f departu re for t h i s essay l i e s i n t w o books by M ik h a i l Bakhti n : Rab elais and His World, Helene Iswolsky. trans. (Cam bridge: M I T Press, 1 96 5 ) , and Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, R . W. R otsel, trans. ( A n n A r bor: A rdis, 1 9 7 3 ) . Bakhtin died in 1 97 5 , the year o f t h e publ ication o f h i s collection of essays, Voprosy /iteratury i estetiki ( M oscow), publ ished in French as Esthetique et theorie du roman ( Paris: Gallim ard, 1 97 8). 2 . Derrida uses the word gram ( from the G reek gram ma, "that which is written") to designate the i rre d ucible m a t erial element of writing, a s opposed t o the vast a m ount o f ex­ traneous connot ations current l y surrounding that word. See his Of Grammato/ogy, Gayatri Spivak, trans. ( B a l t i m ore: Johns H o p k i ns P ress, 1 976). [Ed.] 3 . " Language is as old as consciou sness, language is practical consci ousness t h a t exists also fo r other m en, and for that reason alone i t rea l l y exists for m e personally as wel l . " K a r l M arx, Th e German Ideology, S. Ryazanskaya, trans . , in The Marx-Engels R eader, Robert C. Tucker, ed. ( N ew Y o r k : Norton, 1 972), p. 1 2 2. [The French translation qu oted hy Kristeva is less faithful t o the German text, although, in the latter part of the sentence, the German word for "gen u i n e" does m od i fy "consciousness": " . . . auch flir m i ch selbst echt existi erende Bewu,Btse i n . " The French version begins. "Le l a ngage est la conscience reelle . . . " - E d . ] 4. I shall refer to only a few o f Bakhtin's n ot i on s insofar as they are congruent with the conceptions o f Ferdinand de Saussure as related to h i s "anagrams" (see Jean Starobinsk i ,

Les Mots sous /es mots [Paris: G al l i m ard, 1 9 7 1 ] ) a n d suggest a n ew approach to literary texts. 5 . See Julia K ris teva, La R evolution d u /angage poetique ( Paris: Seuil, 1 974), pp. 5 9-60, and the " N otes on the Translation and on Term ino logy" i n this volume. [Ed.] 6. I ndeed, when structural semantics refers to the linguistic foundations o f d iscourse, i t p o i n t s o u t that "an expanding sequence i s recognized as the equivalent o f a syntactically simpler c o m m u nication" and defines "expansion" as "one of the m ost important aspects o f the operation o f natu ral languages . " A . J . Greimas, Semantique structurale (Paris: Larousse, 1 966), p. 72. I conceive of t h e notion of expansion a s the theoretical principle a u t h orizing m e to study i n the struct u r e o f gen res an exteriorizat ion ( a n expansion) o f struc­ tures in herent to language. 7 . E . F . Bou de, K istorii velikoruskix govorov (Toward a H i story o f R u ssian Dialects) ( Kazan : 1 869). 8 . L . V. Czerba, Vostotchno-luzhickoe narechie (The Eastern Louj i k s ' D ia lect) ( Petrograd: 1 9 1 5) . 9 . V . V . V inogradov, " O dialogich eskoj rechi" ( O n Dialogical D i scourse), i n Russkaja rech, 1 : 1 44. l O . V . V . V i n ogradov, Poetika ( M oscow: N a u k a , 1 9 26), p. 3 3 . 1 1 . It seem s that what is persistently being called "interior m onologue" is the most i n domitable way i n which a n entire civilization conceives itself as identity, as organized chaos, and fi nally, as t ranscendence. Yet, this "monologue" probably exists only i n texts that pretend to reconstitute the so-called physical rea l i t y of " verbal n u x . " Western m an ' s state o f "interiority" is thus a l i m i t ed l i t erary effect (confessional form , continuous psychological speech, automatic writing). I n a way, then, Freud's "Copernican" revo l u t ion (the discovery of the split within the subject) put an end t o t h e fiction o f an internal voice by positing the fu ndamental principles governing t h e subj ect's radical exteriority in relation to, and within, langu age.

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D I A LO G U E ,

AND NOVEL

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1 2 . Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, pp. 1 5 1 -52. 1 3 . " S h i fters, Verbal C ategories and the R u ssian Verb," i n Selected Writings /I (The H ague: M outon, 1 9 7 1 ) , pp. 1 3 0-4 7. 14. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, p. 1 5 1 . 1 5 . I should emp hasize that i n t roducing notions o f set theory i n t o considerations on poetic language h a s o n l y metaphorical value. I t is legi t i m a t e t o do so because one can draw an analogy between the Aristotelian logic/poet ic logic relationship on the one hand, and t h e quant ifiable/ i n finite relationship on t h e other. 16. See L u ce Irigaray, " C o m m u nication l i nguistique et com m u n icat ion specu laire," in Cahiers pour /'Analyse, no. 3 , ( M ay 1 966), pp. 3 9 -5 5 . 1 7. I should l i k e to stress t h e a m biguous r o l e of Western individu a lism . I n v olving t h e concept o f identity, i t i s l i n k ed t o t h e substantialist, causal, a n d atomist t hought o f Aris­ totelian G reece and has strengt hened throughout cen turies this activist, scientistic, or theological aspect of Western culture. On t he o t her hand, since it i s fo u nded on the pr in­ ciple of a di fference between t h e "self' and the "world," it prompts a search for m ediat ion between the two , or for strat ifications within each o f them, in order t o allow the possibi l i t y o f a correlative logic based on t he very components o f form a l l ogic. 1 8 . It was perhaps this phenomenon that Bakhtin had in m ind when he wrote, "The l anguage of the novel can be located neither on a surface nor on a line. It is a system of s u r­ faces t h a t in tersect. The author as creator of every t hing having to do w i t h the n ovel cannot be l ocated on any o f t hese l ingu istic surfaces. Rat her, he resides within the controlling center constitu ted by t h e i n t ersect i o n of the surfaces. A l l t h ese s u r faces are located at vary­ ing distan ces from that authorial center" (" S l ovo o romane, " in Voprosy literatury, [ 1 965], vol. 8, pp. 84-90). Actually, t h e wri ter is nothing more than the linking of these centers. Attributing a single center to him would be to constrain h i m within a monological, theological position. 1 9 . This point o f view is shared b y a l l theorists of t h e novel: A . Thibaudet, R eflexions sur le roman (Thoughts on the Novel; Paris: G al l i m ard, 1 9 38); Koskim ies, "Theorie des R om ans" (Theory of the N ovel), in A nna/es A cademiae Scientiarum Finnicae, I, series B, ( 1 9 3 5 ) 3 5 : 5-275. Georg L u k acs, Theory of the Novel (Cam bridge: M IT Press, 1 97 1 ), a n d others. An int eresting perspective on the concept o f t h e novel a s dialogue i s provided b y Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction ( C h icago: U n iversity of Ch icago P ress, 1 96 1 ). H i s ideas concerning the reliable and unreliable writer parallel some of Bakhtin's investigations into dialogism in the novel, although t h ey do not posit any specific relationship between n ove­ listic " i l l usionism" and linguistic symbolism. 20. Such a mode shows u p in m odern physics as well a s i n ancient C hi nese t h ought, as the t w o are equally a n t i -Aristotelian, a n t i monol ogical, and dialogical. See S . I . H ayakawa, "What I s M eant by Aristotelian Structure i n Language," in language. Meaning, and Maturity ( New Y o r k : H arper, 1 9 59); Chang Tung-su n , " A C hinese P h ilosopher's Theory of K n o w l edge , " in S. I. H a yak awa, ed . , Our la nguage and Our Wor/d ( New York: H arper, 1 9 59); J oseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 2 (Cambr idge: The U niversity P ress, 1 9 6 5 ) . 2 1 . S e e t he i m portant col lect i o n o f studies o n narrative s t ructure i n Communications, no. 8 ( 1 966), which in cludes contributions by R o land B arthes, A. J. Greim as, C l au d e Bremond, U m berto E c o , J ules G r i t t i , Viole t t e M orin, C hristian M e t z , Tzvetan Todorov, and Gerard G enette.

4.

HOW D O E S ONE S P EAK TO LITERAT U R E? . . . a ion of writing, which recounts stage by stage the disintegration of bourgeois consciousness. Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero , '

As capitalist society i s being economically and p o litically choked t o death, discourse is wearing t h i n a n d heading fo r collapse a t a m ore rapid rate than ever before. Philosophical finds, v arious m odes of "teaching," scientific or aesthetic formalism s fol low one upon another, com pete, and disappear without leaving either a convinced audience or n oteworthy dis­ ciples. Didactic.ism, rhet o ric, dogmatism of any k ind, in any " field" whatsoever, no longer command attention. They have survived, and perhaps will continue to survive, in m odified form, t hroughout Academia. Only one language grows m ore and m or e contem p orary: the equivalent, beyond a span of thirty years, of the language of Finnegans Wake. It follows that the literary avant-garde experience, by virtue of its very characterist ics, is slated to become t h e laboratory of a new discourse (and of a new subj ect), thus bringing about a m u t at ion, "perhaps as important, and involving the same problem, as the one m arking the age fr om the M iddle Ages to the Renaissance" ( Critiq u e et verite, p. 48). I t also rej ects all discourse that is either stagnant or eclectically academ ic, preem pts its k nowledge where it does not impel it, and devises another original, m obile, and transformative knowledge. In so doing, it stimulates and reveals deep ideological chan ges t h at are currently search­ ing for their own accurate political formulation, as opposed to the breakFirst published in Tel Que/ 4 7 (Fall 1 9 7 1 ); reprinted in Po/y/ogue ( P aris: Seuil, 1 977), pp. 23-54.

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down of a bourgeois "liberalism " t h at never ceases t o exploit and dom i nate, to the revisionism and hasty integration of a dogm atism that never ceases to be repressive and m e-too-ist under its [revolutionary] dis­ guise. How does literature achieve this positive subversion of the old universe? How does there em erge, through its practical experience, a negativity germane t o the subj ect as well as to hist ory, capable o f clear­ ing a way ideologies and even "natural" languages in order to formulate new signifying devices? How does it condense t h e shattering of t h e sub­ ject, as well as that of society, into a new apportionment of relat ionships between the sym bolic and the real, the subjective and the obj ective? The investigation of these contem porary ideological upheavals h inges on a knowledge of the literary "machine . " M y review of the work o f R oland B arthes i s situated i n this perspect ive. He is t h e precursor and founder of modern literary s tudies precisely because he located literary practice at the intersection of subj ect and history; because he studied this practice as symptom of the ideological tearings in the social fab ric; and because he sough t , within texts, the precise mechanism that symbolically (semiotically) controls this t earing. He thus attem pted to constitute the concrete obj ect o f a learning whose variety, multiplicity, and m obility allow him to ward off the saturation of old discourses. This knowledge is in a way already a writing, a tex t . I s h a l l now review w h a t I consider a major portion o f the w o r k o f R oland Ba rthes, which a i m s at specifying t h e key role o f literature i n the system of discourses : the notion of writing; language seen as negativity; the desubstanti fication of linguistic ideals; the operation of inscribing the a-sym bolized real into the fa bric of writing; the desire of the subj ect in writing; the impetu s of the body and, ultim ately, the reckoning of history within the written tex t ; and the status of metalanguage within the possi­ ble k nowledge of literature (the split bet ween "science" and "criticis m " ). This will be a "classical," indeed a d idactic review, whose only am bi­ tion is to call attention and refer to the texts of R oland Barthes; h ow could I m atch his t alents as a writer? I ntending to write neither a scien­ tific analysis of any one specific text, nor a global evaluation, I shall attempt t o cho ose a "point o f view"-a displacement that perhaps jus­ tifies this undertaking. In o ther words, since I shall necessarily effect a sifting o f the whole of Barthes' s texts, I shall do so from the standpoint

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of avant-garde texts, of current avant-garde tendencies often subsequent t o the writing of Barthes, t hus displacing his framework. My "point of view," therefore, is that the avant-garde allows u s to read in Barthes's work (itself part of that m ovem ent) contemporary elements of the cur­ rent discursive-ideological mutation.

THE

DISCOVERY

T h e notion of writing ( Writing Degree Zero) fashioned the concept of literary practice as well as the possible knowledge of this practice. " Literature" becomes writing; " k nowledge" or "science" becomes the objective formulation of the desire to write, t heir i nterrelationship im plicating both the "literary" person and the quibbling "scientific" spe­ cialist, thus setting the sta kes where the subject is-within language through his experience of body and history. Writing then is a section effected by history in the language already wor ked on by a subject . Realizing the desire fo r writing requires o f the subj ect (of metalanguage) the double m otion of adhesion and of distancing wherein he curbs his desire for the signifier th rough the sanction of a code (linguistic, semio­ logical, et cetera), itsel f dictated by an ( u topian?) ethics. This is to insert within society a practice that it cen sors; to com m u nicate what it cannot understand or hear; and thus to reconstitute the cohesion and harmony of a social discourse, inheren tly ruptured. The knot is thus t ied by which l iterature will be considered from various viewpoints at the same time: language, subject-producer, history, subject o f metalanguage. These are all "ent ries" into it for sciences that are either established or i n the process o f being established, such as lin­ guistics, psychoanalysis, sociology, and hist ory. They are not only inseparable from one another, but t heir specific m ode of blending is the very condition of this possibility of k nowledge. The originality of Barthes 's writings probably lies in this double necessity: ( 1 ) that scientific approaches be simultaneous and that they form an ordered set giving rise t o Bart hes ' s concept of semiology; (2) that they be controlled by the discreet and lucid presence of the subject o f t his "possible kn owledge" of literature, by the reading that he gives o f t exts t oday, situated as he is within contem porary history.

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The Technicist Illusion Without the first of those necessities, we witness the fragmentation of the literary entity into "disciplines," grafting them selves onto literary practice, living o ff it (history, sociology, but also, in a m ore m odern and deviou s way, the various form alisms, either linguistic or not, Russian or New-Critical). Literature confirm s all the hypotheses of all the human sciences; it gives the linguist as well as t he hist orian its surplus value, on the condition t hat it rem ain in the shadows of knowledge as a ive thing, never as an agent . This means that, not specified as a precise object, delineated in its t otality by an autonom ous, circum scribed theory looking for its truth, literature does n o t give rise to specific knowledge, but to applications of doctrines that are nothing but ideological exercises since they are em pirical and fragmented. Without the second necessity, we have the technicist illusion that "literary science" need only reproduce the nor m s of Science (if possible, of linguistics, or even m ore "rigorously, " of phonology, structural semantics, or generative grammar) in order to insert itself into the dig­ nified but am orphous domain of "studies in mass com m unication . " Possibly, n o t a l l of Barthes's writings obey ( o r a t least n o t all i n the same way) t hese necessities extracted from the whole of his wor k . It is rather certain that his colleagues or disciples tend t o neglect them . Nonetheless, com pliance ta kes place i n the aggregate o f Barthes's texts. These writings, often appearing as "essays , " m odel literature and make of it the object of a new k ind of obj ective discourse; but the same discourse fa ils in the works of those-m ore scientific or m ore essayistic-w ho, in the wake of B arthes, omit one or the other com­ ponents of the operation. The term "essays" should not be perceived either as showing rhetorical hum ility or as ission of weak theoretical discourse (as the wardens of "rigor" in the human sciences m ight be tempted to think), but as a m ethodological exigency of the m ost s erious k ind; t he science of literature is an always infinite discourse, an always open enunci a t ion of a search for t he laws of the practice known as litera­ ture. The objec tive of this search is to make manifest the very procedure through which this "science," its "object" and their rela tionsh i p are brought about, rather than to apply em pirically such and such a tech­ nique to an indifferent obj ect.

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The Axis of R ecasting: The His torical Subject What epistem ological, ideological, or other requirem ent does B arthes's discovery m eet-a discovery that amounts t o a recasting? Would it not be m ore prudent to manage with m odestly coupled divisions: literature and linguistics, literature and psychoanalysis, literature and sociology, litera­ ture and ideology, and so forth. The list goes o n and on. If the contribution o f Barthes, who seek s t o iden t i fy what i s s p ecific and incomparable in literary practice, seems to heed the technocratic requirements o f our time (to constitute a specialized discourse fo r all o f the so-called "human" domain), and t o follow empirio-critical p ostu lates (all signifying practices can be subsu m ed under a fo rm alism borrowed trom an exact science), in fa ct, it goes counter to these appearances, m atching them so as to overturn t hem . For subj ects of a civilization who are alienated i n t heir language and blocked by their h istory, the work o f Bart hes shows t h a t literature i s precisely t h e place where this alienation and this blockage are thwarted each time in a specific way. As the borderline between a signifier where the subj ect is lost and a history that i m poses its laws on h i m , l i terature appears as a specific m ode of pra ctic al knowledge. H ere i s concentrated what verba l com­ m unication and social exchange put aside, since they obey the rules of econo-technical evolution. This concentra tion, this deposit, is thus, by definition, a nonexistent obj ect for t h e sciences of communication or social exchange. Its place is transversal t o the one t h e sciences assign t hem selves . It goes through t hem and locates itself elsewhere. The cur­ rent stage of capitalist, industrialist society, having delineated, if not dominated, the global possi bilities o f communication and techn ology, has allowed a portion o f its analytical activity t o grapple with this "absence of place . " Whether decadent or worked upon by w h a t i t h a s repress ed, our society can see that art is as m uch, if not m ore, an index for the underly­ ing rules g overning it as is the structuration of k inship for so-called primitive s ocieties. It can then m a k e of this "art" an o bj ect of "science" in order to see that it cannot be sim ply reduced, like the myths of antiquity, t o a techne-procedure o f cogitation (to be manufa ctured according t o this or that linguistic device) or to social functions (to be

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related t o som e economic need). But on the contrary, "art" reveals a specific practice, crystallized in a m ode of production with highly diversified and m ultiplied manifestations. It weaves into language (or other "signifying m aterials") the com plex relations of a subj ect caught between " nature" and cultu re, " between the imm em orial ideological and scientific tradition, henceforth available, and the presen t, between desire and the law, the body, language, and "metalangu age." ) What we discover, then, within this t exture, is the fu nction of the sub­ j ect caught between instinctual drives and social practice within a lan­ guage that is today divided into often incommunicable, mult iple systems: a Tower o f Babel that literature specifically breaks open, refas hions, and inscribes in a new series of perpetual contradictions. This is the subject t h at has reached its apex in the Christian-capitalist era, to the point of being its secret m otor, powerful a n d unknown, repressed and innovative; literature dist ills its birth and its struggles. The science whose possibilities Barthes outlines seeks the subject 's lines o f force within this literature, that is, this writing. We have not yet grasped the importance of a change o f venue that involves thinking about the subj ect on the basis of literary practice rather than on the basis of neurosis or psychosis. The project outlined by Roland Barthes, while in fa ct sancti oned by psychoanalysis, nonetheless opens out on a different "subj ect , " wh ich, as we know, psychoanalysis stum bled against while examining the m eanderings between " I " and "other . " " L iterary" and generally "artistic" practice transforms the dependence of the subject on the signifier into a test o f its freedom in relat ion to the signifier and reality. I t is a trial where the subject reaches both its limits (the laws of the signifier) and the obj ective possibilities (linguistic and hist oric) of t heir displacement, by i ncluding the tensions of the "ego" within historical contradict i ons, and by gradually breaking away from these tensions as the subject incl t;I des t hem in such contradic­ tions and reconciles t hem to t heir struggles ( It is precisely this inclusion, an essential specificity o f the "art s , " by which an asserted " ego" becomes outside-o f-self, objectivized, or better, neit her objective nor sub­ j ective, but both at the same t ime, and consequently, t heir " other , " t o which Barthes has given its name: writing. A s infra- and ultra-language, as translanguage, writing is the ridge where the historical becoming of

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the subj ect is affirmed; that i s , an a-psychological, a-subjective sub­ j ect-an historical subj ect. Writing thus posits another subj ect, for the first time a definitively anti psychological one, for what determines it ulti­ m ately isn't the problem atic of communication (relationship to an other) but that of an excess o f "ego" within an experience-a necessary practice. Barthes can say, therefore, that " art is a certain conquest o f chance" ( Critical Essays, p . 2 1 8) and that, like the structuralist project, i t "speak s t h e place of m eaning b u t does n o t name i t " ( Critical Essays, p . 2 1 9).

j

L iterature: The Missing L ink of Human Science Because it focuses on t he process of meaning within langu age and ideology-from the "ego" to history-literary practice rem ains the m issing link in the socio-com mu nicat ive or subj ective-transcendental fa bric of the so-called human sciences. Nothing m ore "natural," for this "place" of meaning that it enunciates but does not name is the very place of the m aterialist dialectic t hat no human science has yet approached. The insert ion of this practice into the social science corpus necessitates a modification of the very notion of "science," so that an analogous dia­ lectic m ay operate. That is, an area of chance will be reserved and delineated within the procedure, whose purpose is to understand this practice: a localized chance as condition of obj ective u nderstanding, a chance to be u ncovered in the relationship of the su bject of metalanguage to the writing u nder study, and/or to the semantic and ideological m eans o f constitution of the subj ect. Once this area has been determined, literary p ractices can be considered as the obj ect of a possible k nowledge: the discursive possibility emerges out of a reality impossible for it although localizable by it. What is involved here is the problem of i m possible m et alanguage, which ma kes up the second of B arthes's inaugural wor k . On the subject o f lit erature, Barthes is the first t o demonstrate this impossibility, thus opening the way fo r philosophers o r semioticians. This dev ice in fact calls for the introduction o f linguistics, psycho­ analysis, et cetera, but only if they respect the constraints of the device. Barthes's work has proposed a new field-a new obj ect, a new knowing subj ect--for these sciences. They are just beginning, sporadically, t o notice it.

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LAN G U A G E AND W R ITIN G Discovering a new object through a m et alangu age elaborated halfway between chance and necessity seem s to be the rule today in all the sciences. These limits, in themselves, appear frequently t o b e the ideological alibi for a barely m odernized Kantianism, whose intrascien­ tific productivity t opples, having barely crossed the t hreshold of the "exact sciences , " into a gnoseological dam ho lding back the scientific theory of the speaking and k n owing subject (psychoanalysis) and of h is ­ tory (historical m aterialism ) . A t t h e s a m e t i m e , i t is clear t h a t i t is the H egelian dialectic (whose transcendence veils the objective progress it has ach ieved since Descartes, Kant, and the Enlightenment) that first pointed to the m asterly lines o f t h i s interplay between limit and i n finity, rat ionale a n d objectivity-a stumbling b lock for contem porary sciences. I t succeeded in this by im posing at its foundations the k nots, invisible without it, where the opposites-subject and his to ry- are interwoven. They are indeed the ones t hat we encounter at the crossroads of Barthian reflection.

Knowledge in the Text For already a century, literature has u n folded and held these opposites, w i t h purposefu l insistence, t h rough language and within the ideology of our society, thereby wielding a " knowledge" t h at it does n o t necessarily reflect. If it t h ereby operates on the side of discursive reason, it avoids, above all, Hegelian t ranscendence b y practicing contradict i on within the material element of langu age as the generator of ideas or m eaning through the biological and historical body of a concrete subject . Any phonic u nit is t hu s number and in finity, plet hora and as such signi fying, because at the same time it is a differential of infinity. Any sentence is both syntax and n onsentence, normative unicity and disorderly m u lti­ plicity; any sequence is both myth and the m elting pot where it is engendered and dies through its own history, the history of the subj ect , and t he objective history o f superst ructures. Any chain o f language is invested with a sending-focu s that links the body t o its biological and social history. Specific subj ects cipher the norm ative language of every­ day commu nication by means of extralinguistic, biological, and socially u n fo reseeable, chancy codes, which cannot be evidenced by a finite

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number of deductive or "rational" operations but operate within the necessity o f "obj ective laws . " This particular subj ect-neither o f cogita­ t ion nor of Saussurian language, but of a text, shattered and coherent, legislated by an u n foreseeable necessity-this " subj ect" is precisely the obj ect that Barthes is look ing for in the literature called writing. I t is then clear that the practice of writing and its subj ect are immediate contem poraries, indeed forerunners, of the modern, scientific u pheaval ; their ideological and practical correspondents; the units that ensure coherence between the way in which the subject enunciates, " feels," and "lives, " and what objective knowledge achieves without him elsewhere; operative sym bols that suture the rifts between archaic subjectivist ideology on the one hand, and the developm ent of productive forces and means of k n owledge on the other, while both preceding and exceeding these rifts.

Two Channels of Disco very: Dialectics and Sociology Brought to our attention by M aurice Blanchot through his studies on Hegel, M al larme, and Kafka, writing and its subj ect secure with B arthes a new epistem ological statu s. They abandon the speculative labyrinth of absolute mind and the contemplation of the essence o f language to achieve-with Fourier, Sade, Balzac; myth ic, political, and j ournalistic discourse; the new novel; Tel Que/; and, thanks t o an alliance between sociology ( Marxism , Sartre), structuralism (Levi-Strauss), and the literary avant-g arde-a new status based on an implicit triple thesis: (a) the m at eriality o f writing (obj ective practice within language) insists on con fr onting the sciences of language (linguistics, logic, semi­ otics), but also on a d(fferen tiation in relation to them ; (b) its immersion in history entails the taking in to of social and historical conditions; (c) its sexual overdetermination orients it toward psychoanalysis, and through it toward the set of a corporeal, physical, and substantial "order . " Writing as a n object o f k nowledge emerges o u t o f t h e transfo rmation of dialectics i n t he field o f language (m eaning), and Barthes is the rational empiricist who comes to m ak e a science o f i t . The productive am biguity of Barthes's writings resides, it seem s, precisely t here. It is from that position that he radically opposes himself to any transcendent

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o r positivist phenom enology; just as i t i s true that this sam e ambiguous stance can sometimes pro ffer a "naive" formalist temptation t oward total symbolization of t he real and sym bolic world.

Linguistics and Phenom enological Idealities Signifying system s, according to Barthes, both do and do not pertain t o linguistics. The deep unity of such seem ingly divergent books as Writ­ ing Degree Zero, Elem ents of Semiology, and Le System e de la mode, evidence this constantly operative contradiction in Barthes. Signifying systems are so strongly linguistic that Barthes proposes t o m odify Saussure's well-known position accordingly: " Linguistics i s not a part of the general science of signs, even a privileged part, it is sem iology which is a part of linguistics" (Elem ents of Sem iology, p. 1 1 ). The need for this is visibly dictated by a concern for rigor and positivity, sin ce lan­ guage is t h e primary signifying system and the most easily apprehended. But at the sam e tim e, signifying systems are trans-linguistic. They are articulated as large u nits that run across phonetic, syntactic order, and even stylistic order, t o organize an other com binat ive system with the help of t hese same linguistic categories operating to the second power in that other system im pelled by another subject. The loop is looped: the age t hrough Russian Form alism served only to return us m ore firmly than ever to the translinguistic and even ant ili nguistic positions of Writing Degree Zero ("There exists funda­ mentally in writing a 'circu mstance' foreign to Janguage"-p. 20), and t o enable u s t o su bst antiate them . We m ight criticize the "ideology" of this procedure if we see it only as a reduction of com plex signifying practice to a neutral and universal intelligibility. But that would amount to neglecting Barthes's itinerary, which is dictated by the desire to specify a t opology (communication does not equal writing) and thus confr onts semiological system atizat ion with a critical writing (we shall return to this point) t h at breaks with the "neu­ tral and un iversal" status of m etalanguage. Barthes's sem iological texts-they all are sem iological texts if we choose to retain the term to designate not form alization, but research int o the dialectical Jaws of the signifying process-demand above all a desubstantification of signifying ideality. Their bearing is negative at first ( " No semiology exists which cannot, in t he last analysis, be ackn owl-

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edged as sem ioclasm " [Mythologies, p. 9]); this negati vity works against the transparence o f language and o f sym bolic function in general . The phenomenological idealities that a linguistic approach discovers there are, for B art hes, a facade conceal ing another order that, precisely, rem ains to be established. Behind substantified, opaque linguistic cate­ gories and structures, there functions a scene where the subj ect, defined by the topos of its com m u n ication with an other, begins by denying this commu nicat ion in order to formulate a nother device. As negative of the earlier so-called "natural" language, this new "language" is consequently no longer communicative. I shall call it transforma tive, or even mortal, for the " I " as well as for the "ot her " : it leads, in borderline ex periences, to an antilanguage (J oyce), to a sacrifical language ( Bataille), indicating in other respects but simultaneously a disrupted social structure. Although it is still u nderstood as signifying, this other scene is only partially linguistic. That is, i t only partially depends on the idealities esta blished by linguistic science, since it is o nly partially com m unicative. On the contrary, it has access to the form ative process o f its linguistic idealities by u nfolding their phenomenal su bstance. Linguistic units and structures no longer determ ine writ ing, since it is not only or not spec(fi­ cally discourse directed at someone else. D isplacem ents and facilitations of energy, discharges, and quantitative cathexes that are logically anterior to linguistic entities and to thei r subj ect m ark the constitution and the m ovem ents o f the "self, " and are m anifested by the fo rmulation of sym bolic-linguistic order. 2 Writing would be the recording, through symbolic order, of this dialect ic of displacement, facilitation , discharge, cathexis of drives (the m ost characteristic of which is the death drive) that operates-constitutes the signifier but also exceeds it; adds itself t o t h e linear order o f language b y using t h e m ost fundamental laws of the signifying process (displacement, condensation, repetition, inversion); has other supplem entary networks at its disposal; and produces a sur-m ean­ ing. As Barthes wrote, Writing on the contrary is always r ooted i n something beyond langu age, it develops like a seed, not lik e a line, i t m a n i fests an essence and holds the th reat of a secret, it is an anticom munication, it is i n t i m idating. All writing will t herefore cont a i n the a m biguity o f an o bject which is both l angu age and coercion: t here exists fu ndamentally in writing a "circu mst ance" foreign to la nguage, t here is, as i t were, the weight of a gaze conveying an intention which is no longer Jin-

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guistic. This gaze m ay well express a ion of language, as in literary m odes o f writing: i t m a y a lso ex press t h e t h reat o f retribution, a s i n political ones [ . . . ] literary m odes o f writing, in which the un ity of the signs is ceaselessly fascinated by zones of infra- or ultra-language. ( Writing Degree Zero , p. 20; emphasis m i ne).

Written in 1 95 3 , these lines were to become the analytical method of S/Z in 1 969.

Myth, History, A esthetics An analogous desubstantification is undergone by mythic idealities, reconstructed like crystals from the practice of subjects in history . " M yt h i s n o t defined by t h e object o f i t s m essage, but b y the way i n which it utters this m essage: there are formal limits to myth, there are no substan tial ones" (Mythologies, p. 1 09). Although this position has a m arked affinity t o the structuralist procedure with which Bart hes readily happened to fall in , his proj ect is radically d ifferen t . While i t m ay be a structure, myth is intelligi b le only as historical product ion; its laws will thus be found not in phon ology, but in history. "One can conceive o f very ancient myths, but there are n o eternal ones; for it is human history which conveys reality into speech, and it alone rules the life and death of mythical language. Ancient or not, mythology can only have an h is torical fou ndation, fo r myth is a type of speech chosen by history: it cannot possibly evolve from the 'nature of things" ' (Mythologies, p. 1 1 0 ; emphasis mine). C on trary then t o a structuralism that seeks in m yths the " perm anent structures o f the human m ind" and perhaps closer t o a recently reasserted Levi-Strauss, 3 Barthes pursues, t hrough and beyond the discursive phenomenon, its social and hist orical overdetermination. But because he begins with another experience, Barthes's position differs from that of structuralism : history, with him, is inseparable fr om the u nfolding in depth of the signi­ fying subjec t through which, precisely, it is legible. "History, then, confronts the writer with a necessary option between several m oral attitudes con nected with language; it forces him to signify Literature in term s o f possibilities outside his control" ( Writing Degree Zero, p . 2 ; em phasis m i ne). This com pulsory but not m asterable necessity that commands the obli­ gation to signify is delivered b y a privi leged ex perience: "structuralist"

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reflection leads to it by u n folding the symbolic function "in depth," thanks t o the subj ect and t o history. This is the "aesthetic." " St ructu­ ralism does not withdraw history from the world : it seeks to link history not only to contents (this has been done a thousand tim es) but also to certain forms, not only the m aterial but also the intelligible, not only the ideological but also the aesthet ic" ( Critical Essays, p . 2 1 9).

To Fascinate and Objectify: Blanchot and Sartre Two different confr ontations will perhaps help us to perceive more clearly the s trategy o f t his desubstantification that produces writing in Barthes. As a t ranslinguistic form ulation, it comes close to B lanchot' s " fascinated" "act of writing" a s well a s t o Sartre's "work a s obj ectifica­ tion of the perso n." Between these app arently i rreconcilable limits, Bar thes points out the dialect ical k inship, or rather, the com m on element of a transform ed dialect ic; he posits writing in the space of t heir separa­ tion, as an operation itting of being clarified by understa nding. The notion of writing, first formu lated in Writing Degree Zero and continually analyzed in its various m odes, partakes (as literally seen in the previous quotation from p. 20 o f that work) of the " fascination" that Blanchot contemplates i n an "act o f writing" "comm itted to absence of time" and which, crossing t hrough the negative and the a ffirmative, posits itself outside of dia lectics, in a "loss of Being, where Being is lack­ ing," in a blinding light, without figure, unfigurable, an im personal "One" whose Oedipal m o ther seem s to be the substratu m . 4 Writing, according to Barthes, is fam iliar with this return of teleological dia­ lectics, a return that allows the negative m ode to be absorbed into a sem ­ blance o f a ffirm ation ( t h e moment o f inscription), b u t only a semblance, because what is inscribed is always already broken up within the u ngraspable, im personal, transsubj ective, anonym ous, musical plurality oi the paragramm atized text.5 Such a text is S/Z, whose sem i otic net­ work, by m eans of the representative cut of castration, simultaneously veils and reveals the voice of the castrate, t he music and the art that appear as lights freed b y an incision. Yet, i f this break perm its the daz­ zling light of the scriptural position to flash "where space is the vertigo of spatial positioning , "6 by suggesting th at i t i s a m aternal beaming that activates the subject o f writing, then such a light can only be t hrown on the h orizon o f the investigation. Sheltered by this dazzling light, t h e semi-

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otician carries on his survey on this side o f blindness, in the opaque night of the form he is t o illuminate. For Barthes then, writing is less a dazzle­ m ent where the subject faints into the m other than an operation l ogically "preceding" this fainting: he follows its perform ance through the sem antic volume of l anguage and presents it in the rigor of its form alism s. I t is precisely upon the traces of this semantic operation that fa scina­ tion appears as objectivation. The subj ectal cloud crystallizes into the praxis of a "person" with a story and in history, and the text em erges as the work of a subj ect ( M ichelet, Balzac, Loyola, Sade, Fourier), a work that exceeds life, but whose life shares its structu res . Formalism is t hus tem pered b y the introduction of an obj ective subject for whom this for­ malism is t h e practice. A d ouble approach is consequently necessary t o d e a l w i t h the tex t : i t m u s t be seen through t h e linguistic network, b u t also through biography. The proportion o f each is already weighted i n favor of t he written element, which nevertheless merely releases, inscribes, and understands "lived experience ." Thus, t here is no "absolute" anonym ity of the text, except in the first stages of research and only inasmuch as the im personal constitutes the "upper" limit o f the operation involved. But t here is obj ect ivation of spacing within a subj ect, endowed wit h biography, body, and history, which are t o be inserted in the text in order t o define its "lower" limit. This dialectical concept ion of writing as obj ective praxis is again sought a ft er if not achieved i n Sartre. 7 Barthes first substantiated it in his essay on M ichelet. Langu age thus becomes not only a germ ination o f empty a n d infinite m eaning m ak ing i t s w a y through linguistic a n d semio­ logical relat ionship and units, but at the same time it becomes a practice, a relationship to heterogeneity, to m ateriality.8 A n d yet, i f writing is the o bjectivation o f the "person , " suring i t a n d bequeathing t o it i t s his torical intelligibility, a n d i f by the same to ken , it serves as the basis for the largely sem iological conception of "praxis" (and not for an interpreta tion of sem iosis based on a t heory of "praxis", a s seems t o be the generally accepted existential approach), Barthes's goals are radically an alytical and dissolve those entities charac­ teristic of existential thought and inherited fr om specu lative philosophy. In t heir place, m entioned in ing, it inaugurates a signifying work through which t hese entities are constituted. The "totality" (of "work" and " person") as well as "expression" and "lived experience" are d oubt-

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less the existential pillars that su ffer the greatest dam age in that kind of procedu re. I t is henceforth naive, i f not impossible, t o try t o generalize from the seesaw m otion linking biography and works without having minutel y scru tinized the devices that the signifying t exture o ffers to the sem iotician's gaze.

Clarity, Nigh t, and Color Caught between objectivation and fascin ation, between involvement and a-theism , writing will be exposed to the light of scientific investiga­ tion. The m odelization proposed by Barthes, apparent in his strictly semiological writ ings as well as in the system atizing layer inherent in all his texts, operates for and through this light. Deductive, prudent, con­ sequent, patient, it proceeds by demonstration, analysis, and synthesis; it ex plains, proves, and elucidates. The sym bolic process is affected in its articula tions. The light that Barthes throws on the praxis of writing on the edge o f the im personal avoids t h e flight o f meaning-its night-side, a t one with anonymous dazzlem en t-as well as the historical j uggernaut-the event­ ful sequence of "forms" accom panying the sequence of base and superstructure in time. The light of such a sem iological reason leaves in the shadows the loss of the subject into nonsense as well as his loss into what is beyond meaning. This rationalism knows nei ther negativity as poetry n or objectivity as m o vement . The light o f understanding that anim ates this sem iotic and ethical dis­ course p ushes the poet aside, " H e who hears a language without under­ standing" ( Blanchot). Is this becau se the poetic work, as H egel would say, is withdrawn fr om ethical substance? A work where any fixed defini­ tion is absorbed into the unconscious and where any (linguistic or subj ec­ tive) substance is fluid and incandescent, lik e an ink that is eaten away'? A work where the subject is not "em pty" u nder the appearance o f multiple meaning, but is a "surplus o f subject" exceeding t h e subj ect through nonsense, in contradiction to which a symbolic formality comes along to posit the meaning(s) as well as the subj ect?9 Faced with t his form ' s night s preading across poetic surplus, faced with this nocturnal form not illuminated by a subject master of language, Barthes's light fails. Of the subj ect ' s dark appearance wit hin the im personal, within the maternal "One, " it retains only the classic system aticness, but not the

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repressed poetic intensity of their struggle; the pluralized domination, but not the pluralizing negative. I n analogous fashion, history as a succession is partitioned into experiences . Sketched out, it is replaced by a toms of flux, full of desires that are legible through their oral (Fourier) or obj ect­ related (Sarrasine) attachment. These atoms are present in their own time, but in a time that does not flow, a time that brings them or takes them a way but d oes not transport them , does not bind them , does not em pty t hem except to fill them up all the more. History (real or literary), then, is what B arthes calls in his essay on M ichelet a "cordial history, " a softening o f the rigid legislature of social or literary system s, a supple­ ment of intim acy that Barthes sees, with M ichelet, tak ing the shape o f "virtue h a tching t h e ambisexual M asses" (Michelet par /ui-m eme, p. 5 3 ) . Sifted by understanding, time and m otion are incarnated by "personalities" or "utterances": a historicity peppered with t i meless "types"- "in it, there is no m ore durat ion: a minute equals a century," or rather, "no more centuries, nor years, nor m onths, nor days, nor hours [ . . . ] Tim e no longer exists; time has perished" (ibid., p . 5 5) . And yet, t h i s supplement o f night a n d m otion t h a t escapes t h e light o f semio/ogica/ u n derstanding will b e produced b y t h e critic's writing within the very l i nguistic texture that gives rise t o light, mixes into writing, shadowing it and coloring i t .

Language as Negativity: Death and Irony Consequently drained of subst ance and ideality, language becom es the b order between subjective and objective, and also between the symbolic and the real. It is understood as the material limit against which the one and the other are dialectically constituted: "The language functions nega­ t ively, as the initial limit of the possible" ( Writing Degree Zero, p. 1 3) . From within "structuralism , " Barthes was probably t h e first t o consider language as negativity, less because o f a philosophical option (deconstruction, antimetaphysics, etc.) than by reason of the very object of his investigation. Literature is for him the ex perience and proof of the negativity specific to the linguistic process: " A writer is someone for whom language is a problem , who experiences its profu ndity, not its instrumentality nor its beauty" ( Critique et verite, p. 46). Experiencing the traj ectory of this negat ivity, writing is contestation, rupture, flight, and irony. Negativity operates within it upon the unity of Language and

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upon the agent of this unity. Acting with th e subject, it breaks its indi­ vidual, contingent, and superficial represen t ations and m ak es of t hem an inorganic nature, 10 a pulverization of fr agm ented elements . "There is no language site outside bourgeois ideology . [ . . . ] The only p ossible rej oinder is neit her confrontation nor destruction, but only th eft; frag­ ment the old t ext of culture, science, literature, and change its features according to formulas of disguise" ; writil}g is ab! � to "e)(ceed the laws that a society, an ideology, a philosophy establish for themselyes in- §!�er to agree among them selves in a fine surge of historical intelli g ibility" ( sade�--r•ou rier ; Loyofo; p : i O) . Yet, this nega tivity reaches t h e edges o f a positivity because it operates within language and the subj ect. By obeying strict, abstract rules also involving corporeal and hist orical m at eriality, signifying m ateriality stops the m ovement of absolute negativity that might exist i n the sig­ nified alone and by m eans of a negat ive t heology. In writing, the negative is formulated. The new signifying process welcomes n egativity in order to remodel language into a u n iversal, internat ional, and transhistoric writ­ ing-language. The writers t hat Barthes chooses are classifiers, inventors of codes and la nguages, t opologists, logothetes. They enumerate, count, synthesize, articu late, formulate; they are architects of new languages. This, at least, is the axis that Barthes seeks in them , from Writing Degree Zero through S/Z into Sade, Fourier, Loyola, threading h i s way in and out of the "flesh" of their writing to find new syntheses of new languages. As for the critic, he brushes against and then es by this shattering of m eaning in language with no pole of transference o th er than linguistic and/or self-refe rential. But the formulating operation of critical writing needs to b e distinguished from t hat of the writer. The operating negat ivity o f writing is grasped, in criticism , by One Affirmation. It is ulti­ m ately blocked by one m eaning clearly revealing the critic's writing as being entirely triggered, sustained, and determ ined by the d iscourse o f t h e o ther. That is, i t operates within t h e dialectic of transfe rential rela­ tionship. "Although we don't know h ow the reader speaks to a book, the critic himself is obliged to produce a particular 'tone'; and this t one, in the final analysis cannot be anything but affirm at ive" ( Critique et verite, p . 78). The critic "openly assumes at his own risk the intention of giving a precise m eaning to a work" (ibid. , p. 56). Unable to dissolve t he "selr'

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into this whirling and sel f-regulated inorganic nature that produces logothetes, the critic rem ains riveted to his " I " that hoards polyvalences, and signs them . "The critic is he who is incapable of producing the novel's He, but who is also i ncapable of tossing back the I into pure, private life, that is, who cannot give up writing. This is an aphasia of the /, while the rest of his la nguage rem ains, intact, yet m arked by the infinite detours that (as in aphasia) the constant blocking of a particular sign im poses on speech" (ibid. , p. 1 7). Through a perfectly homonymic course, starting fr om his opaque " I " and moving towards the writings of an other, h e returns t o this same "I," which, in the process, has becom e language: t h e critic "confr onts [ . . . ] h i s own language" ; "it is n o t the object which must be opposed t o the subj ect in criticism, but its predi­ cate" (ibid. , p. 69); "The sym bol must go looking for the symbol" (ibid. , p. 7 3) . I m plicating him self, therefore, in t h e negative operation t h a t i s lan­ guage, t h rough the intermediary of the other, the critic retains from scriptural n egativity a weak ened, but persistent, effect. The death drive of the writer becomes irony in t h e critic, because t here is irony each t i m e an ephem eral meaning crystallizes for such a reader . Freud dem onstrated precisely this economy of laughter in Jokes and Th eir Relation to the Unconscious : it is a discharge with two meanings between sense and nonsense. In order for this t o happen, a sem blance of m eaning must appear at a fugitive m oment. I t is the critic's task, and there is hardly a m ore com ical one, to coagulate an island of m eaning upon a sea o f negativity. Thus, for Barthes, t h e critic m a y "develop what is precisely lacking in science and could be sum m ed in one word: irony"; " I rony is nothing m ore t han a question put to la nguage by language" ( Critique et verite, p. 74). This irony, by which the critic, sure of his I and without abandoning it, participates in the scriptural operation, constitu tes only one m omen t (am ong others) of the operation. For Rabelais, Swift , Lautreamont, a n d J oyce a r e ironic only when w e posit them ( o r when they p osit t hem selves) as subj ects tapping a m eaning that is always already old, always already out of date, a s funny as it is ephemeral.

The Objectification of the Negative Since l anguage is negativity, a m ovem ent exceeding its subj ective center and encoming the enlarged center m ak ing up the object , it is

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am enable-even in its negative m obility-to laws. Writing would be the inscription of o ther laws, although they be inseparable from the rules of negat ivity inherent in the symbolic fu nction. Barthes points to these laws w hen he speak s of ' 'formal tru th, " "equation , " "necessity, " and indeed "law . " "The m a n is put on show and delivered up by h i s language, betrayed by a formal reality which is beyond t h e reach of h i s lies, whether they are inspired by self-interest or generosity" ( Writing Degree Zero, p. 8 1 ) . " I f the writing is really neu tral, and if language, instead of being a cum bersom e and recalcitrant act , reaches the state of a pu re equa­ tion, which is no m ore tangible than an algebra when it confronts the innermost part of man, then Literature is vanquished" (ibid. , p. 78); " social or mythical characters of a language are abolished in favor of a neu tral and inert state o f form (ibid. , p. 77). " I f Flaubert's writing enshrines a Law, if that of M allarm e postulates a silence, and i f others, that of Proust, Celine, Queneau, Prevert, each in its own way, is founded on the existence of a social nature, if all these m odes of writing imply an opacity of form and presu ppose a problem atic of langu age and society, thus establishing speech as an object wh ich m ust receive treatment at the hands of a craftsm an, a m agician or a sculptor" (ibid. ; all em phases mine).

Dialectical Law, Scrip tural Law: Writing of the R eal The practice of writing becom es the edge separating and u niting the subj ectivity to which style attests-"starting from a sublanguage elaborated where flesh and external reality com e together" (ibid. , p . 1 1 )-with the obj ectivity represented by s ocial history. Writing, then, i s considered as a k ind of totality "in itselr' and " for itself. " Better defined than the negative u n ity of individual language, it denies it. M ore precise than an exterior objectivity that is nothing in itself, it speci fies it precisely by returning through and across n egative language to the sin­ gular speaking being. I n short, it brings one back to the other, neither subj ective individuality nor exterior object ivity, it is the very pri nciple o f Hegel ' s " self-movem ent" a n d o ffers the very element of l a w : "the determ inateness of this animating principle, which is the difference i f the Notion itself is Law. " 1 1 Although it is dialectical, t h e law inscribed by writ ing according t o Barthes i s n ot Hegelian. O n e w i l l recall t h a t i n Hegel "law [ a s ] t he stable

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Ill

presentment or picture of unstable appearance" 1 2 must, in order t o palliate t h i s difference internal to t h e thing itself, a n d to place itsel f on a par with the phenomenon, appropriate i n finity to itself. To do that, in a first stage, "understanding thus learns that it is a law in the sphere of appearance for distinctions to com e about which are not distinctions. I n other words, i t learns that what i s self-same [Gleichnam ige] is self-repul­ sive . . . . " 13 In a second st age, and a fter a precise course, an inverted world (the in-itself of the sens ible world) is posited and rem ains present in the sensible world . Such a dialectic of inversion leads to Hegelian infinity, situ ated, because of this self-sam eness, beyond representation. 14 Writing establishes a different legality. Writ ing is upheld not b y the subj ect o f understanding, but by a divided subject, even a pluralized sub­ j ect, t h at occu pies, not a place of enunciation, but perm u table, multiple, and m obile places; t hus, it brings toget her in a heteronomous space the naming of phenomena (their entry into symbolic law) and the negat ion of t hese names (phonet ic, sem ant ic, and syntactic shattering). This supple­ m entary negat ion (derivative negation, n egation of the hom onomic nega­ tion) leaves the hom ogeneous space of m eaning (of naming or, if one prefe rs, of the "symbolic" ) and m oves , without "im aginary" interme­ diary, t oward the biological-societal " base" that is its excess, t oward what cannot be sym bolized (one m ight say, toward the "real"). I n other t erms, the heteron om ical negativity o f writ ing operates, on the one h a n d , bet ween nam ing (utterance/enunciation) carried out b y the subj ect o f underst anding (m eaning) and polynom ia, that is, the pluraliza­ tion of m eaning by different m eans (polyglottism, polysem ia, etc . ) t ra­ versing non sense and indicating a sup pression of the subj ect. Writing Degree Zero i dentifies this type of heteronomy by the term "writing"; S/ Z analyzes in the t ext t he contradiction between naming and poly­ nomia, the subj ect and its loss. At the same time, but on the other hand, heteronomic negativity operates between polynomia and its ins tinctual cathexis. Polynomia is the index, the ideogram of biological and social orders. It is a k ind of asym bolic memory of the body. In Writing D egree Zero it is s tyle that represents this heteronom ia included in writing. Indeed, style as a "frame o f reference is biological or biographical, not historical [ . . . ] indi fferent to society and t ransparent t o it, a closed per­ sonal procc:: s s [ . . . ] a sublanguage elaborated where flesh and external reality come together" ( Writing Degree Zero, p. 1 1 ); "its secret is

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recollection locked within the body of a writer" (ibid., p. 1 2) . " B y reason of its biological origin, style resides outside art, that is, outside the pact which binds the writer to society" (ibid. , p. 1 2 . Emphasis mine.). Barthes's studies of Fourier and Sade suggest the possibilities open to this biological-corporeal, transsymbolic, and transhistorical cat hexis. I n these two aspects (contradiction between nam ing and polynomia, contradict i on between sym bolic and asym bolized), scriptural hetero­ nomia does not com e into play between two "sam es" that repulse one another o r dissolve within one unity. So, too, it avoids Hegelian and post-Hegelian " aesthetic religion ." N ever producing ex nihi/o, without an origin, it inclu des a production. "Without origins" m eans that it is a superim pression or a suppression of a first, prim ordial m eaning, which i s always fo r Barthes a neutral sym bolic, an unma rked code, a n u nwritten language, a void meaning. "It includes a production" m eans that the polynomic superim pression (suppression of first and, when all is said and done, null m eaning), iden tifiably within language, is a supercathexis of the symb olic "void" by a biological-social, instinctual substratum left intact by the first sym bolization (by natural language) and t hu s, in a sense, preceding it so as to look back upon the scriptural act through the interplay of " prim ary processes, " o f the "signifier's logic," bursting across and through the language of a book-free dramatized subject. Thus, it appears that for literature, language is "the whole of History [ . . . ] unified and com plete in the m anner of a N atural Order" ( Writing Degree Zero, p . I O). "A language is therefore on the hither side o f litera­ ture. Style is alm ost beyond it" (ibid. ); "another notion of writing is possible: neither decorative nor instrum ental, i . e . , i n sum secondary but prim al, antecedent t o m an, whom it t raverses, founder of its acts like so m any inscriptions" (Sade, Fourier, Loyola, p. 40). Clearly, n am ing and its negation in writing operate on heterogeneous series and split the totality of One hom onomic M eaning ( prescribed by the first negati on-symbolization) in order to reproduce the production o f the subj ect between t h e r e a l and the symbolic back wards, after t h e fact. The conditions for a theory of writing are thereby posited. Sem iology could be t his discourse i f, by recognizing the heteronomy of m eaning, it started from linguistics and went t o m eet w i t h psychoanalysis and his­ t ory; consequently, its name ("sem iology") m atters little. The path is clearly marked along which writing organizes, but d i f-

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ferently, into a new legislation the "phenomena" as "named . " I t appears to deny H egelian phenomenon and law because it struggles against the " first" naming, which is the domain of Law. The text, as an other name (a pseudonym), an antiname and pronom inal, "cuts obliquely through the instances of discourse as well as through 'genres."' It effects the anamnesis of "literary history" only by dint of u ndertaking an analysis of the place of enu nciation within the very element o f language. The first study of Barthes that records the multiplications of the space of enuncia­ tion within writing, relying on Benveniste's linguistic analyses of the sub­ ject in langu age, was devoted to Philippe Sollers's novel Dram e (" Drama, Poem, Novel" ) . 15 Here, the dram a of personal pronouns reveals the st aging o f a subject pluralized on the chessboard of writing. Neither lyric " I , " rit ual "you , " nor epic-or m ore prosaically-novel­ istic "he," the "plural subj ect" of writing sim ultaneously t raverses the sites of t h ese three discursive agencies, invoking t heir conflicts and under­ going t h eir divergent appearances. Now, since writing breaks the "subj ec t " apart into multiple doers, int o possible places of retention or loss o f m eaning within "discourse" and "history ," it inscribes, not the original-paternal l aw, but other laws that can enunciate t hemselves differently beginning with these pronom­ inal, transsubstantive agencies. Its legitimacy is illegal, paradoxal, " heteronym ic; heteronom ous i n relat ion to Hegelian Law, it struggles with constancy and originality. A l t hough one can discern in wri ting a m ove­ m ent that seems to recall i deated dialectics condensing the phenomenon and inverted infinity, scriptural logic b rings it about specifically in a frag­ m ented space t h at transforms the idealistic matrix. Writing provides the act of reading with an asy mbolic "phenomenon, " left unnamed because it is "real , " and whose n ovelty is due to the infinity em anating from the rupture of the sym bolic, u n i fying instance. A process of nam ing is substi­ tuted for this im possible to symbolize real, whose transform ation and future nevertheless allow them selves to be inscribed (in the pronominal device, am ong others).

The Return of R epresen tations It is also in departing from totalizing homonymy t hat scriptural laws postulate, not a beyond of representation, but a transfusing and renewal of it . To the extent that they are inscribed through and across the enun-

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ciations em anating from the mu ltiple and unnamable p laces of meaning occu pied by the book- free subject, and to the extent that they combine these enunciations t ogether with their agencies, t hey liberate new representations elaborated by the subj ect of these enunciations. Such new represent ations of a world "in progress" t ranslate the suppression of the topos of One Su bject of understanding (a new symbolic responds to the new topology articu lated by the instinctual drives oq � anized by d esire) as well as a violent criticism o f ideologies, h abits, and social rules (a new world through and across t h e negation of the present world t h at writing denies according to its imm anent logic). For semiological metalanguage, this new representation appears as a "double coding , " 16 as a redistribution of l anguage amenable t o "extra" or supplementary rules. It presents itself as a simply n ominal negation, and t hus as a h omonym ic n egation, rej ecting the name outside of itself into other plu r alized names. But what the lit erary avant-garde grasps of t h i s rej ection is situated out side of nam ing itself; it is no longer language, or is so only metaphorically, because what is involved is the material that-through drives-accomplishes in each writing according to a speci fic topos, a sentence always in t h e process of becoming.17 This warrant s repeating. Although one can detect in Barthes 's works a kinship with dialectical principles, portents o f avant-garde activities, and the foundations of a program for a contem porary literary theory, it is largely because we read them in the l ight of what is being written today. The term inology we are using, the very problems t h at we k eep facing with B arthes, are called forth by this avant -garde, whose epic rhythm breaks apart social and phantasmatic m yt h ology by synthesizing i n a new way a critical tradition whose subversive i m p act has been ignored ( Rabe­ lais, J oyce) with the form al experience of the avant-garde of this century and with a revolt against the langu age and order of a society on the wane. Confronted with this text, and i f one accepts the necessity of Barthes's ethical project, the question still remains: h ow does one const itute a new heterogeneous signifying b ody, for which literature, and even m ore so, this new "literature" that has us read in a new and d ifferent m anner, can no longer be m erely an "object"? No work other than Bart h es's better opens up a pat h of investigation that m ight yield an answer to t h i s ques­ t i on.

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S C I E N CE

AND

CRITICI S M :

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MUSIC

I n the place of a metalanguage generally recognized a s powerless, the discourses of the "critic" and of the "scholar" becom e differentiated and linked to spell out the legislating heteronomy of writing. "The scholar" describes n egativity within a transrepresentative and transsubj ective hom ogeneous system : his discourse detects the linguistic formality of a shattered, pluralized meaning as the condition, or rather, as the index o f a heteronom ous operation: "general discourse, whose obj ect is not a particular meaning, but the very plurality of the work's m eanings" ( Critique et verite, p . 56); "science of the contents' conditions, that is, science o f form s : what will concern it are the v ariations i n m ean­ ings engendered and, in a m an ner of speaking, engenderable by the works them selves . I t will not interpret sym b ols, but their polyvalence alone; in a word, its obj ect will n o longer be the full m eanings of a work but, o n the contrary, the empty meaning t h at s them all" (ibid. , p. 5 7); "We shall not classify the entirety o f possible m eanings as an immutable order but as the traces of an immense 'operating' arrangement [ . . . ] broadened fr om author t o s ociety" (ibid. , p. 5 8 ) . As for the "crit ic, " he t akes o n the t ask o f pointing o u t heteronomy. H ow? Through the presence of enunciation in t h e utterance, by introduc­ ing the agency of the subj ect, by assuming a representative, l ocalized, contingent speech, determ ined by its " I " and thus by the " I " of its reader. Speaking in his nam e to an other, he introduces desire: " Clarity [ . . . ] is all this desire th at lies within writing" ( Critique et verite, p. 3 3); one should ask the critic t o "make m e believe in your decision to speak" (ibid. , p . 75); "To m ove from reading to criticism is to change desires; it is no longer to desire the work but to desire one's own language" (ibid. , p . 79); "works crisscrossed by the great mythic writing in which humanity tries out its significations, that is, its desires" (ibid. , p . 6 1 ); "there is no other primary significatum in literary works than a certain desire: to write is a m ode of Eros" ( Critical Essays, p . xvi); "the same writing: the same sensual pleasure in classification, the same m ania for cutting up [ . . . ] the same enumerative obsession [ . . . ] the same im age practice [ . . . ] the same erotic and phantasmatic fashioning of the social system " (Sade, Fourier, Loyola, p. 3); "the ing ion t ransmit­ ted to the exercitant" (ibid. , p. 70); "the energy of language (of which the

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Exercises is one of the exem plary t h eaters) is a form-and the very form of a desire of the world" (ib id. , p. 68) . "What is indeed rem ark able about such an imagination, with desire as its purpose (and one would h ope that sem iol ogical analysis shows this abundantly), is that its substance is essentially intelligible; a name prom pts desire, an object does not; m ean­ ing prom pts a sale, a dream does not" (Systeme de la mode, p . 1 0). The network t o be deciphered seems to split in half. Desire, w here the subject is implicated (body and hist ory), and sym bolic order, reason, intelligibility. Critical k nowledge ties and unties their im brication. Desire as Index of Heterogeneity Desire causes the signifier to appear as h eterogeneous and, i nversely, indicates heter ogeneity through and across the signifier. To posit that the subject is linked by its desire to the signi fier is to say, therefo re, t hat he has access t hrough and across the signifier to what the symbolic d· Jes not make explicit, even if it translates it: instinctual drives, historical contradictions. One can thus understand how Barthes's work is not only a t r anslation into scientific law of the l iterary t ext . His k n owledge of literature is precious precisely because it j oins to these "t races of an i m m ense operat­ ing device" that science pun ctuates, the irrupt ion of desire in the signifier as an index of "real" het erogeneit y . Perhaps one can posit that, fo r Barthes, "desire" seem s to signify the recognition o f a heterogeneous ele­ ment in relation to the sym bolic-t h e space of a m aterial contrad iction where the "other" is another topos of the subj ect, an other practice of the sexes . Consequently, t here is "desire" b etween language and writing, but also "desire" between writing and criticism - kn owledge, and so on. Thus is made up not a h ierarchy of overlap ping m etalanguages but a m obile system of free signifying devices, alert, i n a state of perpetual initiative. This revealer-desire of the eteros (E'Tepos) is not only a m ode of eros (Ep ws) that then finds its categorial explanation. It is equ ally and simultaneously the m ar k of Barthes's prudence that brings together kn owledge and the process of truth-a prudence whose m oral connotation is erased if we it that the irruption within the neutral truth of science of a subj ect of enunciat ion d oes not i nvalidate this truth but calls attention t o its operation, its obj ective genesis. The statemen t s of all great scholars in the "hum an sciences, " from Benveniste to L evi-Strauss, statem ents sup-

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posedly legislative and lacking in any kind of subj ect, give evidence of being contaminated by this type of "m odesty" and affected by "writ ing. " Within such a m ethod, the unicity of t h e enunciating rationale contradicts t he heteronom ous development of writing. The " m odel" itself, a paragon of demonst ration, becomes caught in this contradic­ tion. Extracted from linguistics, for exam pie, appropriated and t hus transformed according t o t h e object u nder scrutiny (a myth, poem , or novel), its intelligibility does not merely lie within the rules of pure m at hesis or any other system aticness on which it depends in order t o give coherence to metalanguage and a m eaning to its obj ect . The form al net ­ work that such a m odel is can only be the ex terior facet of this m ass whose hidden side m ade up of asym b olic "rem nants" com es to light within the negativity of desire. Without the latter, the m odel does not touch upon the extrahom onymic obj ect ivity of the signifying operation that t he critical k nowledge of Barthes proposes to address. With it, the eventuality of a possible understanding of this operation is preserved.

Desire as An Objective "The critic of verisimilitude," Barthes writes, "normally chooses the code of the let ter , " while the nou velle critique "grounds the objectivity of its descriptions on t heir coherence" ( Critique et verite, p. 20). The desire of a subj ect t h at ties him t o the signifier obtains th rough this signifier an objective, extraindividual value, void-in-itself, other, without, for all that, ceasing (as it does in science) to be the desire of a subj ect. This h appens only in literature. Writing is precisely this "spon­ t aneous m otion" that changes the formulat ion of desire for a signifier into obj ective law, since the subj ect of writing, specific like no other, is "in-itself-and-for-it self," the very place, n o t of division but, overcom ing it, of m otion. C onsequently, it is the place where the subj ective/ o bj ective d istinct ion proves invalid, where it is erased, where it appears to be dependent on ideology. Since Freud not iced in the subj ect the failure of a desire for the signi fier to ach ieve objective value, it is possible t o con­ clude t h at literary practice is not situated within the field explored by psych oanalysis. Barthes's work is not an investigat ion into how this " objective-becom­ ing of desire" comes about within the literary text. Revealing literature as a possible science, by way of exam ple, he paves the way for such a

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strictly scientific investigati o n . H is own undertaking makes it clear that literature's specificity resides in the age between this desire t o signify the asymbolized and the asymbolizable, where the subject coalesces, and historically sanctioned objectivity. That constitutes a radical discovery of which no literary history, n o aesthetic or stylistic approach could ever conceive, a s they remain limited by their fr agm entation . M oreover, on each o f these planes (desire/ objectivity), Barthes seeks whatever can be m astered and experim ented upon in schem atic form; whatever is regularity, code, form ality, neces­ sity, and algebra: in short , sem i ology. Yet, we must never forget that these peaks of Barthes's semiological graph r ise up from a b ase that cannot be m ade axiomatic and is summarized by desire and history. Thus, Balzac, Sade, and Loyola can be grasped within a sem iological diagram that summarizes the regular objectivity of their writing, which permeates the biological subj ect and descriptive history. But, at t he same time, each of these rules depends on corporeal, biological, vital, and his­ t orical elem ent s. The empirical, unmasterable, aleatory, hazardous object appears from beyond the diagram-it s it, gives it its buoyancy, and engenders it. The salience of Barthes's discovery lies precisely in this alliance between regularity and unclassifiable, objectival multiplicity; an alliance of unification and pluralism, a ion for objectivity sim ultaneous with a subjective desire for objects. The laws that Barthes t aught us to b ring to light from within literary practice always exhibit this duplicity, this assymm et ry, and this dialect ic. He discovers them to be the essential principles of t exts, since, as we have already poin t ed out, they constitute his own way o f proceeding.

Laws and Ru les What apparently begins t o emerge from within Barthes's textual analyses is the rough draft o f a dialectical conception of law. The laws that he formul ates for signifying systems d o not carry the weight of rules governing a form al, l ogical p rocedure; but t h ey do convey a sense o f the "precision" of a dialect ics, a "motion," or a "limit" ( these are Barthes's words) between the two levels that writing m akes obj ective (sym­ bolic/real; subj ect /h istory). Barthes ' s sem i ological laws delineate the objectivation of the subj ective t h rough and acr o ss history and within the signifying texture (language, im age, et cetera). One can thus u nderstand

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that Barthes's semiology is not a formalization; his formulations that so irritate the purist are all on the order of dialectical laws. This kind of t heoretical attitude allows Barthes to skirt psychoanalysis without m aking m istakes on writing. In his writings, his k n owledge of literature, his reading of it, occupies the position of a t heory o f the unconscious and o f its role in writing. But Barthes's conception and practice of "writing," as a notion substituted for "literature" and as a procedure, is not alien to the Freudian discovery. The being-in-itself-and­ for-itself of the "obj ective" other that negates and determ ines the "sub­ j ective" is active within language and adheres to certain laws; stating t his should be enough to establish a com m on grou n d for psychoanalytic and dialect ical laws . Yet, for Barthes, this position proves to be less a theoretical platform than what we might call a " practical kn owledge" of writing .

Music The reading of a text is doubtlessly the first stage of t h eoretical elaborat ion. A reading, whose conceptual s are muted, is the t er­ rain of the reading subj ect's desire, h i s drives, sexu ality, and attentiveness t oward the phonematic network, the rhythm of the sentences, the particular sem anteme bringing him back to a feeling, pleasure, l aughter, an event or reading of the m ost "em pirical" kind, abounding, enveloping, multiple. The identity of the reading I l oses itself there, at omizes itself; it is a time of j ouissance, where one discovers one t ext u nder another, its other. This rare capacity is a condition of B arthes's writings on the fr ontiers of "science" and " criticism" ( Barthes is probably the only one who can read his students). "The text is an object of pleasure" (Sade, Fourier, L oyola, p. 7); "it is a m at t er o f bringing into daily l i fe t h e fr ag­ ments of the u nintelligible " formulas") that emanate from a t ex t we ire" (ibid. ) . At the s a me t i me, already, a regularity comes forth t o gather these atom s: a grid l ays out j ouissance, and " m a kes pleasure, happiness, com­ munication dependent on an inflexible order or, to be even more offen­ sive, a com binative" (Sade, Fourier, Loyola, p. 3 ) . A harmony organizes sounds around us. T h e " I " is n o t t h e one w h o reads: t h e im personal time o f regularity, of the grid, and of harm ony t akes hold of the "I," dis­ persed for h aving read. Then, one reads j u st as one listens to mu sic: "the

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measure o f critical discourse is its accuracy. J u s t as i n music . . . " ( Cri­ tique et verite, p. 72). There is only one final step left befo re we reach explicative discourse. We must find a w ay to communicate this music by finding a code, while allowing what is said and what is not said to float haphazardly.

The External Inclusion The goal here is t o capture t h e l a w of desire t h a t makes m usic, that produces writ ing. But it is also t o experience the desire of the one who reads, to find its code and to note it down. M etalanguage, t hen, is not everything. Theoretical discourse is not the discourse of a repudiated sub­ j ect, but of one searching for the laws of its desires, operating as a hinge between immersion in the signifier and repudiation (it is neither one nor t he other), its status unknown. Its n ovelty is m easured in the change of a preposition. He doesn ' t speak about literature, he speaks to literature as to his other as instigator. Through this change, Barthes's discourse posits i t sel f outside the circumscri bed discourse of t he scholar and calls forth on his part the charge of "j argon" as an obj ective necessity: ' "j argon ' is a product o f imagination ( i t shocks as does t h e imagination), t h e approach to m et a ph orical language t ha t intellectual discourse will one day need" ( Critique et verite, p. 34); '"j argon' is the language of the other; the other (and not others) is what is n o t self; whence t h e trying character of its lan­ guage" (ibid. , p. 3 1 ). But where, t hen, is obj ectivity? What "guarantee" have we against the possibility of desire to "deform" the "truth" of the "object" itself, the literary t ext'? The dialectical objectivity of this discou rse stem s from its " truth," constructing itself in t h e operation of a n inclusion exterior to i t s "obj ect . " I t s truth is t o p roduce the m otion o f t h i s inclusion (contrary t o t h e excluding procedure o f classical science) t h a t posits a n d goes beyond its subj ective center (repudiated in science, hypostasized in ideology) by addressing itself t o a difference (writing) recognized and always m ain­ tained as external (heterogeneous) to k n owing discourse, while revealing the d ialectical laws fo rmu lated by this discou rse. Thus, t hi s new continent of k n owledge t h a t approaches ideology, religions, and the "arts" articulates itself through an external i nclusion in its object . Through its function, which Barthes calls "critical," t hat is, by reason of the desire and heteronomy it brings to light and into play, this possible

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understanding o f literature heralded b y Barthes possesses a knowledge that science does not attain . It implicates the k n owing subject within an analytic relationship to langu age, withi n a constant questioning of the symbolic and of its subj ect, with a perpetual struggle with no possible philosophical relaxation. Such a discourse announces what seem s re­ quired by an eventual ideological renewal: the awakening of subj ects . This awakening occurs simu ltaneously w i t h t h e putt ing i n t o play of the desire for a signifier to symbolize a "real" that has fallen into th e sub­ j ect ' s past or is questionable for societ y. It is also simultaneous with the opening up o f the hom onymic corral of the totalizing and repudiated sub­ j ect t oward the questioning o f active, corporeal, and social m ateriality. This simultaneity is accompl ished in literatu r e and especially in the literatu re o f the contem porary avant-garde. In deed, on of that, such a literature assumes its efficacy in present t ime. What can literature accom plish today? T h i s ethical a n d political ques­ tion has never fa iled t o be present u nder the for m al ist appearances that j o u rnalistic and academic rum ors have pasted onto the avant-garde. What can literature accomp lish? Perhaps no one k nows, but one is nonetheless obliged t o draw up an answer if one does not want t o abdi­ cate time: the time of history as well as that microcosmic time, the other, where the t ext is elaborated . An answer: Where fr om? When? Barthes's work and the trend that h e init iated, and which still carries him, are perhaps the symptom indicating that this power of writ ing penetrates, in our time and according to hist orical necessity, all discourses that d o not shirk t heir t opicalit y: "knowledge, " "politics," 18 and in general any art that carries m eaning. The constitution of a possible k n owledge o f this writing is, for Barthes, the sym ptom of a deep social m ut ation, "as important, and involving the same problem , as the one m arking the age from t he M iddle Ages to the Renaissance" ( Critique et verite, p. 48).

Notes I . R e ferences t o books by Roland Barthes appear i n t h e body i n the t e x t , followed by page n u m bers. The following edi t i ons have been used: Critical Essays . R i chard H oward, trans. Evanston, I l l . : Northwestern U n iversity Press, 1 97 2 . [Translation or Essais Critiqu es. Paris: Seuil, 1 964. ]

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T O LIT E R ATU R E'?

Critique et verite. Paris: Seuil. 1 966. Elements of Sem iology. Annette La vers and Colin Smith, trans. N ew York : Hill and Wang, 1 96 8 . [Translation of Elements de semiologie. Paris: Editions du Seuil. 1 964.] Michelet par lui-m em e. Paris: S e u i l . 1 954. Mythologies. Annette La vers, trans. and ed . New Y o r k : H i l l and Wang, 1 97 2 . [Trans la­ tion of Mythologies. Paris: Seuil, 1 9 5 7 . ] Sade, Fourier. Loyola. R ichard M i ller, trans. N e w Y o r k : H i l l a n d W a n g , 1 97 6 . [Transla­ t ion of Sade, Fourier. Loyola. Paris: Seuil, 1 97 1 . ] System e de la mode. Paris: Seu i i , 1 96 7 . S/Z. R ichard. M iller, t r a n s . N ew Y o r k : H ill a n d W a n g , 1 974. [Translation o f S/Z. Paris: Seuil, 1 97 0 . ]

Writing Degree Zero. Annette La vers a n d C o l i n S m i t h . trans. N e w Y o r k : H i l l a n d Wang, 1 967. [Translation of Le Degre zero de Ncrilure. Paris: Seu il, 1 95 3 . ] 2 . "The concepts of 'psychical energy' a n d 'discharge' and t he treatment o f psychical energy as a quantity have become habitual i n my thought since I began to arrange the facts of psych opat hology phil osophically"; Sigm u nd Freud, Jokes and their R elation to the Unconscious, J ames Strachey, trans. ( N ew Y o r k : Norton, 1 960), p. 1 47. T h e reference to Freud is recent a n d never elaborated i n Barthes's works. I t does not involve t h e econ omic concept ion of psychic activity i n Freud (theories i n instinctual drive, metapsychology); r at her, dialectical semantics, w hich controls t he notion of writ ing, and its explicit relationship with the spe a k ing subj ect argua bly p l ace Barthes's u nder t a k ing within a thinking that i s congruent (or could be m ade congr uent) with t hese Freudian positions. 3. " . . • a mythology that may be causally linked to history by each of its ele ments, but that, considered in its ent irety, resists the cou r se of the latter and continually readjusts its own grid t o offer the least resist ance against the torrent of events, w hich, experience has shown, i s rarely strong enough t o smash it and carry i t away i n i t s m om e nt u m " -C l aude Levi-Strau ss, "Le Tem ps du mythe," A nna/es ( M ay-August 1 97 1 ), 26(3): 540. 4. " P erhaps the power of the m a ternal figu r e derives its explosivity from the very power of fascination. We could also say t hat if the M other i m plements her fascinating attraction, it is only because the child previously li ved entirely u nder fascination's glance; i t concentrated in i t s e l f all the power of enchant m ent . [ . . . ] Fascination is fu ndament ally l i n k ed to t he neu tral and im personal presence of the i n determ inate O n e, t h e i m m ense face­ less someone [ . . . ] To write is to enter i n t o an affirmat ion of solitude where fascination operates as a t hreatening ele m e n t " - M aurice Blanchot, L'Espace litteraire ( P aris: Galli­ m ard, 1 9 55 ) , p. 24. 5. The notion of " paragram" is related to Saussure's "anagram s . " K r ist eva discusses this

in her essay. " P our u n e sem iologie des paragra m m es" i n "!-17µE1wrrxi/. [ E d . ] 6. B l anchot, page 2 2 . 7 . " T h e w o r k poses questions t o t h e l i fe. B u t we m u s t u nderstand in w h a t sense; t h e work as the obj ectification o f t h e person is. in fact, m ore complete, m ore total than the l i fe. It has i t s roots i n t h e l i fe, t o be sure; it i l l u m inates t h e life, b u t i t finds its total explanation only in itself. Yet is is still too soon for this total explanation to b ecom e apparent to us. [ E mphasis m ine. ] T h e l i fe i s illu m i nated by the work as a reality w hose total determ ination i s fou nd out­ side o f it, both in the conditions t h at bring i t about and in the artistic creation t h at realizes it and fin ishes i t off by expressing it. Thus, the work-when one has searched i t -becomes a hypothesis and a research tool to clarify t h e biography. [ . . . ] B u t we m u st k n o w also t h at t h e work never reveals the secrets of the biography"-J ean- P a u l Sartre, Search For a Method, ( N ew York: K n opf, 1 96 7 ) , pp. 1 42-4 3 .

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8. " Language a s t h e practical relat ion o f o n e m a n to another i s praxis, and praxis i s always l a nguage (whether t r u t h fu l o r deceptive) because it cannot t a k e place without signi­ fying itselr. [ . . . ] ' Hu m a n relations' are i n fact interindividual structures whose common bond is language and w h i c h actually e x i s t s at every m om ent of H istory"-Jean -Paul Sartre, Critiqu e of Dialectical R eason, l , A l a n Sheri dan-Smith, trans. ( London: N ew Left Books, 1 976), p. 99. 9. "That first reflection out o f i m m ediacy is the subject's process of distinction o f itself from its substance"-Georg Wilhelm Friedrich H egel, Phenomenology of Mind, J . B. Baillie, trans. ( N ew York: M ac m i l l i a n , 1 949), p. 804 . 1 0 . Ibid., p. 3 1 5 . 1 1 . H egel, Science of Logic, A. V. M i l ler, trans. ( New Y o r k : H u m anit ies P ress, 1 969), p. 7 2 5 . 1 2 . Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind. p . 1 9 5 . 1 3 . Ibid., p . 202. 1 4 . "[T]his absol ute notion o f distinction m u s t be s e t for th a n d apprehended purely as inner distinction, self-repulsion o f t h e self-same as self-same, and l i k eness of the u n l i k e as unlike. W e h a v e t o t h i n k pure flu x , opposi t i o n w i t h i n opposit ion itself, or Cont radict ion. For i n t h e distinction, which is an i n t ernal distinct ion, the opposite is not only one of two factors-if so, it would not be an oppos ite, b u t a bare existen t-it is the opposite of an opposite, or t h e other is itself directly and i m m ediately present within i t . No doubt I put the opposite here and the O ther, o f w h ich i t i s t h e opposite, t h ere; that is, I place the opposite on one side, t aking it by itself w i t h ou t the other. Just on that , however, since I have here the opposite all by itself, it i s the oppos ite o f its own self, that is, it has i n point of fact the other i m m ediately within itself. Thus t h e su persensible world, which is the i nverted world, has at the same time reached out beyo nd the other world and has in itself that other; it is to itself conscious of being in verted ( ftir sich verkehrt e ) , i.e., it is the i n verted form of itself; it is that world itself and its opposite in a single u nity. Only thus is it distinction as i n t ernal distinction, or distinction p er se; in o t h e r words, only thus is it in the fo rm of Infinity." Ibid., pp. 206- 7. I S . Tel Q u el, Theorie d'ensemble ( Paris: S e u i l , 1 968), pp. 2 5 - 3 9 . 1 6. I . Fon agy, " D o u b l e Coding in Speech ," Semiotica ( 1 97 1 ), 3 ( 3 ) : pp. 1 89-2 2 2 . 1 7 . O n t h e subject o f the inscription of i n s t i n c t u a l drives t hrough and across l angu age in a u n i q u e t e x t control led by a precise situ a t ion o f the subj ect in relation to castration, cf. Philippe Sollers, " L a m at iere et sa ph rase," Critique, J u l y 1 97 1 . 1 8 . M a o Z edong i s t h e only m a n i n polit ics and t h e only com m unist leader since Lenin t o h a ve frequ ently insisted on the necess ity of worki ng u pon language and writing in order t o transform ideology. H e obviously considered work ing on language as a fu nda­ mental element of any ideological i m pact, and t hus. o f ideology and politics. His remarks are cer t a i nly m otivated by the particularities o f the Chi nese language and its l i terature, by their distanciation from writing and by an inequality between t he old and the new on these two levels. Y e t , beyond t hese concrete i m plications, M a o ' s remarks have a m ore general worth that we cannot grasp without a theoretical reevaluation of the subject within signify­ ing practice. Thus, for example: "Caring l i t t l e for gra m m a r or rhetoric . they relish a style which is a cross between the li terary and the colloq u i a l "-"On Literary Style" i n Mao Tse­ Tu ng on Literature and A rt ( Pek ing: Foreign Language Press, 1 9 60), p. 1 3 2; "Whenever a m a n speaks to others, he is doing propaganda work . U nless he is dumb, he always has a few words to say. I t is th erefore im perative that our com rades should all study lan­ gu age- "Oppose Stereotyped Party Wri ting," ibid., p. 1 0 2 .

5.

F ROM ONE I D ENTITY TO A N OTH E R

I shall attempt, within t h e ritual limits o f a o ne-hour sem inar, to posit (if not to dem onstrate) t hat every language t heory is predicated upon a con­ ception of the subj ect that i t explicitly posits, implies, or tries to deny. Far from being an "epistemological perversion ," a definite subj ect is present a s soon as t here is consciousness o f signification. Consequently, I shall need t o outline an epistem ological itin erary : tak ing three stages in the recent hist ory of linguistic t h eory, I shall indicate the variable posi­ tion these m ay have required of the speaking su bj ect-sup port within their obj ect langu age. This-on the whole, t echnical-foray into the episte­ m ology of linguistic science will lead us to b roach and, I hope, elucidate a problem whose ideological stakes are considerable but whose banality i s o ften ignored. M eaning, identified either within the u n i ty or the mu lti­ plicity of subj ect, structure, or t h eory, necessarily guarantees a certain transcendence, if not a t h eology; this is precisely why all human k nowledge, whether it be t h at of an individual subj ect or of a m eaning structure, retains religion as its blind bou ndaries, or at least, as an internal limit, and at best, can just barely "explain and validate religious sentim ent" (as Levi-Strauss observed, i n connect ion with structuralism ) . 1 Second, I s h a l l deal with a particular signifying practice, which, like the Russian F o rm alists, I call "poetic language, " in order t o demonstrate that this kind of language, through the particularity of its signifying Originally a paper read a t a seminar organized by J ean- M a r i e Benoist and d irected by Claude Levi-Strauss at the College de , J anuary 27, 1 97 5 ; first published in Tel Que/ ( S u m m er 1 97 5 }. no. 62; repr i n t ed in Poly/ogue ( Paris: Seuil, 1 977), pp. 1 49-72. " D 'une identite l ' a utre, " t h e original title of Kri steva's ess ay reflects and m a k es use of t h e title o f Celine's n o v e l D'un chateau /'au tre. Although t h i s has b e e n transla ted as Castle to Castle, t h e more literal "From One Identity to an Other" has been chosen in order to k eep t h e a mbiguous feeling o f the French as w e l l as the w o r d "other , " a n i m p o r t a n t one in p hilosophy since H egel and also in Kristeva's wor k .

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operations, is an unsettling process-when not an outright destruc­ tion-of the identity of m eaning and speak ing subj ect, 2 and consequently, of transcendence or, by derivation, of "religious sensibility. " On that , it accom panies crises with i n social structures and institu­ tions-the moments of their m utation, evolution , revolution, or d isarray. For if m u t ation within langu age and institutions fi nds its code through this signifying practice and its questionable subj ect in process that const i t u tes poetic language, then that practice and subj ect are walking a precarious tightrope. Poet i c language, the only langu age t hat u ses u p transcendence and theology t o sustain itself; poetic language, knowingly the enemy of religion, by its very economy borders on psychosis (as for its subj ect) and tot alitarianism or fascism (as for the institutions it implies or evokes). I could have spoken of Vladimir M ayakovsky or Antonin Artaud; I shall speak of Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Finally, I shall try to draw a few conclusions concerning the possibility of a theory in the sense of an analytical discourse on signifying system s, which w ould take into these crises of meaning, subj ect, and structure. This fo r two reasons: first, such crises, far fr om b eing accidents, are inherent in the signifying fu nction and, consequently, in sociality; secondly, situated at the forefront of twentieth-century polit ics, these phenomena (which I consider within poetic language, but which may assu m e other forms i n the West as well as in other civilizations) could not rem ain outside t he so-called human sciences without casting su spicion on their ethic. I shall therefore and in conclusion argue in favor of an analytical theory of signifying systems and practices that would search within the signifying phenomenon for the crisis or the u nsettling process of meaning and su bj ect rather t han for the coherence or identity of either one or a multiplicity of structures. Without referring back to the stoic sage, who guaranteed both the sign's triad and the inductive condit ional clause, let us return to the con­ gruence between conceptions of language and of subj ect where Ernest Renan left them . We are all aware of the scandal he caused among ninet eenth-century m inds when he changed a t heological discour se (the Gospels) not into a myth but into the history of a man and a people. This conversion of t heological discourse into historical discourse was possible thanks to a tool (for him, scientific) whose om nipotence he never ceased praising-philology . As used by Renan or Eugene Burnou f in A vestic

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Studies, for exam ple, philology incorporates the comparativism o f phi­ lologists Franz Bopp or August Schleicher. Whatever the di fference between com parativists seek ing t hose laws unique to fam ilies of lan­ guages and phi lologists decipheri ng the m eaning o f one language, a com­ mon conception o f language as an organic identity unites t h em . Little does it matter that, as comparativists believed, this organic identity articu lates itself thanks t o a law that crosses national and historical lan­ guage bo rders making of t hem one fa mily (cf. J acob Grim m ' s phonetic laws); or that, as philologists believed, this organic identity articulates itself thanks to one meaning-singular and unique-inscribed into a text still undeciphered or whose decipherability is debatable. In both cases this organic identity of law or m eaning implies that langu age is the possession of a homo loqu ens within history. As Renan writes in A veroes et l'A verroi"s me, " for the philologist, a text has only one meaning" even i f it is through "a kind o f necessary m i sinterpretation" that "the philo­ sophical and religious development of human ity" proceeds. 3 Closer to the object ivity of the Hegelian "consciousness of sel r ' for the com parat ivists, em bodied into a singu larity that, be it concrete, individual, or national, still owes something t o H egel for the philologists; langu age is always one system, perhaps even one "struct ure," always one m eaning, and, therefore, it necessarily implies a subj ect (collective or individual) t o bear witness t o its history. If one has d i fficulty following Renan when he affirm s that "rat ionalism is based on philology"-for it is obvious t hat the two are int erdependent-it is no less obvious t h at philological reason­ ing is m aintained through the identity of a historical subject : a subj ect in becom i ng. Why? Because, far from dissecting the internal logic of sign, predication (sentence gram m ar), or syllogism (logic), as did the universal gram m a r of P ort Royal, the com p arativist and philological reason that Renan exem plifies considers the signifying unit in itself (sign, sent ence, syliogism) as an u nanalyzable given . This signifying unit rem ains im plicit within each description of law or text t h at philologists and com parativist s u ndertake: linear, unidimensional descriptions-with n o analysis o f the sign's density, the logical problem atic of meaning, et c.-but which, once technically completed, restore struct ural identity ( for the com parativists) or mean ing ( for the philologists); in so d oing they reveal the initial presupposition of the specifically lingu istic undertaking as an id eology that posits either the people or an exceptional individual as appropriating

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this structure or this meaning. Becau se it is in itsel f unanalyzable (like the sign, sentence, and syll ogism, it has no density, no economy), this subject- of com parativist laws or o f philological analysis does not lend itsel f t o change, that is t o say, to shifting from one law to another, from one structure to another, or from one m eaning to another, except by postulating the m ovem ent of becoming, that is, of history. In the analysis of a signifying fu nction (language or any "human," social phenomenon), what is censu red at the level of semantic complexity reemerges i n the form of a becom ing: that obliteration of the density t hat consti tutes sign, sentence, and syllogism (and consequently, the speaking subj ect), is compensated for by historical reasoning; the reduction o f the com plex signifying economy of the speak ing subj ect (though obliquely perceived by Port R oyal) produces without fail an opaque "I" that makes h istory. Thus, philological reasoning, while founding h istory, becom es a deadlock for language sciences, even t hough there actually is in Renan, beyond countless contradict i ons, an appreciation of u niversal gramm ar, a call for the constitution of a lingu istics for an isolated l an­ guage (in the m anner of t he ancient I ndian gramm arian Par:iini), and even surprisingly m odern pro posals t h at advocate the study of crisis rather than normality, and in his semitic studies the rem arks o n " t hat delirious vision transcribed i n a b arbaric and undecipherabl e style" as he calls the Christ ian gnostic texts, or on t h e texts of J oh n the Apostle.4 Linguistic reasoning, which, through Saussure, succeeded philological reasoning, works its revolution precisely by a ffecting the constitut ive unity of a p art icular language; a langu age is not a system, it is a system of signs, and this vertically opens up the fam ous gap between signifier and signified, t hu s allowing linguistics to claim a logical, m athematical formalization on the one hand, but on the other, it definitely prevents reducing a language or t ext t o one Jaw or one m eaning. Stru ct u r al lin­ guist ics and the ensuing structural m ovement seem to explore this episte­ m ological space by elim inating the speak ing subj ect. But, on a closer look, we see t h at the subj ect they legitimately do without is nothing but the su bj ect (individual or collective) of historico-philological discourse I just discussed, and in which the H egelian consciousness of self became stranded as it was concretized, embodied into philology and history; this subj ect, which l inguistics and the corollary hum an sciences do without, is the " personal identity, miserable treasure. " 5 Nevertheless, a subj ect of

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enunciation t akes shape within the gap opened up between signifier and signified that its both structure and interplay within; and structura l linguistics ignores such a subj ect . M oreover, because i t left its place vacant, structural linguistics could not become a linguistics of s peech o r discourse; it lacked a gra m m ar, for in order t o m ove from sign t o sentence t h e pl ace of t h e subj ect h a d t o b e acknowledged a n d no longer k ept vacant. Of course, generative gram m ar does reinstate it by rescuing universal grammar and the Cartesian subj ect fr om oblivion, using that subj ect t o just i fy the generative, recur sive functions o f syntactic trees. But in fact, generative gra m m ar is evidence of what structural linguistics omitted, rather t han a new beginning; whether structural or generative, linguistics since Saussure adheres to t h e same presuppositions, implicit within the structuralist cu rrent, explicit in the generative t endency that can be found su m m ed up in the philosophy of Husserl. I refer m odern linguistics and the m odes o f t h ought which i t oversees within the so-called hum a n sciences back to this fou nding fat her fr om another field, but not fo r conj unctural reasons, th ough t h ey are not lack­ ing. I ndeed, Husserl was invited to and discussed by the Circle of Prague; indeed, J akobson explicitly recognized in him a philosophical m entor for post-Saussurian linguists; i ndeed, several A m erican epistem ologists of generative gra m m ar recognize in Husserlian phenom enology, rather than in D escartes, t h e fo u nd at i o n s o f t h e generative u ndertaking. But it is possible to detect in Husserl t h e basis o f linguistic reasoning (structural or generat ive) to the extent t h a t , a fter the reduct ion of the H egelian con­ sciousness of self into philological or historical identity, Husserl master­ fully u nderstood and posited that any signifying act, insofar as it remains capable of elucidation by k nowledge, does not m aintain itself by a "me, m iserable treasure" but by t h e "transcendental ego . " I f it is t r u e t ha t the divi s i on o f t h e Saussurian sign (signifier /signi fied), unknown to Husserl, also i nt roduces the heret o fore u nrecognized possi­ bility of envisioning language as a free play, forever without closure, it is also t rue that this possibility was not developed by Saussure except in the very problematic A nagram m es . 6 M oreover, this investigation has n o lin­ guistic followers, but rather, philosophical ( Heideggerian discou rse) and psychoanalytic (Lacan' s signifier) contem poraries or successors, who t oday effectively enable u s to appreciat e and circu m scribe the contribu­ tion of phenomenological linguistics from a H usserlian perspective. For

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post-Saussu rian structural linguistics still encloses the signi fier, even i f nonm otivated, within patterns of a signification originally destined fo r faultless communicat ion, either coinciding with t h e explicit signified or set o ff a short distance from it, but still fastened t o the unalt erable presence of meaning and, similarly, tributary to phenomenological reason. It is t herefo re im possible to take up the congruence between concep­ tions of language and of subj ect where Renan left off without recalling how Hu sserl s h i ft ed ground by raising it above empiricism, psycholo­ gism , and incarnat ion theories typical of Renan. Let us exam ine for a m oment t h e signifying act and the Husserlian t ranscendental ego, keep­ i ng in mind t h at linguistic reason (structural or generative) is to Husserl what philological reason was t o Hegel : reduction perhaps, but also concret e realiz.a tion, that is, fa ilure m ade manife st. A s early as Logical Investigations of 1 90 1 , Husserl situates the sign (of which one cou ld have naively thought t h at it had n o subj ect) within the act o f expressing m eaning, constituted by a judgment on something: "The articu late sound-com plex, the written sign, etc., first becomes a spoken word or communicative bit o f speech , when a speaker produces i t with t h e intention of 'expressing himself about something' t hrough its means. " 7 Consequently, t h e thin sheath o f t h e sign (signifier / signified) opens onto a complex archit ecture where int entional l i fe-experience captu res m at erial (hy lic) m u lt i plicities, endowing them first with noetic m ea ning , t h e n with noematic m eaning, so that finally the result fo r the j u dging consciousness is the formatio n of an object once and fo r all signi fied as real. The i m portant point here is that this real object, first signified by means of hylic data, t hrough noesis and noemis, i f it exists, can only be t ranscendental in the sense that it is elaborated i n its identity by the j u dg­ i ng consciou sness of transcendental ego. The signified is transcendent as it is posited by m eans of certain concat enations within an experience that is always confined to judgment; for i f the phenom enologist distinguishes between intuiting and endowing with m eaning, t hen perception is already cogitation and the cogitation is t ranscendent to percept ion.8 So m uch so t h at i f the world were annih ilated, the signi fied "res" would remain because t hey are t ranscendental: they "refer entirely t o a consciousness" insofa r as they are signified res. The predicative (syntactic) operation

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constitutes t h i s judging consciousness, positing a t t h e same tim e the sig­ nified Being (and therefore, the object of meaning and signification) and the operating consciousness itself. The ego as of the predicative act therefore does not operate as the ego-cogito, that is, as the ego of a logically conceived consci ousness and " fragment o f the world"; rather, the transcendental ego belongs to the consti tuting operating conscious­ ness, which means that it t akes shape within the predicative operation. This operation is thetic because it simultaneously posits the thesis (posi­ tion) o f both Being and ego. Thus, for every signified t ranscendental obj ect, t here is a t ranscendental ego, b o th of which are givens by virtue o f thetic operation-predicat ion o f j u dg m en t . "Transcendental egology"9 th u s reformula tes t h e question o f t h e signi­ fying act 's subj ect: ( 1 ) the operating consciousness, through predication, simultaneously constitutes Being, the (transcendent) signified real object, and the ego (in so far as it is t ranscendental); the p roblem atic of the sign is also bound up in this q u estion; (2) even if inten tionality, and with it, the judging consciousness, is already a given in m aterial data and percep­ tions, as it "resembles" t h em (which allows us to say that t he t ran­ scenden tal ego is always already in a way given), in fact, the ego constitutes itself only through the operating consciousness at the time o f predication; t h e subject is m erely the subj ect o f predication, of j u dgment, of the sentence; (3) "belief' and "ju dgment" are closely interdependent though not identical: "The syntheses of belief (Glaubenssynthesen) find their 'expression' in the for m s of stated m eaning . " 10 Neither a historical individual nor a l ogically conceived consciousness, the subj ect is henceforth t h e operating t hetic consciousness positing cor­ relat ively the t ranscenden t a l Being and ego . Thus, H u sserl m ak es clear that any lingu istic act, insofar as it sets up a signified that can be com­ municated in a sentence (and there is no sign or sign ifying structure that is not already part of a sentence), is sustained by the transcendent al ego . It i s perhaps n o t unim portant t h at the rigor of J u daism a n d the persecution i t has been subj ected to in our time u nderlie Husserl's extraordinarily firm elucidation o f the t ranscendental ego, j u s t a s they are the foundation of the human scien ces . For the purposes of our discussion, we can draw two conclu sions fr om this brief review:

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1 . I t i s im possible t o treat problem s o f signification seriously, i n lin­ guistics or sem iology, without including in t hese considerations the sub­ ject thus form ulated as operating consciousness. This phenomenological conception of the speaking subject is m ade possible in m o dern linguistics by the introduction of logic into generative gram mar and, in a m uch m ore lucid m anner, through a linguistics (developing in a fter Benveniste) which is attuned to the subject of enunciation and which includes in the latter's operating consciousness not only logical m odalities, but also interlocutory relationships. 2 . I f it is t rue, consequently, that t h e question o f signification and t herefo re of m odern linguistics is dominated by Husserl, the attempts to criticize or "deconstruct" phenomenology bear concurrently on Husserl, meaning, the s till transcendental subj ect of enunciation, and linguistic methodology. These criticisms circu m scribe the met aphysics inherent in the sciences of signification and therefore in the human sciences-an important epist em ological t ask in itself. But t hey reveal their own short­ com ings not so much, as some believe, in that t hey prevent serious, theoretical or scientific research, but in that such "deconstructions" refu se (through d iscredit ing the signified and with it the t ranscendental ego) what constitutes one fun ction of language though not the only one: t o express meaning in a com m unicable sentence bet ween speakers. This function harbors coherence (which is indeed transcendental) or, i n other words, social identity. Let us first acknowledge, with Husserl, this thetic character of the signifying act, which est ablishes the transcendent object and the transcendental ego of com m unication (and consequently of socia­ bility), befo re going beyond the Husserlian problem atic to search for t h at which produces, shapes, and exceeds t he operating consciousness (this will be our purpose when confr onting poetic language) . Without t hat acknowledgem ent, which is also that of the episteme underlying structur­ alis m , any reflect ion on significance, by refusing its t hetic character, will continually ignore its constraining, legislative, and socializing elements: u nder the imp ression that it is break ing down the m etaphysics o f the sig­ nified or t h e transcendental ego, such a reflection will becom e lodged in a negative t h eology t hat denies t heir limitations. Finally, even when the researcher in the field, beginning with what is now a descri ptive if not scientific perspective, th inks he has discovered givens that m ay escape the unity of the transcendental ego (because each

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identity would be as if flaked into a multiplicity of qualities or appurtenances, the discourse of k n owledge that delivers this multiplied identity to us remains a prisoner of phenomenological reason for which the multiplicities, inasmuch as t hey signify, are givens of consciousness, predicates within the same eidet ic unity: the unity of an object signified by and for a transcendental ego. In an interpretive undertaking for which there i s no dom ain heterogeneous to m eaning, all m at erial diversities, as multiple attributes, revert to a real (transcendental) obj ec t . Even apparently psychoanalytic interpret ations (relationship t o parents, et cetera), from the m om ent t hey are posited by the st ructuring learning as particularities of the transcendental real obj ect, are false multiplicities; deprived of what is heterogeneous to m eaning, th ese m ultiplicities can only produce a plural identity-but an identity all the same, s ince it is eidetic, t r anscendental. Husserl th erefore stands on the threshold not only of m odern linguistics concerned wit h a subj ect of enunciation, but o f a n y science of m a n a s signified phenomenon, whose obj ecthood, even i f multiple, is t o b e rest ored. To the extent that poet i c langu age operates with and communicates m eaning, i t also shares particularities of the signifying operations eluci­ dated by Husserl (correlation between signified obj ect and the t ran­ scendental ego, operating consciousness, which constitutes i tself by predication--by syntax-as thetic: thesis of Being, thesis of the obj ect, thesis of the ego). M eaning and signification, h owever, do not exhaust the poetic fu nction. Therefore, the t hetic predicative operation and its correlatives (signified obj ect and transcendental ego), t h ough valid for the sign i fying economy of poetic language, are only one of its limits: cer­ t ainly constitut ive, but not all-encom pa ssing. While poetic language can indeed be studied through its meaning and signification (by revealing , depending on the m ethod, either structures or process), such a study would, i n the final analysis, amount to reducing it to the phenomeno­ logical perspective and, hence, failing to see what in the poetic funct ion departs from the signified and the transcendental ego and m akes of what is k nown as "literature" something other than k n owledge: the very place where social code is dest royed and renewed, thus providing, a s Artaud writes, " A release for the anguish of its time" by "animating, a tt racting , lowering o n t o its shoulders the wandering anger of a particular t i m e for the d ischarge of its psychological evil-being." 1 1

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Consequently, one should begin by positing t hat there is within poetic language (and therefore, although i n a less pronounced m a nner, within any language) a heterogeneousness to m eaning and signification. This heterogeneousness, detected genetically i n the first echolalias of i n fants as rhythm s and intonations anterior to the first phonemes, m orphemes, lexem es, and sentences; this h eterogeneousness, which is later reactivated as rhyth m s , intonations, glossalalias in psychotic discourse, serving as ultim ate o f the speak i ng subj ect threatened by the collapse o f the sign ifying function; this heterogeneou sness to signification o perates through, despite, and in excess of it and produces in poetic language "musical" but also nonsense effects t hat destroy not only accepted beliefs and significations, but, in radical experiments, syntax i tself, that gua rantee of t hetic consciousness (of t he signified object and ego)-for example, carnivalesque discourse, A rtaud, a num ber of tex t s by M allarme, cert ain Dadaist and Surrealist experiments. The notion of heterogeneity is i ndispensable, for though articulate, precise, organized, and com plying with const raints and ru les (especially, like the rule o f repetition, which articu lates t he units o f a particu lar rhythm or i nt ona­ tion), this signifying disposition is not that of m eaning or significat ion: no sign, n o predication, no signified obj ect and therefore n o operat ing consciousness of a transcendental eg o. We shall call this disposition sem io tic (le sem iotique), m eaning, according t o the etym ology o f the G reek sem eion ( a71µE iov), a dist inctive m ark, t r ace, index, the p rem oni­ t ory sign, the proof, engraved m ark, imprint-in short, a distinctiveness itting o f an uncertain and indeterm inate articulation because it does not yet refer ( for young children) or n o longer refers (in p sychotic dis­ course) to a signified obj ect for a t hetic consciousness (this side of, or through, both object and consciousness). Plato's Tim eus spea ks o f a chora ( xwp a), receptacle (1J-iroooxEiov), unnam able, improbable, hybrid, anterior to nam ing, to the One, to the father, and consequently, m aternally connoted to such an extent that it m erits "not even the rank o f syllable. " One can describe m o re precisely than did philosophical intuition the particularities of this signifying disposition that I h ave just named sem iotic-a term which quite clearly designates that we are deal­ ing with a disposition that is definitely heter ogeneous to m eaning but always in sight of it or in either a negative or surplus relationship t o it. Research I have recently u ndertaken on child language acquisition in the

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prephonological, one could say prepredicative stages, o r anterior to the "m irror stage, " as well as another concom itant study on particularities of psychotic discourse aim notably at describing as precisely as possi­ ble-with the help o f, for exam ple, m odern phono-acoustics-these sem iotic operations (rhyt h m , intonation) and their dependence vis-a-vis the body's drives observable through muscular constractions and the libidinal or sublim ated cathexis that accom pany vocalizations. I t goes without saying that, concerning a signifying practice, that is, a socially commu nicable discourse like poetic language, this semiotic heterogeneity posited by theory is inseparable from what I shall call, to distinguish it from the latter, the sym bolic function of sign ificance. The symbolic (le sym bolique), as opposed to the sem iotic, is this inevit able attribute of m eaning, sign, a n d the signified obj ect for the consciousness o f Hu sserl's transcendental ego. Language as social practice necessarily presupposes these two dispositions, t h ough comb ined in di fferent ways to constitute types of discourse, types of signifying practices . Scientific discourse, for exam ple, aspiring to the status of m etalangu age, tends to reduce as much as possible the sem iotic component . On the contrary, the signifying economy of poetic language is speci fic in t h at the sem iotic is not only a constraint as is the symbolic, but it tends to gain the u pper hand at the expense of the thetic and predicative constraints o f the ego's j udging con­ sciousness. Thus in any poetic language, not only do the rhythmic constraints, for example, perform an organizing function that could go so far as to violate certain gramm atical rules of a national 111.ngu�g-� and oft en neglect t he importance of an i deatory message, but in recent texts, t hese semiotic constraints (rhythm, phonic, vocalic timbres i n Symbolist work , but also g raphic disposition on the page) are accom panied by nonrecoverable syntactic elisions; it is im possible t o reconstitute the particu lar elided syntactic cat egory (object or verb), which m a k es the meaning of the utterance u ndecidable ( for example, the non recoverable elisions in Un Coup de Des). 12 However elided, attacked, or c orrupted the sym bolic function might be in poetic langu age, due to the impact of semiotic processes, the sym bolic fun ction nonetheless m aintains its presence. It is for this reason that it is a language. Firs t , it persists as an internal limit of this bipolar economy, since a mult iple and som et imes even u ncom prehensible signified i s nevertheless com municated; secondly, it persists also because the sem iotic processes themselves, far from being

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set adrift (as they would be i n insane discourse), set u p a new formal construct : a so-called new formal or ideological "writer's u niverse, " the never-finished, undefined production o f a new space of signi ficance. Husserl's "thetic function" of the signifying act is thus re-assumed, but in different form : though poetic language unsettled the position of the sig­ nified and the transcendental ego, it nonetheless posits a thesis, not of a particular being or meaning, but o f a signi fying apparatus; it posits its own process as an undecidable process between sense and nonsense, between language and rhythm (in the sense o f link age that the word "rhythm" had for Aeschylus's Prometheus according to Heidegger's reading), between the symbolic and sem i otic. For a t heory attuned t o this k ind o f functioning, the language object itself appears quite differently than it would from a phenomenological perspective. Thus, a phonem e, as distinctive elem ent of meaning, belongs to language as symbolic. But this same phonem e is i nvolved in rhythm ic, intonational repetitions; it t hereby tends t owards autonomy from m ean­ ing so as to maintain itself in a sem iotic disposition near the instinctual drives' body; it is a sonorous distinctiveness, which therefore is no longer either a phoneme or a part of t h e symb olic system-one m ight say that its belonging to the set of t h e language is indefinite, between zero and one. Nevertheless; the set to which it . thus belongs exists with this indefinition, with this fuzziness. I t is poetic language that awakens our attention t o this undecidable character of any so-called natural language, a feature that u nivocal, rational, scien t ific discourse t ends to hide-and this im plies considerable consequ ences for its subj ect . The o f this signifying economy could not b e t h e transcendental ego alone. I f it is true that there would unavoidably be a speak ing subject since the signifying set exists, it is nonetheless evident that this subj ect, in order to tally with its heterogeneity, must be, let us say, a questionable subject-in-process. I t is of course Freud's theory o f the unconscious that allows the apprehension of such a subj ect; for through the surgery it practiced in the o perating consciousness of the transcendental ego, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis did allow, not for (as certain sim plifications would have it) a few typologies or structures that m ight accomm odate the same phenomenological reason, but rather for heterogeneity, which, k nown as the unconsciou s, shapes the signifying function. In light of these state-

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ments, I shall now make a fe w rem ark s o n the questionable subj ect-in­ process of poetic language. 1 . The sem i otic activity, which introduces wandering or fuzziness into language and, a fortiori, into poetic language is, from a synchronic point of view, a m ark o f the workings of drives (appropriation/ rej ection, orality / anality, love/hate, life/deat h ) and, fr om a diachronic point of view, stem s from t he archaisms of the s emiotic body. Before recognizing itself as identical in a m irror and, consequen t ly, as signifying, this body is dependent vis- a-vis the m other. At the same time instinctual and m aternal, sem iotic processes prepare the future speaker for entrance into meaning and signification (the symbolic). But the sym bolic (i.e., language as nom ination, sign, and syntax) constitutes itself only by breaking with this anteriority, which is retrieved a s " signifier," " prim ary p rocesses," displacem ent and condensation, m et aphor and met onomy, rhetorical figu res-but which always rem ains subordin ate-subj acent to the prin­ cipal fu nction of naming-predica ting. Language as symbolic funct ion constitutes itself at the cost of repressing instinctual drive and cont inuous relation to the m other. On the contrary, the u nsettled and questionable subj ect of poetic language (for whom the word i s never uniquely sign) m aintains itself at the cost of reactivating this repressed insti nctual, m aternal elem ent. If it is true that the p rohibition o f incest constitutes, at the same time, language as comm un icative code and women a s exchange obj ects in order for a society to be established, poetic language wou ld be for its q uesti on able subj ect-in-process the equ ivalent of incest: it is within the economy of signification itsel f that t he questionable subj ect-in­ process appropriates to itsel f this archaic, instinctu al, and m aternal terri­ t ory; thus it simultaneously prevents the word fr om b ecoming m ere sign and the m other fr om beco ming an o bjec t like any other-forbidden. This age into and through the forbidden, which constitutes the sign and is correlative to the prohibition of i ncest, is o ften explicit as such (Sade: " Un less he becomes his m ot her' s lover from the day she has brought him into the world, let him not bother to write, fo r we shall not read h i m , " Idee sur /es romans; Artaud, iden t i fying with his "daughters"; J oyce and his d aughter at the e n d o f Finnegans Wake; Celine who takes as pseudonym his grandmother's first name; and innum erable identifica­ tions with women, or d ancers, t h a t waver between fet ishizat ion and hom osexuality). I stress t his point for th ree reasons: -

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(a) T o em phasize that t h e dominance of sem iotic constraint i n poetic language cannot be solely interpreted, as formalist poetics would have it, as a preoccupation with the "sign," or with the "signifier" at the expense of the "m essage"; rather, it is more deeply indicative of the instinctual drives' activity relative t o the first structurations (constitution o f the body as sel f) and identifications (with the mother). (b) To elucidate the intrinsic connection between literature and breaking u p social concord : because i t utters incest, poetic language is linked with "evi l"; "literature and evil" (I refer t o a title by G eorges Bataille) should be u nderstood, beyond the resonances of Christian ethics, as the social body's self-defense against the discourse o f incest as destroyer and generator of any language and sociality . This applies all the m ore a s "great literature," which has mobilized unconsciousnesses for centuries, has not hing to do with the hypostasis of incest (a petty game of fet ishists at the end of an era, priesthood of a would-be enig ma-the forbidden m other); on the contrary, this incestuous relation, ex ploding in l anguage, em bracing it from top t o bottom in such a sin­ gular fashion t h at it defies generalizations, still has this common feature in all outstanding cases: it presents itself as demyst ified, even disap­ pointed, deprived of its hallowed function as of the law, i n order t o become the cause of a perm anent trial of the speaking subj ect, a cause of that agility, o f that analytic "compet ency" that legend attributes to U lysses. (c) It i s of course possible, as Levi-St rauss pointed out to Dr. A ndre Green, to ignore the mother-child relationship within a given anthropo­ logical vision of s ociety; now, given not only the them atization of t his relationship, but especially the mutat ions in the very economy o f dis­ course attributable to it, one must, in discussing poetic language, consider what this presym bo lic and trans-sym bolic relationship to the mother introduces as aimless wandering within the identity o f the speaker and the economy of its very discourse. M oreover, this relationship of the spea ker t o the m other is probably one of the m ost important factors pro­ ducing interplay within the structure of m eaning as well as a quest ioning process of subj ect and history. 2. And yet , this reinstatement of maternal territory into the very economy of language does not lead its quest ioned subj ect-in-process t o repudiate i t s symbolic disposition. Formulat o r-logothete, as Roland

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Barthes would say-the subject of poetic langu age continually but never definitively assumes the thetic fu nction of naming, establishing m eaning and significati on, which the paternal function represents within reproduc­ tive relation. Son perm anently at war with father, not in order to take his place, nor even to endure it, erased from reality, as a symbolic, divine menace and salvation in the manner of Senatspriisident Schreber . But rather, to signify what is untenable in the symbolic, nominal, paternal function. If symbolic and social cohesi on are m aintained by virtue of a sacrifice (which m ak es o f a soma a sign towards an u nnam able transcendence, so that only thus are signifying a n d social structures clinched even though they are ignorant of this sacrifice) and if the paternal function represent s this sacri ficial function, then it is not up to the poet to adj ust to it. Fearing its rule but su fficiently aware of the legis­ lation of language not to be able to turn away from this sacrificial­ paternal function, he takes it by storm and from the flank . In Maldoror, Lautream ont struggles ag ainst the Om nipotent . A fter the death of his son Anatole, M allarm e writes a Tom beau , thanks to which a book replaces not only the dead son, his own father, m other, and fiancee a t the same time, but also hallowed humanism and the "instinct of heaven" i tself. The m os t analytical o f them all, the M arquis de Sade, gives up this battle with, or for, the symbolic legislation represented by the fa ther, in order to attack the power represented by a woman, M adame de M ontreuil, visible figurehead of a dynasty of m atrons t oward whom he usurps, through writing, the role of father and incestuous son; h ere, the transgression is carried out and the transsym bolic, transpaternal function of poetic langu age reaches its thematic end by staging a simult aneously impossible, sacrificial, and orgastic society-never one without the other. Here we must clearly distinguish two positions: that of the rhetorician and that of the writer in the strongest sense o f the word; that is, as Celine puts it, one who has "style. " The rhetorician does not invent a language; fascinated by the symbolic fu nct ion of paternal discourse, he seduces it in the Latin sense of the verb-he "leads it astray , " inflicts it with a few anomalies generally taken from writers of the past, thus miming a fa ther who re having been a son and even a daughter of his father, but not to the point of leaving cover. This is indeed what is happening to the discourse of contem porary philosophers, in particularly, when, hemmed in by the breakthroughs in social sciences o n the one hand, and

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social u pheavals on the other, the philosopher begins performing literary tricks, thus arrogating t o him sel f a power over imaginations: a power which, though m inor in appearance, is m ore fetching than that of the transcendental consciousness. The stylist's adventure is t ot ally different; he no longer needs to seduce the father by rhetorical affectations. As win­ ner of the batt le, he m ay even drop the nam e of the father to take a pseudonym (Celine signs with his grandm o ther's first name), and thus, in the place of the father, assu m e a different discourse; neither im aginary discourse of the self, nor discourse of t ranscendental knowledge, but a perm anent go-between from one to the other, a pulsation of sign and rhythm , of consciousness and instinctual drive. "I am the father of my im aginative creations," writes M allarm e at the b irth of G enevieve. "I am my father, my m other, my son, and me," Artaud claim s. Stylists all, they sound a dissonance within the t het ic, pat ernal fu n ction of language. 3. Psychosis and fetishism represent the two abysses that threaten the unstable subject of poetic language, as twentieth-century literature has only too clearly demonstrated. As to psychosis, symbolic legality is wiped out in favor of arbitrariness of an instinctual drive without m eaning and communicat ion; panicking at the loss of all reference, the subj ect goes through fan tasies of omnipotence or ident ification with a totalitarian leader. On the other hand, where fetishism is concerned, constantly dodg­ ing the pat ernal, sacrificial function p roduces an obj ectification of the pure signifier, m ore and m ore em ptied of m eaning-an insipid for­ m alism . Nevertheless, far fr om thus becoming an u npleasant or negligi­ ble accident within the firm progress of sym bolic process (which, in the footsteps of science, would eventually find sign ified elem ents for all sig­ nifiers, as rationalists believe), these borderline experiences, which contem porary poetic language has u ndergone, perhaps m ore dramatically than b efore or elsewhere, show not only that the Saussurian cleavage (signifier/ signified) is forever unb ridgeable, but also that it is reinforced by another, even m ore radical one bet ween an instinctual, sem ioticizing body, heterogeneous to signification, and this very significat ion based on prohibition (of incest) , sign, and thetic signification est ablishing signified object and t ranscendental ego. Through the perm anent contradiction between these two disposit ions (sem iotic/symbolic), o f which the internal setting off of the sign (signifier / signified) is merely a wit ness, poetic Ian-

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larity o f his discourse, but also because, though they function di fferently, both o f them involve constitutive operations of the j u dging consciousness (therefore of identity) by simultaneously perturbing its clarity and the designation of an obj ect (obj ecthood). M oreover, if they constitute a net­ work o f constraints that is added to denotative signification, such a net­ work has nothing to d o with classic poeticness (rhythm, m et er, conven­ tional rhet orical figures) because it is drawn from the drives' of a desiring body, both identi fying with and rej ecting a com m u nity ( fa m ilial or folk). Therefore, even if the so-called poetic codes are n o t recognizable within poetic la nguage, a constraint that I have termed semiotic fu nc­ tions in addition to the j u dging consci ousness, provokes its lapses, or compensates for them ; in so doing, it refe rs neither to a l iterary conven­ tion (like our poetic canons, contem porary wit h the m aj or national epics and the const itution of nat ions them selves) nor even to the body itself; but rather, to a signifying disposition, pre- or t ranssym bolic, which fashions any j u dging consciousness so that any ego recognizes its crisis within it. It is a jubilant recognition that, in "modern " literature, rep l aces petty aesthetic p leasure. Sentential rhythms . Beginning with Death on the Installment Plan, the sentence i s con densed : not only does Celine avoid coordinat ion and em beddings, but when different "obj ect-phrases" are for example numerous and juxt aposed with a verb, they are separated by the charac­ teristic "three dots." This procedure divides the sentence into its constitu­ tive phrases; they thus tend t o become independent of the central verb, to detach themselves from the sentence's own signification, and to acquire a m eaning initially incom plete and consequent ly capable o f taking on multiple connotations that n o longer depend on the fram ework o f the sentence, but on a free context (the entire book , but also, a l l the addenda of which the reader is capable). Here, there are no syntactic anomalies (as in the Coup de Des or the glossalalias of Artaud). The predicative thesis, constitut ive of the j u dging consciousness, is maintained. By using three dots to space the phrases making up a sentence, thus giving them rhyt h m , he cau ses connotation to rush t hrough a predication that has been striated in that manner; the denotated object of the ut terance, the transcendental obj ect , loses its clear contours. The elided obj ect in the sentence relates to a hesitation (if not an erasure) of the real object for the speaking subject . That literature is witness to this kind of deception

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better than an obscene word for perceiving the limits of a phenom eno­ logical linguistics faced with the heterogeneous and com plex architec­ tonics of significance. The obscene word, lacking an obj ective referent, is also the contrary of an aut onym-which involves the function of a word or utterance as sign; the obscene word m obilizes the signifying resources of the subj ect, perm itting it to cross t hrough the m embrane of m eaning where consciousness holds it, connecting it to gesturality, kinesthesia, the drives' body, the m ovement of rej ection and appropriation of the other. Then, it is neither obj ect, transcendental signified, nor signifier available to a neutralized consciousness: around the object denoted by the obscene word, and that obj ect provides a scanty delineation, m ore than a simple context asserts itself-the drama of a questioning process h eterogeneous to the meaning that precedes and exceeds it . Childrens' counting-out rhymes, or what one calls t he "obscene folklore of children," utilize the same rhythmic and sem antic resources; they maintain the subj ect close to these ju bilatory dramas that run athwart the repression that a uni vocal, increasingly pure signifier vainly attempts to impose upon the subj ect . By reconst itut ing them, and this on the very level of language, literature achieves its cathartic effect s . Several them es in Celine bring t o light t h e relat i onships o f fo rce, a t first within t h e fa mily triangle, a n d then i n contemporary society, that produce, prom ote, and accom pany the particu l arities of poetic l anguage to which I have just refe rred . In Death on the Installm ent Plan, the m ost " fa m ilial" of Celine's writ­ ings, we find a paternal figure, Auguste: a m an "of instruct ion," "a mind," sullen, a prohibitor, prone to scandal, full of obsessional habits like, for exam ple, cleaning the flagstones in front of his shop. His anger ex plodes spectacularly once, when he shuts himself u p in the basement and shoots his pistol for h ours, not without explaining in the face of general disapproval, "I have m y conscience on m y side," just before fall­ ing ill. " M y m other wrapped the weapon in several layers of newspaper and t hen in a cashmere shawl . . . ' Come, chi ld . . . com e ! ' she said when we were alone [ . . . ] We threw the package in the drink . " 1 3 Here is an i m posing and m enacing father, strongly em phasizing the enviable necessity of his position, but spoiling it by his derisive fury: undermined power whose weapon one could only take away in o rder to engul f it at the end of a j ourney between m other and son.

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I n an interview, Celine com pares him sel f to a "society woman" who braves the nevertheless maintained fam ily prohibition, and who has the right t o her own desire, "a choice in a drawing room " : "the whore's trade doesn't interest me"; before defin ing himself, at the end : "I am the son o f a wom a n who restored old lace . . . [I am] one o f t hose rare men who k nows how t o distinguish batiste from valencienne . . . I d o not need to be t aught . I know it. " This fragile delicacy, heritage of the m other, s the lan­ guage-or i f you wish, the ident ity-of him who u nseated what Celine calls the "heaviness" of m en, of fathers, in order t o flee it. The threads of in stinct ual drive, exceeding the law of t he paternal word's own mastery, are n onetheless woven with scrupulous precision. One must therefore conceive of an other disposition of the law, t h rough signified and signify­ ing identity and confronting the semiotic network : a disposition closer t o t h e G reek gnomon ("one that k nows, " "carpenter's squ are") t h a n t o the Latin lex, which necessarily im plies the act o f logical and legal j u dgment. A device, then, a regu lated discrimination, weaves the sem iotic network of instinctual drives; if it thus fails t o conform to signifying identity, it nevertheless constitutes another identity closer t o repressed and gnomic archaism s , susceptible of a psychosis-inducing ex plosion, where we decipher the relationship of the speaker to a desiring and desired m other. I n another interview, this m aternal reference to old l acework is explicitly t h ought of as a n a rcheology of t h e word: " N o ! I n t h e beg inning was emotion. The Word came next to replace emotion as the t rot replaces t h e gallop [ . . . ] They pulled m a n out of emotive poetry in order to plunge him into dialectics, that is, into gibberish, right?" Anyway, what is R igodon if not a popular dance which obliges language to bow to the rhythm of its em otion . A speech thus slatted by inst inctual drive-D iderot would have said "musicated"-could not describe, narrate, or theatricalize "object s " : by its com position and signification it also goes beyond the accepted cate­ gories of lyric, epic, dramatic, or tragic. The last writings of Celine, plugged in live to an era o f war, death, and g enocide, are what he calls in North, "the vivisection of the wounded, " "the circus," "the three hundred years befo re Chris t . " While m em bers o f t h e Resistance sing i n alexandrine verse, i t i s Celine's language t hat records n o t o n l y t h e institutional b u t a l s o the

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profoundly symbolic j olt involving m eaning and the identity of transcendental reason; fascism inflicted this j olt on our u niverse and the human sciences have hardly begun to figure out its consequences. I am saying that this literary discourse enunciates through its formal decenter­ ing, m ore apparent in Artaud's glossalalias, but also through the rhythm s and them es of violence in Celine, better than anything else, the faltering o f transcendental consciousness: this does not m ean that such a d iscourse is aware of such a faltering or interprets it. As proof, writing that pretends to agree with "circu s" and "vivisect ion" will nonetheless find its idols, even if only provisional; though dissolved in laughter and dom inant non-sense, they are nevertheless posited as idols in Hitlerian ideology. A reading o f any one o f Celine's anti-semitic t racts is su fficient to show the crudely exhibited phantasm s of an analysand struggling against a desired and fr ustrating, castrating, and sodomizing father; sufficient also to u nderstand that it is not enough to allow what is repressed by the sym­ bolic struct u re to em erge in a "musicated" language to avoid its traps. Rather, we must in addition dissolve i t s sexual determ inations. U nless poetic work can be linked to analytical interpretation, the discourse that u nderm ines the judging consciousness and releases its repressed in­ stinctu al d rive as rhythm always turns out to be at fa ult fr om the viewpoint o f an et hic that remains with the transcendental ego-wh atever j oys or negations m ight exist in Spinoza's or Hegel's. Since at least H olderlin, poetic language has deserted beauty and m eaning to become a laborat ory where, facing philosophy, k n owledge, and the t ranscendental eg o of all signification, the impossibility of a sig­ nified or signifying identity is being sustained. If we t ook this venture seriously-if we could hear the burst of black laughter it hurls at all attempts t o m aster the human situation, to m aster language by lan­ guage-we would be forced t o reexam ine "literary history," to rediscover beneath rhetoric and poetics its unchanging but always different polemic with the symb olic function. We could not avoid wondering about the possibility, or simultaneou sly, the legitim acy of a theoret ical discourse on this practice of language whose stakes are precisely to render impossible the transcendental bou nding that s the discourse of k nowledge. F aced with t his poetic language that defies kn owledge, m any of us are rather tem pted to leave our shelter to deal wit h literature only by m i m ing its meanderings, rather than by positing it as an object o f kn owledge. We

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let ou rselves b e taken i n b y this mim eticism : fictional, para-philo­ sophical, para-scientific writings. It is probably necessary to be a woman (ultimate gu arantee of sociality beyond the wreckage of the paternal symbolic function, as well as the inexhaustible generator of its renewal, of its expansion) n o t to renounce t heoretical reason b u t to com pel it to increase its power by giving it an obj ect beyond its limits. Such a posi­ tion, it seem s to me, provides a possible basis for a t h eory of significa­ tion, which, confronted with poetic langu age, could not in any way accou nt for it, but would rather use it as an indication of what is heterogeneous to meaning (to sign and predication): instinctual econom ies, always and at the sam e time open t o bio-physiological sociohistorical constraints. This kind of heterogeneous economy and its questionable subj ect-in­ process thus calls for a linguistics other than the one descended fr om the phenom enological heavens; a linguistics capable, within its language object , of ing for a nonetheless articulated instinctual drive, across and through the constitut ive and insurm ountable frontier of m ean­ ing. This instinctu al drive, however, located in the m atrix of the sign, refers back to an instinctual body (to which psychoanalysis has tu rned its attention), which ciphers the langu age with rhyt hmic, intonational, and other arrangem ent s, nonreducible to t h e position of the transcendental ego even t h ough always wit h i n sight of its thesis. The developm ent o f this t h eory of signification is in itself regulated by Husserlian precept s, because i t inevitably m akes an object even of that which departs from m eaning. But, even though abet ting the law o f signi­ fying structure as well as of all sociality, this expanded t heory of signifi­ cation cannot give itself new objects except by positing itself as n onuniversal: t hat is, by presu pposing that a questionable subj ect-in­ process exists in an economy of discourse other than that of thetic con­ sciousness. And this requires that subjects of the theory must be themselves subjects in infinite analysis; this is what Husserl could not im agine, what Celine cou ld not k now, but what a woman, am ong others, can fi nally it, aware as she is of the inanity o f Being. When it avoids the ris k s that lie in wait for it, literary experience rem ains nevert heless som ething other than this analytical theory, which it never stops challenging. Against k nowing thought, poetic langu age pursues an effect of singular tru th, and thus accom plishes, perhaps, for

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the m odern community, t his solitary practice that the materialists of antiquity unsuccessfully championed against the ascendance of theo­ retical reason.

Notes I . Claude Levi-St rauss, /'Homm e nu (Paris: P i o n , 1 97 1 ) , p. 6 1 5. 2. Kr isteva's French phrase is m ise en proces, which, like le sujet en proces, refers to an im port ant, recurring concept-that of a constantly changing subject w hose identity is open t o ques t i o n . C f. " N otes o n the Tran slation," p. 1 7, and note 6. [ Ed . ] 3 . E r n est Renan, Oeuvres Completes, (Paris: C a l m ann- Levy, 1 947-58) 3 : 322. 4. E r n est Renan, The Future of Science ( B oston: R oberts B r others, 1 8 9 1 ), p. 402. 5. Levi-St rauss, l 'Homm e nu, p . 6 1 4. 6. See J ea n Starobinski, Les Mots sous /es mots ( P aris: G al l i m ard, 1 9 7 1 ). [Ed.] 7. Edmund H u sserl, logical Investigations, J . N. Findlay, trans. ( London: R o u t ledge & K egan Paul, 1 970), pp. 276-77. 8. Edm u nd H u sserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, W . R. B oyce G i bson, trans. ( London: C o ll ier- M ac M ill an, 1 962), pp. 9 3 -9 4 and 1 0 1 . 9 . Edmund H u sserl, Erste Philosophie, V I I I , i n Husserliana (The H ague: H rsg. v o n R . Boeh m , 1 956). 10. H u sserl, Ideas, p. 3 1 3 . 1 1 . A n t o n i n Artaud, " l ' A na rc h i e sociale de !'art , " in Oeu vres completes ( Paris: G al l i­ m ard), 8 : 2 8 7 . 1 2 . See K r isteva, la R evolution du language poelique ( P aris: Seuil, 1 974), pp. 274ff. [Ed.] 1 3 . Louis-Ferdinand C e l i n e , Death on the Installment Plan, R a l p h M anheim, trans. (New York: N ew Directions, 1 966), p . 78.

6.

T H E FAT H E R , LO V E , AND BAN I S H M ENT That one who on earth usurps my place, my place which is vacant in the sight ofthe Son of God, has made of my cemetery a sewer Dante, Paradiso, XXVII, 22-25. ( Trans. H. R. Huse, 1965) What goes by the name of love is banishment. Becke t t .

First love

Strangely enough, I needed a Venetian ambien ce-the complet e opposite of Beck ett's un iverse-to h ave a sense of grasping, within the parenthesis of First Love and Not I, b ot h t he strength and the limitations of a writ­ ing that comes across less as " aesthetic effect" than as something one used to situate close to the "sacred . " No name exists t oday for such an "unnam able" interplay o f m eaning and j ouissance. This parenthesis, in my opinion q u it e adequately circu m scribing that writer's known novels and plays, conveys b ack t o m e, in m icrocosmic fashion, the now carnivalized destiny of a once flourishing Christianity. I t includes everything: a father's death a n d t h e arrival o f a child (First Lo ve), and at the other end, a t h em e of orality stripped of i t s ostenta­ t i on-the m ou t h of a lonely woman, fa ce to face with G od, face t o face with nothing (Not I). Becket t's pieta m aintains a sublime appearance, even on her way to the toilet . Even t hough the m ot her is a prostitute, i t doesn't matter w h o t h e actual father i s since t h e child belongs solely t o i t s m ot her (First Love). And t h e babblings o f a seventy-year-old woman (Not I), the antonym of a hymn or of M olly's monologue, are no less First published i n Cahiers de /'Herne ( 1976); reprinted i n Polylogue ( P aris: S e u i l , 1 977). pp. 1 3 7-47.

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haloed, in all their nonsense, with a paternal aura, ironically but obsti­ nately raising her toward that third person-God-and filling her with a strange j oy in the face o f nothingness. R aised, demystified, and for t hat very reason m ore tenacious than ever, the pillars of our im agination are still there. Some of them, at least . . . And so: 1 . A m a n experiences love a n d simul t aneou sly puts it to the t est on the death of his father. T h e " thing" he h a d heard of "at home, in school, i n brothel and at church" finally appears in reality under the guise of a paternal corpse. Through it, he catches a glimpse of "some fo rm of aesthetics relevant to man" (the only one ! ) and discovers a "great disem bodied wisdom" (the u nrivaled one!). Father and Death are u nited, but still split and separate. On the one hand, Death-the ideal that provides m eaning but where the word is silent; on the other, the pa ternal corpse, hence a possible though trivial comm unication, waste, decay, and excrem ent m o bilizing pleasure and leisure. A verbal find seals this junc­ tion of opposit es: chamber pot, a term that, for the son-writer, evokes Racine, Baudelaire, and Dante all at once, 1 su mm arizing the sublim ated obscenity that portrays him as consubstantial with his father, but only the decayed cadaver of his fat h er, never leaving the black m ourning of an inaccessible paternal fu nction, which itself has found refuge on the side of Death . From a far, and constantly th reatened with being obscured, it thus provides a m eaning for the existence of living corpses. R acked bet ween the father (cadaverous body, arousing to the point of defecation) and Death (empty axis, stirring to t h e point o f tran­ scendence), a m a n has a hard time finding som ething else t o love. He could hardly venture in that direct ion unless he were confr onted with an undifferentiated woman, tenacious and silent, a prostitute t o be sure, her singing voice out of tune in any case, whose nam e remains equally undif­ fe rentiated, just like the archaic breast ( Lulu? or Lully? or L olly?), exch angeable for another (A nna), with only one righ t: to be inscribed "in time's forgotten cowplats , " and thus to bl end into "history's ancient faeces . " This will then be the only love-one that is possible, one that is true: neither satyric, nor Platonic, nor intellectual. But banishment-lo ve . 2 . Banishment : an attempt at separating oneself from the augu st and placid ex panses where the father's sublime Death, and thus Meaning, merges with the son's "selr' (but where a daughter can very easily become tra pped), mumm ified, pet rified, exhausted, "m ore dead than

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alive" ; a banishment robbing this sensible but always already dead, filial. self o f its silence on the t hreshold o f a rimy m inerality, where the only opportunity is to become a nyone at all, and moreover, without the means for fading away. So flee this perm anence of m eaning. Live somewhere else, but in the com pany of paternal Death. Banishment: above/beyond a life of love. A life always off t o one side, at an im able distance, m ourning a love. A fragile, uncertain life, where, without spending the saved-up, paternal capital in one's pockets, he discovers the price of warmth (of a hothou se, of a room, of a turd) and the bored om of those humans who provide it-but who waste it, t oo . I t i s a life apart from t h e paternal country where n onetheless lies the obsessed se! rs unshakable quiet , fr ozen forever, b ored but sol id. To lo ve is to survive pa ternal meaning. It demands that one travel fa r to discover the futile but exciting presence of a waste-obj ect: a man or woman, fallen off the fa ther, taking the p lace o f his protection, and yet, the always trivial ersatz of this disincarnate wisdom that no obj ect (of love, necessarily) could ever t otalize. Against the m od i fying whole of the father's Death, on chooses banishment toward the part constituting a fal len object or an object of l ove (of being possessive and genitive parti­ tive). H ow trivial, this obj ect of love-transposition of love for the Other. And yet, without banishment, there is no possible release fr om the grip of paternal Death. This act o f loving and i t s incum bent writing spring from the Death of the Father-from the Death of the third person (as Not I shows). 3. In other words, the prim ary, obsessed m an never sees his fa ther as dead. The corpse under his eyes is the waste-obj ect, the fallen and thu s t h e finally possible obj ect , endlessly expected from t h e first cries o n , fr om the first feces on, from the first words on; and so firm ly condem ned, pu shed aside by paternal st rength. This cadaverous object fi nally allows its son to have a "real" relationship with the world, a relat ionship in the im age of this very obj ect, this m iserable downfall, this di sappoint ed m ercy, this disabused realism, this sullen irony, this low-spirited action. Through this opening, he might look for wom an. But the Other, the third- person father, is not that particular dead body. It is Death; it always was. It is the m eaning of the narrative of the son, who never enunciated himsel f as anything else, save for and by virtue of this stretched out void of paternal Death, as ideal and inaccessible t o any !iv-

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ing being as it might seem . A s long a s a son pursues meaning i n a story or through narratives , even if it eludes him , as l ong as he persists in his search he narrates in the name of D eath for the father's corpses, that is, for you, his readers. 4 . Now, how can one fa il to see that i f Death gives meaning to the sublime story of this first love, it is only because it has come to conceal barred incest , to take up all the space where otherwise we would im agine an unspoken woman: the ( father's) wife, the (son's) m other? It is because he deduces this absence that t he banished son, by analyzing his b anish­ ment, m ight not remain forever a bachelor-neither m onk nor nar­ cissistic l over of his peers, but a father in flight. 5. Indeed, with Becket t , the myth o f the bachelor writer leaves behind the fa scinated terror of P roust or Kafka and comes closer to M a rcel Duch a m p's d r y humor. This banished l over, w i t h all h i s calcula­ tions ("I thought of Anna then, long long sessions, twenty m inutes, twenty-five m i nutes and even a s long as half an hour daily. I obtain these figures by the addition of other, l esser figures . " ) and his nigh ttime "stewpan," k eeping him b edtime com pany better than a bride, truly evokes the aut oerotic m echanism and " M alic M olds" of the " Large G l ass" Bachelor. M oreover, Lulu-Anna has all the qualit ies of Th e Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even-half robot, half fo urth dimen­ sional, a kind of " automobilis m , " autom atically activating its "internal combustion engine" and setting for th again by "stri pping-bare" m ove­ ments. And even if Lulu isn't a virgin , even if she proves to be a woman with an unruly clientele, the " cooling cycle" that adj usts h er am orous m echanism t o that of the banished narrator places the two coital pro­ t agonists forever, as with Ducham p, into icy communication. I n t he m an­ ner of Duchamp, Beckett says, a fter and against the m ilitant bachelors of the early twent ieth century, that rather t han avoid the sexual act, t hey should assume it but only as an i m possible relationship, whose participants are condem n ed t o a perpetual banishment that confines them within auto­ erot icism . But Beckett writes again s t J o yce, too, ascet ically rej ecting the latter's j oyous and insane, incestuous plunge sum m ed up in M olly's j ouissance or the paternal baby talk in Finnegans Wak e. Assumption of self through t he dead father turns the banished writer into a father in spite of himself, a father u nder protest, a false father who doesn't want to be a father, but noneth eless believes in being one-tense

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in the elegance of perm anent m ourning. There remains fo r him t o relish his grief, and even m ore so, the em ptiness h olding him u p between Death and waste, bet ween su blimity and pleasure, a balance of nothingness-on condition that it be written: " those instants when, neither d rugged nor drunk, nor in ecstasy, one feels nothing . " L iving close to a woman who helps him survive in this banishment from the father's Death, h e does not allow him self t o be concerned about h er own experience; fortified wit!i this assum ption of Death, he quickly gets away fr om h e r s o a s t o devot e himself entirely to his own "slow descen t s again, the long submersion," which expressly allows him t o sketch out a new m eaning, to write a nar­ rative. Assuming the s tance of his father's son inocul ates h im forever against any incestuous, that is, "poetic" endeavor. I n corresponding fashion, for his wi fe- the "ma rried" spinster-the autoerotic autonomy of her u niverse is ensu red by childbirth. T h i s also accom plishes the impossible coexistence of two incom municable ent ities, one male and o ne fe m ale. First Love suggests that, for a woman, the counterpart of what the dead father is for the obsessed m an i s t h e child, substituting for the fa ther; that, however, is a different m atter. Because i n a more immediate and direct sense, what the banished m an n eeds m os t from a woman is simply someone t o accompany h i m i n t o Death's void, into the third person's void. He needs the gentle t ouch of a mute partner, renu nciation of the b ody, waste, su blimation, and-in order to be fa ithful to his dead father to the end-a double suicide. 6. The banished young m an has aged . Faithful to his paternal love, he has becom e an old lady (Nat I). Yet, t here are no ambiguities to sug­ gest the sl igh test m easure of perversion. The body is stiff, there is no pleasure, except, in the field, the soft , solitary illumination of a head suf­ fused by light and of a m outh, grasping at t h e same void, and continually asking questions. The father's D eath, which enabled the son to experience love, is still with us, at the end of the act, in these light beams, this void, but now it does not even lead t o a pseudofictional narrative. The fa t her's presence t h at caused the son t o narrate First Love has become fo r the old woman of Not I a rhetorical device: a questioning. Corpse and wast e have been replaced by a syn tactic occurrence: elision. Questioning is the supreme j udicial act, for the I who asks the ques­ tions, th rough the very act of asking t hese questions (apart from the

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meaning of the request) postulates the existence of the other. Here, since it is " not I , " not you either, t h ere must be a He beyond communicatio n . T h e elision of t h e obj ect is t h e syntactic recognition o f an im possible object , the disappearance not only of the addressee (you), but o f all topic of discourse. In First Lo ve, already, the object conceals itsel f, slipping out of the sentence, probably remaining in t h at u nnamable domain of the (ather: It had something t o do with lem on t rees, or orange trees, I fo rget, that is all I remem ber, and for m e that is no mean feat, t o rem ember it had something to do with lem on trees, or orange trees, I forget, for o f all the o ther songs I have ever heard i n my l i fe, and I have heard plenty, i t b eing a pparently i m p ossible, physically i m p ossible short o f bei ng deaf, t o get through this world, even m y way, without hearing singing, I have retained nothing , not a word, not a note, or so few words, so few notes, that, t h a t what, that nothing, this sentence has gone on long enough.

What in this t ext still appears as a su rplus of meaning, an overflow caused by an excess of internal subordination, o ft en becomes, in Not I, a deletion o f direct obj ects, and always a delet i on o f the object o f dis­ course. A missing (gram m at ical or discu rsive) object im plies an i m p ossi­ ble subj ect: not I. And yet, i t exists, she speaks; this de- oralized and frustrated mouth is nevertheless held to its trivial search : " not k nowing what . . . what she was- . . . what? . . . who? . . . no! . . . she! . . . S H E ! . . " "Mouth recovers fr om vehem ent refusal t o relinqu ish third person . " Here, t h i s m eans t h a t the a c t of writing, without me or y o u , is in fact an obstinate refu sal to let go of the third person: the elem ent beyond dis­ course, the third, the "it exists," the anonymous and u nnamable " G od," the "Other"-t he pen's axis, the fa ther's Death, beyond dial ogue, beyond subj ectivism, beyond psych ologism . A disappointed M outh, seized by the desire to pour itself out as i n t o a w ash basin. And yet t here is nobody in mind, no "you"-neither fat her, m other, m an, nor child; alone with the flow of words that have lost their m eaning, that are suspended, like pleasureles s vowels, "askew , " "tack y " ; u seless, dying M outh, dying but persistent, tenacious, obst inate voice, sustained by the same first love, looking for, awaiting, pursuing, who? what? . . . The prerequisites of writing. Yet, beyond this amorous association o f the banished writer with the .

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m ad, seventy-year-old woman, pursuing a paternal shadow binding h e r to the body and to language, the gap between writing and psychosis bursts open . He, writing, fled his father so that the int roj ected superego, adher­ i ng to its meaning, m ight perpet uate it self as trace t h rough a symbolic ascesis renouncing sexual j ouissance. She, d evastated by (paternal) love, which she incorporates into her impossibility to such a degree that she sacrifices her "self' to it, replaces a forbidden, perm anently m ourning vagina with a m outh, t h rough which, m adly but cert ainly, j ouissance seeps-oral, t actile, visible, audible, and yet unnamable disgust, without link or syntax , perm anently setting her o ff fr om socialized humans, eit her before or beyond t heir "work s . " He writes in a state of ascesis . She experiences j ouissance in nonsense t h rough repression. Two boundar ies of paternal love, one for each sex. They are a fasci n at ing and i m possible couple, also sustai ned, on both sides, by censorship of the m aternal body. Becket t's tragic irony thus achieves its m aximal resonance when the son's tenacious love of Death is uttered through the m outh of a wom an. Im possible subjectivity ("if I have no obj ect of love, I do not exist"), but an equally impossible fem i ninity, an im possible genitality for both sexes, no escape fr om death for either. No t /: a heartrending statement of the loss o f identity but also, discreet and resigned jubilation, a sweet relief produced by the m ost minute corru ption of m eaning in a world unfail­ ingly saturated with it. In contrast with the overflowing M olly and Fin­ negan's negative awak ening, stands a j ouissance provoked by m eaning's deception, which nevert heless inevitably perseveres through and beyond this unavoidable third pers on. A t t h e (phantasm atic?) dawn of religion, the sons of the pnm1t1ve h orde commem orated their share in the Deat h of the fa ther by partak ing of a totemic m eal. In fact, the father's Death was a murder denied . Swallowing the totemic animal, the substit ute for the father, reconciled them to his body as if it were a maternal breast; that was sexual ambi­ guity or t ravesty, and it exonerated them fr om any guilt in replacing the fa ther and exercising the power they t ook fr om h i m . They thus incor­ porated into t heir reality what they had symbolically introjected. But Beckett represents the other end of the process. Only refuse, "stewpans," and the "convenience" have replaced the totemic m eal. Left

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with only failed or frustrated orality, the sons have given up any hope of either annexing, incorporati ng, or introjecting the father's power and/or Death . They will rem ain forever separated from him ; but, forever subj ect to his hold, t hey will experience its fascination and terror, which continues t o i n fuse meaning, dispersed as it m ight be, into t heir a bsurd existence as wastrels. The only possible community is then centered in a ritual of decay, of ruin, of the corpse-u niverse o f M olloy, Watt, and the rest of their company, who n onetheless continue their m ost " Beck ettian" of activities: questioning and wait ing. Will he come? Of course not ! But just the same, let us ask for G odot, this Father, this God, as omnip resent as he is incredible. There probably has never been a k eener eye directed at paternal Death in that it determ ines the son, our m on otheistic civilization, and m aybe even all granting of m eaning: saying, writing, and doing. C arnivalesque excavations on the brink o f a t oppling over t oward something else, which, nonetheless, rem ains im p ossible in Becket t. X ray of the m ost fun­ damental myth of the Christian world: the love fo r the fa ther' s Death (a love for meaning beyond communication, for the incommunicable) and fo r t he universe as waste (absurd com m u nicat ion). In this way, one of the components of Christianity reaches its apex and the threshold leading to its reversal: its Judaic substratum and its Protestant branch, which, lucid and rigorous, have founded speech's meaning i n the Death o f the inaccessible father. The fact rem ains that there is another componen t . Christianity, according t o Freud, seem s t o b e o n the verge o f itt ing that this Death was a M u rder. But what is m ore, such an ission could surface or become bearable only i f the communal meaning, thus linked to the m urder, were com pensated by j ouissance. Both in its pagan beginnings or its Renaissance deviation, Christianity celebrates m at ernal fecundity and offsets the m orbid and murderous filial love of paternal reason with m other-son incest. One needs only t o glance through fifteenth-century art, or bet ter yet , to see both-Pieta and serene jubila­ tion of the m other-in the work of Giovanni Bellini, for example, t o u nderstand t h a t t h e fasci nation a n d enduring quality of M editerranean and Oriental Christianity are unthink able without this conj unction. True, these luminously fleshed M ad onnas, holding their male i n fa nts with often am biguous caresses, rem ain enigmatic becau se of an incom-

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m ensurable dis tance separating them from their sons-a dista nce espe­ cially manifest in their averted gazes, close to fainti ng, disgust, or noth­ ingness. A s i f t o say that t heir love is not even the baby-still an object of b anishm ent-but perhaps now as always, an elsewhere, the same incredulous and stubborn "God is love" that in No t I already opens up onto nothing. Their child is probably t here, but its presence is only one segm ent of j ouissance, the segm ent dest ined for others. What rem ains, in its immensity, can be expressed by neither narrative nor im age, except , perhaps, t hrough these oblique, dim m ed , withheld, and always vacant glances; or through these oblivious heads, averted from the world in a fr ustrated and m elancholy expecta tion. Illum inated by absence, nothing­ ness; and nonetheless persis tent, obstinate-like Not I. And yet there is a rem nant, which cannot be found i n the glance soothed by the nothingness underlying " Go d is love," nor in the serenely positioned, m aternal body, that discretely diverted body-interm ediary and p assageway between an ex ploded and absent head and an i n fa nt t o be given away. This rem nant is precisely what constitu tes t h e enigma o f Christian maternity; b y means of a quite u nnamable stance, it parallels the obsessional m orbidity specific to Christianity as it is to any religion, but which, in Christianity, has already b een eclipsed by the God in the M adonna's eyes as well as i n M outh of Not I. N ow, such an unnamable, unlike that of Not /, is not less but m ore than Word and M eaning. Through the recovered mem ory of the i ncestuous son-the artist-this j ouissance im agines itself to be the same as the m other's. I t bursts out in a profusion o f colors, o f flood of lights, and even m ore brutally, in the baby-angels and winged breasts scu lpted into the colum n s of Saint M ark's Church in Venice. A n attem pt was made, at the beginning o f the R enaissance, t o save the Religio n of the Father by breathing into it, m ore than before, what is represses: the j oyous serenity of incest with the m other. Bellini's cl assicism and, in another fa shion, the lavish ness of the baroque testify to it. Far from fem inist, they can be seen as a shrewd ission of what in the fem inine and maternal is repressed, and which i s always necessarily k ept u nder the same vei ls of sacred terror when fa ced with the father's Deat h--a Death that, nevertheless, had henceforth becom e nothingness in the eyes of these early Western women, looking at us fr om within a painting.

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Too late. The Renaissance was to revive M an and his perversion beyond the m other thus dealt with and once again rej ected . Leonardo and M ichelangelo replaced G iovanni Bellini . Humanism and its sexual explosion, especially its hom osexuality, and its bourgeois eager ness to acquire obj ects (products and money) rem oved from immediate analysis (but not from t he preconscious) the cu lt of natality and its real and sym­ bolic consequences . So much the bet t er. For, through such scorn for femininity, a truly analytic solution might, albeit very exceptionally, take shape at last. I t was not until the end of the nineteenth century and J oyce, even m ore than Freud, that this repression of m o t herhood and incest was affirmed as risky and unsett ling in one's very flesh and sex . Not until t hen did it, by m eans of a language that "m usicates t hr ough letters," resume within discourse the rhythms, intonations, and echolalias of the m oth er-infant sym biosis-intense, pre-Oedipal, predating the father-and this in the third person . Having had a child, could a wom an, then, speak another love? Love as obj ect banished fr om paternal Death, facsimile o f the third person, probably; but also a shattering of the object across and through what is seen and heard within rhythm : a poly­ m orphic, poly phonic, serene, eternal, u nchangeable j ouissance t h at has nothing t o d o with death and its obj ect, banished from love. In Not I, Mou th, leaving behind an obsessional labyrinth , becom es a m irage of this possible serenity, shielded from death, that is, incarnate in the m other. H ere I see the averted, disillusioned eyes of radiant M adonnas . . . But the colors o f t he paintings are lacking. Is it because Becket t ' s written works, after Joyce a n d in di fferent fashion, seem to have their sights on some archeology other than Chris­ tianity's? U sing the Lat ins' m ost analytic language, French, a language nonetheless foreign to him, a language of banishm ent , a language of l ove, Beck ett d oesn't oblige them to experience the ex plosion of a nat ivity whose incestuous j ouissance they celebrated . If he had, he wou ld have been led to write poetry. On the contrary, having chosen the narrative, frustrated but obstinate, through m onologue or dialogue, he has set forth the limi tations and the means-the structure-that enabled him to probe the desacralized piety of the father' s Death. And he m ade us a present of the calm discharge that it allows . T h e result is a text that forces Catholics, Latins, t o assume, i f not t o discover, what they have borrowed from the outside (Judaism) or what

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they have rej ected ( Protestantism ). Such a text necessarily att racts a certain num ber of irers or even accomplices from am ong the "o thers," the "dissim ilar, " the strange, foreigners, and exiles. On the other hand, t hose who refu se consciou sly to ack nowledge their debt to the third person will listen to Not I and i ts portrayal o f senseless, radiant death in the face of a fleeing God wit h a feeling of terror and lack of understanding. Beck ett ' s lesson is thus one in m o rality, one o f rigor and ironic seriousness. Yet , at a glance and despite Not I, the comm unity that Beckett so challenges quickly notices that the writ er' s work does leave something untouched: the jub ilant serenity of the u n approached, avoided m other. So beyond the debris of the desacralized sacred that Beck et t calls upon u s to experience, i f only as lucid and enlightened observers, does there not persist an other-untouched and fully seductive? The true guarantee o f t h e last myth of m odern times, t h e myth o f th e fem in ine-hardly the third person any longer, but, both beyond and within, more and less than m eaning: rhyt hm, tone, color, and joy, within, through, and across the Word? Therein lie both the strength and the limitations of Beck et t ' s fiction, at least within Christianity's closed world. A n d t h at will have t o d o until someone else comes in a burst o f s ong, color, and laughter to conquer the last refuge of the sacred, still inac­ cessibly hidden in Belli ni's rem ote M ad onnas. To give them back to us transformed, secu lar, and c orporeal, m ore fu ll of langu age and imagina­ tion. Just as Beck ett restored , above and beyond his m ockery and for a humanity searching for a solitary com m unity, t h e trivial rigor o f paternal Death-fo r every speak ing being, a disillusioned and hardly bearable, but permanent of M eaning.

Note I.

The references t o Racine, Baudelaire, and D a n t e e x i s t only in the F r e n c h v e r s i o n of

First Love (Premier A mour [Paris: Minuit, 1 970)). The French equ ivalent o f "ch amber pot" is po t de cham bre, b u t Beck ett used the more "elegant" versi on, vase de nuit, which, i f t h e denotation i s put aside, could indeed have various poetic connota tions. Q u otations are from First L o ve and Other Shorts (New York : Grove Press. 1 9 74). [ E d . ]

7.

T H E NOVEL AS PO L YLOG U E Unveiling is noz reduczion buz ion . Logically, zhe reader of zhe Divine Comedy is Dame, 1ha1 is, no one-he, zoo, is wizhin "love," and k no wledge is here bul a mezaphor for a jar more radical experience: 1ha1 of zhe le11er, where life, deazh, sense, and nonsense becom e inseparable. L o ve is sense and nonsense, ii is perhaps whaz allows sense zo come ouz of nonsense and mak es zhe lauer obvious and legible. [ . . . ] Language is seen as zhe scene of zhe whole, zhe way zo infinizy: he who k no ws nm language serves idols, he who could see his language would see his god. Philippe Sollers, Logiques, p. 76

H is a m usic t h a t is inscribed in language, becoming t h e object o f i ts own r e aso ning, ceaselessly, and u nt i l saturated, over flowing, and d azzling sense h as b een exh austed . H asks fo r no thing-no dec i ph er i ng, at any rate, no comm entaries, no phi losoph i c al , theoreti cal, or po l i t i cal comple­ m e nt t h a t might h ave been left in abeyance, unseen and forgo tt e n . H sweeps yo u away.

It w h i sks you fro m your com for table posi t i o n; i t

breathes a gust o f di zziness i nto y o u , but lucidity returns at once, along w i t h music,

and you can watch

your opacity bei ng dissolved-into

sounds; yo ur b l ind, organi c, murdero us sexuality bei ng unwound i nto a subtle, easy gesture, proj ec t ed from t h e body i nto l anguage; and your social animosities being released i nto a vision o f t i m e where Di o nysi us, t h e anci ent l and of A qui t a i ne, Nerval, H olderlin, Epicurus, Ch uang Tzu , t h e poets of Arabia, Webern ( " Das Augenli cht"), t h e "Apocalypse," Augusti ne, Mar x, Mao , t he class struggle,

Po mp idou' s , and

cultural revolut i o n all f ind t h eir place. So you m ust read, listen, i m m erse yourself in i ts l anguage; discover its m usic, its gest ures, i ts dance; and h ave i ts t i me, its h i story, and all of h istory jo i n in a dance. First pu blis hed in Tel Que/ 57 (Spring 1 974); reprinted in Polylogue (P aris: S e u il, 1 977), pp. 1 7 3 - 2 2 0 . H is a novel by Philippe Sollers.

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O r else, you talk about it, because H sends you into analysis; you assu m e its writ er as an obj ect of trans ference, as a character on you r Oedipal stage. And t h a t is endless, u ndecidable. You go from H to Sollers, and from Sollers, back to H: who is what? D oes the text have a m aster? H ow do I go about killing what I assume is "master " and causes me to founder, dissect s my language, m y representation, and my history: H? Y ou tend to see H as a person, to fashion its negativity into a psychological or sociological case, a n d t o search for an identity t h a t is a threat t o itself-and a t hreat to you . H ow so? As m u sical and as active as all t hat? I mpossible! It is not delirious enough, not sexed enough, not politicized enough. I t is overpolit icized , oversexed, overdelirious. I n a first phase, as protectio n from H (I m ean, from the p rocess that today writes H and tom orrow som ething else) you say, "This is a problem . " In a second phase, " I don't want to k now that this is a problem . " In a th ird, "It gets at me j u st the same, but elsewhere and deferred . " T h e j ol t of M ay ' 6 8 : a call fr om t h e m asses. F o r those w h o have long known that im agination is an absolute ant ipower, what was new was the concrete m anifestat ion of this truth-the general strike i m m obilizing . Were they mistaken? The time of history es through the stories of individuals: their birth, t h eir experience . . . . Worldwide revisionism has collapsed-a foundering that i s plain fo r all t o see, henceforth, through the climax it has reached. The Cultural Revo­ lution fol l ows its course: socialism now attempts to transform itsel f, t o fi n d a n e w vitality, to rej ect dogmatism-politics-ideology-diplomacy m oving forward, withdrawing, correcting them selves, thus giving evi­ dence of a historical turning point having been arrived at, perhaps. What , here, now, concretely, enclosed within a still-active bourgeoisie, living in a culture that is weak ened but still capable o f integration, a t t h e peak o f a rationality t h a t i s n o l onger G reek, b u t dia­ lecticized, materialized, perm eated by t h e u nconscious, and structured by the reality principle laid down by social contradictions? A l anguage, a subj ect within langu age, seeks itsel f-it seeks one that m ight enunciat e this turning point, this whirlwind, this reversal, this confrontation of the old within the new . There is the violence of Lois (" Laws," 1 972). The l aughing, singing, somber, and open logic of H ( 1 973).

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161

Wou ld discussing i t am ou n t to resisting the tide? One resistance against oth ers? Since people have been wondering why, since they have said so, for some t i m e, and under various guises that change according to power r ela­ tionships, I want to speak about it myself. In fact, to speak about it, to the extent that I am allowed to use the pronoun " I , " is to speak about my right to speak, in French . Obviously, I shall not say all. To put it bluntly, I speak in French and about literature because of Yalta. I m ean that because of Yalta, I was obliged to ma rry in order to have a French port and to work in ; moreover, because of Yalta I wanted t o "m arry" the violence that has tormented m e ever since, has dissolved ident ity and cells, coveted recognition and haunted my nights and my tranquility, caused hat red to well within what is usually cal led love, in short, has raked me to death. Consequently, as you m ay have noticed, I have no "I" any m ore, no i m aginary, if you wish ; everything escapes or comes t ogether i n theory, o r politics, or activism . . . But that is not the issue. You will perhaps understand if I tell you that Yalta has turned a portion of the earth into societies that are being buil t on the illusion t h a t the negative-death, violence-does n o t concern them . That the negative is a rem nant of the past (the not yet abolished bourgeois classes, parents) or an outside threat . But what we are propos­ ing will be, or r a ther, is nothing more than u nderst anding, exch ange, and sociality, hence, socialism . Or perhaps, violence is a ing error (Stalin's prison camps); what one t ends to accept before veering com­ pletely about and believing that such violence is fatal, irrem ediable, i nsu­ perable, but-ala s !-such is our lot, while elsewhere, they d o without it, and that is what is known as civilization. Read H egel as one m ight, the "ego, " once ex posed t o the negative, ignores it and escapes m ore or less unscathed; com plicity with, if not basis fo r St alinis m . It all begins with dogm at izing ideological struggle, then abandoning it and, finally, m ak ing u p little protectionist " l 's"-the convenient narcissism s of b ackwar d bourgeois "su bj ects," very m u c h protect ed, indeed; but s u c h a protection, generally speak ing and allowing for a few except ions, shields them from innovation, analysis, and h istory . And yet , it sometimes h appens: ques­ tions about sexuality, irregularity in a poem, sounds in a foreign lan­ guage, eroticism t hat is forbidden, im possible, and yet all the m ore

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experienced a n d unrem itting. Y ou become someone w h o wonders i f the communal eu phoria is not a lie, a lie involving not only harvest-time enthusias m , but something that no one talks about: devious words, dream s, the s oreness in your throat, desires, death drive, wasted sentences, rhyt hms. Then, after you ask for inform ation on the latest five-year plan, you listen to the figu res, of course, but you also listen t o t h e voice of t h e woman t a lking to you , a n d you l o o k especi ally at the orange, purple, red, and green rugs she wove . . . Like som et hing by M atisse, one m ight say. And you notice, returning to the capital, that the "abnormal" and "crazy" people, the " hom osexuals, " the "poets," the gadflies are there, their num bers are growing, and t here i s n o way either to integrate them or to avoid integrating them into your t hinking. Because o f the well-k nown easing of oppression, the "thaw" . . . Y ou will say that Freud has given us a way of gett ing rid of all of these problem s, be they juvenile or charact eristic of developing societies (one and the same). It is easily said, but not quite certain. Above all, y ou must not forget that this all takes place within language. Hence, not possible in Bulgarian, once again because of Yalta, and, of course, p ast history. As a result, I h ad recourse to French : Robespierre, Sade, M allarme . . . And I h ave since been wedded to a torren t . It is a desire t o unders tand, to be sure, or, i f you prefer, a laboratory of death. For what you take t o b e a shattering o f language i s really a shattering o f t h e body, and the immediate surroundi ngs get it sm ack on the chi n. Besides, they exist fo r no other reason than to t a k e it on the chin, and t o resist, if they can . But above all, do not take yoursel f for someone or something; you " are" within the shattering, to be shattered. Woe unto him who thinks that you are-in good part or in bad, no m atter . First, narcissism cru m bles and the superego says, "So m u ch the better, there's one problem out of the way . " But the body seem s t o need an identity, and it react s-matures, t ightens, like st one, ebony. Or else it crack s, bleeds, decays. All accord­ ing to the symbolic reaction that is more or less likely. Then, the sym­ bolic covering (constituted by acquired k n owledge, the discourse of others, and commu nal shelter) cracks, and something that I call instinctual drive (for lack of a bet t er term) rides up to dest roy any guarantees, any beliefs, any protect ion, i ncluding those com prised by fa ther or professor. A n aim less drift i ng ensues that reconciles me t o everyth ing t h a t i s being shattered-rej ecting what i s established and

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opening up an infinite abyss where t here are n o m ore words. Tha t gives me a fractured appearance that fools the naive observer . In fact, it opens me up to a precise j ouissance that few suspect even existed . That is a place one must rush away from; oth erwise, two thousand years of nun­ neries illustrate what m ight happen. Words come to mind, but they are fuzzy, signifying nothing, m ore throbbing than m eani ng, and their stream goes to our breasts, genit als, and irridescent sk in. That could be all there is to it-an "anonymous white con flict" as they said in the ninet eenth century. But what would be the point? N ow this is the point: my concern lies in the other, what is heterogeneous, my own negation erected as representation, but the consu m pt i on of which I can a lso decipher. This het erogeneous obj ect is of cou rse a body that invites me to ident i fy with it (wom an, child, androgyne?) and i m m ediately fo rbids any identifica­ tion; it is not m e, it is a non-me in m e, besid.e me, outside of m e, where the me becom es lost. This heterogeneous obj ect is a body, because it is a text. I have written d own this much a bused word and insist upon i t so that you m ight u nderstand h ow m u ch risk there is in a text, how much nonidentity, nonauthenticity, im possibility, and corrosiveness it h olds for t h ose who chose to see them selves within it. A body, a t ext that bounces back to me echoes of a t erritory that I have lost but that I am seeking within t he blackness of drea m s in Bulgarian, French, Russian, Chinese tones, invocati ons, lifting u p the dismem bered, sleeping body. Territory of the mot her. What I am s aying t o you is that if this het erogeneou s body, this risky text provide m eaning, identity, and j ouissance, they do so in a com pletely d i fferent way than a "Name- o f-the-Father . " Not that they do not operate un der the shield of a tyrannical, despotic Nam e-of­ the- Father; I u nderstand t hat, and we could engage in endless fo rensic contests. But it is only a question of power; the im portant thing is to see what exceeds it. So I listen to the black, heterogeneous t erritory of the body/ text; I coil my j ouissance within it, I cast it off, I sidestep its own , in a cold fire where m u rder is no l onger the m u rder of the other, but rather, of the other who t h ought she was I, of me who thought I was the other, of m e, you, us-of personal pronouns t herefore, which no longer have m u ch to do with all this. For neither body that has become liquid powder nor the shining m ercury that founders me can ever abolish a vigil : paternal shadow, Being o f langu age? I t even calls on me t o represent it. " I " continually m akes itself over again, reposi t s itself as a

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displaced, sym bolic witness of the shattering where every entity was dissolved. " I " returns then and enunciates this intrinsic twisting where it split into at least four of us, all challenged by it. " I " pronounces it , and so "I" posits m yself-" 1 " socializes my self. This is an indispensable and imperative movement, an abrupt about-face when this heterogeneous negative that provoked me to j ou issance/death sets to work , wants t o k n ow i tself, t o communicate, a n d consequently, loses itself. To communi­ cate, to k now . . . All that is, if I m ay say so, rather perverted. L anguage i s affected by it, the concept is twisted, the murder is disgu ised as a request that others put some rigor in t heir thinking. No scholar, n o orthodox theoretician c a n find h i s w a y through a n y of m y essays, u n less he has personally experienced this four-sided duel. And yet, t h i s already puts me on the other side, where society constitutes itself by denying the murder it inflicts on m usic-on instinctual drive-when it is fo u nded o n a code, t h at is, on a language. H aving returned, " I " feels u ncom fo rtable t here, but not without a certain sense of grat ification, having a t endency to accept the ambiguous and ephem eral praises due to the diver who was mischievous enough to bring back a few t r ophies. But ceaselessly drift i ng away, letting out slack , protesting: j ealous of its exploration, fascin ated by the danger of ever having to begin again . . . All the m ore so b ecause t h e other, t h e "poet , " the " actor" is t h ere, coming and going, leaving, shattering, and forbid­ ding any "I" to doze off within the realm where denial persists. ' I feel t h at this path is determined by sexua l difference. I think that for a wom an, generally speak i ng, the loss of identity in j ouissance demands of her that she experience the phallus t h at she simply is; but this phallus m u st i m m ediat ely be establ ished somewhere; i n narcissism , for instance, in children, in a denial and/ or hypostasis of the other woman, in narrow­ m inded m astery, or in fet ishism of one's "work " (writing, painting, knit­ t ing, et cetera). O therwise, we have an underwater, u ndermaternal dive: oral regression, spasmodic but unspeak able and savage violence, and a denial of effect ive negat ivity. Rem ember Artaud's t ex t where t h e black, m ortal violence of the " fe m inine" is simultaneously exalted and stig­ m at ized, compared to despotism as well as to slavery, in a vertigo of the phallic m other-and the w hole thing is dedicated t o H itler. So t hen, the problem i s t o cont rol this resurgence of phallic presence; t o abolish i t a t

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first, to pierce through the paternal wall o f the superego and afterwards, to reem erge still u neasy, split apart, asymm etrical, overwhelmed with a desire to k now, but a desire to know m ore and differently than what is encoded-spoken-written . If a solution exists to what we call to day the fe minine problem atic, in my opinion, it too es over this ground. I believe two conditions are necessary if this course is to be followed . T h e first i s historical; it was satisfied much m ore rapidly in socialist countries and is already reaching the Christian, bourgeois West . It involves t hrowing wom en into all of society's contradict ions with no hypocrisy or fake protection. The second condition is sexual and no social statute can ever guara ntee it. As far as I am concerned, it i nvolves coming to grips with one's langu age and body as others, as heterogeneous elem ents. The "auth or, " as I perceive him through my reading H, keeps me awake during my negative vigil. For others, it m ight be something else; what is i ndi spensable is the function carried out by som e One, or-why not (but not yet)-by a group, having you, through language too, go through an infinite, repeated, multipliable dissolution, until you recover possibilities of sym bolic rest oration: h aving a position that a l lows your voice t o be heard in real, social matters-but a voice fragmented by increasing, infinitizing breaks. In short, a device t hat d issolves all of your solutions, by they scholarly, ideological, fam ilial, or protective, in order to point out to you that you do not take place as such, but as a s tance essential t o a practice. With this device, castration applies not t o this or that person, but specifically t o each individu al in recurrent fashion. It applies to him as he experiences his phallic fixation; t o her as she accedes t o it, and the other way around, interchangeably. The other that will guide you and it sel f through this dissolut ion is a rhyth m , music, and within language, a text. But what is the con nection that holds you both t ogether? Counter-desire, the negative of desire, inside-out desire, capable of quest ioning (or provok ing) its own infinite quest. Rom antic, filial, adolescent, exclusive, b lind and Oedipal: it is all that, but for o thers. I t ret u rns to where you are, both o f you, disap­ pointed , irritat ed, ambitious, in love with hist ory, critical, on t h e edge and even in the m idst of its own identity crisis; a crisis of enunciation and of t h e interdependence of its m ovem ents, an instinctual drive that descends in waves, tearing apart the symbolic thesis. There, befo re you, it

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breaks apart a n d recovers, building up i t s strength, quiescent, elsewhere. A fter the sacch arine whirlwind of J ocastas and Ant igones, next t o a quie­ tude fascinat ed with the self-indulgent whims of hysterics, t h e negative awakens within the body and language of the other so as t o weave a fa bric in which your role is tolerated only if it resem bles that of women in Sade, J oyce, and Bataille. But you m ost certainly m u st n o t consider you rsel f either as the weaving or as t h e ch aracter against whom it is woven. What is im portant is t o listen to it, in your own way, in definitely, and to disappear within the m ovem ent of this attentiveness. This m eans t hat the wife of a "poet , " of this particular poet, no longer exist s . N either M m e. M allarme's k nitt ing, nor Lou Salom e ' s subtle cu riosity, n or Nora Joyce' s proud and obedient excitement, nor M aria van Rysselbergh's asexual m ythology, any m ore than the grat i fying cou­ pling that "viri lized" the women of postwar existentialism or rom antic­ communism-henceforth, all that is i m possible, antiquated, a dismal relic. Since t here i s one m an and one woman, but since they are "one" only t o begin with, anot her "relationship" arises out of sexual difference and the i m p ossible element it infers on both sides . This development has just barely begu n , by virtue of a cert ain non-"uxorial" way of grasping the Freudian revolution; by virtue of communit ies that open up the fam ily; by virtue of pop music; and H [ash ] 1 . A painful laboratory that entails mistakes, fai lu res, and vict i m s . But if you want t o t alk about i t (and this is the only way t o undergo its process) you find yourself once again face to fa ce, two by two, bearing its and the other's fam ilia!, social, and lin­ guistic constellation. I am talking about it because it is my problem , a con tem porary prob­ lem . There are men, enthralled by archaic m others, who dream of being wom en or som e unapproachable master; exasperat ed and frigid young women, confined within groups where what t hey take for l esbianism leads them into seclusion from society; others, classic hystericals, search for that impossible maternal fusion and are exalted in their fr ustration. We recognize t hem m ore clearly each d ay; they are precisely the subj ects who involve themselves in class and ideological st ruggles, in scientific experimentation, in production . . . So that is why, where, and h ow I am searching for, hearing, reading, and deal ing with H- tak ing H. .

.

THE

BE YOND THE

NOVEL

S E NTE N C E :

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1 67

T H E TRAN S F I N I T E

I N LA N G U A G E

With n o punctuation, H is not a sentence but it is not less than a sentence. The clauses are th ere: short and regular, with no synt actic or lexical anomalies to cloud t h eir clarity. Sentences are easily "restored" and the simple clause kernels that constitute the running text a re easily isolated and punctuated. In so doing, we lose semantic and logico­ syntactic ambiguit ies, but we mainly lose a music. By m usic, I m ean intonation and rhythm, which play only a subordinate role in everyday communication but here constitute the essent ial elem ent of enunciation and lead u s directly t o the otherwise silent place of its subj ect. You your­ sel f perceive this music when you let yoursel f be carried along by the unpunctuated, sentence fr agments; you can check this, i f you are so inclined, by listening to the writer read. You notice that whenever you ex pect his voice, ordinarily, to slow down, drop, and trail off so as to sug­ gest a limit, a period, it in fa ct rises higher, releases the period and, instead of declaring, quest ions or reques ts. So that the sentence limits are there, m eaning (the position of a subj ect of enunciation) and signijlcance (possible, plausible, or actual denotation) remain, but the semiotic process does not stop there. Instead of serving as the upper limits of enunciation, the sentence-m eaning-sign(/icance here acts as its l ower limits. Through and in conj u nction with these limits, but not below, there occu r s a break th rough of what m ay be called "prim ary" processes, those dominated by intonation and rhythm . When this involves m orphemes, it produces " stylistic figures " : m et aphor, m etonymy, elisions, etc . Here, t h i s intonational, rhythm ic, let us s a y "instinctual" breakthrough i s situated a t t h e m ost intense place of nam ing-at t h e thetic place o f a n inescapable syntax that abru ptly halts the maternal body's vague, autoe­ rotic jubilation-recognizes its reflection in a m irror and shifts instinctual m ot ility into logically structurable signi fiers. The A ujhebung of inst inctual drive across this boundary, which nonetheless exerts its full impact, situates the sem iotic ex perience beyond the sentence, and thus, beyond signification and meaning. So-called " artistic" practices have always exerted fa scination because they elude this boundary, owing to which sign ification-always already

1 68

T H E N O V E L AS

P O L Y LO G U E

in the form of a sentence-com es into being, a n d they revive t h e u neasi­ ness t h a t goes w i t h regressing to a time before the m i rror stage. H moves us beyond these aesthetic regions, alth ough they continue to upset com ­ m onplace logical order by setting in m otion the most active, insurgent, m odern pract ices. But these have fou n d t h eir m ost frui t ful ground in music: Cage, La M onte Y ou ng, Kagel, and Stockhau sen have m ade this clear. Language, on the other hand, has a specificity that no other system based on d i fferences possesses: it divides (signifier/ signified) and s (modifier/m od i fied sentence) ; it is sign-com munication-sociality. " M usicating" this dividing-j oining m ovement i nvolves exploding rhythm into division, of course, but also, into juncture: into the m et aphoric­ met onymic slippage that corrugates lex em ic items and l i ft s even t he sig­ nifier/ signified censorship; but especially, into the juncture of logic and sentence where socio-sy mbolic order is rebuilt and ignores anything hav­ ing to do with the previous, u nderlying ( semic, m orphem ic, phonic, instinctual) explosion. I nt ervening at the l evel where syntact ic order renders opaque t h e outlay u nderlying t h e signifying practice; intervening at the point where sociality constitutes itself by k i lling, by throttling the outlay that k eeps it alive-that m eans intervening precisely when the sentence pulls i tself t ogether and stops. The problem is t o raise and transfo rm this very m oment, to allow i t to sing. Thus we are dealing with a composition where the sentence is a minimal unit and where a texture t hat sures b u t never belies it is elaborated on the basis of i t : m ore-than -a-sentence, m o re-than-m eaning, m ore-than-significance. If t h ere is a loss, if an outlay is made, t h ey never result in less, but always m ore: m ore-than-syntactic. There is no outlay of logical m ovem ent without the completio n of its course. Finishing off reason is done only after t he full ness o f reason, ( full)filling it and then ripping it: "a reason in hell" (p. 26).2 Otherwise, reason remains as a power and demands i t s right to exercise control over the drift ing that remains unaware of it . Otherwise, literature lends itself t o t h e Hegelian challenge t h at discovered in i t nothing m ore than a few pearls of wisdom in a sty. H reveals a practice where p resent and sured reason has no power; a practice where the antipower of instinctual drive is in turn deprived of its hallucinatory influence as it is filtered through the rigor of =

THE

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1 69

the sentence; a practice where logical su perego and fetishist oraliza tion neutralize each other without m astery and without regression. Looking closely at the beginning of H, we notice that sentences, easily det achable from the textual whole, either dovetail or adj oin am biguously because of the elision of determinants (conj u nctions, relative pronouns, et cet era.) This ambiguity is heightened when predicate phrases appear in surface structures, as nom inat ive, attributive, aded phrases t h at can agree in many di fferent ways with the noun-phra se subj ect. Or for reasons o f sem antics or of length, the predicative sequence itsel f break s up into phrases that funct ion as subjects and others that fu nction as predicates. Equally applicable is the am bivalent value of those personal pronouns whose antecedent is unclear: the pronoun e//e on the first page could refer equally to the fe minine French words machine, fem m e or balle. Networks of alliteration (the correlat ives of "signifying dif­ ferent ials") est ablish trans-sentence paths that are su perim posed over the linear sequences of clauses and int roduce into the logical-syntactic mem ory of the t ext a phonic-instinctual memory. They set up associative chains that crisscross the text from beginning to end and in every di rec­ tion: son cote cata soc/e ( 9 : 1 -2), accen ts toniques (9:2), cata cata catalyse (9:10- 1 1 ); ji/tre philtre (9 :23), phi jlo t tant (9 :28), ph i/ippe fi/ioque procedit-ffl/ ( I 0:23-24); c/e (9:1 5), c/aquem en t (9 : 1 6); g/ai'eu/ clocher c/e de sol ( 1 0 :6-7); so//ers-sol/us ( 1 1 : 1 ), etc. Through these am biguit ies and polyvalances, sentence sequences still m anage t o become est ablished, defined in reading by a single breath ing motion, which result s in a generally rising in tonation. This breathing thus sustains a succession of sentences, sim ultaneously unified by m eaning (a position of the subject of enunciation) and significance (a virtual denota­ tion). A breathing m ovement thus coincides with the attitude of the speaking subj ect and the fluctuating range o f denotat ion. The next breathing m ovement introduces the speaking su bj ect 's new attitude and a new sphere of denotation. The human body and meaning, inseparable as they are, thus fashion a dismem bered score; a halt in breathing and syntactic finitude, also inseparable, are thus given a new start, but in a different logical realm, as if t h ey were drawing supp ort fr om some other region of the b ody- . The borders that define a sequence as a unit of breathing, meaning,

1 70

and

T H E NOV E L AS POLY LOG U E

significat ion

(gramm ati cally

m ade

up

as

a

concatenat i o n

of

sentences) vary great l y a n d indicate t h e s u bject o f enuciatio n ' s m ot i l ­ it y-his chances for res urgence a n d m e ta m o r phosis. H e r e are som e t h at appear at t h e begi n n i n g o f t h e tex t : -T h e personal pronoun e//e ( 9 : 3 ) m ar k s th e bou n dary o f the preceding sequ ence and i n t r odu ces another unit of breathi ng- m eani ng-sign i fi cation . It is a r eply t o t h e i n i t i a l q u est ion (qui dit salut), a rein v o k i n g o f the machine, or a remi n der o f a heterogeneous enunciat i o n , o f an e//e who act i vates the machine a n d t r i ggers i ts-or her- to n ic accen ts . In any case, i t is a displ acement o f the m a c h i nel i k e anonymity toward a she, a dream a n d m o t i o n cast. T h e second bou n dary is m arked by t h e pronoun

elle, now beco m e balle a n d bombe qui retombe . N otice t h a t t h e je representing t h e subject presen t i n g t h e text appears for t h e f i r s t t i m e w i t h i n t h e dream o f the pro n o u n elle: "elle a reve ce tte nuit queje lanr;ais

la ba//e" ( 9:3). The narrat i o n h as b egu n ; e//e is at t he s a m e t i m e t h e speak ing and a ct i ng su bj ect o f t h e n arrative, j u st like je. Je/e//e m ark s t h e m ax i m u m sexual and d iscursive a l terat io n - t r a u m a and l e a p o f t h e n arrative's b egi n n i n gs. - A fter the interrogative e nu n ciation gi ves way t o t h e declara tive, t h e l atter is i n t u r n cut a n d repl aced b y an imperative: " tiens on es t en pleine

mon tagne y a d'la poudreuse regarde /es cristaux blancs violets sens cet air" ( " h ey we're way up in the m o u n t a i n s t h e stu ff is powdery look white purple crystals feel t h a t a i r"). "Je" b egi ns to speak a n d t a k es charge of t h e n arrative now u nder way. -There follows a metalinguistic position that com m e n ts u pon the course of a

silent

body

b ro ught

into

play

by

someo n e else's dream

and

h enceforth pl aced i n a posi t i o n t o control this narrative, phant asm ati c, a n d h a l l uc i n ato ry al terity: "pour la premiere fois I' hallucination goutte a gou tte est vue du dedans decoupee foutee" ( " fo r t h e fi rst t i m e th e h a l l uci­ nation drop by drop is seen from within cut u p cru s h ed " ) . -There is an i rr uption o f onomatopoeias: cata cata catalyse suggests t h e so u n d o f a ty pewri ter in actio n , m ar k i n g infinitely a bi ologic a l , electric, signify i n g cu rrent . . . Thus,

a fract u ring of the previously

a ffirmed,

m e tal i n guistic m astery ; rem i nder o f l ex ical disso l u t i o n , o f the bursts o f instinctual dri ves work ing th rough p h o n e mes: t h e metal ingu is t i c position does not predo m i n at e . -A n e w resu m pt i o n o f th e narrative, w i t h t h e pro n o u n elle; b u t d o e s t h e pronoun refer to t h e m ac h i n e o r t h e wo m a n ?

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171

-Again, a return to m etalanguage: "y a-t-il une au tre form e non y aura­ l-ii reponse bi en sur que non personne et d' ailleurs le de/ire n' est pas le de/ire" ("is there anot her form no will t here be an answer certainly not no one and besides delirium isn't deliriu m " ) . -Within a few lines, we find several ne w boundaries analogous to the previous ones, int roducing an explicit I ("I was not born to be quiet ") who begins his " own" narrative. I t again drifts away, however, is im possible to pinpoint, this time floating across new boundaries cor­ responding to historical and biographical references. -The pronoun I is not seeking itself, it loses itself i n a series of refe rences to l ogical or political even ts that, within t h e framework of eit her t h e past or the present, determine a sim ilar m obility of a subj ect propelled into the whirlwind of his own fr agm entation and renewal-his ex-schize (p. 82).3 It is a m ortal, but "exquisite" scission (an ironic com­ ment on Surrealist au tomatism's cadavre exquis, or "exquisite corpse") because it is anterior, a renewing and prophetic resum ption. Thus we have the reference at the beginning of the text t o t he m agic " filt er" or "philtre," structuring and regenerating the intoxicat ion of a shattered, but not lost, identity. Or similarly, this "phi floating on my lips like the other infa n t with the vultures' tail" reminding us o f Freud's int erpreta­ tion of one of Leonardo Da Vinci's drea ms. Or the first and last paternal names generating t hrough signifying series an infinitely open array of sig­ nifieds, where each elem ent in turn gives rise to a m ini-narrative, what I have called a "sequence"-a unit o f breathing, m eaning, and significa­ tion, gathering childhood memories or historical sketches by means of a swarm of hom onymous k ings. Or the references t o the Bible: "in hebrew the word fo r nude craft y awake is the same" (p. 1 1 ); or to the Koran: "he who accept s his book with his right hand that m ight be alright but he who accepts it behind his back zap flu nked " (p. 1 2 ). The reading voice m arks the boundaries of each sequence by rising. Nothing is brought t o completion, the enunciation is not finished, ot her semiotic procedures draw out the com plet ion produced by synt actic operat ions. This intonat ion hangs on a clearly interrogative connotation, which, in add ition, the interrogative sentence o pening the text ("qui dit salut . . . " ) stimulates from the very beginning, and which several inter­ rogative sentences frequently and thr oughout the text confirm . That question i ng su mmons is less pronounced at the end, but it persist s; inter­ rogative segm ents are present up to the last sequences of the text: " k ilusu

1 72

THE

NOVEL

AS

P O L Y L OG U E

kilucru kiluentendu [ . . . ] que crierai-je [ . ]" ("hoocoudanow n hoocoudabeleev'd hoocoudaherd [ . . . . ] what shall I shout" (pp. 1 84-85). The sum m oning intonation also enters into the abundant im peratives near the end: "that's why go enter leave come b ack in leave again close yourself upon yours e lf hide yourself from yourself outside of yourself come back leave come back in quickly [ . ] shout to h i m " (p. 1 8 5 ) . The set ends with a sequence held on a level rather than a descend­ ing intona tion: " all flesh is like grass shadow the dew of time among voices" (p. 1 85). As is well k nown, the lowering voice of t h e declarative sentence and the ensuing pause are essential and distinctive m arks of a sentence. Children learning a langu age first learn the intonations indicating syntax structure-that is, melody or music-before they assimilate the rules o f syntactic form ation. I ntonation and rhythm are the first markers o f the finite in the infinity o f semiotic process; they delineate the limited posi­ tions o f a subj ect who first invokes but, soon thereafter also signifies. Syntactic apprenticeship brings about and com pletes the subj ect's ability t o become a speaking subj ect, but only t o the extent that he has at his disposal an infinite system that can be m ad e finite. This is what genera­ tive grammar attem pts to represent through its system of recursive operations capable of reducing an infinite number of signifying procedures to the gramm atical norms of any national langu age; and (within the specific infinity of any of these languages) of repeatedly pro­ ducing fin ite but original and renewable utterances . We d o not k n ow, however, what determines that possibility for the speaking subj ect to confine t h e sem iotic practice within t h e lim its of t h e sentence norm ally described as noun phrase plus verbal phrase (Chom sky) or m odified plus m odifier ( Kurylowicz) or the j oining of nonlinguistic by means o f nonrelational ties between t h e un iversal a n d t h e particular ( Strawson), and so on. Although every one agrees t h at t here is n either m ea ning nor signification without a syntactic nucleus, we are still far fr om u nder­ stand ing which of the speak ing subj ect's att itudes imposes this finitude and, even less, what happens on either side o f it. I shall assu m e that a precise type of signifying practice, based on a reques t and an exchange of information, embeds the spea king subject within the limits of sentence enunciation; but other signifying practices that have j ouissance as t h eir goal-that is, the A ujhebung of death and o f .

.

.

.

THE

NOVEL

AS

POL YLOG U E

1 73

outlay of sign i fying unit within the production of a new socio-sym bolic device-would necessitate the pursuit of signifying operations beyond the li mits o f the sentence. We have seen that these signi fying operations, for which t h e sentence serves as a basic com ponent through which one must work one's way, can be either "prim ary" or "secondary, " and t hey prevent the speaking subj ect from being fixed in a single or unified posi­ tion-rather, they m ult iply it. Thus, instinctual rhythm becomes l ogical rhyt h m . I t is not enough t o say t h a t , thanks t o these operations, t h e sentence gai ns access to a higher dom ain, that is, to discourse. For discou rse m ight be (as in fact is the case) a simple concatenation of sentences (whose l ogic rem ains to be determ ined), without ever requiring of the subj ect of enu nciation a shift as to his position in relation to his speech act . Yet, this is precisely what happens in H. Not only is there a j ux­ t aposition of di fferent ideological or comm unicative positions (sender, addressee, illocution, presupposition), but also a juxtaposition of utterances t h a t record the various stratifications of t h e genotex t (instinctual drive, resonant rhythm, synt actic a n d metalinguistic posit ions and t heir inversions). Language possesses a transfinite elem ent ( if I may use this term in a different sense than Cantor's); it is the expanse beyond the sentence limits t hat, preserved, open u p on a sundered cont inuity where a precise interval (the sentence) holds the value of meaning and significat ion-bu t their t r u e power i s built u p only on t h e basis o f t h e numerated, phrased infinity of a polylogical "discourse" of a multiplied, stratified, and heteronomous subj ect of enunciation. H generates this transfinite of lan­ guage, o ne that is neither sentential m onologue nor allocutionary dia­ logue, but rat her, a raising of sentential (monological or dial ogical) meaning t o the p ower of an open infinity, to the extent that the possible attitudes of the subj ect in relation to his speech rem ain open. Because it is transfinite, the text o f H funct ions not o nly as a plural dialogue between the subj ect of enunciat ion and his ident ity; not only is it a s peech act imposing t h e fulfillment of this plural dialogism on the addressee sub­ j ect (that is, an illocutionary, "j uridic" act presu pposing a direct effect on the reader, with out which it cannot ex ist); but the text fu nctions as a plural dialogue, an illocutionary act, in relation to the very realm of lan­ guage: in relat ion t o the sentence and its -subj ect , in t h e sense

1 74

T H E N O V E L A S PO LY L O G U E

t h at it takes them for granted, necessitates their position, but also appro­ priates them within the infinitely open "set" that it constitutes. Therefore, we are no longer talking about poetry (a return to th e near side of syntactic articulation, a pleasure of merging with a rediscovered, hypostatized m aternal body); nor about narrative (the fulfi llment of a reque � t, the exchange of inform ation, the isolation o f an ego am enable t o transference, im agining, a n d symb olizing). I n t h e narrat ive, t h e speaking subj ect constitutes itself as the subj ect o f a family, clan, or state group; i t has been shown that the syntactically norm ative sentence develops within the context o f prosaic and, later, historic narrat ion. The simul taneous appearance of narrative g enre and sentence limits t he signifying process to an attitude of request and communicat ion. On the other hand, since poetry works o n the b ar bet ween signifier and signified and t ends to erase it, it would be an anarchic outcry against the thetic and socializing posi­ tion of syntactic language. It depletes all communities, either destroying them or identifying with the m om ent of t h eir subversion. H's originality derives fr om playing t hese contradictions one against another; being neither. The breaking up of genres ("poetry , " "narrative, " and so on) isolates the protective zones o f a subject who normally cannot totalize the set of signifying procedures. I n H, on the cont rary, all the st rings of t h i s prodigious instrument that langu age is a r e played t oget her and simultaneously; no process is im peded, repressed, or put aside to give free rein to another . "Prim ary" processes confirm , interrupt, or rather, shorten "secondary processes , " condensing and shifting them ont o anot her level where, in the meantime, t he subj ect of enu nciation has turned arou nd. Consequently, although the collision bet ween sem iotic operations ( those involving instinctual drive, phonic differentials, 4 intona­ tion, and so on) and symbolic operations (those con cerned with sentences, sequ ences, and b oundaries) m ay be th ought o f as a tot alizing phenomenon, it actu ally produces an infinite fragm ent at ion that can never be t erm inated : an "ex ternal polylogue. " I have attem pted to " restore" standard punctu ation t o the transcrip­ tion of the opening ages of H . A plus sign ( +) marks syntactic ambiguities (indefinite embeddings and subordinations) that remain. A double virgu le (/ /) marks the limits o f each sequence, and the lines drawn above each sentence indicate the level of in tonati o n . The lines linking certain segments of the text m ark a few of its phonetic-signifying differential axes.

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N O V E L A S P O L Y LO G U E

175

Intonation actually punct u ates the tex t . A vocalic "scanning" o f these two pages ( figure 2) generally m atches syntactic divisions, and, in this sense, eliminates som e of the ambiguities that persist when one m erely restores standard, written punctuation . Y et, my vocalic scanning cannot coincide with comm onplace punctu ation, for it sets up vocal ic series whose arrangement also rem ains aut o n o m ous in relation to the signi fied sequence. For this rhythm is k ept up independently, as if an enunciatory flight, m arked off by the scope of one's breathing, went beyond sentence limits and sequence boundaries and called forth , within the phenotex t , a " fundamental language" 5 t h at is quite simply rhythm . The regu larity of these breathing periods that arise and stop short at precise intervals is striking. They appear as a sequence of short intervals, or as a long one foll owed by th ree short ones; sometimes, however, they are bro ken up, shortened, or highlighted by the insertion of t onic accents. This scanning, which is added to the underlying punctuation and points out the latter's inability to com prehend "the rhythmic fu ndamental langu age, " strikes the unconscious as a calm and yet horrifying violence. Still, our con­ scious listening s it as an invocat ive, lyric m onotone-a k i nd o f Tibetan M ozar t . W i t h i n t h e t ext t aken as a whole, which is neither poem nor novel but polylogue, both pulverizing and m u lt iplying u nity through rhyt h m , the unpunctuated but m et rical sentence finds its justification. The subj ect of enunciat ion's m otility, converting prelogical rhythm or crumbling logic int o a polylogical rhythm, requires a different m ode of phrasing. There is no fo rmal prej u dgment that led to breaking up the sentence. The sentence is lift ed away th rough a scan ning that, while m aintaining it, im beds it into a new sem i ot i c d evice. This is precisely the device that produces the limited-and-infinitized sentence. It evokes im ages of old, u npunctuated Chinese texts, which are impossible to decipher except when approached as a whole; for one m ust grasp the rhythm of the whole text, hence the poly-logic of the speak ing subject, in order to pick out, in reverse fashion, t he meaning of the smaller sentence or lexical units. One does not begin with the part in order to reach the whole: one begins by infinitizing the totality in order to reach , only later, the finite m eaning of each part. With this reversal of our logical habits, the sen tence appears as a shelter, a finitude in which there huddles an ideational unit, plainly nar­ row-m inded, refusing its infinitization-the metaphysical, transcendental

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ego, threatened by the negativity t h a t produced it, denying that negativity a n d going on to a syntax seen as absolute. Keeping and converting this shelter within a poly-logue, where it would play the role of l ower lim it rather t h a n absolute pin nacle, would thus a m ount to upsetting a metaphysical enunciation. When the m os t solid guarantee of our ident ity-synt ax-is revealed as a limit, the entire history of the West ern subj ect and his relat ionship to his enunciation has com e to an end: "teach the tongue to sing and it will be ashamed to want anything else but what it sings" (p. 1 1 ); "what interests me is this brain dive below the sponge flip flop letting the clay ru n in it drop in pressure half-muted shreds who sees a sentence t here you do yes oh really" (p. 3 2); " sentences should be m isunderstood" (p. 89); " langu age is a fi n ite or infinite grou ping o f sentences them selves sequences of discrete atoms" ( p . 7 7 ) ; with and beyond the sentence, there is always a l ogical stu bbornness: "alone the logical fire cipher of negat ion leaves n o rem n ants" (p. 66). Thus, when you allow y ourself t o be carried away by the polylogue's fugue, you first hear a rhythm-sound-voice-scanning. But this is merely a bridge, like the bridge o f a s hip on t h e high seas, evok ing M oby D ick and M elville (p. 42), taking you t oward the d issolu t ion of sym bolic link ing, t oward the dissolution of rhythm a fter t hat of the sentence, t oward empty and m u t e instinctual drive, t oward the clashes of m atter: "better to perish in t h i s wailing infinity t h a n t o be thrown back to t h e lands" (p. 43); "there comes a time when i feel m yself like i am the bearer of everything and nothing in everything it's m aybe a cranked sym phonic · state" (p. 4 1 ) and "you h ave t o treat y ou rsel f like a sonata" (p. 96), bu t "don't rush and give too ful l a contou r t o what comes back" (p. 98), because it is "sounds-words-sounds-not-words-sounds-nor-words-sounds" ( 1 5 5). The poly logue's fi rst prerequisite: cause rhythm to em erge, hasten it, have it rem ove the symb olic surface: "you believe you can hold out at this pace in the face o f universal refusal you k now i don't mind war i enjoy it" (p. 4 1 ); "you think i go t o o fast y ou think it has the shakes it m ight look hysterical of course not everyone has understood it was only a peaceful open k indly rhythm true m eaning o f the t orrential spasm here i m im ic the least possible m usic" (p. 64); "speech is a recessive phase o f the respiratory cycle" ( p . 7 8 ) . B u t t hrough m u sic, through breathed rhyt hm, "everything cru mbles at the same time without m oving without water without su bstance while em ptiness forces everything to flow while

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it goes plop by plopped m atter only filaments on the surface" (pp. 3 2-3 3). M u sic i t self is a derivat ive. I t is simply the sonorous indica tor o f a break, o f a deaf, mute, m o rtal, a n d regenerative rhythm . I t takes place where t he b ody is gashed by the blows of biology and the shock of sexual, social, a n d hist orical contradiction, break ing through to the quick, pierc­ ing t hrough the shield of the vocal and symbolic cover: "but as long as space and drives or the anim ated void push y ou on go on let yourself bloom begin again erase your get out again from there" (p. 1 29); "the guy who's got brakes he stops as i f drive wasn't constant as if was enough time t ' write com m a sem icolon and the whole m ess as if it wasn't on the air 24 out of 24 it's up t o you to transform yourself each t o his own ditch" (p. 1 78); "what a choral group the whole body let me stick my ear against you cheek against y our j aw that's where i want to listen to your silence in stifled noise not sound effect s" (p. 94). A m easu red language carried away into rhythm to a point beneath lan­ guage: v iolent silence, instinctual drive, collided void; and back again­ the path of j ouissance, "it's the u nderside of language that turns over at the boiling point" (p. 64); "as far as i rem em ber the hallucination was there alive patient its third dimension added listen I didn't inven t the clock of language the point is t o k n ow who is m aster and that's it" (p. 64); "my words have begu n to trem ble in the shape of airplanes com et s tendrils torches busy pouring out this sky t oward the end of the day bursts of delirium you only have to find outside the raw triggering enem y wall of come coal-smeared ice axe entangled suck me or else i'll blow m y brains ou t" (p. 14 7). Each syllable then becom es the fo r a small portion of b ody, which is just as m uch inside (the body itself) as outside (the physical, cosmic space). Each syllable becomes a particle, a wave, a whirlwind of a pu lverized " I " dissolved and reassembled within, violating and harm onizing, raising and lowering its voice, its language: "so my hypothesis is as follows wells of roaring orgasms tapped to the t en-thou­ sandth t hought t o the ten-billionth thrust aside honestly with the force of a drop ham mer" (p. 72); "o nce one has truly scaled the voice the names come b ack softly violently that is an experience that takes up delirium from way back " (p. 99). Con sciousness in rhythm and instinctual drive, instinctual drive and rhythm in consci ousness: t h ey are the repossession and representation o f

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delirium a n d t h e loosening o f t h i s repossession and representation: "what distinguishes this style from the clinical docum ent in the strictest sense is the absence of chok ing lin ked not link ed no reason fo r the opening to sketch itself id is the representation of t hings nerved rather than nervous nervated narrated in the inert that is innate twice born never superan­ nuated" (p. 1 39); "the schizo is as m uch a bircher as anyone" (p. 1 39). Rhythmic language thus carries a representation, but it is indeed a striated representation and vision. The eye cannot be excluded by the ear; the representation reverberates, sound becomes im age, invocative instinctual drive encounters the signifiable, realistic, poly-logical object: "when t he ear is penet rat i ng it becom es an eye o t herwise the lesson rem ains t angled in the ear without reaching the k not st accato outside" (p. 97). Language exists to have music burst into sight, o therwise m u sic is exiled into an esoteric, mythic inside, and sight rem ains "one, " opaque: "i said you have to exhaust sight spread hearing befo re letting it go in due time come on let's get this skull out for m e gold meant sonority and j ade glitter branch leaves flow smile all of this m u st be slipped into silk herbs light [ . . . ] you must exercise throat larynx lungs liver sp leen the two sexes" (p. 8 1 ). U nder this totalizing-infinitizing condition, the equation sex politics i s satisfied, as the agent of this equation is a sonorous-representat ive, depleting-signifying l anguage: "the sex and politics equation without the insertion of l anguage rem ains m et aphysical the indicator of an unmastered belief [ . . . ] how can one s ay that in what rhythm h ow does one transfo rm written and spoken langu age in the sense of breathing dis­ m antling o f ideology verbal tartar now becom e m u te orbital sometimes we are on t h e bank sometimes in the m i ddle of the st ream it is necessary that one fe el that very strongly the stream the bank two and one on top of the other and one u nderneath the other and one separated from the o ther and one lin ked t o t h e other stream bank stream bank stream bank stream leaving the thread to the curren t" (p. 83). Spelled out here, there is a dialectics between limit and dismem bered infinity, between sight and rhythm, between m eaning and m u sic, and bet ween bank and stream : dialectics-epitome of language. Yet, the polylogue-text, which only this d ialectics can construct, emphasizes m u sic above all and, th rough it, the mute m atter of language: it is a polemic with finitude, with pause, with 't otality, with the t hesis of =

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socialization that is also, and simultaneously, bounding and deadly. The polylogue destroys any symbolic "thesis" that it preserves by pelting it with a mu sic that revives the dea fened, i f not ruptu red, eardrum of socialized, educated, phrasem ongering m an: "there go your associat ive chains gnawing at the liver of yesterday yet this music should have massacred the m em ory struck the eardrum straight fr om the shou lder no no not the ear the eardrum cut out in t he open n o no not the old drum a whole lucid peeled vortex shined thawed colors now listen please be fair pick out the pieces the effort the crystals that yearned for no for what well that yearned yes that wanted oh yes that wanted would a com plaint be hazardous an asshole of a m an half-baked animal" (p. 1 62). T o revive the animal, to rect i fy the failure, to stretch out the eardrum anew, the unreasoning resonance; all this is to push man aside and to refashion the animal within man-to make him sing like the b irds of J osquin des Pres: "hyt ys m o rnyng cum now herkyn the smale larke that sayeth lorde hyt ys day hyt ys day rede rede di! do rede dil do lee" (p. 1 45); drowning him in a burst of laughter: "we are the ashes of innu m erable living beings while the problem is to experience it in the throat as i f we had all b ecome nobody what im palpable instrument dissolved in the wind" (p. 1 4 5 ) . Laugh th rough saturated-st riated meaning, through affirmed-rhythmic identi ty. Laugh into a void comp osed of logical , syntactic, and narrat ive surplus. An unfa mi liar, troubling, u ndefinable laugh . H' s laughter d oes not arise out of the Rabelaisian joy shak ing up science and esotericism, m arriage and Spirit, based on a full, recovered, promising body-the laughter o f gigantic Man. Nor is it Swift's furious, disillusioned, and cruel fit, u nearthing hell under social harmony and proving t o M an t hat he is " Lillipu tian." Since the Renaissance, the West has laughed only with the Enlightenm ent (with Voltaire and Diderot, laughter dethrones), or perhaps in the recesses o f psychosis, where power and logic are experienced as am bivalent at first, and broken d own in the end (laughter is black with burnt up m eaning: J arry, Roussel, Chaplin . . . ) . H laughs di fferen tly. Its laugh is heard only through and after the music of the tex t . A ll network s of possible meaning must be exhausted beneath com ­ mon sense, banal, vulgar, obvious meaning, or cru el, threateni ng, and aggressive meaning-before we can understand that they are ungraspa­ ble, that they adhere t o no axis, that t hey are "arbitrary" just like the sign, the name, and the uttera nce, but also pleasure and j ouissance. The

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laughter of H i s n ' t caused by a clash between signi fied values; n o r is it caused by the eruption of nonsense within sense as appears to be the case in Lois [" Laws," 1 97 2 ] . Rather, it is t h e arbitrariness of the break establishing m eaning, wh ich set s i t sel f squarely against t h e flow o f rhyt h m , intonation, a n d music, t h a t provo kes t h i s l aughter . W e do not laugh because o f what m akes sen se or because of what does not. We laugh because of possible in eaning, because of the attitude that causes us to enunciate significat ion as it brings us j ou issance; H does not avoid this attitude, rather it accept s it so as to pul verize it all the better. We laugh at the utterance that is not music, and/ or at sexuality that is not a process of consumption. We l augh at castration . Neither happy nor sad, neither life nor death, neither sexual organicism nor sublimated renuncia­ tion, such a laughter is synonym ous with m usicated enunciation-a space where enu nciation and rhyt hm, positioning and infinitization of m eaning are inseparable. We do not laugh, then, in order t o judge the position that gives mean­ ing; even less so in order to put ourselves out of j u dgmen t ' s reach, in some surreality where everything is eq ual. We laugh on of the limit assumed in the very m ovement t h at enroots and uproots finitude within an endlessly centered and yet decent ered process. Laughter of lan­ guage, laughter of sociality itself. Laughter of a castration t h at m oves u s t o n ame in a process that exceeds nam ing . Optim ism o r pessim ism?­ misplaced m ilestones that also cause laughter. Everything cau ses l aughter since sign ifiance is motion. Oriental laughter: sen sible and leading t o t h e void . T h e sonorou s t h reads branch out until t h ey disperse with l o s s i n a body inebriated with a motion that is in no way personal t o it, but rather, m erges with the motion of nature as well as of an historical mutation : "you must swim in m a tter and the language of matter and t h e transformation o f language i n t o matter a n d m at t er into language tribe of m atter feel ing o f the outing on swann's way t h e sun is still the same a s before but chang hsii h a d the best cu rsive script u nder t h e t' ang h e would get drunk the souse shouted ran every which way then took up his brush wrote at top speed it even happened t h a t he dipped his hair into the ink t o draw to the quick hsieh-huo means to write lively t h at ' s clearly evident in m a o ' s characters 1 7 august 1 966 hsin p'ei ta the first two jumbled t h e t hird aggressive resolute sure o f the new and there i t is that ' s the whole

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story the class struggle i s part o f nature and n ature has plenty o f tim e this seagull is t he same as a t h ousand years ago but man is full of clouds" (p. 1 00).

WHAT IS A MATE RIALIST WHO SP EAKS? I am reading Sollers' H, at the s a m e time as I a m reading his Sur le materialisme [On m ateriali s m ] (Paris: Seuil, 1 974): two aspects of the same process. From a m ec h anistic point of view, m aterialism is a ques­ tion of substance, or better, of t he ackn owledgement of the prim acy o f exterior over interior, o f n ature over society, o f economy over ideology, et cetera. Lang uage, the practice that causes the id to signify, the-id-to­ sig nify-that-something-is, i s left t o the wardens of the logos positing­ rem oving Being-beings-nothingnes s . There is no such thing as materialist logic or m aterialist linguis tics. Logics and li nguist ics have each been based on an attitude that repudiates heterogeneity in the signi fier and that, as such, conforms to t he truth of a particu lar stance of the speaking subject: that of the transcendental ego, whose emergence through the game of hide-and-seek with the object was explained by H usserl . M o reover, any discourse that adheres t o the postu lates of a communica­ tional logic and linguistics is at once a discourse that, in its very system , is foreign to m aterialism . Philosophy-be i t logical, gram m atical, or pedagogical-could never be m aterialist . Seen fr om the place of its enun­ ciation-the same as that of the basic sentence (an u t terance o f req uest and exchange)-matter can be nothing but "transcendence," and H u sserl said as much. And yet , m aterialism was able t o sign i fy; it did in Heraclitus' elisions, in Epicurus' gestures declining the m ores of the city-st ate, in Lucret ius' poetic language. In spite of its prescientific shortcomings, naivetes, and errors, this classical m aterialism carries within itself a "trut h " that contem porary m echanistic m aterialists are unable to m atch. M at erialism is a kn owledge o f the world, t o be sure, but this k n owledge is inseparable fr om the atti tude o f the s peaking subject within his language and/or within the world. M aterialism is above all an enunciation of whatever you please, but t h at necessarily imp lies that whoever enunciates has an unconscious that beats within him as rhythm-intonation-music, before

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dissolving him within a cellular and biological, at the same tim e a s a sub­ j ective, symbolic, and social explosion . An "I" that has u ndergone this process in order to return t o his fo rm er position and give voice to its poly-logic- that is a materialist who speaks. Diderot speaks as a m aterialist when he performs as a one-man orchestra: Rameau ' s nephew . M arx and Lenin speak as m aterialists when t hey rej ect philosophical dis­ course and, through polemics or struggle, rediscover a multivalent "dis­ course" beneath surface speech ; let us call it a discourse without words. It is a t oken of their involvement in a broader process, and this im plies the m asses' own involvement . H investigates precisely this m o m en t that so m any philos o p hies and dogmatisms seek to cover u p-the m om en t when materialism is able to ut ter itself. Not the " self ' dissolving into some muted m atter­ schizophrenia adrift ; not t h e flight of an ego subsu m ed by the pred­ icative synthesis outside of any notion of what came befo re its l ogical posit i o n . R ather, it is the ordeal of an attack, inst inctual separation, i m m obility, or death, at the same time as their reappearance at the heart of a logical, fragmented, and rhythmic polyvalence. The subj ect loses himself so as to imm erse himself i n the m aterial and historical process; b u t he reconstitutes himself, regains his u nity and rhythm i cally pro­ nounces his own dissolution as well as his return. When i t is set forth in rhythm , a m a terialist discourse appears as joy ripped with pain. A rhythm that multiplies language and withdraws from its transcendental position is propelled by pain; rhythm is the enunciation of a pain that severs t he "self, " t he body, and each organ . That pain is experienced as such as soon as a word (signified, signifier) is posited. It i s drained only a fter having pelted all w o r d s circulating within, befo re, and a fter the enunciat ing subj ect . Only through this multiple schizt ic pain can the process of the subj ect, m at t er, and history be formu­ lated-spoken-as a d ialectical process, that is, a s one and hetero­ geneous. So H eraclitu s was the misanthrope, the fragmenter, divider, and separator. And Sade was the stag e director for p ain a s the scene of u nconsciousness and jouissance-spoken at last, possible a fter all. And Lenin, t orn between Philosophical Notebooks and What Is To Be Done?, who arrived during the night at [his] Smolny [headquarters i n St. Petersburg] with his body crippled by p a i n , a n d that m y sterious death . . . The protectionist, bargaining, social code, made up of opaque

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units that interchange without getting involved, subj ect-object irre­ mediably lost to each other . . . -such a code cannot become can­ celled-ecstatic-laughing-without hurting. The instant the attack begins, t here is loss o f sel f and o f k n owledge, the pain of schism, a bru s h with death, and the absence of m eaning: "t here is an instant vertigo when you reach out your arm beyond absolute k nowledge in order t o find the flower" (p. 96); "a bone that is feeling a h igh" (p. 1 62), " i t ' s like the intimate st art of mat ter now me i refuse i refuse i refuse no no no [ . . . ] i won't accept the identity i feel m uch too am phibious bombing protein nucleot ides hydrogen cloud initial iridescence of helium double helix" (p. 61 ), "it's t rue that that frightens t hem this daily crum bling o f sensitive tissue pain of the gum s in t h e kidneys o f the liver in the shoulder t h ere are some who w o u l d lock them selves up with m at h for no m ore reason than there are some who prefer rushing to a dance" (p. 26); " so t h ere's the pain that rises again in the t eet h the temples in the b ack of the neck the pain you know it's lik e ext ended t allied temporalized palpable j ouissance who said it cou ldn't be written but o f course by long su ffering little fire sharp k een poin t s t h at is where you see who works and who gossips [ . . . ] oh dusty conveyor b elt" (p. 32); " i hurt everywhere when i am seized by this epilepsy from m edical greek spilepsia properly attack yes it attacks me it takes h old of me inside­ out sk eleton" (p. 1 2 1 ) . And t hen, there is t h is rewriting o f Saint Paul: "oh but who shall deliver m e fro m this body without death" (p. 39); " t h e grave you carry it everywhere with you" (p. 77). Painful and deadly negative drive, capable o f provoking schism, and imm obility, does not stop t h i s process. The " I " em erges again, speaking and musicating, so as to reveal the m aterial t ruth o f the process that brought i t to the brink o f its shattering into a whirlwind of mute parti­ cles. The schizoid regains consciousness: "the schizoid becomes diplomat enterprising u nbeatable su pple again post m aso bird kind" (p. 1 1 3 ) . H i s shat tering h a s multiplied h i m , deprived h i m of hum an characteris­ tics, made him anonymous: " nature is for me a lak e full of fish and m e fish fish fish without a complex" ( p . 63). T h e " I " h a s become a strange physicist fo r whom the quantum particle is not merely an "external" obj ect t o be ob served, but also, an "internal" state of the subj ect and of experienced language: "the actor m ay i ndicate th is by the wave function of his m olecule to escape the cycle he must crush him self in the

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um bilical" ( p . 1 0 5); " i f you wish to m a intain t h e boiling point i n your room don't forget t h at each link is represented by a wave fu nct ion with two centers occupied by a pair of elect rons em anat ing from two linked atoms go on breathe your probability of presence the clouds now replace the traj ectories we evolve with this spectral fo g any ej aculation casts a thought not t h ought it really makes one burst with laughter" (p. 1 06). I t cannot be pinned down but is liable to be present, logica l, thought out-both wave and particle, mat ter com ing t hrough : "i don't paint being i paint the ing anyhow i don't paint anything at all i fe el really bombed out when will we accept im perm anence absence of signature disappearance of the seal inside feet close t ogeth er and goodnight" (p. 46). Only t hen does the spea king subject discover him self as subj ect o f a body t h at is pulverized, dismembered , and refashioned according t o t h e polylogue's bursts o f instinctual drive-rhyt h m . As a n area o f heterogeneou s strata (drive-sound-langu age) that can b e multi plied and infinitized, materialist language is the language of a body never heard and never seen. Here, there are none of Spinoza's substances, no C artesian extension, nor even Leibnitz's m onads in t abular networks . This polylogical body i s a perm anent cont radict ion between substance and voice, as each one enters into a process of infinite fission that begins as they clash; subst ance is vocalized, voice is dam ped, as each is m ade infinite in relat ion t o the other. But it finally recovers the unity of speak­ ing consciousness in order t o signify itself. The subj ect is destabilized-Van Gogh, A rtaud-and physical disloca­ tion has becom e its m etaphor. But-and this is what is so surprising-the subject returns. Sol lers speaks of a "springing of the subj ect , " occurring in order to arrange the shattering into a langu age, which it i m m ediately provides with a dismembered, count less body. Because some One emerges fr om this schizophrenic pulverizing and has it g o through our com m u nal code (discou rse), a new rhythm is perceived and our body appears as brok en, refashioned, and infinite: "one body is not equivalent to another we are here t o begin enlightening the scale of bodies within the stream how do you force the head to let it be to becom e conscious of all the s" (p. 47); "this ability that som etimes an obstinate but fluid subject has t o rem ove veil by veil to untie t he knots t o insist on its nega­ tion u nt i l the infinity in i t s always u nexpected shape begin s to well u p

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nearby inside outside" (p. 70); "curious how the animal can get a hard on in its sleep while it is in the process of cutting itself up how i t experiences itself at the same time com pressed gaseous u nit put away in drawer" (p. 68). An animal is a physical, vocal, perhaps codified whirlwind; but it is also cleft fr om its axis, from its subj ective-signifying-symbolic control point. The test of radical heterogeneity comes when the sign ifying thesis finds itself outside o f any mult iplicative experience, while the taut stretch separating the two, liable to break a t any m o m ent, preventing any return to unity, makes of this sus pended "u nity" a dead ent ity: "i apply this treat ment t o m y self by peri odic massaged excitement each side occupied wit h crisscrossing itself striated zones on the whole the problem is this unit of equilibrium which causes the m u lti plicity t o be t hought outside on the basis o f a unit that is firm on dead center" (p. 1 5 5); "n ever forget the right o f the de ost" (p. 1 1 0). 6 In short, right belongs only t o the "deost. " The deost alone is capable of formulating som ething new. Formulat ion i m m ediately be­ comes anteriority, deat h . It is the (primary) condition of this surprising rebound, which is i tself a (secondary) condition causing t he pulverization to speak, causing the once alientated unity t o d ance: "basically it is death that is afr aid of us" (p. 87); "any spont aneou s formulation that is not sought after will have to be paid for dearly" (p. 62). I shall term "writer" that ability t o rebound whereby the v iolence of rej ect ion, i n extravagant rhythm, finds its way into a multiplied signifier. It is not the reconstruct ion of a unary subj ect, rem iniscing, in hysterical fa shion, about his lacks in m eaning, his p lunges into an underwater body . It is ra ther the return of t he lim it-as-break, cast ration, and the bar separating signifier from signi fied, which found nam ing, codi ficat ion, and language; t hey do this not in order to vanish at that point (as com munal m eaning w ould h ave it), but in order, lucidly and consciou sly, to rej ect and mult iply them , t o disso lve even their bou ndaries, and to use t hem again . . . A rem inder of the Vedas: "here i am i i and again i first-born of the order befo re the gods in the navel of nondeat h " (p. 99). This is a reaffirmed, indelible " I , " t en aciously h olding on to its unity, but busy going through it-going t hrough itself-in all directions, crisscrossing itself with furrows, reaching over itself, appraising it sel f and conceiving of itself in term s of all the coordinates o f "geo m etry" : "that's a peculiar kind of horse this subj ect at a walk at a trot at a gallop before you

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behind y o u under you a n d above y o u forward m ot i on backward m otion swallowed up swim mer worker idler and dreamer and fu dger liar and seeker and speaker pillager weeper lis tener fleer and unemployed" (p. 1 29); "how do you expect to live with an u ngraspable sheet of water with a body that sees itself and sees itsel f t h at sees itself seeing itself seen visible invisible thus ceaselessly saying g ood-bye that's not a fa ther m a 'am t h at ' s not a m other" ( p . 1 07); "there is the obj ect of sexual grat ­ ification and someone who es for t he one who experiences it but he who while he experiences orgasm k n ows one and the other is not affected" (p. 99). So here, then, is "the sign of a m ore profo und geometry that i feel in me behind me with the smell of t he attic crossroads of stitching fine network of stars dig dig unfasten u nglue send back you get h ere a quick theory of envelopes algebra and arithmetic are the doubles of this t ongued wind without effect" (p. 98). This "I" speaks/ sings the indecisive m ovement of its own coming. Its geometry-that is, the text, this "double of tongued wind"-gathers t ogether into a single, formulated sequence rhythm and meaning, erased presence, and a reconstructed or m i m ed presence where it scans-and-sig­ nifies the truth of its production and dea t h . It goes from the "subjective" to the "obj ective," then back again t o the "subj ective," and so forth without end: "i had n othing o f the outside save an interrupted circular perception i wasn't able t o determine if the water h ad a b ackdrop of vegetation t h e color green was perhaps simply t h e reflect ion of t h e shut­ ter" (p. 1 1 ); "i want to be alone u ndersta nd alone when i want to as bathed aired as on the first m orning" (p. 3 6 ) . B u t such a n asserted " I , " hypostasized a n d unsha keable in i t s twi sted multiplications, conscious of the tru t h of its practice, does not insist on truth for its sp eech. This is not m ys ticism saying, "I am the t ru t h . " The polylogue says, "i truth i have a right to lie in the m anner that suits me" (p. 3 5 ) . F or this polylogical " I " speak s of a before: before logic, before la nguage, before b eing. A b efore t h at isn't even unconscious; a "before" all "before-unconsciousness"-shock, spurt, death; a collision, t hen-stasis of sound, then-heterogeneity of the "represent amen," the "other," "language," " I , " "speech, " . . . then--an inrush of shock, spurt , and death . One cannot even say t h at this "before" has in fact t aken place, because if "it has t aken place, " it is only because "I" says so; otherwise, this before, in relation to the " I ," constitutes a "knot," a I

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"not," that is, negativity. Yet, any " I " that ventures into this "before" has no guarantee of "being" or of "t ruth" in its speech other than intonation, melody, song, and the twisting effect it inflicts on langu age by making it speak in a future t ense that is menacing to those com fo rtably satisfied with th e present-with "beings" com m em orating a " Being" that, nevertheless, rem ains presentable. In H, on the other hand, the present "I" is the crest of a m elodious before and an immediate, logical fu ture, flashing like light ning for whoever has not heard t he echo of the before and has not gone there on his own. This "I" is j u st present enough t o open the present into a double infinity: an imm emorial before and an historically ravaging immediateness: "as for me I speak of m isappropria­ tion from before the before let him who has the spark be enlightened with the deduction at the source which they never viscerally suspected it's something ent i rely di fferent a fight here with knives between what traverses me and the set brow that used to be cal led dem onic don't believe fo r a m i nute the delu ders who tell you that it isn't true at all the t erm prophet came i n t o use arou nd 980 concerning ion in its physical sense in the twelfth they said prophesy from the greek prophetes literally he who says in advance check it out yourself at least those of you not too entrenched where do i get t his insolence i don't k now yes it is really limit­ less" (p. 30). "Wh o says h ello"?-hell o, Yesha'yahii, I saiah . I t is " I , " present t o sign i fy the process t h a t exceeds it, a n d o n l y for t h a t . It is neither One, paran oid, set in his m astery. Nor is it an Other, prophesying because he is cutting a dangerous after (logical, naming, castrating) away fr om an inaccessible before (instinctual, m aternal, musical). But it is the very process itself, where One and O ther are stases, m oments of pause: a natural-sem iotic-symbolic process, invo lving h eterogeneity and contra­ dict ion: "i kind of lik e when malaise m isunderstanding grow in thick ­ ness t h e whirlwind must come into being there maybe t hey'll make me k ick m ysel f o ff in t h e e n d accused as i a m o f wanting the t w o a n d a t t h e s a m e t i m e proposing scission they see i t as manichaeism while t h e rumbling in their stom achs doesn't m a k e the mul tiple voice o n e and bound m u l tiple divided bound saying the one mult iple the non-one the always and never m u l t iple oh my void you alone faithful i shall go so fa r as saying tender and faithful and cutting horrible soft punctual t errify­ ing" (p. 3 5 ).

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A floating signifier? A senseless flow that produces i t s own signifiance: "what a pro fession being the so-called floating signifier or rather the water t hat signifies itself by itselr' (p. 59). Thus impersonal, in short, speak ing (in) t h e n a m e o f no one-not even i n its (own) " proper name," but saying what is heard: "he shall not speak on his own but everything he hears he shall say" (p. 1 8 1 ). This is the Augustinian formula referring to the "holy spirit" in De Trinitate. But, within this , to what can "in the name o r ' refer? An excess in the fu nction of the Father or o f the Son; the ideal proceedings against t h e One and ag ainst Naming itselr? The transfinite in la ngu age, as what is "beyond the sentence, " is probably foremost a going through and beyond the nam ing. This m eans that it is a going th rough and beyond the sign, the phrase, and linguistic finitude. But it is also and sim ult aneously that of one' s "proper name"; an indexing that gives an identity t o entity if, and only if, it has such entity proceed fr om a symbolic origin where the law of social con tract is concealed. H introduced proceedings against both naming and the (proper) Name by positing and then ack nowledging their constraint. Proper Name-pseudonym-releasing the two in a burst of l aughter t h at attack s the son ' s identity-but also that of the "artist . " Sentence-sequence-nar­ ration-and an excess of t h eir sign ificat ions (in which so many readers o f Lois became trapped) loca lizable i n a process of i ndefinitely, infinitely m ovable centers. Nothing proceeds from anything; infinity is invented through colliding, het erogeneous, and cont radict ory bursts where "what proceeds" (naming and the Name) is only a set whose ex istence depends on infinity t hrust aside; here, h owever, the logical and heterogeneous infinity is no longer kept out of the way, it returns and t h reat ens all nominal ex istence.

S H ATTE R I N G T H E FAM I LY There is a sober quality in H that consists in the light contour o f music, an avoidance of overl oading sequences with narrative, and a logical and perm anent awakening in the very drift of syllab les-fr ustrating the hysteric, disappointing the obsessed, get ting on the fet ishist ' s nerve, and int rigu ing the schizoid.

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H says that what determ ines these reactions lies within the dom ain of the Phallic M other. A ny subj ect posits him self in relat ion to the phallus-that m uch everyone understands. That the phallus could be the m other is something often said, but h e re we are all stopped short by this "trut h " : the hysteric, the obsessed, the fetishist, and the schizoi d . I t is a focu s o f attention that drives us crazy or perhaps allows u s t o rem ain afloat when the t hetic (the symbolic) lets go. The phallic mot her has possession of our im aginaries because she controls the family, and the imaginary is familial. The a lternatives used to seem set : either the N ame­ of- t he- Father t ranscending the fam ily within a signifier that, in fact, reproduces its dramas; or the phallic M ot her who gathers us all into orality and anality, into the pleasu re of fusion and rejection, with a few lim ited variations possible. Either you stay spastic and aph asic, or a fan­ tasy takes root in you and clears t he way for a polym orphism t hat eats away at accepted social codes-but can also be their repressed accom ­ plice. Or you have this P h allic M other enter into you r language where she enables you to k il l the m aster signifier-but also reconstitutes that ultim ate and tenacious repression seizing you in the veils of the "genital mystery" (Nerval, Nietzsche, Artaud) . . . No language can sing u nless it confronts the Phallic Mother. For all that i t m u st not leave her u n t ouched, outside, opposite, against the law, the absolute esoteric code. R ather, i t must swallow her, eat her, dissolve her, set her up like a boundary o f the process where "I" with "she"-"the other, " "the m other"-becomes lost . Who is capable of this? "I alone am nourished by t he great m other , " writes Lao Tzu . In the past, this was called "the sacred . " In any case, within the experiencing of the phallic, m aternal m irage, within this consumm ated incest, sexuality no l onger has the gratifying appeal o f a return to the promised land. Know the mot her, firs t take her place, t h oroughly investigate her jouissance and, without releasing h er, go beyond her. The language that serves as a wit ness to this c ourse is iridescent with a sexuality of which i t does n o t "spea k " ; i t turns it into rhythm-it i s rhythm. What w e t a k e fo r a m ot her, and all the sexuality t h at the m at ernal im age com m ands, is nothing but the place where rhyt h m stops a n d iden tity is constituted . W h o kn ows? W h o says so? Only rhythm, t h e de-signating a n d dissolving gesture, scans i t . T h e s o n ' s incest is a m eeting w i t h the other, the first other, t h e m other.

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I t is t h e penetration o f a heterogeneous terrain, t h e absorption o f its bursting, and the alliance o f the bursting o f the "proper" that follows. The p oet 's j ouissance that causes him t o em erge from schizophrenic decorporealization is t he j ouissance of the m other: "who was able i s able will be able to kiss his deep m other on the mouth and sense arising radiating the triple and one rejoicing" (p. 1 64); "i had my m ot h er in a dream clearly silhouetted clean alluring" (p. 1 3 8); "what causes t h e poet to have first a definite taste o f m enstrua in the m ou t h and why it is not reasonable to ask him t o talk as if h e had not lost his baby t eeth" (p. 1 43); "it's the whirlwind n o need t o insist to m a k e one believe there is a t hought on this side nervous non-t hought read t o m e slowly it's not about a crisis we are in a m ess in fact what rem ains here is always childish free fa l l the difficulty lies precisely in accepting that the m o ther be this slow oh so slowly broken from the species would that she were blind what here's the secret would that she were t h i s slow blind fa ll and whore despite the appet ite but don't hope to see her without sm ashing you rsel f in" (p. 1 2 7). It i s a strange sort of in cest where "Oedipus" comes out look ing like Orpheus-singing-and where J ocasta rem ains blind. It involves a reversal o f roles; the m other's power, engaged and directed t owards refashioning a harmonious ident ity, is exhausted . Oedipus, m ade into a hero through t he unconscious from J ocasta, retraces h i s steps t o a before all o f this h appened-so a s t o k n ow; his i s a refusal t o accept blindness, a demystification of the fem ale sphinx, and a forsaking o f A n tigone. The Greek myth i s deflated, replaced b y a n on-Oedipal incest that o pens the eyes of a subj ect who is nourished by the m other. The Phallic Mother-as blinding pillar of the p olis and u nconscious buttress of the laws of the city-is apprehended, comprehended, and t h rust aside. The subj ect of this drama can in no way be a "citizen"-neither Orestes , m urderer o f h i s m other, n o r Oedipus, cast rated trustee o f a invisible k nowledge, occult wise m an, tragic of political religion. The "actor" subject , "poet" banished fr om the Republic because he has shot t hrough his m a t ernal pedest al, abides in the margins of society by waver­ ing between the cu lt of t he m other and t h e playful, laughing, stripping away of its m ystery. By the same t oken, he eludes all codes; neither animal, god, nor m an, he is Dionysius, born a second time for h aving had the m ot her.

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H i s oracular discourse, s plit (signifier/signi fied) and multiplied ( i n its sentential and lyrical concatenations), carries the scar of not m erely the trauma but also the triumph of his battle with the Phallic M other: "you haven't sufficiently not iced that the d ouble dimension of oedi pal lan­ guage reprodu ces in inverted form the double dimension of the oracle oidos swollen foot oida i know while sucking his thumb grapes of corinth they also say the laws at a higher m oment's notice defining the animals below the gods above one and another pawns iso lated on the chess­ board of the polis out of play rupture of the gam e moral whoever wants t o leave without for that m at ter buying glasses white cane while listening carefully to the whee whee when the animal finally falls without him we would k n ow n othing what a view into backness true suring of the soothsayer in short there a re two ways of being blind one in the future the other i n the past [ . . . ] or else go t ake a walk in the schizoo when I say k ill father sleep with m other go away eyeless from where one com es got to understand that it t akes place on the same body right hand left hand [ . . . ] d o you k n ow what he d oes after having disappeared at colonus because antigone was beginning t o get 'im pissed off he returns on the road to t h ebes h e n otices that the fem ale sphinx is surfa cing again oh well once again he k ills it but forewarned by the previous experience he doesn't tell anyone and ye'know buzzes off fa r real far somet i m es he's here among you aggrieved look fo r being so b adly t h ought of badly understood" (p. 1 5 8). The war, h owever, i s never over and the poet shall continue indefinitely to m easure himself against the m ot her, against his m irror i m age-a partially reassu ring and regenerative experience, a partially castrating, legislating and socializing ordea l: "it's the old woman's vengeance fu rious at having been deciphered saying that's it isn't it it's finished buried once and for all that pig you are free my little darlings i squat on his grave reproduce the dead end ask your questions have respect for the bar it's me it's the law i anus in the su perego i bring you the chi ld of an inhumed gu y's night" (p. 1 5 8).7 The luster surrounding M a llarmean m yst ery i s shattered, as is the tragedy firmly and ent irely anchored in class st ruggle. For the subj ect, h owever, this tragedy is primarily an­ chored in the som ber and blinding reg ion of the m aternal phallus. What follows is the aggressive and mus icated discourse of a kn owledge that att ack s phallic power each t ime it sees it constituting itself under the

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aegis o f t h e m other. Yet i t never forgets t o draw forth the truth that this conflict lets escape. Whence the warning that conju res up the City of God: "the great m other tends to come back with her castrastes as she does each time the ground opens up before boiling" (p. 49); "when thought is im peded it's becau se it has come and gathered around a nam e a desire for a n ame for a navel" (p. 52). He who thinks he is a man is m erely the appendage of a m other. Does that make Man a fantasy of the Phallic M other? " . . . man as such does n o t exist [ . . . ] the shadow of mama shaping her penis everywhere" (p. 1 1 3); j u s t like the Prim itive Father, by the way, "what is all this talk about a man who could h ave every woman if not a woman's fant asy" (p. 1 3 7) . Procreation: t h e m other's pregnancy, that unshakable butt ress o f every social code, insu res cont inued repressi on: "as if science's postulate was a t t h e beginning woman m ade pregnant" (p. 1 37); "m ister t otem misses taboo the dessert a la stabat mater" (p. 13 7). It also insu res, b y the same stroke, the power of the Phallic M other underlying any tyrann ical orga­ nizat ion as she is present in any unconscious desire: "the mama the m am a of great big papa [ . . . ] m other on t h e right fat her on the left and the right side has the left side killed and t h e right side gets hold of the tip of the left side which it hides under its litt'l sk irt which generates t h e indefinite l a y i n g of the o n e excluded from t h e middle" (p. 1 3 7); " t h e cult of the g oddess reason always seem ed to me to be a negative argument against robespierre t here's still some of m ama inside it reeks o f a sub­ m issive son fine student still although the soprano on the altar t h at was daring from that point of view we haven ' t progressed that much" (p. 70). The occult, the esoteric, and the regressive rush in as soon as the sym­ bolic surface cracks and allows the shadow of the t ravestied m other t o appear-its secret a n d i t s ultimate . But why is the speaking subj ect incapable of ut tering the m other within her very self? Why is it that the "m other h ersel f ' does not exist? Or that what is (what is said) has a m other who can only be phallic? A n d whence the insuperable oral stage? " . . . you're all stuck at the oral" (p. 7 5 ) . 8 T h e difficulties of gathering i n t o a specular space the motility o f a pre­ m ature hum a n body, pulverized by instinctual drive: t h at is the difficulty o f identification that t h e mother is particu larly partial to-is t h at an unavoidable backdrop? Transforming this identifying into an

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Other-into the place o f a pure signifier-maintains the presence of a m aternal, substantial, and ego-related opacity in the shadows. The m other reemerges as the archetype of the infinitely interchangeable obj ect of the desiring quest. Thus only by puncturing this place of a "pure signifier" can we also and simult aneously deflate the m aternal sup­ port u pon which the signifier establishes i tsel f, and vice versa. Then, what about the desiring quest? I t becom es a desire for appropriation by maternal langu age: "i'm not talk i ng t o you in the name of the phallic anal this pisses you off like me nor in t he name of the father the son or the t rading post nor in the name of the t hieving genital n o but of genius spread t h e newness of t om orrow t h e antisuperm an the nongod nonman the nonunique the excesses i n dormitories because at last i ask y ou what becomes of death in your neighborhood [ . . . ] your birth sm ack s you in the face you hear breathing easier the rights o f what was there before you i through you i do not through you it's you who chooses my am oeba" (pp. 7 5-76). To rediscover the intonations, scansions, and jubilant rhythms preced­ ing the signifier ' s posit ion as langu age's position is to discover the voiced breath that fastens us to an undifferent iated m other, to a mother who later, at the m i rror stage, is altered into a maternal language. It is also to grasp t h i s maternal language as well as t o be free of it t h a n k s t o the sub­ sequently rediscovered m oth er, who is at a s trok e (a linguistic and logical stroke, m ediat ed by the subj ect ' s p osition), pierced, stripped, signified, uncovered , castrated, and carried away into the symbolic. Thi s is the text-detached from orality, set within the symbolic thesis of a l anguage already acquired before puberty . Perhaps what is involved is the possibility o f reactivat ing the experience of early childhood (the Oedipal stage), a fter the period of latency, into puberty, and u ndergoing the crisis o f this particular reacti­ vat ion in the m idst of language, with no delayed action, directl y o n the body "proper," and within the already ripe sym bolic-logical system that the subj ect will have at its d isposal in his future experience. This "second birth"-this Dionysiac birth-probably comes at the m oment of puberty : then the subject and the Oedipal, m aternal body come together again , her power collides with the sym bolic (which the m ature subj ect-body has already mastered during the period of latency), and the subj ect experiences the trauma of this collision. At that point, either the subject

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su bmits inextricably to a reactivated Oedipal experience, or he and his semiotic capability flee beyond the burnt out, distracting m o t her who threatens sym bolic unity, but who is u ltim ately carried a long within a sem iotic process, where t h e subj ect is alternately put t ogether and pulled apart. From a careful reading of Lois and H, it becomes clear t hrough the numerous evocations of childhood situations-the G ironde region, the garden, the fam ily, the factory, sisters, workers, friends, and games­ that Sollers grants a great deal of im port ance to the period o f latency as a t ru e laboratory where this storehouse of evocations, this semiotic, m ore-than-linguistic stroke, is worked out, which allows the subj ect to break t hrough the pubescent reactivation of the Oedipal experience. This consequently lets the subj ect reconnect with his own oral, anal, and phallic stages and to function within the com plete gamut of the body, l anguage, and the sym bolic. Does this, then, make the "poet" a subj ect who, t oward the end of his childhood, did not sim ply stop and forget but now roams over his own backlands and, like an anam nestic child finds his phallic mother again, thus leaving a t race of t heir conflict in the very language he uses? As a result, that spoken incest places him on the brink where he could sink into the delirium of a schizoid that successfully breaks t h rough everything but the m ot h er; h e could also, under t he sam e m omentum, although by dialect icizing t h e rediscovered m ot h er, on the one hand, and the signifier ri pened at the m o m ent of latency, on the other, by pitting them against each ot h er, produce what is new in "cul­ ture." The innovator, then, would be that child that doesn't forget. Neither blind Oedipus nor warring Orestes t rampling t h e m ot her u nderfo ot, but a subj ect who ceaselessly searches t h rough his latent memory fo r whatever m ight allow him t o resist an invoked and rej ected m ot her. From this moment, every "she" has a place in this configuration . Every hysterical woman, as sym ptom o f symbolic weak ness in relation t o t h e overflowing instinctu al drive, index o f a poorly controlled phallus, and drama o f the word/body separation whose flash-spasm t he poet alone can hear and whose lesson he al o ne can integrate; "the hysterical woman's m outh is our radar" (p. 67); "it can feel in a flash what years cou ld n ever have revealed" (p. 88); "resonant m ercury separating the

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ger ms divergence of dye especially with wom en while man t ends to bury himself under words becau se he still doesn't know how t o let the words bury the words" (p. 1 1 7)-such is "M an's" m istake, which the "poet , " w h o h a s learned from t h e hysterical wom an w i l l not make. The hysterical woman, as wom an, as the other, heterogeneous t o the "poet , " represents what poetic discourse brings about but what man is not (to the extent that he does exist); "she" is this "disunited unity unified into the unique and multiplied multifold" (p. 1 30), which he experiences only in a text. This is why he mu st necessarily a n d constantly m easure him self against her, confront her by inventing a new m eaning for love. Evok ing J oyce: "the other one is right to say that finally a hero mat ters little if he has not also li ved with a woman that lofty airs without this mult iple experience in the m inuscu le allow the m aximum amount of illusion t o subsist" ( p . 2 2 ) . A n d love? " . . . what new relationship male fe m ale i've been look ing for this forever at bottom alone with all quicker lighter brighter" (p. 1 02); "j ust the same i say love out of personal t aste for paradox because of course little t o do with the filth for sale u nder that label j u st the same we n eed revolutionary romant icism a particular serious new style brilliant resolute a vice that o beys us qualified partners [ . . . ] on the contrary i say that with that we settle at the heart of power we overthrow it if we hold firm on obscure points whatever the case m ay be i want to see people come while t hey're wondering why" ( p . 5 6) . Otherwise, w e revert back t o notions of God, t h e exiled negative, and mythical fu sion. Opp osed to this, and in of the "new relation­ ship," we must " think " love-that is, we m u st im pregnate it with negativity, con tradiction, and conflict ; we must display, a s a waterm ark , its constitutive hatred: "bearing the hate of som eone who hates you is not unworthy and i am sick if it is so to hate your enem ies hate is older than love" ( p . 1 67). The "new relationship" involved here is consequen tly dia­ metrically opposed t o fam ilial, mothering, and domestic tranquillity. The closest comparison would be "the big bang hypothesis inspiration expira­ tion the galaxies m ove apart fr om each other as if they were located on a balloon that was being quickly inflated there is the sensation t h at we must ask of coitus without which what a bore the yarn about fusion captation the m a nger the stable the moo moo of the beauty and the

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beast" ( p . 5 2). " H e?" " She?" Each i s split apart, twisted, infinitized, usurping the other's place, giving i t back, an enem y, alone, incom prehen­ sible, dissolved, harm onizing, mak ing war again elsewhere, su rer, truer : "thus the point i s to m old o neself exactly on the enemy like the enemy in the spouse and the spouse in the enemy that's the way he him self offers you vict ory one wants the other and his other is other and you are alone with the sunset" (p. 1 24); "real nett ing of the bedmate who h as becom e an accom plice in mu rder doesn 't stop me from liking the horse in you galloping noble savage" ( p . 96). She?-"here t here's a m oment when the girl looks at you and says i am you you're happy that i ' m you" ( p . 1 44). He?- "he the specialist in reverse pregnancies" (p. 1 1 0). She-He?-as the crisscrossing of sexual di fferences, as the splitting of "I's," or as avoidance, since each one bestows deficiency on the other: "these women their parry is t aut u nder rock toward childbearing the men want to avoid death theorem their desires cross" (p. 60); "you're m y little boy and i'm you m other very depraved o bserving you young beautiful supple your living zipper" (p. 3 8 ) ; with death running the show, shatter­ ing every entity: "and each bone exploded by layers arms gett ing longer and longer [ . . . ] but there is the other's t orture trusting and burning and i already k n ow h ow she won't ever get to know i see her al ready eyes open incredulous cram med full of life and scents carried away blown out like a torch are you able to t ouch her punctu red skull to weigh it to enter it in the race and to laugh j u st the same to continue isn't that the moment when you crack up" (p. 84 ). Rom eo? Juliet? They are disson a n t : "it's t rue that i would kill you with too m any caresses and he detestable m a t rix of death i damn well will force your rotten m outh open [ . . . ] they can ' t feel fr om in there this unex­ pected aspirated jouissance the one since ever on the horizon the retained excess fl are let ' s go come and die where your life was" (pp. 84-8 5); and even m ore clearly: "shall i ever be a sharp parcel of her breath shall i ever succeed in m ak ing a bank d i ssolving of bank s in its reflect ion i u nderstand him who says no i'll stop when the last one has been freed until then i want to hear only dissonances i refuse to sign the prepared agreemen t" (p. 148). Now we can understand that the logic o f this place where negat ivity causes j ouissance is foreign to the l ogic of genealogy and paternal-filial

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numerat ion, i n short, fo reign to procrea tion. This is a place of depletion, lying athwart that of the reproduction o f the species, refusing its absolute regulation with a black ease that here, as elsewhere, avoids the tragic with a laugh: "i propose to provide for as of now a central area for reproduction with fem inine interests set forth from head to foot national assem bl ies of huck stering fathers st ock exchange of proper names [ . . . ] with a norm alization of sundry hom osexual practices [ . . . ] sgic sodom gom orrha int ernational cou ncil" (69- 70) . T h e reproductive funct ion, sustained b y a homosexuality ( nar­ cissism-tapping by the mother) that is unaware of itsel f, engenders the Father-the figure of a power agai nst which the "actor" rebels and whose fissure precisely induces him t o explore the m aternal t erritory. Thus, next to the Phallic M other, but more noticeable than she, and hence less dangerous than she, the Primit ive Father arises . The Freudian vision in Totem and Taboo is deciphered as a hom osexual conspiracy in which brothers kill the father to take the mother for them selves. But, before restoring paternal power in t h e form of a paternal righ t, they indulge in homosexual practices u nder the prim al m other's imaginary grip: "finally the prim ordial father was sim ply a tall crazy woman and freud was right to recall that guys in exile base t heir organization on mutual fe elings t hey fo reswear the use of liberated women it scares t hem shitless they see again in th eir dream s t h at butchered father who is none other than mama knowing the ropes and diseased" (p. 1 28). Similarly, Laius, Oedipu s' fat her, "disobeyed the oracle who forbade him to procreate but o n the other hand as he was a fag like everyone else and as he's �upposed t o have forgotten him self one day in a woman you get the picture" ( p . 1 63 ) . The procreator, an unconsci ou s genetrix, who accom ­ plishes the Phallic M other's desire, is thus the ant onym of the "act or, " o f the "poet . " T h e latter, preserved from t h e reproductive chain, i s at t h e s a m e time preserved fr om sociality a n d the social sexual code-normal or abnormal: "leave the ballroom where the judge dances glued to his favorite lawbreaker go deeper leave ' em alone you've got no t ruck with them " (p. 27). H e is also preserved from au thority and from c oded m astership: "you should procreate how do you expect anyone to take your word without that" (p. 79). Whence, once agai n, t h e " poet' s " com­ plicity with the hysterical-phobic woman who suspects t h a t the fat h er is

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castrated : "enormous di fference o f the daughter who was able physically to ascertain the fa ther's filth iness she can becom e exceptionally our ally how d o we liberate the woman from woman that is the question likewise how do we rid the guy of the guy and maybe then everybody outside o f t heir bou ndaries t h e real session could begin" ( p . 37). And y e t , since the sym bolic network n o t o n l y resists the onrush o f m u sic, and since t h e subj ect's u n i t y not o n l y refrains from crum bling into the "schizoo" bu t , pluralized, sets u p an analytical polylogue in all of his peregrinations, consequently, the paternal function-inasmuch as it is symbolic function, a guaran tee o f nom i nation, symbolization, and superegoistic (even pulverizable) resu rgences-persists eternally. The father' s death accelerates the analysis of the Phallic M other; it reopens access t o the negativity o f drive; but it also probably favors its insertion in a signifier t hat was never so complet ely l iberated and mastered at the same time. The father's first name shows up at th e very beginning of H, j ust as, later on, one encounters the Asiat ically calm image of the father planting orange trees (p. 1 39). They are an im aginary accom plishment, recognizing t h i s symbolic, or one could say "paternal" fu nction that the "I" henceforth assumes; yet, far from providing the subj ect with either fa m i ly or power, this funct ion m akes of him an innumerable and infinitizable exile from socia l sets: "and he pu ts his right hand on me i mean t hat i put it there m yself but in a rather special way t h a t would really take too long to explain but that in any case u ses a rather signifi­ cant qualitative j u m p to k eep the two of the one divides into two and he tells me don't worry 'bout it i am the first and the last and so we h ave t i m e to gas t ogether i am li ving i was dead but now i am living in a way t h at you will n ever stop suspecting [ . . . ] anyhow they can't do anything against my m issile ground ground ground air let him who has ears listen" (p. 28; ground air = sol air = Sollers [Ed . ] ) . T h e paternal function: internal structuration o f t h e polylogical process, cond ition of separat ion from maternal rhythm, posit ing of an " I " that is stable and here, by means of a spoken inces t, m u ltipliable. When all protagonists i n what was the fam ily becom e funct ions within the signi fying process, and nothing m o re, the fa mily l oses i t s reason to exist. It withdraws before something else, something s t i l l i nvisible, an other social space serving the poly logizing subj ect; perhaps, it withdrew before the contradictory association of j ouissance and work?

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20 1

H I S T O R Y A S INFINITIZE D

TOTA LITY Since t h e fam ily has its fam ilial time-the time o f reproduction, genera­ tions, life and death, the linear-phal lic t i m e within which and in relation to which the fam ilial son-daughter-subj ect thinks it self-shattering the family through rhythmic polylogue puts an end to that time. Still, the time of the polylogue is not pause in time, either; some out­ side-of-time rediscovered by the "I" in analysis who brea ks through his sym bolic screen and plunges into a recept acle where the u nconscious holds it self protected and in reserve, without tim e or negation, but who returns within the act of writing, out lin ing this division under the guise of an I/ she-he contradiction. This tim elessness, which is st aged in Drame and, t o a lesser degree, in Nom bres,9 is no longer called for with the "springing of the subj ect" in Lois and H. Here, time reappears and, with the logical- sym bolic thesis, the "I" rediscovers the thread of succession, deduct ion, and evolution. But the rhythm that scans this t hesis turns the thread into a broken path with m u l t i ple edges, an infinity of forks, returns to the same furrows, and departures into other d imensions. It t u r n s it into an unlikely "to pology" t hat t ot alizes every possible and im aginable zone (history of t h ought, history of art, h ist ory of conquests, h istory of revolutions, and history of class struggle), infinitizing them the one t h rough the others. It is like a Phenomenology of the Mind, wit h chapters shuffled like playing cards, their piecing together revealing recursive determinations, trans-tem poral causalit ies, and achronic dependencies that Hegel-a teleol ogist of the evolutionary finite who proceeded by closing cycles-could not h ave im agi ned. In H, there are no set cycles-they open up and crisscross. This is not a Proustian "recovered time" where concatenation of sentences h ark ens the story b ack t o its fam ilial genesis, even if it allows itself to be b roken or rhyth m ically measured by a panchronic and uncon­ scious pro-j ect . Time in H is stratified, polyph onic time; the genesis of t h e family plays only one score among m any others, literally jolted b y t h e sudden appearance o f other paths, b rief flashes, condensed ech oes of otherwise interm inable chronologies. A lmost every sequ ence is recovered time, alt hough it lasts but the time of a breath, of an intonat ion, or of one or m ore j ux t aposed a n d imbricated sentences. Thereupon the sub-

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sequent sequence em erges out o f anot her chronology, and condenses an entirely different time. The rapidity that H produces is in fact the rapidity with which temporal changes take place; it departs from logical m astership, the calm rigor of utt erances, and the perm anent rationality of the subj ect of enunciation, crossing un scathed the boundaries of each sequence. What m oves quickly is not linguistic time nor intonational sequences; alth ough brief, they in fact calm the text by means of their periodic flow, even to the point of mak ing it mo notonous, as some feel Indian music to be. What really m oves along quick ly is the perpetually dividab le story . First, it is taken from different "domains," as can be seen fr om the list of names that are evo ked: Goethe (Dichtung und Wahreit), Homer ( The Iliad, p. 1 1 }, Overney (p. 1 2), 10 H O!derlin (p. 1 6), U SS R- India- U S A (p. 5 9 ) , Stalin- Lenin- Lasalle- H egel-Heraclitus (p. 67), an ailing Freud (p. 73), oppositions to Freud ( p . 81 ), Don Juan (p. 86), M ozart and Nietzsche (p. 87), Rumi (p. 89), M ozart (p. 89), Pu rcell (p. 90), J oyce (p. 90), Charcot (p. 92), M allarm e (p. 1 03), M arx (p. 1 07), Sade (p. 1 09), Nietzsche and Socrates (p. 1 1 3 ), Stali n ' s daughter (p. 1 1 4), Leibnitz (p. 1 1 4), Spinoza (p. 1 1 4), M a rx- Engels and N ietzsche again, along with the Vietnam war (p. 1 1 5 ), HO !derlin (p. 1 1 9), Len in-E picurus (p. 1 1 9), H egel and Plato (p. 1 1 9), M allarm e rewritten (p. 1 2 5), the Greek s (p. 1 2 5), M elville (p. 1 26), Mao ("the infinite flow of absolute truth," p. 1 25 ) , the Biturige people (p. 1 4 1 ), the child G oeth e (p. 1 45), G orgias (p. 1 1 0), Euripides and Pindar (p. 1 22), Aristotle, A eschylus, Pu rcell (p. 1 22), Nerval (p. 1 23 ) , Engels and Bachofen (p. 1 23), C opernicus ( p . 1 5 6), Baudelaire as dealt with by L e Figaro (p. 1 62), G reek paeans (p. 1 65), again M allarme rewritten (p. 1 64), P ou nd (p. 1 72), Freud on h omosexuality (p. 1 3 2), Nerval with the Prince of Aquitaine (p. 1 3 9), M onteverdi (che g/oria ii morir per desio de/la vit­ toria, p. 1 42), the Brahmins (pp. 1 42-43), Descartes-N apoleon (p. 1 43), Socrates ( p . 1 48), Celine, Beckett, Burroughs (p. 1 5 1 ), Lautreamont (pp. 1 5 3-54), Van G ogh (p. 1 54), Lenin (p. 1 8 2) . . . This list is fa r from com­ plete, but it eventually provides an (approxim ate) idea of t h e meander­ ings of H t hrough what is k n own as the history of philosophy, science, religion, and art. By m eans of these circuits and short-circu its, these separate fields cease t o be the shreds of one "specific h i story" t o becom e the heterogeneous moments of a poly-logical, poly-tem poral subject; the reader is asked to refashion within his own semiotic process "specific

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tem poralities" (art, science, politics, econom ics) and the exceptional adventu res of "great m en. " These are indices of the "springing o f the subj ect" into and through his own dissolut ion into the masses, among others, and they continue t o weigh uncom fortably on the com plex-ridden, neurotic consciousness of this or that political choice. Through t im e experienced a n d recast-heterogeneous a n d m ultiplied-the subj ect who has been called fo rth, the twentieth-century subj ect , is a subj ect of m ore than twenty centu ries of histories that ignored one a nother, within m odes of production that excluded one another. Let us set history to rhythm, let us introduce history's rhyt hm into our discou rses, so that we m ight become the infinit ized su bj ect of all histories-be they individual, national, or class histories-which h enceforth nothing can tot alize. Confronted with that practice in H, any historical, linear, and "specific" reconst itution seem s narrow, penal, penalizing, and reductive of at l east one of the li nes that are competing here to sever, com plem ent, and open them selves-avoiding the formation of a closed loop. There is, however, an axis that insu res the progression of this frag­ mentat ion of refashioned time: the critical political position in present­ day history. To the logical thesis, disintegra t ed by semiotic rhythm s within an i n finit e sentence, t here corresponds, as concerns t i m e, a critical practice within contemporary history. The stage is set with Overney from the outset , but one also recognizes ing figures or configurat ions of the political scene: M essm er,11 Pom pidou (p. 1 34), the Palestinians at the M u nich Olympic Games (p. 1 5 5), fascists m assacring J ews; Laurence, a childhood fr iend, and her yellow star (p. 1 40), M ao's reception of the Japanese Prime M inister ( p . 1 7 2), the Lin Piao "affair" ( p . 1 68), the idiocy o f academ ic discourse ("that seven horned sheep of a reading expert, " pp. 30, 1 48), the accelerated rhythm of the polylogue iden t i fying with the pace of industrial work (p. 92), and so on. Class conflicts, the shifting of the historical axis, the entry of China int o world history, and, gradually, the ideological struggle, here and n ow: thus is the historical space elaborated where the subject posits him self in order to refashion time-the time of subjectivity and, through it, a new historical time. Without this space, there can be no polylogue: neither rhyth m , nor mul­ tiplied m eaning, nor tot alized, strati fied, infinitized time. By this I mean that H would not be co nceiva ble if it were not political. There could be no polylogical subject without this new-stratified, mu!-

2 04

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tiplied, and recurring-political topos, which dem onstrably has nothing to do with classical, dogm atic, and merely li near political positions that incarnate a fam ilial time structure within a familial discou rse. The inseparability o f politics and polylogue ap pears as the guarantee of a meeting between the subj ect's unset tling process and that of history. Fail­ ing such m eeting, there is either insanity or dogmatism-always s olidary, like the two sides of a coin. Historically significa nt, the bourgeois class, the very one that was responsible for forging a notion of history, has had no poetry and has censured madness. Its successor, the petty bou rgeoisie, at best rehabilitated mad ness, but it lacks a sense of history: " t h ere is by definition n o bourgeois poetry just as there is no petty bourgeois h i story" (p. 1 4 1 ). New historical fo rces, if they exist, will have no choice but to impose them selves in other ways; that is, through a polylogical politics: "a form of life has grown old it's done for bring on the next one" (p. 1 6 1 ). The k ind of u pheaval now required involves more than a change in class power. We are now faced with a m o nu m ental requirement. We must transform the subj ect in his relat ionship t o language, t o the sym­ bolic, to un ity, and to history. U ntil recently, this k ind o f revolution t ook the fo rm of religion: "as if the new subj ect was not primarily the one risen fr om the dead in other words he who absolut ely does n ' t give a damn fo rever and forever climbing out of potter's field with his little red and gold flag t hat's why christianity is a tragic or comic m isin terpreta­ tion" (p. 6 5 ) . H also listens to the tim e of Christianity, perhaps m ore closely than anyone t oday, in order t o grasp the truth of m onotheism that it sets for th; namely, that neither subject nor history can exist without a confrontation between challenging process (sem iotics, produc­ tion, class struggle) and u nity (symbolic, th etic, phallic, paternal, of the state). H does this with the aim o f leading us through and beyond Chris­ tianity: "he'll come the new subj ect it's messianic thinking not really only that we m ove forward in disorder on all fr onts strudel leaves" (p. 73). H inserts us into the m om entum of death held in abeyance-that i s , of t i m e . H splinters a n d refashions o u r language, our body, a n d our t i m e . H i n fuses our identity with a sense o f struggle to have u s desire social con­ flict and no l onger separate the one from the other. In t oday, "death lives a human life you can check i t out yourself every night just look at the newscaster on the tv absolute k n owledge has com e into being

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period" (p. 41 ) . So "i accept com pletely the com ing of class struggle it does not affect m y interests n o second thoughts about i t no bank no subj ective obelisk to polish i'm look ing for points at which to intervene little finger right foo t earlobes wrists top of t h e shoulders i've been really on top of it for years now" (p. 27). Traditionally, time has been divided into two opposing modes-irredu­ cible, split, both sym pt om and cause of schizoid condition. The fi rst is an atemporal " basis" from which there su rges an infinit ely repeat able, resounding im pulse, cu tting an inaccessible eternity into unifo rm o r dif­ ferentiated instants. The second is the, let m e call it "biblical," suc­ cession of numbers, chronological devel opment, evolution with an i n finite goal ; this is generally called his torical time. H r eleases from within the historical continuum cert ain eternally recurrent m o m ents. Similarly, but inversely, by situating each rhythmic m easure, each intonation, each narrat ive sequence, each sentence, and each eternal m oment of personal experience within hist orical develop­ ment and progression, H prevents any atemporal "basis" whatsoever fr om forming. Time as rhythm ic agency and time as evolutive duration m eet dialectically in H, just as they m eet in language, even if every lin­ guistic perform ance does not reveal it . Consequently, if historical dura­ tion operates on the basis of repression, locking the ego and the superego into an endless race toward death, seen as a race toward paradise, then rhyt hm-as metered time, spat ialized, volume rather than line--crops up t o remind one of what is at w ork beneath repression: the cost at which repression (duration-or history, to put it briefly) achieves its goal as the fulfillment of a sociocu ltural contract . But it is an explosive encounter, for when rhythm gets rid of repressive duration, time can stop for the subj ect who has become the situs of the intersect ion. Rhythm causes this stop in order to cut duration short; duration plans it so as t o i m pede rhythmic pain. Suicide: "write this down a hu ndred times rhythm is an inferior demon but sir if the general refers to itself it catches fire n egation that m a k es up the basis of cause is the positive encounter of cause with itself and anyhow the reciprocal action being the causality of cause cause does n't die out in the effect alone [ . . . ] what is the one a disqualifying limit and lenin says it in restrained fa shion thought should emcom all represent at i on and so must b e dialectical to wit divided by nature unequal altered i am thirsty

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[ ] i ' v e h ad enough enough o r t h e n the cou rage t o w a n t a l s o this enough t o the extreme in half a second i t is gul ped raw tem ptation for it is out of the question to express oneself here during the lecture light up no turn on the gas no jump go on com e on now j u m p no swa llow all of that no i said no the knife no the razor blades in hot water no now is the time when you ' re the rat ion" (pp. 1 82-8 3). Suicide stands for the accident o f this dialectical encounter between rhythm and duration; of the negat ivit y that causes each stasis to be "deferred" and each inst ance of repression to be driven towards the limits where sociality and l i fe disappear; and of the repression that serves as a foundation fo r the sym bolic, for comm unication, and fo r t h e social j 1.! ggernau t . Thus, it is easy to understand why striated, rhyth mic, and transfinite discourses are cat hected into social logic only at the m o m ent of its ruptu res-i .e., its revolutions. It should be equally underst andable why suicide (in M ayakovsky's case, for example) marks the failure of a revolu tion; its settling down censures a rhythm that t hought it could m eet and recognize itself within i t . But besides revolu tions? Classically and traditionally, when there is no revolu tion, there is transcendence "rescu­ ing" the subj ect from suicide. Divine, family oriented, humanitarian (the list could go on fo rever) transcendence shifts the rhythmic time o f a poly­ logical subj ect into a signifying or sym bolic elsewhere where h e exists as a shelt ered exile. Yet, th ere, surreptitiou sly, the eternal " basis" is reconstituted, along with phobic hom ogeneity, and once again, an eternal-su pport for the Eternal-Phallic M other. Such a "rescue" is therefore im possible for the heterogeneous, m aterial, and polylogical experience of the subject in unsettling process. But what about su icide? I t i s , indeed, t h e ultimate gesture, i f o n e exists, a n d which is prevented only by the j oui ssance of regaining control-the recovery of the " I , " this "springing of the subject" against (as one says, "leaning against") h er, the other, as well as against the others, the other in itself; against the symbolic, structuring, regim enting, protective, historicizing thesis-to be shi ft ed, traversed, exceeded, m ade negative, and be brought t o j ouissance. The negativity that underlies historical duration is the rej ection of the other but also of the " I , " of the alt ered " I . " The history that precedes us, that is being made all arou nd us, that we invoke as ultimate justification and un touchable sublimation, is built upon negativity-rej ection-death; .

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and the fulcrum of this negativity is first and forem ost the subj ect itself: put to death o r suicided by society (as Artaud said of Van Gogh ) . This is what H sets forth by m eans of its series of "personal histories, " its "case studies" (Nerval, Holderlin, Artaud, et cetera), often invisible within "comm onplace" renditions of history, and particu larly that of class struggle. H aving durable history listen to the murder over which it steps ahead; having those atem poral moments when duration was ruptu red reason and resound, so as to extract whatever it represses and whatever renews it at the same t i m e (new music, new poetry, new philosophy, new politics). The ruptured, invert ed, and refashioned time of H induces us to grasp a new history. We t end to forget t h at when a twen tieth -century-minded person l istens to the Eroica, for exam ple, he/ she is listening to time as Beet h oven experienced it when he heard the arm i es of the French Revolu tion; the rhyth m ic hoo fbea ts o f their horses, the borders t h ey opened, and Europe brought together for the first time thank s to the canons . . . Listening to t h e t i m e that fills H, I hear a world finally spread out. Asia, A fr ica, A m erica, and Europe are inextricably mi ngled by economy, politics, rad io, television, and communications satellites. Each one bears a chronology that, instead o f accepting to b e quietly pigeonholed in proper order, calls on the other, p oin ting out its shortcomings, even though it wi shes to be its partner. Each one itting of different sem iotic practices (myths, religions, art, poetry, polit ics) whose h ierar­ chies are never the same; each system in turn questioning the values of the others. The subj ect who listens to this time could indeed and at least "treat himself as a sonata," as H put s i t . Is H , t h e n a book? A t ext that ex ists only i f it c a n fi nd a reader who m atches its rhythm-its sentential, biological, corporeal, and trans-fami­ lial rhythm, infini tely m arked out within historical t i m e. Already in H, as Artaud wanted it t o be, "co m p osition instead of happening in the h ead of an author wil l hap pen in nature a n d real space with consequently im m ense obj ective wealth in addition i m peding u nderhanded approp �ia­ tion necessitating the risks of execu tion" (p. 1 04). This is all p ossi o1e because someo ne r efashioned his "I" and his language into a music ade­ quate to the continuing, splin tering times. But also and at the same time, this is possible because H has gone b eyond the One in order to be written, and thus calls on every "one" to venture out into the explosion t hat sur-

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ro u n ds u s , mo ves t h rough us, refashions us and that sooner or later

we

shall have to h ear: "a form of l ife h as grown o l d i t' s done for b ri n g on t h e next one" ( p . 161) or, i f you t ak e in some o f H, yo u know t h a t " al l flesh is l i k e grass sh adow t h e dew o f t i m e a m ong voices" ( p . 1 8 5 ) .

N otes I. I n F rench slang, t h e l etter H rerers to hashish as well as to heroin, whe reas i n our slang it rerers mainly to heroin. The American slang word hash would t hus correspon d to Sollers' H ; t ha t con notation o r his t i t l e shou ld be k e p t i n m i n d-bu t t he re are , o r course, a n umber or others. [ E d . ) 2. R e rerences to Sol lers' nov el H ( Paris: S e u i l, 1 97 3) w i l l b e made i n t h e body or t h e t e x t ; ro m a n rigures w ithin pare n t heses indicate t h e pa ge, i t a l i c s t h e line. Quotations have b e e n translated except when the disc ussion is closely t e x t u a l , as in t he fol lowing pages, and the points made by K rist eva would not apply to an En glish v ersio n . [Ed.) 3 . I n F r e n c h , the pronunc iation or ex-schize is t h e same as t h a t o r exquise, the words meaning respectively "being a former schizoid" a n d " e xq u isit e . " The Surrealist rererence is obv ious in Sollers' t e x t, where t h e word cadavre precedes ex-schize. [Ed . ) 4 . T h e " p honic d ifferential," which i s a "si g n i rying di fferential" ( Le ibnitz hovers i n the back gro u n d), is, briefly put, t he place and the m ea ns by w hich t h e g enotext penetrates the phenotext at t h e level or t h e sign ifier; each elem e n t o r t h e sign ifier is thereby overde­ termined by the m ea n ing or the l ex ical item or or the sentence, and by the d rives working t hrou gh phona tion . The phenotext is t h e printed text, b u t it is legible in the fu l l sense or the term only when one explores its complex g e n esis. These notions are developed i n the essay, " L ' E ngendrement de la form u l e ," in �1Jµflwnx� (Pa ris: S e u i l , 1 9 69), a nd La Revolurion du langage poerique (Paris: Seuil, 1 9 74), pp. 209/f [Ed . ] S . T h e re rere nce is to S chre be r's Grundsprache, which h a s b e e n t ra nslated as "basic language" in the Srandard Edirion or Freud's works. Because or t he connot ations or "basic" (e.g., "basic English"), I h ave c hose n to t ra nslate it as " ru nd a m e n t a l language." The Fre n c h phrase is langue defond. [ Ed . ) 6 . " l a raison du p l u s mort" parodies t h e w e ll -known line b y La Fon t a i n e , " La raison d u p l u s fort e s t toujou rs l a meilleure" from t h e fable T he Wolf a n d 1 h e Lam b. I t is a rough equ i v alent or " Might m ak es right ." [Ed.) 7. " I a n u s , " im plyi ng that t h e n ou n has b e c o m e a v e rb, renders t h e Fre n c h J'anus b u t l e av es out the o b v i o u s p u n ; "i bri n g you t h e c h i l d o r an i n h u m e d guy's n i g h t " reebly a tte mpts to suggest the sound or t h e Engl ish t ra ns l a t ion or a line by M allarme, "I bri n g you the c hild or an Id u m e an night . " In Fre nch, the a nalogy is closer: " J e t 'apporte l'e nfant d'une n u i t d'Idu mee/Je t 'a pport e l ' e nfa n t d'une n u i t d'inhume." [ E d . ) 8 . T h e Fre nch, "vous etes t ous colics a ! 'oral" c a n mean both, " you hav e a l l rlu n k ed your orals" or, "you a re all glued to oralit y . " [ E d . ) 9 . Two e arlier novels by Sol lers: Drame ( Pa ris: S e u i l , 1 9 6 5; New York : R e d Dust, 1 980), and Nombres, ( P aris: Seuil, 1 9 68). Nom bres w as the starting poi n t o r Krist ev a's essay, " L ' E ngendrement de la formule" (CL note 4 ) . [ Ed . ) IO. P ierre Overney w a s a work er k i l led by a s e c urity g u a r d d u rin g a n a n t iracist demonstra tion outside the R e n a u l t plant at Bil Ian court (a Paris suburb) on Febru ary 26,

THE

N O V E L AS P OLY LOG U E

209

1 972; Jalal ed- Din Rumi w a s a thirteenth c e n tury S u list poet whose main work is t h e Mathnawi; Jean-Ba ptiste Cha rcot ( 1 8 67- 1 9 3 6 ) w a s a French neu rologist a n d explorer or the antarctic re gions a n d or Greenland, t he latter in his ship named Pourquoi pas? ( Why not?): the B itu rige were one or t h e t ribes of G a u l. dwellin g in what later became the Berry province w ith some ( according to Sollers) w a n d e ring to the Bordeaux region; Gorgias ( c . 48 5-c .380 B.c.) was a Greek Sophist born in Sicily who was sent as am bassador to A thens where he set t led and taught rhetoric: Johan J a kob Bachoren ( 1 8 1 5- 1 8 87) was a S wiss ju rist and c lassical scholar who is perhaps best k nown for his stu dies on social evolu­ tion and matriarchy as developed i n his book , Das Mutterrecht [ M at r i a rchal law] Base l: B. Schwabe, ( 1 8 6 1 ): while t he re were prin ces in t he former d u c hy a n d k in gdom or Aquitain e . t h e phrase " P ri n c e o r A q uita i n e" e vok es, for a contem porary c u l t u red French perso n, the we ll-k nown lines from Gerard de N erval's poe m El Desdichado, "Je suis le tenebreu.x,-le veuf. l'inconso/e, I Le prince d'A quitaine a la tour abolie." [ E d . ] 1 1 . P ierre M essmer i s a hard-line Gaul list w ho w a s a ppoi nted premier in 1 972 by con­ servative French P resident G eorges Pompidou; at the Olympic G ames in M u n i ch ( 1 97 2 ) n i n e Isr a e l i a th l etes w e re seized by t h e Black Septe mbe r O rganizat ion a n d l ater k i l led dur­ ing a g u n battle between the Palest i n ian terrorists and German police: clearly. K risteva in cludes, under t he general term . " fascist." the German N a z is a n d French collaborators who were respo nsible for m assacring French J ews. [Ed. ]

8.

G I OTTO ' S J OY

H ow can we find our way through what separates words from what i s b o t h without a n a m e a n d m ore t h a n a name: a painting? W h a t is it that we are trying to go through? The space of the very act of nam ing? At any rate, it is not t h e space o f "first naming," or of the incipient naming o f t h e in/ans; nor is i t the one that arranges into signs what the subject perceives as separate real ity. In the present insta nce, the painting is already there. A particu lar "sign" has al ready come into being. It has organized "something" into a painting with no hopelessly separate referent ; or rather, the painting is its own reality. There is also an " I " speak ing, a n d any num ber of "I's" speaking di fferently before the "same" painting. The question, then, is t o insert t h e signs of language i n t o this already-produced reality-sign-the painting; we m u st open out, release, and set side by side what is compact, condensed, and m eshed . We must t h e n fi n d o u r w a y through w h a t separates the place where " I " spea k, reason, and u nderstand from t h e o n e where something functions in addition to my speech : something that is more-than-speech, a m eaning to which s p ace and color have been added. We m u st develop, then, a second-st age nam ing in order t o name an excess o f n am es, a m ore-than­ name become space and color-a painting. We must retrace t h e speaking t hread, put back into words that from which words have withdrawn . M y choice, m y desire t o speak o f Giotto ( 1 267- 1 3 3 6)-if justification be needed-relates t o his experiments i n architecture and color (his t ranslation "of in stinctual d rives into colored surface) as m u ch as t o his place within t h e history o f Western painting. (He lived a t a time when the die had not yet been cast, when i t was far fr om sure that all lines would lead t oward the unifying, fixed center of perspect ive. ) ' I shall attempt t o First appeared i n Peinture ( J a n u ary 1 972), no. 2-3 ; r eprinted i n Poly/ogu e ( P aris: Seuil, 1 977), pp. 3 8 3 -408.

' G I OTTO S J O Y

21 1

relate that ex perience, that translation, that pivotal historic m om ent without verbal from any of these-except for a few a necd otal although not insignificant points, drawn mostly from G iorgio Vasari. 2 This kind of endeavor locates m y strategy som ewhere between an immediate and subj ective deciphering and a stil l incoherent, heteroclitic theoretical apparatus yet to be worked out . Primarily, I should emphasize that such an i t inerary implicates its subject m ore than it repudiates it u nder the aegis of a scientific code. This is not an apology; rather, I am calling attention to the dialectical necessity and difficulty now facing any theory of painting that attempt s to put forward an under­ standing of its own practice.

N A R R ATION

AN D T H E N O R M

Giott o 's pictorial narr&. tive fol lows bi blical and evangelical canon, a t Assisi a s well a s a t PadU<"\, deviating from i t only t o bring i n the m asses. In those works concerning St. Francis, the Virgin M ary, and Christ, mythical charact ers resem ble the peasants of G iotto's time. This socio­ logical aspect , h owever important it m ight be to the history of paint ing, shall not concern me here. O f course, it goes hand in hand with Giotto's disruption of space and color; it could not h ave come about without such a disruption and, in this sense, I could say that it followed . Christian legend, then, provided the pictorial signified: the normative elements of painting, insuring both adherence t o social code and fidelity to ideological dogm a. The norm has withdrawn into the signified, which is a narrative. Painting as such wou l d b e possible as l ong a s it served the narrative; within the framework of the narrative, it had free rein. A nar­ rative signified cannot constrain the signifier (let us accept these for the moment) except through the im position of continuous representa­ tion. Contrary to a certain k ind of Buddhist or Taoist painting, Christian painting experienced the mass arrival of charact ers with t heir itineraries, destinies, and histories: in short, their epic. The advent of "histories of subjects" or "biographies"-sym bolizing both phylo- and ontogenetic mutations-as wel l as the int roduction of the principle of narrative into Christ ian ideology and art are theoretically justified by Saint Francis and his exegete Saint Bonaventura . The lat ter's

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' G IO T T O S JO Y

The Mind's R oad t o God is t h e philosophical enu nciation of a subject' s itinerary, o f a series o f trials, o f biography, of narrative. I f t h e principle of itinerary itsel f is not new (it appears in Greek epics, popular oral tradition, biblical legends, etc. ), its formulation by Bonaventura is rela­ tively so, favoring, or sim ply justifying, its entry into the Christian pic­ torial art of the time by disrupting twelve-centur ies-old, rigid Christian canon . This t heoretical and artistic phenomenon fits in with a new European society m oving t owards the Ren aissance and breaks with the Byzantine t radition (portraits and detailed but isolated scenes, lack ing sequences of im ages articulated within a totalizing cont inuity) that Orthodox Christianity, which h ad no Renaissance, preserved . There are pictorial narrative episodes in t h e nave of Santa M aria Mag­ giore in Rome (fourth century), but it would seem that the oldest narra­ tive sequence pertaining to the old Test ament is in the Church o f Sant' A pollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, dating from the t i m e of Theodoric. In illust rated manuscripts of the sixth century, illuminations follow a logic o f narrative epi sodes (cf. Th e Book of G enesis at Vienna). But Byzantine m osaics, including those at St. M a rk ' s Chu rch in Venice, depict detailed scenes and sequences of dramatic and pathet ic scenes without any com prehensive narrative to seal the entire fa te of a particular character. To the contrary, the narrative signified of the G iotto frescoes at Padu a ( figure 3), through a sim ple and stark l ogic lim ited t o the basic episodes of M ary's and Jesus' lives, suggests t h at the dem ocratization of the Christian religion was effected by means of biography. On the walls o f Padua w e find a masterful expression of personal itineraries replacing Byzantine pathos. Within Giotto's pictorial narrat ive, the notion of indi­ vidual history is, in fact, m ore developed in the Padua frescoes than in those at Assisi. The em pt y chairs suspen ded in a blue expanse ( Th e Vision of the Thrones at Assisi) would be unim aginable in the secular narrative of the Padua fr escoes. Yet, the narrative signi fied of the Arena Chapel's nave, ing the symbolism of teleological dogm a (guarantee of the mythical Christian community) and u n folding in three superimposed bands from left t o right in accorda n ce with the Scriptures, is artificial. Abruptly, the scroll tears, coiling in upon itself from both sides near the top of the back wall facing the altar, revealing the gates of h eaven a h d exposing the narrative as

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F IG U R E 3 . G I OTTO, I N T E R I O R O F T H E A R E NA C H A P E L, P A D U A . P h o t o : Dm itri K essel

nothing but a thin layer of color (figure 4). Here, just under the two scrolls, facing the altar, lies anot her scene, outside the narrative: Hell, within the broader scope of the Last Judgment. This scene is the reverse of the narrat ive's symbolic seq uence; three elem ents coexist there: his­ torical characters (Scrovegni [who is the donor of the chapel], and the painter him self), the Last Judgment, and the two groups of the blessed and the damned. With the representation of Hell the narrative sequence stops, is cut short, in the face of hist orical reality, Law, and fantasy (naked bod ies. violence, sex, death)-in other words, in the face o f the human dimension-the reverse of the divine continuity displayed in the narrat ive. In the lower right-hand corner, in the depiction of Hell, the contours of the characters are blurred, some colors disappear, ot hers weak en, and still ot hers dark en: phosphorescent blue, black, dark red . There is no longer a distinct architecture; obliquely set m asonry alongside angular mountains in the narra tive scenes give way on the fa r wall to ovals, discontinuity, curves, and chaos.

2 14

G IOTTO'S J O Y

FIGURE 4. G I OTTO, D E TA I L F R O M T H E L A S T J U DG M ENT. A R E N A C H A P E L. P A D U A . Photo: Scala

It seems as if the narrative signified of Christian painting were upheld by an ability to point to its own dissolu tion; the u nfolding narrat ive (of tra nscendence) must be broken in order for what is both extra- and anti­ narrative to appear: nonlinear space of historical men, Law, and fantasy. The representation of Hell would be the representation of narrative dissolution as well as the collapse of architecture and the disa ppearance of color. Even at this fu ll stop in epic sequence, representation still rules

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as the only vestige of a tra nscendental norm , a n d of a signified i n Chris­ tian art . Deprived of narrat ive, representation alone, a s signifying device, operates a s guarantee for the m ythic (and here, Christian) com munity; it appears as symptom atic o f this pictorial work ' s adh erence t o an ideology; but it also represents the opposite side of the norm, the antinorm , t he forbidden, the anoma lous, the excessive, and the repressed: Hell. Only in this way is the signifier of the narrative (i . e . , the particular ordering of forms and colors constituting the narrative as painting) released here, at the conclusion of the narrat ive; it fi nds its sign, and con­ sequently, b ecom es symbolized as the reverse, negat ive, and ins�parable other of transcendence. The his tory of i ndividual subj ects, the Last Judg­ ment, and Hell cap ture in a transcendence (which is no longer recited, but rather, pinpointed; no longer situ ated in time but rather in space) this "force working upon form " that earlier was concatenated as narrative. In Hell, painting reaches its l i m i t and brea k s apart . The next m ove would be to abandon represen tation, to have noth ing but color and form-or noth­ ing at all. In Giotto's wor k, color and form "in them selves" are never liberated. But beginning with Giotto, with the em ergence of the great Christian paintings of the Renaissance, the independence of color and form appears in relation to the signified (to th eological norm ): with respect to narrative and representation. It appears indepen dent precisely because it constantly pits itself against the everpresent norm . It tears itself from the norm , byes it, turns away from it, absorbs it, goes beyond it, d oes something else-always in relation to i t . Certain Buddhist a n d F a r Eastern paintings exclude t h e signified from representation and become depleted either through the way t hey are laid out (Tantric squares, for exam ple) or inscribed (ideograms in Chinese painting). Giotto's practice, on the other hand, and the Christ ian tradi­ tion of art in general, show t heir independence of symbolic Law by pit­ ting themselves against the represented narrative (parables of C hristian dogma) as well as against the very economy of symbolization (color­ form-representation). Thu s, pictorial practice fu lfills itsel f as freedom-a process of liberation through and against the norm ; to be sure, we are speaking of a subj ect's freedom, emerging through an order (a signified) turned graphic while permi tting and in tegrating its transgressions. For, the subj ect ' s freedom, as dialectics sets forth its truth, would consist

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precisely in i t s relative escape from the symbolic order . B u t , since this freedom does not seem to exist outside o f what we agree t o call an "artist, " it com es about by m od i fying t h e role played by t h e systems of referent, signifier, and signi fied and their repercussions within the organi­ zation of signi fiance into real, im aginary, and sym bolic (both role and organization are patterned on the fu nction of verbal commu nica­ tion-keystone of the religious arch) so as to organize them differen tly . Two elem ents, color and t h e organization o f pict orial space, will help us, within Giotto's painting, t o follow this m ovement t owards relative inde­ pendence from a signifying practice patterned on verbal communication.

THE

TRIPLE



OF C O L O R

I n t h e search for a clue t o a r tistic renewal, attention h a s often been given to the com position and geomet rical organizat ion of Giotto's frescoes. Critics have less frequently stressed the im portance of col or in the pic­ torial "language" of G i o t t o and of pai nters in general . This is probably because "color" is difficult t o situate both within the formal sys tem o f painting and within painting considered a s a practice-th erefore, i n rela­ tion to the painter . Although sem iological appro aches consider painting as a language, they do not allow an equivalent for color within the ele­ ments of la nguage identi fied by linguist ics . D oes it belong am ong phonem es , morphem es, phrases, or lexemes? If it ever was fru itful, the la nguage/painting analogy, when faced with the problem of color, becom es untenable. Any invest igation of this question must th erefore start from another hypothesis, no lo nger structural, but econom ic-in th e Freudian sense of the term . What we have perm issibly called t h e conscious presentat i o n o f the obj ect can now be split u p into the presentation o f the word and the presentation o f the thing [ . ] The system Ucs. contains t h e t h i ng-ca t h exes of the objects, the first and true obj ect-cathexes; t h e Pcs. comes about b y t h i s thi ng-presentation being hy percat hected th rough being l i n k ed with the word-prese ntations corresponding to it. It i s these hypercathexes, we may suppose, that bring about a higher psy­ chical organization and m a k e it possible for the primary process to be succeeded by the secondary process which is dominant i n t h e Pcs.3 .

.

This hypercathexis of thing-presentations by word-presentations permits the fo rmer to become conscious, somet h ing they cou ld never do without

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217

this hypercathexis, for " thought proceeds in sys tem s s o far remote from the original perceptual resi dues that they have no longer retained any ­ thing of t he qualities of those residues , and, in order to become con­ scious, need to be reinforced by new qualities . "• Freud sees, then, a split between percepti on and t hought process. Positing a qualitative disappearance of archaic perceptions (an assump­ tion that seem s wrong to us when we co nsider the subject as "artist , " but we shall not argue this point here), Freud situates word-presentations in a position of relat ionship involving two categories: the perceptual and the verbal . Such an economy is particularly clear in the case of sch izophrenia where word-presentations undergo a m ore intense cathexis in or der to allow for recovery o f "lost obj ect s" separated from the ego (what Freud calls " taking the road of the o bj ect by way of its word elem ent"). In int erpreting Freud's t erminology, it becom es clear t h a t "thing­ presen tation" principally designates the pressure of the unconscious drive linked to (if not provoked by) obj ects. "Thought" denotes conscious processes (including secondary processes), and the various synt actical and logical operations; resulting from the imposition of repression, they hold at bay the "thing-presen tations" and their corresponding insti nctual pressures. The term "word-presentation" poses m ore o f a problem . It seem s t o designate a com plex state of drive t h at cathect s the symbolic level, 5 where this instinctual drive will later be replaced, due to repression, by the sign representing (erasing) it within the communicative system . Within "word-presentations" the drive' s pressure: ( 1) is di rected at an external obj ect ; (2) is a sign in a system ; and (3) emana tes from the biological organ that articu l ates the psychic basis o f such sign (the vocal apparatus, the body in general). Freud in fact writes, "But word-presenta­ tions, for their part t oo, are derived from sense-perceptions, in the sam e way as th ing-presentations are." 6 Word-presentations would t h en b e doubly lin ked t o t h e body. First , as represen tations of an "exterior" obj ect denoted by the word, as well as representations of the pressure itself, which, although intraorganic, nevertheless relates the speaking subject to the obj ect. Second, as representations of an " interior objec t , " an internal percept ion, an eroticization of the body proper during the act of formulating the word as a sym bolic elem ent . This b odily "duel , " thus coupling the inside and the out side, as well as the two instinctual pressu res linked to bot h , is the matter upon which repression is set-transform ing this complex and

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heterogeneous pressure i n t o a sign directed at someone else within a com ­ municative system, i . e . , trans form ing it into language. The triple is made up of a pressure marking an outside, another linked t o the body proper, and a sign (signifier and pri m ary processes). This is then invested in the fragile, ephemeral, and com pact phase of the symbolic fu nct ion's genesis and constitutes the true require­ ment for this fu nction. It is preci sely this triple that is cathected in an instinctual ma nner in cases of "narcissistic neuroses" where one has detected the " flight of the ego that manifests itself in the rem oval of con­ scious cathexis." That is, it fo rsak es the dist ance that kept apart "thought" from "d rives" and "thing-presen tations" and thus cu lm inated in isolat ing the ego. This triad also seem s to be hypercathected on the artistic fu nction, whose economy thus appears to be clearly disti nct from that of com­ municat ion. I f, indeed, the signifier-signified-referent triangle seem s methodologica lly su fficient to describe the com municative fu nction, artistic practice adds what Freud calls "word-present ation . " This implies the triple of exterior drive, interior drive, and signifier. It in no way corresponds to the sign's triangle, but it affect s the architecture of the latter. As a result, the artistic fu nction int roduces a pivotal order into the symbolic order (the order of "thought," according to Freud's termi­ nology). This pivotal order-both an "energetic pressure" (instinctual drive) and an "imprint" (signi fier)-modifies both the symbolic (because it cathects it with instinctual drive and thing-presentation) and thing­ presen tations (because it cat hects them with signifying rela tionships that the percep tions them selves could not have insofar as th eir cathexes "cor­ respond only to relationships between th ing- presentations").7 This Freud ian metapsychol ogical triad frustrates both " representa­ tion" (as it rat her involves tak ing in instinctual pressu res) and the "word . " It suggests an elementary formal apparatus, capable of setting in m otion the phonemic order, a stock of lexemes, syntactic strategies (these to be determined for each subject through the process of langu age acqu isition), and the presyntactic and prelogical primary processes of dis­ placem ent, condensation, and repetition. This formal apparatus, subsum­ ing instinctual pressures, is a k i nd of verbal code dom inated by the two axes o f metaphor and meto nymy; but it uses, in a specific way (according t o each subject ) the general and limited possibilities of a given la nguage.

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219

Color can b e defined, considering what I have just said, a s being articulated on such a triple wit hin the dom ain of visual percep­ tions: an ins tinctual pressure linked to external visible obj ect s; the same pressure causing the eroticizing of the body proper via visual percept ion and gesture; and the insertion of t his pressure u nder the impact of censor­ ship as a sign i n a system of representation. M atisse alludes to color having such a basis in instinctual drives w hen he speaks of a "retinal sensation [that] destroys the calm of the surface and the contour"; he even com pares it to that of voice and hearing: " U l t i m a tely, there is only a tactile vitality com parable to the 'vibrato' of the violin or voice. "8 And yet , although subj ective and instinctual, this advent of color (as well as o f any other "artistic device") is necessarily and therefore objectively occasioned and determined by the hist orically produced, form al system in which it operates : Our senses have an age of development which does not come from the i m m ed iate surroundings, but from a m o m e nt i n civilization. We are born with the sensibility o f a given period of civilization . And that counts for more than all we can learn about a period. The arts have a development which comes not only from the indi­ vidual, but also from an accu m u l ated strength, the civilization which precedes us. One can't d o just anything. A t a lented artist cannot do j u st as he l ikes. I f he u sed only his talents, he would not ex ist. We are not the m a sters of what we produce. It is i m p osed on us.•

One might th erefore conceive color as a com plex economy e ffecting the condensation of an excitation m oving towards its referent , of a physiologically ed d rive, and of "ideological values" germane to a given culture. Such values could be considered as the necessary historical decantation o f the fi rst two com po nent s . Thence, color, in each instance, must be deciph ered according to: ( l) the scale of "natural" colors; (2) the psychology of color perception and, es pecially, the psychology of each perception's instinctual cathexis, depending on the phases the concrete subj ect goes t hrough with reference to its own history and within the m ore general process of im posing repres sion; and (3) the pict orial system eith er operative or in the process of form ation. A preeminen tly com­ posite elem ent, color condenses "objectivit y," "subj ectivity," and the intrasystematic organiz ation of pictorial practice. It thus em erges as a grid (of differences in ligh t , energet ic charge, and system atic value) whose every element is linked with several interl ock ing s. Because

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it belongs t o a painting' s system, a n d t herefore, to the extent that i t plays a s tructural role in any subject-elaborated apparatus, color is an index of value (of an obj ect ive referent) and an instinctual pressure (an erotic im plication of the subj ect); it hence finds itself endowed with new func­ tions it does not possess outside this system and, therefore, outside pic­ torial practice. In a painting, color is pulled from the unconscious into a symbolic order; the unity of the "self' clings to this symbolic order, as this is the only way it can h old itself t ogether. Th e triple is constantly present, however, and color's diacritical value within each painting's system is, by the sam e token, withdrawn t oward the u ncon­ scious. As a result, color (conpact within its triple dimension) escapes censorship; and the unconscious irrupts into a culturally coded pictorial distribution. Consequently, the chromatic experience constitutes a m enace to the "sel f," but also, and t o the contrary, it crad l es the sel f s att em pted reconstitution. Such an experience follows in the wake of t h e s pecu lar­ imaginary sel fs formation-dissolution. Linked therefo re t o primary narcissism and to subj ect-obj ect indeterm inacy, it carries t races o f the subj ect ' s instinctual drive t oward unity (Lust-Ich ) with its exterior sur­ rounding, u nder t he influence of the pleasure principle about to become reality princi ple u nder the weight of rej ection, the symbolic funct ion, and repressi o n . 10 But chrom atic experience casts itself as a turning point between the "selfs" conservative and destructive proclivities; i t is the place of n arcis sistic eroticism (autoeroticism) and death drive- n ever one without the other. If that experience is a revival of the "sel f ' t hrough and beyond the pleasure principle, such a revival never succeeds in the sense that it would constitute a subj ect of (or u nder) symbolic law. This is because the symb olic necessity, or the interdiction laid down by color, are never abso lute. Contrary to delineated form and space, as well as to drawing and composition subj ected t o the strict codes of representation and verisim ilitude, color enj oys considerable fr eedom . The color scale, apparently restricted by com parison with the infinite variation of fo rms and figures, is accepted as the very domain of whim, taste, and serendipity in daily life as m uch as in painting. I f, nevertheless, the inter­ play of colors follows a particular historical necessity (the chromatic code accepted in Byzantine painting is not the same as that o f the Renaissance) as well as the internal rules o f a given painting (or any

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device whatsoever), still such a necessity is weak and includes its own transgression (the im pact of instinctual drive) at the very m oment it is im posed and applied. Color m ight th erefo re be the space where the prohibition foresees and gives rise to its own immediate transgression. It achi eves the momentary dialectic of law-the laying down of One M eaning so that it might at once be pulverized, multi plied into plural meanings . Color is the shatter­ ing of unity. Thus, it is through color-colors-that the subj ect escapes its alienation within a code (represent ational, ideological, symbolic, and so forth) t hat it, as consci ous subj ect, accepts. Similarly, it is through color that Western painting began to escape the constraints of narrative and perspective norm (as with Giotto) as well as representation itself (as with Cezanne, M atisse, Rothko, M ondrian). Ma tisse spells it in full: it is through color-painting's fundamental "device, " in the broad sense of "human language"-that revoluti ons in the plastic arts come about. W h e n t h e m e a n s of expression h ave become s o refi n ed, s o attenuated that t heir power o f expression wears thin, it is necessary to ret u r n t o the essential princip les which m ade human language. Th ey are, a fter all, the principles which "go back t o the source," wh ich relive, wh ich give us l i fe. Pictures which have become refinements, subtle gradations, d issolu tions without energy, call for beau t1jiil blues, reds, y ello ws m atters to stir the sensual depths in men . 1 1 -

T h e chrom atic apparatus, l i k e rhythm for la nguage, thus involves a shattering o f m eaning and its subject into a scale of differences . These, however, are articulated within an area beyond m eaning that holds m ean­ ing's surplus . Color is not zero meaning; it is excess m eaning th rough instinctual drive, that is, through death. By dest roying unique normative meaning, death adds its negat ive force to that m eaning in order to have the subj ect come t hrough . As asserted and different i ating negativity, pic­ t orial color (w hich overlays t he practice of a subj ect merely speak ing in order to com mu nicate) does not erase m eaning; it maintains it through multi plication and shows t hat it is engendered as the meaning of a sin­ gu lar being. A s the dialectical space of a psycho-graphic equili brium , color t herefore t ranslates an oversign i fying logic in that it inscribes instinctual "residues" that the underst anding subj ect has not sym ­ bolized . 12 It is easy t o see how color's logic might have been considered "em pty of meaning," a m obile grid (since it is subj ective), but outside of semantics, and th erefore, as dynamic law, 1 3 rhythm , interval, 1 4 gesture.

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We would suggest, on the cont rary, that this " form al," chromatic grid, far from empty, is em pty only of a "unique or ultimate signi fied"; that it is heavy w i t h "semantic latencies" linked to t h e economy of the subject's constitution within significance. Color, therefore, is not the black cast of form , an u ndefilable, fo rbid­ den, or sim ply deform able figure; nor is it the white of dazzling light, a transparent light of m eaning cut o ff fr om the body, conceptual, instinctually foreclosed. Color does not suppress light but segm ents it by break ing its undi fferentiated unicity into spect ral multiplicity. I t provok es surface clashes o f varying inten sity. Within the distribution of color, when bl ack and white are present, t h ey t o o are colors; that is to say, instinctual/ diacritical/ represen tational condensations. After having made mani fest and analyzed the "mystery" of light and the chemical production o f colors, science will no doubt establish the obj ective basis (biophysical and biochemical) of col or perception; just as contem porary linguistics, h aving d iscovered the phoneme, is seek ing its corporea l, physi ological and, perh aps, biological fou ndation. Psycho­ analytic research will then make it possible, proceeding not only from the obj ective basis of perception and o f t h e ph ases o f the subj ect's age through chromatic acquisition parallel to linguistic acquisit ion, to establish t h e m ore or less exact psychoanalytic equivalents of a part icular subj ect 's color scale. (These phases would include the perception of such and such a color at a given st age; the state of instinctual drive cathexes during this period; the relationship to the m irror phase, to the form ation o f t h e specu lar " I " ; relat ionship t o t h e m oth er; e t cetera . ) Gi ven t h e presen t state of research, we can only ou tline cert ain general hypotheses on the basis of our observat ions c oncerning painting's relationship to the sub­ j ect's sign i fying m ode. In all likelihood, these hypotheses involve the observer much m ore than they can lay any claim to obj ectivity.

F O R M A LU C I S :

THE BURLESQUE

Therefore, speak to t h e m . and hear, and believe, Si nce the light of the t ru t h which requites them Does n o t let them t u r n from it sel f. D a nte, Paradiso, I I I , 3 1 - 3 3

That speci fic economy of color c a n perhaps ex plain why m etaphysical speculations on light and its variations go back to the very oldest of

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beliefs. With i n Indo- European civilizations, for instance, they are im plicit in the fundamentals of Zoroastrianism ; later, through Hellenistic civilization, 15 and Plotinism , 16 they reach the center o f Christian doctrine (in Saint Augustine, for exam ple), opening u p within Christianity an opportunity for the plastic arts, for a fl owering o f im ages, never before achieved . The twelfth cent u ry occupies a k ey position in this process because of t he humanist refo rm it brought to Christianity: this affects the metaphysics of color in the work of Saint Bonaventura, when it lin ked ligh t with t h e body. As the other of the body, light gives it its form and thus becom es the privileged int erm ediary between substance and its effect-or t h e essent ial element of imagination: "If light names or articu­ lates form , t hen light cannot possibly be a body; it must be a something­ else-than body. [ . . . ] August ine says that hum or and the earth's soil are fundamental counterparts, and philosophers say that warmth is a certain subtle k ind of substa nce. [ . . . ] Therefore, it seem s clear that light, both strictly and figuratively speaking, is not a body, but a corporeal form " : 17 forma lucis. This sta tem ent entails a lib erat ing scope difficult for us to appreciate t oday: i t aims at contesting the lum inous unicity of the idea and opens it up t o the spectrum of the subj ect 's "art i st ic" experience, the place of the im agination. Format ive light is nothing but light shattered into colors, an opening u p o f colored surfaces, a fl ood of representations. Yet, at t h e same time, we m ust insist on the ambiguity of such a state­ ment: if it cont ests a rigid, unitary theology, arrested in the dazzling whiteness of m eaning, then, by the same token, it co-opts the chromatic scale (with its basis of drives crossing through the subj ect), into theol ogical space, as I suggested earlier . Within t h is ambiguity and by playing with this contradiction, Western painting p rofessed to serve Catholic theology while bet raying it at the same time; it eventually left behind, first , its t h emes ( a t the time of the Renaissance), a n d later, its n orm-representation (with the advent of I m pressionism and the ensuing movem ents). Several theological state­ ments bear witness to high spiritual leaders' distrust of painting, which they perceive as "not elevated enough" spiritually, if not simply "bur­ lesque . " Hegel evinces this kind of attitude when , after h aving recognized Giotto's original use of color, and pursuing his reasoning in the same paragraph, he observes that the painter l eaves behind spirituality's higher spheres:

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2 24

G i otto, a l o n g w i t h the changes he effected i n respect t o m odes o f conception and composition, b rought about a reform in the art of preparing coulours. [ . . . ] The thi ngs o f the w orld receive a stage and a wider opport u n i ty for expression; and this is i l lustrated by the way G iotto, under the i n fluence of his age, fou nd room for burlesque along with so much that was pathetic [ . . . ] in this tendency of G i ot t o to hum an ize and t owards realism he never real ly, as a rule. adva nces beyond a compar atively subordinate stage in the process . 18

Thus, in changing color style, Giotto might have given a graphic reality to the "n atural" and "human" t endencies of the ideology of his time. Giotto's colors would be "formal" equivalents of the burlesque, the visual precursors of the earthy laugh that Rabelais only translated into language a few centuries later. Giotto's j oy is the sublim ated j ou i ssance of a subj ect liberating him s elf from the transcendental dominion of One M eaning (white) th rough the advent of its inst inctual drives, again articu­ lated within a com plex and regu lated distribu tion. Giotto's j oy bu rst into the chrom atic clashes and harm onies that guided and dom inated the arch itectonics of the A rena Chapel frescoes at Padu a . This chro matic joy is the indicat ion of a deep ideological and subj ect ive transformation; it descreetly enters the theological signi fied, d istorting and doing violence to it without relinqu ishing it. This joy evokes the carnivalesque excesses of the m a sses but anticipates their verbal and ideological t ranslations, which came to light later, through literary art (the novel, or, in philosophy, the heresies). That this chrom atic experience could take place under the aegis of the Order of M erry Knights com mem o rating the Virgin is, perhaps, m ore than a coincidence (sub lim ated j ouissance finds its basis in the forbidden m o ther, next to the Name-of-the-Father). ' PADUA S

B LU E

Blue i s the first color t o strike the visitor as he enters into the semidark­ ness of the A rena Chapel. U nusual in Giotto's time because of its brilliance, it contrasts strongly with the som ber coloring of Byzantine m osaics as well as with the colors of,Cim abue or the Sienese frescoes . 19 The delicate, chromatic nuances oh he Padua fr escoes barely st and out against this lum inous blue. One's first im pression of Giotto's painting is of a colored substa nce, rather than form or architecture; one is struck by the light that is generated, catching the eye becau se of the color blue. Such a blue takes hold of the viewer at the ext rem e limit o f visu al percep­ tion.

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I n fact , J ohannes Purkinj e's law states that in d i m light, short wave­ lengths prevail over long ones; thus, before sunrise, blue is the first color to appear. Under these conditions, one perceives the color blue through the rods of the retina's peri phery (the serrated m argin), while t he central elem ent containing the cones (the fovea) fixes the object's im age and identifies its form . A possible hypot hesis, following Andre Broca's pa radox, 20 would be that the percept ion o f blue entails not ident ifying the object ; that blue is, precisely, on this side of or beyond the object's fixed form ; that it is the zone where phenom enal identity vanishes. It has also been shown that the fovea is indeed that part of the eye developed latest in h uman beings (sixteen m onths a fter birth). 2 1 This m ost likely indicates that cent ered vision-the identifica tion of obj ects, including one's own im age (the "sel f ' perceived at the mi rror stage between the sixth and eighteenth month)-com es into play after color perceptions. The earl iest appear to be those with short wavelengths, and therefore the colo r blue. Thus all colors, but blue in particular, would have a noncent ered or decentering effect, lessening both object ident ificat ion and phenomenal fixation. They t hereby ret urn the subject to the archaic m om en t of its dialectic, t hat is, before the fixed, s pecu lar " I , " but while in the process of becom ing this " I " by breaking away from instinctu al, biological (and also ma ternal) dependence. On the ot her hand, the chromatic experience can t h en be interpreted as a repet ition of the specular subj ect ' s em ergence in the already constructed space of the underst anding (speaking) subj ect ; as a rem inder of the subject's conflictu al const itution, not yet alienated into the set im age facing h i m , not yet a ble to distinguish the contours of others or his own other in the mirror. Rather, the subject is caught in the acu t e contradiction between the instincts of self-preservation and the destructive ones, within a limitless pseudoself, the conflictual scene of prim ary narcissism a n d autoerotism22 whose clashes could follow any concat enat ion of phonic, v isual, or spectral differences. O B LI Q U E C O N S T R U CT I O N S

AND

C H R O M AT I C

HARMONY The m a ssive irruption of bright color into t h e Arena Chapel frescoes, arranged in soft but contrasting hues, gives a sculptu ral volu m e to Giotto's figures, often leading to com parisons with Andrea Pisano. That is. color t ears these figures away from the wall's plane, giving them a

GI OTTO " S JOY

F IG U R E S .

G I OTTO, THE EXPULSION O F THE DEMONS FR O M A REZZO. B A S I L I CA OF ST. F R A N C I S , ASS I S I . Photo: Scala

forty-five-degree angle, one next to the other, transparent, with each rec­ tangular surface once again divided in order to generate other blocks and tiered columns. A block is set at an angle to the frame, broken and exploded on t he fa r-side wall, culminating in the triangle at the top (pyramid) or in the green cupola; or, conversely, pyramid and cu pola are articulated by m eans of nested, broken blocks ( The Cruc�ftx of St.

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Dam ian Speaks t o S t . Francis). St. Francis R enouncing t h e World present s open blocks, pressed o n t o each other, slightly ask ew; another diagonal overlapping echoes th em within the square fr esco. In the Dream of Pope Innocen t Ill, a raised and im balanced bl ock coll apses onto another facing it within the square of the frame. In The Apparition to the Brothers of A ries, another bl ock , opening from the back t owards the viewer, would be alm ost in perspect ive except fo r the friezes and ogives near the top, deepening and mult iplying the surfaces and preven ting the lines from converging at one point. In Visions of Friar A ugustine and the Bishop of A ssisi t here are blocks open on t h e right, soaring over a large block oriented t owards the left, to which is added, similarly oriented, a triptych o f blocks with their far sides shot through with blue ovals. A similar working of square surfaces m ay be seen in the Church of Santa Croce i n Florence. A n interesting variation o f Giotto's geometrical investigations of the rect angle appears in St. Francis Preaching before H onorius I II at Assisi . The surfa ce of the square cut out by the frame is t ranslated into two volumes, one set on top of the other (the seat ); but this antagonistic treatm ent o f space is softened by the curves of the three ribbed vaults, as if the square, confronted with the circle, produced an oval lin ing, a depth set o ff from the frame, a field curving inwards, but avoiding the vanishing point of perspect ive. This particu lar treatment of space is worth noting, since it reappears at Padua in two figu reless fres­ coes. Situated over the altar, t hey inaugurate the narrative series and program it, providing its graphic matrix, in three stages : first t here is a solid rectangu lar base; second, above this an angle appears (slanted t o the left in o n e fresco, t o the right in t h e other)-a confrontat i on o f sur­ faces cut into squ ares, a conflictive m odule for space; third, the conflict is nevertheless harmonized in the up per part of the fresco, where the intersecting arcs of the ogives m eet in the ribbed cupola's t hree focal p oints. A spiral is cl inched before the window as if to emphasize the unstoppable and inexhaustible m ovem ent going from square to circle. H ow do colors part icipate in this both antagonistic and harmonized space? Two workings of color m ay easily be distinguished at Padua: first, in the scenery ( field, landscape, architecture); and second, in the m a k e up of human figures and interiors.

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The blue field dominates the scenery. The oblique or frontal planes of t he blocks stand out from this background eit her through the use of colors close to blue (green, grayish-green: for exam ple, in The A n nu ncia­ tion to A nna) or contrasting with it (rose and pink ish gray, for exam ple, i n The Meeting at the Golden Gate; or gold and golden-rose i n The Betrothal of th e Virgin). Interiors that are set frontally are surrounded by square or lateral planes painted rose or yellow ( The Mocking of Christ). The blue-green relation dominates the upper frescoes, whereas the blue­ rose or blue-gold one appears m ore frequentl y in the lower s. Once again, Giotto seemingly wants to facilitat e the natural percep tion of a viewer standing at the center o f the somber chu rch. The less visible upper s are consequently done in blue-green, while the lower ones, more accessible to dayligh t, accen tuate gilded-rose colors, which are, in fact, the first perceived under increased l ighting. In every case, however, the antagonistic space o f the overlapping, frag­ mented blocks is achieved through the confrontation of colored surfaces : either through colors of the same hue with the addition of com ple­ mentary t ones ( for exam ple, the pink roof in The A nnuncia tion to A nna), or direct ly through complem entary chromatic scales. What is im portant is that, except for the basic blues, all other hues are particularly refined and very ligh t. It seem s as if the distribution of colored ma sses reflected a search for the smallest possible difference capable of shattering a homogeneou s b ackground. Such a difference is precisely what causes spat i al conflictivity t o be perceived without vio­ lence-as h arm ony and transi t ion. This becomes even m ore evident in the treatm ent o f human figures. On the one hand, each m ass of color is unfolded into its variants. For exam ple, the colors of clothing are o pened out t hrough the realistic effect of drapery folds into variations of pink absorbing gray, white, and green, thus m olding a cape. These variants are infinitesimal di fferentials within the already subtly different light hues of G iotto's palette. In some instances they recall the subdu ed colorings of Chinese prints, where a text su pports the signified, while color seeks out barely perceptible dif­ ferences, m inu te ret inal sensations charged with the least "semantic lat ency . " These " folds o f color" are confront ations between one color and the complete chromatic scale: while each color remains dominant

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in its various m ixtures, i t is also differently a n d indefinitely attenuated. The con flict within a color moving t oward white-an effect of pure brilliance-provides each color and, therefore, each framed su r face, with a sense o f volume. This rou nded, sculptural aspect of Giotto's figures strikes one im mediately. The curves of the drawing (oval shape of the heads, rou nded fullness of the bodies) repeat the oval- shaped, colored masses (deformed and drawn out spheres and cy li nders). Roundness becom es chromatic and ind ependent of the cu rved drawing itself. The line seem s guided by unfol ding color and merely follows it, accentuates it, set tles it, identifies it when color defies fixed obj ects, and in short, dis­ tinguishes it fr om adj oining spheres and colors. These m asses of color become spherical through their own self-differentiation; set within an angular space of blocks and squares, they serve as transition between clashing surfa ces. In fact, and m ore effect ively than the clashing surfa ces, these m asses of color generate the volume of the pain ted surface. The colors of colliding surfa ces thus delineate the edges of such cubed space, while t h e colors of each figure give volu me to and round out this c O"n flict bet ween block s . Color thus succeeds in shaping a space of conflicts, a space o f noncent ered , unbordered and unfixed t ransitions, but a space tu rned inward. In addition and at the same time, t hese voluminous colors, as they com e into being by interm ixing and detaching them sel ves from t h e entire spectru m , becom e articula ted with one anot her eit her by close contrast (at the same end of the spectru m) or by truly d iverging contrast (comp le­ m entary colors ). Thus, in The Massacre of the Innocents at A ssisi we have the foll owing sequ ence: brick red-pink-bordeaux-green­ white-lavender-white-g reen-red-pink-lavender-blue (like the field)-red-gold. To sim plify, if we designate red by A, blue by B, and yellow by C, the fol lowing a rrangem ent m ay be seen . Relatively lim ited di fferences appear at the beginning (red-pink ) : A; there is t h en a j u m p to the other e n d of the spectrum (green ): B ; an echo of the beginning (lavender): A . ; agai n , a return to the opposite side (green ): B 1 ; its opposite (red): A 2 will be varied until it reaches only a B 3 before another return t o slight di fference in hue (pink- lavender): A 3 t h e opposite (b lue): B 4 ( field) opposed in turn b y red : A 4 before the fi nal C. =

=

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Thus, w e have: A-B-A 1-B1-A 2 -A 3 B 3 -B 4 -A 4 -C. The arrangem ent, whose "m odel" could very well be a multi-faceted gem, is both conflictual and serial. In fact, the geom etry represent ed in the same fresco includes two prismatic t owers with their facets obliquely set. The chromatic treatment of characters produces a plastic effect con­ firming this geometry. I t also adds a harmonization of delineated sur­ faces and an im pression of volu m e within the colored surfaces them selves . This is done solely by virtue of the colors' own resources, without recourse to geometric determ ination. Volume is produced by jux­ taposing u n folding chrom atic differences alone wi thout the assistance o f rigid contours. The painter uses drawings and lines, b u t h e coats them, suffuses them with colored m atter so that they break away from strictly chromatic differentiation. By overflowing, softening, and dialecticizing lines, color em erges inevitably as the "device" by which painting gets away from identi fica­ tion of obj ects and th erefore from realism . As a consequence, G iott o's chrom atic experiments prefigure a pict orial practice that his im m ediate fo llowers did not pursue. This practice aspires not t o figu ral representa­ tion, but rather, to the resources of the chromatic scale, which t hen extrapolate, as we have suggested, the inst inctual and sign i fying resources of the speaking subj ect. F o r this chromatic system-so crowded with figures, landscape, and m y th ical scenes-appears void of figuration i f viewed at l ength and attent ively. I t i s l i k e a setting side b y side o f chro­ m atic differences that throb iflto a third dimension. Such a chromatic work ing, therefore, erases angles, cont ours, limits, placements, and figurations, but reproduces t h e movement of t heir confr ontation. Color, arranged in this m anner, is a com pact and plurifunct ional ele­ ment, not conforming to the l ocalization-identification-placement o f phen omena and/or their ( o r an y ) ultim ate m eaning; it acts u pon t h e sub­ j ect ' s station point outside of the painting rather than proj ecting him int o i t . This painting, t hen, reaches comp letion within t h e viewer. I t steers the subj ect t owards a system atic cutting t h rough its foreclosure, because it has been set in m otion starting from "retinal sensation," their instinctual basis, and the su perim posed signifying apparatus. I s this not precisely the "mechanism" of j ouissance whose economy Freud locates in the process =

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o f rem oving prohibition by making one's way through it (in h i s studies on another phenomenon o f "bewilder m ent" : witticism , in Jok es and their Relation to the Unconscious ) ? Let me emph asize, in su m m ing up, that thi s work ing one's way t h rough is rigorously regu lated by a j uxtaposition of differences in volu m e that operates along two converging paths. On the one hand, it brings into play the geometric possibilit ies of squares and blocks ( their conflict); on the other, it explores the infinitesimal chromatic di fference that produces a t hree-d imensional effect from a colored surfa ce and the opposing or serial alternation o f such volumes due t o an "element" already indicating volume: the triple o f color (as suggested above) in rela tion t o the sign. The signifying economy thus made up partakes o f an ideological func­ tion: Giotto's paint ing as an element of t h e early fourteenth century societal "superstructure." This raises a fundamen tal p roblem, that is, the inclusion of a signifying economy within a social context. By its very natu re, artis tic practice is indeed doubly articulated: t h rough the inclu­ sion o f a "subj ective" signifying economy within an "obj ective" ideological functioning; and t hrough the production of m eaning t hrough its subj ect , in t erms of (and liable to t he constraints o f) concrete social contradict ions. In other words, a ( subj ective) sign i fying economy becom es an art istic signifying practice only to the extent that it is art icu­ lated t hrough the social struggles of a given age. A long such lines, I m ight suggest that the sociopolitical and ideological position of the painter within t he social contradictions o f his time u ltim ately det ermines a concret e signifying economy, turning it into an artistic pract ice that will play a given social and hist orical role. A signifying economy within an artistic practice, therefore, not only operates t hrough the individual (biographical subject) who carries it out, but it also recasts him as his­ torical subject causing the signifying p rocess that the subj ect undergoes to match the ideological and political expectat ions o f his age' s rising classes . Thus, Giott o ' s own work-j ouissance in color and space and the specific role incum bent on the subj ect t herein, which merge with the ideology of the time: subjectivist and hum anist renewal o f Christianity; liberating, "secularizing," m odern, even "materialist" m o rality (in the forms of Averroism and nominalism). This ideology corresponds to what Fred-

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erick Antal calls the "securely established F lorentine upper m iddle class, " 25 which happens t o be the fin ancial basis but also the ideological patron not only o f Giotto, but, m ore generally, o f the ensu ing pictorial renewal. Antal's study should be consulted for a detailed analysis of the economic and ideological foundations behind the pictorial experience exami ned here. I would simply em phasize that one cannot understand such practice without taking its s ocioeconomic foundations into ; nor can one understand it i f one chooses t o reduce it solely t o these foun­ dations, thereby bying the sign i fying economy of the subj ect involved . I began with a discussion o f color in o f light, and therefo re, of frequency. Applied to an obj ect, however, the notion of color can only have t opological value: it expresses precise structures o f atoms and molecules. Therefore, what can be described in t erms of frequency (light) can only be ana lyzed in ter ms of geom et ry (coloring matter). Nevertheless, concerning the painting ' s signification, these topol ogical or frequential di fferences are of no im port in their own speci fici ties and precisions. They are importa n t only as structural differences all owing a spatial distribution. As diacrit ical m arkings inside a system (the system of a painting), t hese d i fferences provide a structural constraint, a general outline, that captures signifiance as well as its specific subj ect look ing at the paint ing . Beyond the th resh old of structural necessity, however, color plays, as I have shown, on a com plex : the instinctual cathexis of chrom atic elements and the ideological values that a particular age p laces on t h e m . What escapes structural constraint is nonet heless sizable, and it is this area that contem porary semiology, aided by psych oanalysis, is investigating. I have m ade use of certain elem ents in Giotto's painting in order to present several problems relevant t o painting as signifying practice. Neither the whole of Giotto's work nor the complex ity of the questions raised about it are addressed directl y by these reflections. Their obj ect has been, rather, to encourage a return t o t he ( " formal" and ideological) history o f painting's subj ect within its contemporary production; t o present t h e avant-garde with a genetic-dialect ical reflect ion on what produced it and/ or that from which it sets itself apart . As Walter Benj a m in said of literature: "It is not a question of presenting works [ . . . ] in correlation to their own t imes, but rather, within the fram ework

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of the time of their birth, t o present the time that k nows them, that is, our own . " 26

N otes I . " Giotto's paintings d o represent a step towards t h e a r t i ficial perspective o f the fifteenth century. At t h e same time the oblique constructions used in the m aj ority o f his designs reveal a m ovement in a different direction"-] ohn White, Birth and R ebirth of Pic­

torial Space ( London: Faber & Faber. 1 97 3 ), p. 7 5 ; em phasis mine. 2 . We should keep in mind that the Padua frescoes are located in the Scrovegni Ch apel, generally k nown as the Arena Chapel. Dante put Scrovegn i's father, Reginald, in the seventh circle o f Hell. Scrovegni himself was a patron of Giotto and thus figured in the fres­ coes. He belonged to the Order of Caval ieri Ga udenti or the " M erry K n ights," so called because o f the wealth and behavior of its mem bers. and upheld the existence and dign ity of the Virgin M ary. Giotto himself. who worked under the aegis of the Franciscans, seemed to be at odds with the doctrine of Saint Francis, ( u nless h e be in agreem e n t with its speci fically Florentine decadent for m ), when he wrote a poem against poverty, " M ol l i son quei che laudan povert ade." ( H istorians, h owever, do not all agree that he wrote that poem . ) In addition, Giotto appears to have been the only Florentine artist at the beginning o f the fou rteenth century to have am assed a true fort u n e . C f. Frederick Antal, Florentine Painting and Its Social Background ( N ew York : H arper, 1 947). There is also an anecdote concern­ ing G i ot t o's pictorial practice. I n reply to Pope Benedict X I , who was looking for a painter for Saint Peter's Basilica, G iotto is said to have sent a single proof o f his expertise-a perfect circle drawn in red pai nt-whence the expression "a more perfected art than G i ot to's O." C f. J o h n Ruskin, Giotto and His Work in Padua ( London: Levey, R obson and F r a n k l y n , 1 8 54 ). 3 . Sigm u n d F reu d , Papers on Metapsychology: The Unconscious i n The Standard Edi­

tion of the Works of Sigm und Freud ( London: Hogarth Press & The I n stitute of Psycho­ Analysis, 1 9 5 3 ) . 1 4 : 2 0 1 -2 . 4 . Freud, Metapsychology, p . 202. 5 . Freud explains t h i s age from percept ion t o symbolic fu nction b y t h e economy o f unification and rejection engendering t h e sym bol ic fu nction, t h e separation between subject and object, and the im posit ion of repression; i t is confi rm ed in its role by the creation o f t h e s y m b o l o f negation (cf. Negation i n The Standard Edition, 1 9: 2 3 5-39). 6. 7. 8. ments 9.

Freud, Metapsychology, p. 202. Ibid., p. 202. H enri M at i sse, Matisse on A rt, J a c k Flan, trans. ( N ew York: Phaidon. 1 9 7 3 ) , St ate­ to Teriade, 1 9 2 9-30, p. 5 8 ; emphasis mine. M at i sse, Statements to Teriade, 1 9 3 6, p . 7 4 .

1 0 . M a rcel in Pleynet has s h o w n , in the c a s e o f M at isse, the connection between chro­ matic experience, relation to the mother, and above all, the oral phase of infa n t i l e eroticism that dom inates not only the pre-Oedipal experience, but also the phase preceding the " m ir­ ror stage" (and ther efor e, the constitution of the specu lar " I " ) , whose role proves to be capital, not only in elucidating the genesis of the symbolic fu nct ion, but even m ore so, in structur ing the "artistic fu nction . " C f. M arcelin Pleynet, " L e Systeme de M atisse," in

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l' Enseignem ent de l a peinture ( P aris: S e u i l , 1 9 7 1 ), p p . 67-74. R eprinted i n P l eynet, System e de la peinture (Paris: Seu ii, 1 977), pp. 66- 7 5 . 1 1 . M atisse, Statements to Teriade, 1 9 36, p. 74. My emphasis. 1 2 . B y that token, i t s fu nct ion i s related ( i n t h e domain o f sight) t o rhyt h m ' s function and, i n general, to the musi cality o r the lit erary text, which, precisely i n this way. i n t ro duces instinctual drive into la nguage. 1 3 . Physical theories of color have at times embraced this point of view. According to wave t heory, each material atom is m ade up or a subatom o r color or sound whose connec­ tions are i m m aterial: dharmas or laws. Anaxagoras held that colors represent the interplay or an i n fin ity or seeds corresponding to t h e i n fi n ity o r l u m i n o u s sensat ions. 14. P l ato maintai ned that "what we say 'is' this or that color will be n e i t h e r t h e eye which e ncounters the motion nor the motion w h ich is encountered, but someth ing which has arisen between t h e two and is pecu liar to each percipient " - Th eaetetus , F. M . C o r n ford, trans., in Edith H a m ilton & H u n t i ngton Cairnes, eds., Collected Dialogues, ( P rinceton: Princeton U niversity Press, 1 97 8), pp. 8 5 8- 5 9 . Epicurus seems t o suggest t hrough his th eory or s i m u lacra a connection between color and what we now call t h e "u nconsci o u s . " The m ind b u ilds a wall against t h e m a s s of s i m u lacra t h a t assails it, selecting o n ly th ose that pique its i n t erest. C f. M. A . Tonnelat, Evolution des idees sur la nature des couleurs, Lecture given at the Palais de la Decouverte, 1 9 56. I 5 . " A nd k n owing that of all th ings light is best, H e m ade it the indispensable means of sight, the best or the senses; for what the intel lect is in t h e soul, the eye is in t h e body; for each or t hem sees, one the things or the m i nd, the other t he things or the senses"-Philo,

On The Creation of the World, age 5 3 , i n Philosop hia Judaica, Hans Lewy, trans. (Ox ford: Ox ford U n i versity Press, 1 946), page 6 1 . S e e also age 1 7 . " For t h e eye o f the Absolutely E xistent needs n o other light t o effect perception, b u t H e Himself i s t h e archetypal essence or w h i c h myriads or r a y s are t h e effluence, none v i s i b l e to sense, a l l t o t h e m ind. A n d therefore, they a r e the instruments of t h a t s a m e God a l o n e , who i s apprehended by t h e m i nd, n o t or any w h o h a v e part a n d l o t in t h e w o r l d o r cre a t i on. F o r t h e created is approached by sense, which c a n n ever grasp t h e nature which is appreh ended by m ind"-Philo, On The Cherubim, age 97, in Philo, F. H. Colson & G. H . Whitaker, trans. ( N ew York: P u t n a m , 1 9 2 3 ) , 2 : 67-69. See also age 28. 1 6. " We must i m agine a center, and around this center a l u minous sphere that radiates from ( I ntell igence ) . Then around this sphere, lies a second one that also is l u m inous, but only as a light lit from another l ight ( t h e u n iversal Soul). [ . . . ] The great light ( I n t el l igence) sheds its light though remaining within itself, and the brill iancy that radiates around i t (on to t h e soul) is ' reason " ' - P lotin us, Enneades, K . Guthrie, trans. ( P h iladelph ia: M onsalvat Press, 1 9 1 0 ), Book 1 v , 3, 1 7 . 1 7 . "si ergo l u x formam
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posed o f p a l e red, green. a n d yellow, b l u e being sparingly introdu ced (earlier s t i l l , in t h e eighth and n i n t h cen tu ries. t h e let ters had often been colou red w i t h black a n d y e l l ow only). Then, in t h e close o f t h e twelfth and throughout t h e thirteenth century, the great system of perfect colour was in u se; solemn and deep; com posed strictly, in a l l i t s leading m asses. o f t h e colours revealed by G o d from S i n a i a s the noblest;-blue, p u r p l e , and scarlet, with gold (other h ues. chiefly green, with white and black, being u sed in points or small m asses, to rel ieve the main colours. In the early part of t h e fourteenth century the colours begin t o grow paler: a b o u t 1 3 30 t h e s t y l e is al ready com pletely modified; and a t the close of t h e fourteenth cent u ry, t h e c o l o u r is q u i t e pa l e a n d delicate" - R u s k i n , G iotto, p. 2 1 . 20. "To see a blue light, you m u st not look direct l y at i t . " 2 1 . I . C . M a nn, The Development of the Human Eye (Cambridge: Cambridge U niversity Press. 1 928), p. 68. 22. In t h i s context, it seems that notions of "narcissism" (be i t primary) and autoe­ roticism suggest too s t rongly an already existing iden t i t y for us t o apply them rigorously to this confl ictual and i m p recise stag e of subjectivity. 23. 24. 25. 26.

White, Birth and R ebirth of Pictorial Space, p. 7 5 . Ibid. , p. 6 8 . A n tal, Florentine Painting and its Social Background. Walter Benjamin. " Literaturgeschichte u n d Literaturwissensch a ft " in Gesammelte

SchrUien ( F r a n k fu rt / a m / M ai n : S u h rk amp, 1 9 72), 3 : 2 90.

9.

M OT H E R H O O D ACCORD ING TO G I OVANNI B E L L I N I

T H E MATE R NA L B O D Y Cells fu se, split, and proliferate; volumes grow, tissues stretch, and body fluids change rhyt h m , speeding up or slowing down . Within the body, growing as a graft , indom itable, there is an other. And no one is present, within that simult aneously dual and alien space, to signify what is going on. "It happens, but I 'm not there. " "I cannot realize it, but it goes on." M ot herhood's i m possible syl logism . This becoming-a-m other, this ges tation, can possibly be accoun ted fo r by m eans o f only two discourses. There is science; but as an obj ective dis­ course, science is not concer ned with the subj ect, the mother as site of her proceedings. There is Chris tian theology (especially canonical theology); but theology defines m a t ernity only as an im possible elsewhere, a sacred beyond, a vessel of divinity, a spiritual tie with the in­ effable godhead, and transcendence' s ult imate -necessarily vir­ ginal and com m itted to assum ption. Such are the wi les of C hristian reason ( Christianity ' s still m at chless rationalism , or at l east its rationa lizing power, finally become clear); th rough the m aternal body (in a state of virginity and "dormition" 1 before Assumption), it t hus establishes a sort o f subject at the point where the subj ect and its speech split apart , fr agment, and vanish. Lay humanism took over t h e con­ figu ration of that subj ect through the cu l t of the m ot h er; tenderness, love, and seat o f social conservat i o n . A n d yet , if w e presum e t hat som eone ex ists th roughout t h e process o f cel ls, m olecu les, a n d atoms accumula ting, dividing, a n d mult iplying First publ ished in Peinture ( Decem ber 1 9 7 5 ) , no. 1 0- 1 1 ; reprinted in Poly/ogue ( Paris: Seuil. 1 9 77), pp. 409- 3 5 .

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without any iden tity (biological o r socio-sym bolical) having been formed so far, are we not positing an animism t hat reflects the inherent psychosis of the speaking Being? So, if we suppose that a mother is the subj ect of gestation, in ot her words the mas ter of a process that science, despite its effective devices, acknowledges it can not now and perhaps never will be able to take away from her; if we suppose her to be master of a process that is prior to the social-symbolic-linguistic contract of the group, then we acknowledge the risk of losing identity at the same time as we ward it o ff. We recognize on the one hand that biology j olts us by m eans of unsymbol ized instinctual dr ives and that this phenomenon eludes social intercourse, the representation of preex isting obj ects, and the cont ract of desire. On the other hand, we immediately deny it; we say there can be no escape, for mamma is there, she embodies this phenom enon; she war­ rants that everything is, and t hat it is representable. In a double-barreled m ove, psychotic tendencies are acknow ledged, but a t the same t i m e t hey are set tled, quieted, and bestowed upon the mother in order to maintain the ultimate gu arantee: symbolic coherence. This m ove, h owever, also reveals, better than any mother ever could, that the maternal body is the place of a splitting, which, even t h ough hypostatized by Christianity, nonet heless rem ains a constant fa ctor of social reality. Through a b ody, desti ned to insure reproduct ion of the species, t h e wom an-subject , although u nder the sway of t h e paternal function (as symbolizing, s peaking subject and like all ot hers) , m ore of a filter than anyone else-a t h oroughfare, a t hreshold where "nature" confronts "culture. " To imagine that t here is someone in that fi lter-such is the source o f religious m yst ifications, the font that nourishes them : the fantasy of the s o-called "Phallic" M other. Because if, on the cont rary, there were no one on t h is threshold, if the m other · were not, that is, if she were not phallic, then every speaker would be led to con ceive of its Being in relation to som e void, a nothingness asymetrically opposed to t h is Being, a perm anent t h reat against, first, its mastery, and ultim ately, its stabili t y . T h e discourse of analysis proves t h at t h e desire for m otherhood i s without fail a desire t o bear a child o f t h e father (a child of h e r own fath er) who, as a result, is o ften assim ilated to the baby itself and thus returned to its place a s devalorized man, su mm oned only to accom plish his function, which is to originate and justify reproductive desire. Only

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through these phantasmatic nuptials can the father-daughter incest be carried out and the baby come to exist. At that, the incest is t o o fa r rem oved, bringing peace only to those who firmly adhere to the paternal symbolic axis. Otherwise, once the obj ect is produced, once the fruit is detached, the cerem ony loses its effect unless it be repeated forever. And yet, through and with this desire, m otherhood seem s to be im pelled also by a nonsy m bolic, nonpaternal cau sality. Only Ferenczi, Freud, and, later, M arie Bonaparte, have spoken about this, evoking the biological destiny of each di fferent iated sex . M aterial compulsion, spasm of a m em ory b elonging t o the species that either binds t ogether or splits apart to perpetuate itself, series of m arkers with no other signi ficance than the eternal return of t h e life-death biological cycle. How can we ver­ balize this prelinguistic, unrepresentable m em ory? Heraclitus' flux, Epicurus' at oms, the whirling dust of cabalic, Arab, and I ndian mystics, and the stippled drawings of psychedelics-all seem better m et aphors than the t heories o f Being, the logos, and its laws. Such an excu rsion t o the limits of pri m al regression can be phan­ tasm a t ically ex perienced a s the reunion of a woman-mot her wit h the body of h er m other. The b ody of h er m other is always the same M aster­ M ot h er of instinctual drive, a ru ler over psychosis, a subj ect of biology, but also, one t oward which women aspire all the m ore ionately simply because it lacks a p enis: that body cannot penet rate her as can a m a n when p ossessing his wife. By giving birth, the woman enters into with h er m ot her; she becomes, she is her own m other; they are the same continuity di fferentiating itself. She thus actualizes the homosexual facet of m oth erhood, through wh ich a woman is simul­ taneously closer to her inst inctual m em ory, m ore open to her own psy­ chosis, and consequently, m ore negatory of the social, symbolic bond. The symbolic paternal facet relieves feminine aphasia present within the desire t o bear the/a ther's chil d . It is an appeasem ent that turns into melancholy as soon as the child becomes an obj ect, a gift t o ot hers, neither self nor part of the self, an obj ect destined to be a subj ect, an other . M elancholy readj usts the paranoia that drives to action (often vio­ lent) and to discourse (essentially parental, obj ect-oriented, and prag­ matic discourse) the feminine, verba l scarcity so prevalent in our culture. The homosexual-maternal facet is a whirl of words, a com plet e absence of meaning a n d seeing; it is feeling, displacem ent, rhythm,

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sound, flashes, and fantasied clinging t o the m aternal body a s a screen against the plu nge. Perversion slows down the schizophrenia that collaps­ ing identities and the delights of the well-known and oft-solicited (by some women) pantheist fu sion both brus h up against. Those a fflicted or affected by psychosis have put u p in its place the im age of the M other: for women, a paradise lost but seemingly close at hand, for m en, a hidden god but constantly present through occult fan­ tasy. And even psych oanalysts believe in it. Yet, swaying between these two positions c a n o n l y mean, fo r the woman involved, that she is within an "enceinte" separat ing her from the world of everyone else. 2 Enclosed in this "elsewhere, " an "enceinte" woman loses communital meaning, which suddenly appears to her as worthless, absurd, or at best, comic-a surface agit ation severed fr om its im possible found ations. Oriental nothi ngness probably better sums up what, in t h e eyes of a Westerner, c a n only be regression. And y e t it is j ouissance, but like a negative o f the one, tied to an obj ect, that is borne by the u n failingly m a scu line libido. Here, alterity becomes nu ance, contradiction becomes a variant, tension becom es age, and discharg e becomes peace. This tendency t owards equalization, which is seen as a regressive ex ti nction of sym bolic capabilities, does not, however, reduce differences; it resides within the sm allest, m ost archaic, and m ost uncertain of differences . It is powerful sublimation and indwel ling of the sym bolic within instinctual drives . I t affects this series of " little dif­ ferences-resem blances" (as the Chines logicians of antiquity would say). Before founding society in the same stroke as signs and com m u nication, t hey are the precondition of the latter's existence, as they constitute the living entity within its species, with its needs, its elem entary appercep­ tions and com munication, distinguishing between the instinctual drives of life and deat h . I t affects prim al repression. An ultimate danger fo r identity, but also supreme power of symbolic instance t hus returning to m atters of its concern. Sublimation here is both eroticizing withou t residue a n d a disappearance of eroticism a s it returns t o i t s source. The speaker reaches this limit, this requisite o f sociality, only b y virtue of a particular, discursive practice called "art . " A woman also attains it (and in our society, especially) through the strange form of split sym­ b olization (threshold of langu age and instinctual drive, of the "symbolic" and the "sem iotic") of which the act of giving birth consists. As the ar-

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chaic process of socialization, one m ight even say civilizat ion, it causes the childbearing woman to cat hect, immediately and unwittingly, the physiological operat ions and instinctual drives dividing and multiplying her, fi rst, in a biological, and finally, a social teleology. The m aternal body slips away from the discursive hold and immediately conceals a cipher that must be ta ken into accou nt biologically and socially. This ciphering of the species, however, this pre- and transsymbolic m em o ry, makes t h e mother mist ress of neither begetting nor instinctual drive (such a fantasy underl ies the cult of any ultim ately fem inine deity); it does make of the m a ternal body the stakes of a natural and "obj ective" con­ trol, independent of any ind ividual consciousness; it inscribes both bio­ logical operat ions and their instinctual echoes into this necessary and hazardous program constitut ing every sp ecies . The maternal body is the m odule of a biosocial progra m. Its jouissance, which is mute, is nothing more than a recording, on the screen of the preconscious, of both the m essages that consciousness, in its analyt ical course, pick s u p from this ciphering process and their classifications as em pty foundation, as a-sub­ j ective lining of our rational exch anges as social beings. If it is t rue t hat every national language has its own d ream language and unconscious, then each of the sexes-a division so much m ore archaic and fu nda­ m ental than the one into la nguages-would have its own unconscious wherein the biological and social program of the species would be ciphered in con frontation with la nguage, exposed to it s influence, but independent from it. The sym bolic destiny of the speaking anim al, which is essential although it comes second, being su perimposed upon t h e bio­ logical--this destiny seals off (and in women, in order to preserve the homology of the group, it censures) that archaic basis and the special j ouissance it procures in being transferred to the symbolic. Privileged, "psychotic" moments, or whatever indu ces them naturally, thus b ecom e necessary. Am ong such "natural" indu cem ent s , maternity is needed for this sexual m odality to surface, this fragile, secretly gu arded and incom­ municable m od ality, quick ly st ifled by st andard palliat ives (by viril and "rational" censorship, or by the sent iment ality of "maternal" t end erness t oward a substitute-object for everything). This process is quite rightly underst ood as the demand for a penis. Fantasy in deed has no other sign , no other way to im agi ne that the speaker is capable of reaching the M ot her, and thus, of unset t ling its own lim its . And, as long as t here is

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language-sy m b olism-paternity, there will never be any other way to represent , to obj ecti fy, and to explain this unsettling of the symbolic stratum, this nature/culture threshold, this instilling the subj ectless bio­ logical program into the very body of a symbol izing subj ect, this event called m o therh ood. I n other words, from the point of view of social coherence, which is wh ere legislators, gramm arians, and even psychoanalysts have their seat; which is where every body is made homologous to a male speaking body, m o t herhood would be nothing more than a phallic attempt to reach the M other who is presumed to exist at the very place where (social and bio­ logical) identity recedes. I f it is true that idealist ideologies develop along these lines, urging women to satisfy this presum ed dem and and to m ain­ tain the ensuing order, then, on the other hand, any negation of this utili­ tarian, social, and sym bolic aspect of motherhood plunges into regression-but a particular regression whose cu rrently recognized m anifest ations lead to t he hypostasis of blind subst ance, to t h e negation of sym bolic position, and to a justification of this regression under the aegis o f the same Phallic M other-screen . The l anguage of art, too, follows (but differently and m ore closely) the other asp ect of maternal j ouissance, the sublim ation taking pl ace at the very m om ent of primal r epression within the m other's body, arising perhaps unwitt ingly out o f her marginal position. At the in tersection of sign and rhythm, of representation and light, o f the sym bolic and the semiotic, the artist speak s from a place where she is not, w h ere she knows not. He delineates what, in her, is a body rej oicing Uouissant ] . The very ex ist ence of aesthetic pract ice makes clear that the M other as sub­ j ect is a delusion, just as the negation of the so-called poetic dimension o f language leads o n e to believe i n t h e ex istence o f t h e M o t her, a n d con­ sequ ently, o f tr anscendence. Because, through a sym bi osis of m eaning and nonmeaning, of representation and interplay of di fferences, the artist lodges into language, and through his identification with the m other (fetishism or incest-we shall return to this problem ), his own specific j ouissance, thus traversing both sign and object . Thus, before all ot her speakers, he bears wi tness to what the u nconscious (through the screen of the mother) records of those clashes that occu r between the biological and social program s of the species . This means that th rough and across secondary repression (fou nding of signs), aesthetic practice touches u pon

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primal repression ( fou nding biological series and the Jaws of the species). At the place where it obscurely succeeds within the maternal body, every artist tries his hand, but rarely with equal success . Nevertheless, craftsm en of Western a r t reveal better than anyone else the artist's debt to the m aternal body and/or m otherhood' s entry into symbolic ex istence-that is, translibidinal j ouissance, eroticism t aken over by the language of art . Not only is a considerable portion of pictorial art devoted to m otherhood, but within this representation itsel f, from Byzantine iconography to R en aissance hum anism and the worsh i p of the body that it i n i tiates, two attitudes t oward the maternal body emerge, prefiguring two destinies within the very economy of Western representa­ tion. Leonardo Da Vinci and Giovanni Bellini seem to exemplify in the best fashion the opposition b etween t hese two at titudes. On the one hand, there is a tilting t oward the body as fetish. On the other, a predominance of luminous, chrom atic differences beyond and despite corporeal representation. Florence and V enice. Worship of the figu rable, representable man; or integration o f the im age accom plished in its truth­ likeness within the luminous serenity of the unrepresentable. A unique biographical experience and an uncomm on, historical intersect ion of pagan-matri archal Orientalism with sacred Christianity and incipient hum anism was perhaps needed fo r Bellini's brush to retain the traces of a m arginal experience, t hrough and across which a m a ternal body m ight recognize its own, otherwise inexpressible in our culture.

L E O NA R D O A N D B E L LI N I : F E TI S H AND PRIMAL REPRESSION Giovanni Bellini: 1 430?- l S 1 6. Approxim ately two hundred and twenty paintings, basically on sacred topics, are attributed to him or to his school . I-i e taught Giorgione and Titian, and founded the Venetian Renaissance, which came somewhat later than the Florentine but was m ore organically allied t o it s Byzantine sou rces and m ore attracted by the display of the fem inine body than by the Grecian beauty of young boys. Bellini's work is a synthesis of Flem ish landscape painting, iconography, and Mediterranean a rchitectural manner. He also con­ tributed a com pletely new elemen t : the lum inous density of color (the

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initial technique of o i l painting, which w a s already being m a stered), o f shadows a n d brightness t h a t , m ore so t han t h e discovery o f perspective, int roduced volu me into the b ody and into the painting. H istorians of art em phasize, in Bellin i ' s m a nner, the effect ; t hey often neglect what this manner im plies as t o pict orial experim entation, but worse, they also neglect to observe it d own to the m ost minute details of the painting's surface. We have almost no biographical details: a nearly perfect d i scretion. His father was the painter J acopo Bellini; his brother, the painter Gentile Bellini . His broth er-in-law was the painter A ndrea M antegna. He was the official painter for the Ducal Palace, but the paintings executed in that capacity were destroyed. He was m arried, but his wife Ginevra Bocheta died y oung, as did his son, and it is u ncert ain whether he mar­ ried again. He was urged b y I sabella d ' Este t o paint pagan motifs but he backed out, refusing t o do so; finally, he complied only when assisted by his disciples. In 1 506, Diirer called him the best of pain ters. The spoors of his l i fe leave a discret e i m print, and t hen t hey disappear. Bellini him self left us no words, n o subj ective writings. We must read him through his pai nting. Bellini's discretion stands in contrast t o t he profusion of information and biographical notes left behind by his you nger contem porary, Leo­ nardo Da Vinci ( 1 452-1 5 1 9). Relying on biographical evidence and on paintings as narrative as Virgin and Child with St. A nne and the Mona Lisa, Freud could maintain that Leonard o ' s "artistic personality" was form ed, first, by the precocious seduction h e was supposed t o have experienced at the hands of his m other (the vampire t ai l o f his dream s would represent the t ongue of his m other, ionately k issing the illegiti­ m ate child); second, by a double m o therhood (taken from his m other, Leonardo was raised in his fat her's fam ily by his stepm ot her, who had no children o f her own); and fi n ally, by the impressive authority o f an o ffice­ holding father. The fat her finally trium phed over the drawing power o f t h e mot her, which determ ined t h e young m a n ' s interest i n art , a n d near the end of his life, Leonardo tu rned t oward the sciences. Thus, we h ave the typical configu ration o f a hom osexual structure. Persuaded by pre­ cocious seduction and dou b le m other hood of the existence of a maternal phallus, the painter never s topped looking for fe tish equivalents in the bodies of young people, in his fr iendships with them, in his miserly wor-

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ship of obj ects and m oney, and in his avoidance of all with and access to the fem inine body . His was a forbidden m other because she was the primordial seducer, the lim it of an archaic, infantile j ouissance that must never be reproduced. She established the child's diffident na rciss ism and cu lt of the m asculine body which he ceaselessly painted, even when a mot her figures at the center of the painting. Tak e for exam ple Leo­ nardo's Virgins : Madonna with the Carnation and Virgin and Child with St . A nne. There we find the enigmatic smile, identical with that of the M o na Lisa, herself furtively m ascu line; with naive tenderness, face and torso im pulsively turn t oward the male infant , who rem ains the real focus of pictorial space and narrative interes t. The m aternal figure is com­ pletely absorbed with her baby; it is he t hat makes her exist. "Baby is my goal, and I k n ow it all"-such is the sl ogan of the m other as master. But when Narcissus is thus sheltered and dominated , he can become the privileged ex plorer of secondary repression . He goes in quest of fan tasies that insure any group's cohesion; he reveals the phallic influence operat­ ing over everyone's im aginary. Such an attitude incites pleasure, but it dram at ically affects a desire that is im possible to satisfy by an abunda nce of obj ects, bodies, or behaviors, which ceaselessly excite and disappoint. As long as t here is father, a m agisterial Lord, an intimate of Power, Leo­ nardo turns to his symbolic power, eclipsing m at ernal imprint ; he st ops the gap in repression and surges t owards scient i fic knowledge rather t han investigating through graphic arts the pleasure-anguish within u ncon­ sci ous form ations. Within t he economy o f representation, this kind of structure unfail­ ingly entails a hum anist realism . First, there i s a fetishism of the body and an extrem e refinement of the t echnique of representation by resem ­ blance. Next comes the staging of psychological episodes centered in the desire for a b ody-his, a child's, or another' s . Finally, all chrom atic, luminous, and architectural ex perimentation, releasing, threatening, torturing, and gratifying the artist subj ect within its practice, u ndergoes a figuration wherein it is reduced to a simple, technical device, desti ned to give the effect of representable, desirable, fe tishistic forms. The fu ndamental traits o f Renaissance pai nting em erge in such a vision, and they are ed by t h e story of Leon ardo' s life t h a t was brought out by Freud. They can be found elsewhere, both earlier and later; but with him better than with others, both in his biography and his

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painting, causes and effects come together a n determ ine beyond the details of his li fe and t h e themes of his paintings, the very economy of representat ion, regardless o f its referen t . It is no accident t h a t the m ajor segm ents of this econ omy, which was t o determine Western man's vision for four centuries to com e, are fitted into place by virtue of the themes of m otherhood, the woman's body, or the m other ( M ona Lisa and the Virgi n ) . The artist, as servant of the m at ernal phallus, displays this always and everywhere unaccom pl ished art o f reproducing bodies and sp aces as graspable, m asterable objects, within reach o f his eye and hand. They are the eye and hand o f a child, underage to be sure, but of one wh o is the universal and nonet h eless com plex-ridden center confronting that ot her funct ion, which carries the appropriation o f obj ects to its lim it: science. Body-obj ects, ion for obj ects, painting divided into form ­ object s, painting-obj ect s: the series rem ains open t o centuries of obj ect­ oriented and figurable libido, delighting in im ages and capitalizing on artistic m erchandise. A m ong this m achine's resources figure the un­ touchable m other and her ba by- obj ect, j ust as t h ey appear in the paint­ ings of Leonardo, Raphael, and others. Both Belli ni' s enigm atic biography and the t echnique of his paint ings suggest a di fferent interpretation. Are we in fact dealing with projections m ade possible by our uncertain knowledge? Perhaps. But they seem well ed by the paintings, a veritable p roof of the deduct ions that biographical information only suggested . Commenta tors are puzzled. According to Vasari, Bellini, son of J acopo, died a nonagenarian in 1 5 1 6, and thus should have b een born in 1 426. Yet, in 1 429, J acopo' s wife Anna Rinversi recorded in her will the birth of a fi rst-born son. If Giovan ni was born before this date, he must have been either an il legitimate child or t h e son o f Jacopo or Anna by a previ ous marriage. Other biographers insist that Vasari was wrong and that Gi ovanni was the you ngest child, after Nicolosia ( M antegna's wife ) and G entile. This hypothesis is corroborated m ost convinci ngly by Giovanni's soci al standi ng in relation to G entile, who held t h e position of Seigniorial pai nter before G iovanni; in some pain ti ngs, Gi ovanni appears third after J acopo and G entile. But that does not explain why Giovanni, unlike his brot her and sister, was living alone in 1 459, out side the paternal household, at San Lio in Venice. N or d oes i t explain-and this is m o st crucial-why Anna's last will, dated N ovem ber 2 5 , 1 4 7 1 , does

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not list him among the chil dren heirs, N icolosia and Gentile. So it seem s that Anna Rinversi did not recognize herself as G iovanni's mother, giving credence to speculations concerning an illegitim ate birth or obscure mar­ riage. 3 Such is the situation, the bi ographical outline, greeting t h e viewer who confronts the work of this painter of m otherhood above all other t opics. I ndeed, he was t h e son of a father: he bore his father's name, worked in his studio, and carried on his painterly tradition. He was also a brother; Gentile let him have the position of Seigniorial painter when he left for Constantinople; Gi ovanni also finished some o f Gentile's paintings. But the m other is absent-the m other has been lost. Was he precociously weaned fr om an illegit imate, abandoned, dead, or concealed genetrix? D oes this point to the disavowal of a "sin" com mitted beyond the law's purview and of which Giovanni was the result? Whatever the truth may be, Anna does not seem to have replaced the "real" m ot her, as the honorable Leonardo's wife replaced Leonardo's real mother: Anna knew not hing of the painter of M adonnas. But even if we do remain incredu­ lous in the face of biographical lack and com mentat ors' perplexity, let us also behold the dist ance, if not hostility, separating the bodies of infant and m other in his paintings. M aternal space is there, nevertheless---fas­ cinating, attracting, and puzzling. But we have no di rect access t o i t . As i f t here were a maternal function that, unlike the mother's solicitude in Leonardo's paint ings t oward the baby-obj ect of all desire, was m erely ineffable j ouiss ance, beyond discourse, beyond narrative, beyond psy­ chology, beyond lived ex perience and biography-in short, beyond figuration. The faces of his M adonnas are turned away, intent on something else that draws t heir gaze to the side, up above, or nowhere in particular, but never centers it in the baby. Even though the hands clasp the child and bodies sometimes hug each other, the m other is only partially present (hands and torso), b ecause, from the neck up, the maternal b ody not covered by draperies-head, face, and eyes- flees the paint ing, is gripped by someth ing other than its object. And the painter as baby can never reach this elsewhere, this inaccessible peace colored with melancholy, neither through the portrayed corporeal , nor by the distribution of colored blocks outlining corporeal volu mes. It rather seem s as t h ough he sensed a shat tering, a loss of identity, a sweet j ubila­ t ion where she is not; but without "her"-without eyes or vision-an

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infinitesimal division o f col or and space rhythmically produce a peculiar, serene joy. To touch the mother would be t o possess this presumed j ouissance and to make it visible. Who holds this jouissance? The folds of colored surfaces, the juxtaposition of fu ll t ones, the lim itless volume resolving into a contrast of "hots" and "colds" in an architecture of pure color, the sudden brightness in turn opening up color itself-a last con­ trol of v ision, beyond its own density, toward dazzling light. The Ecstasy of Saint Francis best su ms up this search for jouissance, less by its t heme than by t h e architectonics of a mountain colored in watery tones against which the saint stands, st aggering; it could even be a Taoist painting. But the search appears wherever color, constructed volume, and light break away from the them e (always banal, canonical, with no psychol ogy, no elaborate individualization), implying that t hey are the real, obj ectless goal o f the painting. Given Bellini's profusion of virginal images, we m ight be tempted t o think that the absent , dead, and mute mother, situated beyond the law, determ ines that fa scination, not as it is confronted with a woman-"body" or woman-"subject , " but as it is confronted with the very function of j ouissance. And yet, Giovanni Bellini could reach it only by fol lowing the spoors o f the fat her who, unlike the m ot her, was always present in the real as well as the sym bolic life of the painter. For it was from h i s fa ther that G iovanni t ook his first lessons in spatial liberation and sacred paint­ ing. I n fact, J acopo, neither dignit ary nor lawyer, fervently pursued architecture (see his drawings for Jesus and the Doctors, Christ before Pilate, The Funeral of the Virgin, etc., in the Louvre; all are monumental displays o f Rom anesque or Gothic architect ure) and venerated conven­ tional notions of Byzantine m ot herhood (cf. his Madonna and Child paintings in the Correr Museum). Yet the dull seriou sness of his m ot herhood scenes cast him as blind to the m other; he paints her as if carried a long by the mo m entum of Byzantine canon . (Jacopo's real fervor, t h rough the i n fluence of his son-in-law M antegna, seemed t o reside in arch itectural innovation.) Only h i s s o n Giovanni w a s able t o awaken this m other, thus instilling a symbolic life less into t h e fa ther's sexual obj ect than into its undiscovered j ou issance. First, G iovanni wanted to sur his father, within the very space of the lost-u nrepresentable-forbidden j ouissance of a hidden mother, seduc­ ing the child through a lack of being.

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But then, and m ost importantly, Giovanni could share in this both m aternal and paternal j ouissance: He aspired to becom e the very sp ace where father and mother m eet, only to di sappear as parental, psycho­ logical, and s ocial figures; a space of fundam ental unrepresentabi lity t oward which all glances n onetheless converge; a primal scene where genitality disso lves sexual identification beyond their given di fference. This is how break ing through prim al repression, as described earlier and evidenced by the psychological dram a or its aesthetic sublim ation, was t o b e spelled out within t h e individual's biographical matrix. In any case, we have here a different con figu ration of artistic practice cont rolling a di fferen t economy of representation. Bellini penetrates through the being and language of the fa ther to position him sel f in the p lace where the m other could have been reached . He thus makes evident this always-already-past conditional of the ma ternal fu nction, which stands instead of the j ouissance of both sexes . A kind of incest is then committed, a kind of possession of the m other, which provides motherhood, that mute border, with a langu age; although in doing so, he depri ves i t o f any right to a real existence (there is noth ing " fem inist" in Bellini's action), he does accord it a sym bolic status. U n failingly, the result o f this attitude (moth er-child representat ion, ma rketable paint ing, etc.) is a fet ishized im age, but one floa ting over a lum inous background, evoking an "in ner experience" rather than a referential "object," This experience, det ectable in Bellini's painti ngs, seem s to dem and a consum­ ing of the het erosexu al relat ionship. The converse, h owever, d oes not hold t rue; the heterosexuality of this part icular economy refers only t o t h e speci fic relationship bet ween t h e subject and h i s ident ity-the possi­ bility of going through sign, object, and obj ect-libido in order to t ap and sem iotize even the most m inute displacements in those i n s tinctual pressures that m ark the dividing line between the species and its lan­ guage. The point is to reach the threshold of repress ion by means of the iden tification with m otherhood (be it as heterosexuality or symbolic incest), to reach this threshold where m a ternal j ouissance, alone ima­ ble, is arrayed. If we see this t h reshold in a painting, we no longer hear words or meanings; not even sounds. (But in order to see it, we need a relati onship t o the m ot her ot her than that of the fet ishistic, object-libidio; we must also work intently upon primal repression, which is insu rm ounta-

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ble-m aking t h e task a s tempt ing as it is risk y . ) As in t h e saturnine sk ies of Dante's Paradise, t h e voice here is silen t . It burst forth as a cry only after having gone through colors and lu m i nous spaces, at the end of Canto X X I . Plunged int o a loss of signs, a loss o f the seducing figure (the com ionate or laughing mother), we fi nally come upon deliverance: " A nd tell why the sweet symphony of Paradise Which below sounds so devou t l y I s silent i n this heave n . " " Your h earing is m ortal, l i k e y o u r vision," H e answered m e, " t herefore there is n o song here, For t h e same reason Beatr ice has no smile. " '

I n general, Bellini's paintings h ave a common denominator in sacra con versazione. I t is there that the " sacred" scene of t h e Western World has been knotted and arrested. It was soon to be replaced by hum anism and rational k n owledge, achieving the progress with which we are all familiar. But with what loss o f j ou issance ! As such, it reappears only in the work of certain m odern painters ( Ro t h ko, M atisse) who rediscovered the technique of eclipsing a figure in order to have color p roduce volume. Bellini was their precu rsor, trapped as he was in an epoch fraught with divergent trends.

A T R AJ E C T O R Y FROM M A D O NN A TO VE N U S I N T H E N U DE T h e practice of honoring Christ ' s M other, h i s N ativity, a n d h e r " D ormi­ tion" comes to Western Christianity fr om the Orthodox Catholic Church, which succeeded in annexing the Oriental rites of m ot h er god­ dess and fecundity. It strained biblical and evangelical interpret ation to m a k e i t seem as i f t h e rites were d erived from these texts, as if t h ey had always been inscribed in them. Byzantine apocrypha of the sixth through ninth centuries confirm this tendency, which appears as o fficial doctrine in the writings of theologians such as St. J ohn o f Dam ascus (late seventh, early eighth century). In t hese texts, M ary takes on again the potential authority of a Greek goddess (despite the writers' cl aims to the cont rary), sanctioned by the themes of her " D ormition" or Assumption. The only

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human not to die, she revived in body and/or spirit (this point varies according to interpreters) and in so doing, elim inated the distance between her son and hersel f. Later, a rather "unfem inist" M aster Eckhart em phasized M ary's assimilation to Christ, justified by the Assum ption, by asserting t h at M ary is only the im age (fantasy?) of Christ him self, t o the extent that, although a m an (but like a woman?) he belongs to the Father. Another quite revealing Orthodox conception of the Virgin defines her as ep"(a.uThpzov, ergas t erion privileged space, liv­ ing area, ladder (of J acob), or door (of the Tem ple, in Ezekiel's vision)-dwelling, in short ; she is thus seen as a union, a withou t gap, without separation, and these functions m ake of her a metaphor fo r the Holy G host. She can be seen in the countless icons that proliferated out of the Orient and steadfastly served as models for I talian art . The formal, rigid iconographic canon, which relied on graphic rigor t o delineate blocks of dark colors, produced neither mother nor even goddess, bu t rather a s tyle of representation t h at shift ed from hum an figures to austere idealization with n o gap or separation b etween the two. This style, which was a link between a body and ascet ic rigor, did not waver or lose any o f its abstract rigidity until Byzantium's importance began t o wane in the twel ft h century (the time of the Fourth Crusade, the assertion of southern Slavic peoples, and the M usulman invasion of Asia M inor). A t that point, t he inaccessible grandeu r of the earlier M adonnas gave way to the already humanist com i on (um ilenie in Russian; €Xwvuza., heleousia in Greek) apparent in Our Lady of Vladimir ( 1 1 25- 1 1 30). The twel fth century witnessed the transition fr om a single, virginal face to a m u ltitude of figures set in a composition oriented t oward an i ncreas­ ingly elaborate architecture (cf. the Sopacani frescoes in Serbia, 1 26 5 ) . I t was thus a transformed Bysantine artistry, this famed maniera greca that invaded I taly and influenced Guido da Siena, Ducci o, Cim abue, G iotto, and others. Confronting Byzantiu m , the Venetian Republic enlarged the economic grip o f its position as t rue colonial empire and am assed artistic influ ences from Europe and the Orient . Among these figured Gothic architecture, Flem ish landscape painting, and M oslem and Romanesque tendencies in iconography, ornamentation, sculpture, and building construction. Venetian Gothic style was thus shaped before the arrival o f Florentine -

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humanism . I n painting, Byzantine's influence prevailed; fo r exam ple, Paolo Veneziano adhered t o it until after 1 3 50. There were, nevertheless, alien implantations: M a ntegna's supposedly N ordic rigidity but also his Roman architectural experience, and espe­ cially A ntonello da M essina who ed on to G i ovanni Bellini t h e art o f oil painting. These lead all o f Venice, including t h e Bellini fam ily and notably Gentile, toward a renascent realism . Thus, on the one hand, we have the deeply rooted persistance of the Byzantine u niverse, and on th e other the awakening and growing influence of continental hum anism . Between the two, there is a Venetian Republic, welcoming the Greek sch olars who were fleeing M oslem dominion, and thus open ing itself up to t h e influences of antiquity. At the same t ime, under pressu re from the Turks, the citystate was beginning to lose i t s hegem ony and t o turn t oward t he "terra firma" of I t aly. Simi­ larity, and perhaps due to the consequences of foreig n-pol icy fa ilures, popu lar involvement in governm ent declined to the extent that the term " Venetian Commune" soon fe ll into disuse. Yet a consciousness of eco­ nomic and religious com munal unity persisted, controlled by the D oges, whose p ower, sym bolic as it was, · was not sacred, since i t was elective (even if only by one part icular class, acting in the name of everyone). The cu l t of the State became the supreme et hical value and its autonomy vis­ a-vis the Church grew, t hanks to, fo r example, increasing influence o f the lay court s. Nevertheless, that the o ften realist and popu lar piety of the people and even the clergy never diminished is clearly evident in the m any reliquary celebrations and religious fe stivals of the time. As a divide between Byzantium and humanism , between the sacred serenity of old religion and the political and cultural upheaval on the day, Venice changed ethics at the same time it changed aesthetics, in fr ont of and u nder Bellini's brush. New Mores: The impoverished pat rician class produced hoodlu m s who chased nuns and adolescen t s so regularly that courtesans began to com­ plain o f being neglect ed. P atrician ladies next became aroused, demand­ ing of the Pope the right to wear richly ornamented clothing and j ewelry . Carnival eclipsed Assum ption i n im portance. Bullfighting and another fascinating game in which cats go at the pates of bald men incited as m uch interest and probably more cathartic angu ish than t he feasts o f Saint M ark, t h e Ascension, a n d Corpus Christi combined.

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New Ideas: T h e Petrarchian a n d Neo-Platonist Pietro Bembo arranged for Bellini to undertake a comm ission from I sabelle d ' Este to paint pagan scenes and thus spread the Florentine doctrine unseating virgin m ot h erhood in favor o f carnal love as the true beginning of any spiritual ascent toward God. But the apotheosis of the sacred's slide toward voluptuousness is without doubt Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ( 1 499), att ribu t ed to a Dom inican monk nam ed Fra ncesco Colonna, who abandoned Reason and Will for the glory of fem ale nudity-a rom ance illustrated by woodcuts of yet u n precedented eroticism . Confronted with the subsequent deluge of nudity and eros, a student of the m aster iconographers m u st have resembled a contem p orary interpreter of Bach fa ced with the onslaught of pornography. Such novelty is certainly surprising, but not shock ing; it is not com p letely anti­ thetical to what p recedes it. A bridge does ex ist between the two experiences, but it must b_e found. Such is the course o f Bellini's endeavor. A fter a few initial paintings in an iconographic style and in the m anner of his fat her ( The Crucifixion, Civico Museo Correr, Ven ice), the M adonnas dating from 1450 to 1 4 60 ap pear coldly distant and imive. Cont act between m o t her and child is by the tips of fingers alone, b arely em erging out of Byzant ine canon (Mother with Child and St. Jerome, D etroit). Her contem plat ive look borders on sadness as i f the baby were already crucified (A doring Madonna before Her Sleeping Child, M et ropo litan M u seum , New York). I n fact, a series of crucifixions, based on the theme of Christ ' s ion and displaying a M antegnesque organization of color and landscape ( The Dead Christ in the Sepulchre, M u seo Poldi Pezzoli, M ilan; Christ's A gony in the Garden, N at ional Gallery, London), is firm ly settled within the theme of m otherhood. M oreover, the theme of Christ's death often a p pears coupled with the N at ivity t h eme, as if the son's dea t h were supposed to provide a necessarily t ragic and human rendition of this indeterm inate ion­ anguish-melancholy-j o y giving iridescence to the serenity of the m at ernal body. Such tragic manifestation of a son's deat h and the p lacid exaspera­ tion of his m ot her are best u nited in the eyes o f J esus, as the color blue collap ses into light, in Christ Blessing the People ( 1 460, Louvre, Paris). The theme of m otherhood reappears in his work between 1 4 5 5 and 1 460, this t i m e with an accent on the ma ternal hands. Painted with

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austere a n d graphic precision, doubtlessly d u e to M antegna's i n fluence, they bear witness to a maternal appropriation of t h e child. There is a cru shing hug, a tussle between a possessive mother and her child, who t ries in vain to loosen her grip (Madonna and Child, Amsterdam and Berlin) (figure 6). There is a shiver of anguish and fear in the child's hand, which grips the m ot h er's thumb, with a Flem ish countryside fo r back drop. I s this an archaic mem ory of m aternal seduction, a recollec­ tion of the hand whose pr ecocious, al ready sexual caresses are m ore th reatening than com forting? I n the following years ( 1 460- 1 464), the m other's hands rem ain at the center o f the painting bringing its miniature dram a to a head. Although still possessive, they now shift toward the child's buttocks (Madonna and Child, New H aven ; Madonna and Child, Correr M u seum) (figu re 7) or rest on his sexual member (National G allery, Washington; Brera). We have a striking cleavage of the mat ernal body. On one side t h e m other' s hands h o l d t hei r obj ect tightly (could i t b e t h at, in h e r relationship to the child, the mother experiences the sym biotic clinging syndrome?); on the ot her, we see the softened, dreamy peasan t faces, nearly distressed at having m issed an ex perience that nothing embodies, as i f the child were merely a displaced witness. The climax of this series is the Madonna and Child in Bergamo (figu re 8), a spotlight thrown on a dram atic narrative. Aggressive hands prod the stom ach and penis of the frightened baby, who, alone of all his peers, frees himself violently, t ak i ng his m other's hands along on his body. All the while, the folds of the virginal gown separate this little dram atic theater from the maternal body, whose illuminated face alone is revealed . H er characterless gaze fleeting un der her downcast eyelids, her noneth eless definite pleasure, unshakable in its intim acy, and h er cheek s radiating peace, all constitute a st ange m odesty. This split character of the maternal body has rarely been so clearly brought forward. Perhaps a brutal, biographical separation from a com­ plicity as striking as su ffocating and an inaccessible recollection that keeps lurking behind the cu rtain were all necessary for Bellini to accom­ plish the task . The Presentation in the Temple ( 1 460- 1 464) ( figure 9) is considered by some today t o be the model, rather than a copy, of M antegn a ' s sim ilar painting. It presents with less narrative suggest ion (but n o Jess clearly, precisely because of the arrangem ent of bodies) the theme of

M O T H E R H O O D A C C O R D I N G TO B E LI J N I

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B E L L I N I , MA D O NNA A ND CHIL D, D ETA I L Amsterdam , R ij k smuseu m .

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FIG URE 7.

B EL L I N I , M A D ONNA A ND CHIL D. V E N I C E , C I V I CO COR R E R .

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FIGU R E 8.

B E L L I N I , MA D O NNA A ND CHILD. B E RG A M O, ACCA D E M I A C A R RA RA .

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d � E:

V E N I C E , G A L LE R I A Q U E R I N I STA M P A L I A .

m other/child separat ion. The Virgin is holding and lifting her swaddled child, who adheres to the hollow of her body, skin against skin, flesh against flesh, branches of the same trunk. On the left stands t h e com ­ munity of women. On the right at a slight dist ance, an old m an, sur­ rounded by other men, holds out his arms to receive the baby, which she does not proffer. According to law, the baby will obviously be separated from its m other, but within this pictorial experience, the sym biosis of the two a ppears to allow no possible separation. Their embrace evokes the embrace binding the dead Christ to the bosom of his mother, a twin body, while Saint John waits slightly to the side (Dead Christ ed by his Mother and Saint John, Brera).

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A long and fru itful period of spatial experimentation in triptychs, altar pieces, and collective scenes followed this forced separation. It is, so to spea k , a representation in the plastic arts of the disengagement of the painter from an im age-from the I m age, which was essentially m aternal. Representations of M adonna and Child accom pany these spatial investi­ gations, repeating the char acteristics of earlier m aternal paintings with the exception, perhaps, that distance is more firmly marked into the painting. Air (A doring Madonna and Child, National G allery, London; Contini Bonacossi, Florence) and landscape (Madonna and Blessing Child, Academy G alleries, Venice) abound to the extent that the m aternal embrace loosens its vise. I t seem s as if Bellini had t o experience, b u t especially t o sur, t he trau m a o f maternal seduct ion i n order t o insert sp ace into h i s organizat ion of chrom atic m arkings, and thereby, b etter to approach the ineffable j ouissance t ranscending the m ot her . During this period, 1 475-80, the painter oriented his int erest, first, t oward representing other im ages than that of the m ot her and sacred su bj ects (cf. the series of portraits), and second and forem ost, toward positioning a basically minim alized body within landscapes or structures that are always architecturally structured. St. Francis in Ecstasy ( 1 480 and 1 485, Frick Collection, New York) is probably the most striking example of this m ovement from figuration t oward pure spatialization o f color. In the next series of pai n t ings ( 1 480- 1 490), the split between m o ther and child becomes thematically as well as concretely accentuated. The beaming, enigm atic fe atures of the Bergam o Madonna (which the child is fleeing) now reverberate in the ret icent Madonna with Two Trees ( 1 487, Academy Museum, Venice) or in the Madonnas of Luga no or Sao Paolo). Alm ost serious, probably disappointed, mist rustful, or hurt, it is she who appears ready to flee. Y et, what fills her is less an inaccessible placidity than a certain stiffness, if not a hostile side-glance canceling the always protected, calm appearance of the Madonna with Two Trees. The "possessive mother" of the previous peri od m oves toward the representa­ tion of a "hostile mother. " And the sacred, combining retention and instinctual drive, transforms the form er dist a nce-pleasure balance into distance-anguish. It appears as t hough this aggressivity were rising to the m ot her's throat , but, in fact , it is the infant that abruptly reveals it when,

M O T H E R H O O D A C CO R D I N G TO B E L LI N I

F IG U R E I O .

B E L L I N I , MA DONNA A ND CHIL D SAO P A O L O , M U S E U D E A RT E .

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a n d the green l andscape o f the backgrou nd, which echo and attenuate the folds of her cape. The total space of the painting thus seem s to u n fold into three planes. Yet, t his juxtaposition of colored masses, producing a sense of space, gives way in turn to differentiation within chrom atic m atter it sel f. Tend­ ing toward pure light, Bellini's colors demon strate t h at even what always remains multihued an d com pact figuration inevitably floats in empty space. Precisely by means o f such a chromatic outcome, Bellini can in reality replace the radiant or angu ished m a t ernal face, caught in the grips of primal repression (even if its im age persists in his paintings) with a subtle d i fferentiation of vision and of what is figurable and iden t i fiable (cf. Madonna with the Child Jesus and Sain ts Catherine and Magdalene, Academy Galleries, Venice) . Through his frequent use of altar pieces and by positioning the m aternal throne in his paint ings u nder architectural vaults, which he himself has sculpted or painted, Bellini produces the same spatial out­ look, relativizing the importance of figuration. Whether in the Madonna, Child, Saints, and A ngelic Musicians ( 1 487, Academ y Galleries, Venice), or pl aced more appropriately into a real architectural setting, as in the triptychs of the Churches of Santa M aria
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m other to the fascinating m other-seductress, and then, ing through a t hreatening and fleeing m other to the lum inous space where she surro­ gates hersel f. A ft er the painter's "m ysterious" birth, there rem ains, however, one intriguing biographical fact that may be sign i ficant. During the same years between 1 4 80 and 1 490 that m ark the transform ation of m ystery, figuration, and the m other-child narrative into a search for space and light encircling and dominating them , Giovanni married and had a son. In 1 48 5 , he recorded the dowry of his wife G inevra Bocheta, and in 1 489, Ginevra lists a son Alvise as heir i n her will. Between these two dates the child's birth m u st have occurred. Then did Ginevra die at that time? I n any case, when Alvise died ten years later in 1 499, he was already orphaned of his m other. I n the fifteen years between 1 48 5 and 1 499, Bellini's fa m i lial and paternal experiences along with the deaths of his wife and son accom­ panied, if they did not lead to, the upheaval involving both the psychology of M otherhood and his sty le. One will recall that t h e M a­ donnas in Lugano, Sao Paolo, the Academ y G al leries in Venice, and the church at Frari were painted a fter his m arriage. His newly acqu ired and soon lost fam ily and paternity reversed the idealized notions of a Byzantine and greatly seductive mot her of the years 1450 to 1 4 80; from 1 4 80 until 1 500, this fascination changed into the feelings o f controlled hostility or disappointment eviden t in the Madonna with Two Trees or the divisive vengeance :,'.' the little st rangler in Sao Paolo; finally, without maternal m e diation, it produced the ecstasy of Saint Francis, set off by a background of ecstatic green color. It is as i f paternity were necessary in order to relive the archaic i m pact of the maternal body on man; in order to com plete t h e investigation of a ravishing m aternal jouissance but also of its t errorizing aggressivity; in order someh ow to it the threat that the m ale feels as much fr om the p ossessive m aternal body as from his separation fr om it-a threat t h at he immediately returns to that body; and finally, in order, not t o demystify the mot her, but to find h er an increasingly appropriate l anguage, capable of capturing her speci fic im aginary j ouissance, the j ouissance on the border o f primal repression, beyond, although always coexisten t wit h, the im agery of full, m i m etic, and true signs. The final series o f motherhood paintings, including the M adonna in Det roit ( 1 500- 1 509), carries on and perfects Bellini's m astery of the style

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h e created bet ween 1 480 and 1 500. The m ot her's fa ce again fa lls into calmness/absence, drea ms o f an unsignifiable experience. The infant's body, parallel and close t o hers, nonetheless appears m ore easily separa­ ble. Light inundat es the canvas; figures increase in number and land­ scapes extend deeper into the painting, sometim es splitting into di fferent scenes, always divided by a central curtain or one covering t wo-thirds of the canvas on one side, thus producing two different perspectives: a shallow, fr ontal perspective and a d eeper, converging perspect ive. The maternal figure increasingly appears as a modu le, a process, present only to justify this cleaved space; she i s again the ep'Yaudpwv (ergasterion), privileged space and living area. M oreover, the very human, that is, psychological ion between adult and child seem s to be displaced fr om woman t oward a m an. The infant J esus n ow clings t o a saint with m ore dramatic confidence than h e ever displayed for any of the M adonnas, as may be seen i n the St. Christopher of the Saint Vincent Ferrer polyptych ( 1 464- 1 468, San Giovanni e Paolo, Venice); or in t he Saint Christ opher Child J esus couple i n Saints Chris topher, Jerom e [or Saint J ohn C hrysost ome?] and A ugustin e ( 1 5 1 3 ), Church of Saint John Chrysostome, Venice). Is not the o bj ect-oriented libido always m asculine? What becomes of this m ovement t h r ough m aternal jouissance, once it has arrived a t i t s luminous, colored im print, devoid of object, figure, or spect acle? What happens t o i t in a Venice just discovering antiquity, humanism, the fem ale b ody, carnal ion as supreme grace, Bembo's theories, and P olyphilus's dreams? Bellini accepted secular or pagan commissions (portraits, alleg orical studies, paintings lost i n the Ducal Palace fire, and so on). But his ret icence t owards the new was shown when he procrastinated on Isabella d' Este's request despite Bembo's i ntervention on her beha l f and even though his patron eventually asked m erely for a simple presepio-an adoration of the shepherds which lent itself to a sacred-secular mixture. He yielded to fashion and probably to his patrons, h owever, when he painted The Feast of the Gods ( 1 5 1 4 , Washington); but its style is already that of G iorgione, and it includes obvious strokes by Titian. N onetheless, t h ose partak ing in t he feast still have the awkward appearance of guests at a carnival.

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The m ost surprising of the paintings of his later years is probably the Venus in Vienna ( l 5 1 5 ). I t shares the same division of pictorial space of the last M adonnas: one-third landsca pe, two-thirds fabric . But now, instead of the trad itionally clad m other in the foregrou nd, we h ave the nudity of a full-bodied young woman, sheltered by shadows against a luminous background landscape. Even though the style is Giorgione's and the body radiates n o less sensu ality than do the paintings of Bellini's young disciple, it is not the flesh's iridescence that captures our a t tention. Rather, it is still the unique light of Bellini's style, emanating not from the jux taposit ion of volu mes nor the isolation of form s ( Leonardo's style), but from the luminous treatment of color itself, spark ling in its matter and through interplay with its counterpart, the com plement ary hues of the shadows. The colored light thus produces curved and open space, which is easily differentiated fr om the m asses of light carving up the bodies and volumes in the canvases of other contem porary painters. This device, unique t o Bell ini and especially to this painting, m anifests it sel f even m ore fu lly becau se of the interplay o f mi rrors, surrou n ding the body of the N u de, revealing by ricochet her fa ce and neck . Through the perpendicular juxt aposition of m irrors, there appears a crack d own the shadowed frontal part of the canvas, producing a bend in the representa­ tion and engendering a third space. N either background nor fo reground, it is the opening of one vista of the painting towards the viewer; it appears as inverted perspective, a reversal of the viewer-viewed point of view-enough to make every cubist dream . It is a reflexive glance, a cir­ cu lar look , careful t o fragment sp ace as much as possible by following the refr act ion of light rays. Her face comes fr om the Madonna with Blessing Child ( 1 509, Detroit), the Madonna with Two Saints ( 1 490, Academy G alleries, Venice). The averted, m odest, ecst atic, melancholic, or ret icent gaze of the M adonnas here proj ects from the depths o f the pupils to see i t self, to encounter itself, not in the obj ect-for-ot hers th at is the i n fant, nor even in the viewer (as the angle of the two m irrors opening towards the viewer might suggest), but in the pseudo-obj ect made up by the m i rror itself. And the m i rror can do not hing m ore than to return the gaze. Face t o face w i t h prim ary narcissism, rest raint persists along with a kind o f sta te­ ment of insurm ou ntable limits: "This is how it is." The Virgin h as com e

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down from her clothed exile i n a n elsewhere that racked her. But the uncovered woman nevertheless rem ains split. On the one hand, there is the nude and ably erotic body; on t he other, its fundamental entrap­ ment by the m i rror im age, certainly her own, but whose slack , m otherly stom ach rem inds us that she is only one point of view, an interplay of lights, unrepresentable, fleet ing. Through this Woman and Mirror, Bellini, now ninety years old, entered easily into the sex shop of his age. In two or three paintings (if we also count the A llegory in the Academ y Ga lleries and the Feast of the Gods in Washington), he exhibited a connoisseur's mastery of the subj ect matter equal to that of Giorgione and Titia n . Yet, h e added his own special discovery, which the fashion of his time never let h im display as such : a lumi nous coloration suring any representation of the nude body . This "sacred" elem ent had long accom panied the im age o f his m aternal bodies; since it was thus engendered by, but also al ready detached from, virginal figurations, as it was fr om all representations, Bellini was fol lowing, like a crit ic from the future, the obj ect-oriented ostentation of his time, which nevertheless encountered and revealed his main preoccupation (jouissance)-but in still too t h em atic a m anner, essentially tied to obj ects and deeply fet ishistic, since h e at tached it t o a body, in this insta nce the female body. In the end, the sex shop ful filled its role for the old master, clearly conveying to the secu lar world j ust ex actly what wo rked upon it, what affected it through a Madonna's veils. And still, his use of light vastly sures this them atic; it could not be fully a ppreciated until after Poussin, Cezanne, and Roth k o .

S P A C E S AND G LI M M E R S

Saint Francis i n Ecstasy ( 1 480- 1 4 8 5 , Frick Collection, New Y o r k ) por­ trays the saint against a cascade o f aquam arine volum es, almost ent irely engu l fed by their m orning glow, fading into sem idarkness at lower right . On the left, near the top o f the painting, diagonally across from pulpit, book, and skull o f the lower right corner, there appears another space, where a landscape, a donk ey, and a great deal of light suggest the divine presence. This unfolding of the painting's surface into two planes, each with its own volum e, is ty pical of Bell ini's work . Each volu m e bends,

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twists, breaks, and fragments itsel f separately, producing a sense o f tor­ ment among the represented forms. Yet , t hey are also hom ogenized into a single luminous mass by t he green hues of the foreground and the orange hues of the backgrou nd. This splitting/laminating of the surface is heightened by, among other elem ents, curving and broken lines, wind­ ing into a green spiral (a hill) in the lower-left foreground. Yet another spiral balances the first, near the top center, constituting the lower right angle o f the backdrop. Consequently, the split/ laminated surface of the painting, tormented by the luminous color of each section, finds i n its left half a spiral m ovement that surges u pwards, in contrast to the verti­ cality of rock s on the rig h t . G raphic constructions t hat divide, covered with iridescent colo red masses that bind together this multiple su rface: foreground/ background, u p per left-hand diagonal/lower right-hand di­ agonal, lower diagonal spiral on the left / centered diagonal spiral near the t op, und ulating left half-vertical right half. Perhaps the saint's ecst asy is precisely this union between the drawing's im placable fr agm entation and a soft lining encoming the fragm ents within two m asses of luminous hues: green and orange. There is i nterplay am ong cutting traces, together with infin itesimal di fferent iations within one color, seek­ ing itself within its own range, up to t h e borders of its complement arity, until it becomes lost in pure ligh t . I n t h e Madonna with t h e Child Jesus, Saints Catherine and Magdalene ( 1 490, Academy Galleries, Veni ce), angular, bending space no l o nger arises out of the graphic carving out of the drawing. Here t h e painting's surface constitutes a vau lt, as did the Frari triptych. But while the triptych's sense of cu rvature is produced by the curved back wall and arched ceiling, here the cupola effect is produced by the dark color becom ing lu mi nous. The outline of the robe covering head and rounded shou lders of t h e Virgin gives to it, and the infant ' s u pward gaze suggests it as well-one sees this at once. But the curvature is achieved essentially by t he turning of t h e m ore saturated colors, filling the paint­ i ng ' s forms and volum es, t oward yellowish-whit e. The brick reds or pur­ ples of the saints' garments, M ary 's bluish-green robe, the deep orange of t heir flesh and the rust -maroon tint of t heir hair deepen or fade with each fold, running t h rough the spectrum, within their own hue, between two invisible limits, from black , where color is ex tinguished, to bright y ellow, where it dazzles. This treatm ent of color as such is accentuated by an

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elliptical placement o f blinding flashes-exposed flesh changing t o yellowish-pink , as in the u pper curves o f the three women's heads and lower curve of t heir hands and the b aby. The brown background is one of Bellini's fu ndamental discoveries. Sat urated with black , green, and red, the com pact ness o f this brown tint inver ts into its opposite-a vague, liquid, invisible color, a sparkling medium engendering and suspending bare brightness. The curved space, repeating the cu rves of a nude body, results from subdued color m oving across the limits o f its scale to the two ex tremes of the spectru m . A high level of sublim ation is reached at the very point where anguish appears-an anguish that nudity m ight otherwise have provok ed and that we call eroticism . I n The Sacred A llegory ( 1 490- 1 500, U ffizi, Florence), t h e tormented graphic nature of form s , fragmented by outlines but bound together by color, is present in the backgrou n d . That reminder o f the graphic space of Sain t Francis in Ecstasy, however, here becomes geom etrical; m ore G reek , more rational in the painting's foreground, where a terrace railing opens up three sides of a rectangula r volu me in fron t of the viewer. The floor is broken u p into red and black squares and hexagons, while the tree of life delineates three-fourths of its surface. Light here is not engendered, as in Madonna with the Child Jesus, Saints Catherine and Magdalene to create the i m pression of vaulted space; nor does it burst forth fr om a corner in order to spiral, twist, and harm onize at the same time, as it did in Saint Francis in Ecstasy. It sim ply exis t s as an incandescence within the d om inating orange that lights u p the browns, reds, and whites, from right t o left and m erges into b lue sky at the top center of the painting-flight, hearth, and azure opening. Because of the dominance of variegated yellows, the wavelike or broken features of the many planes of the background, as well as the regular geometry of the foreground, open u p on i n finity. There are n o bent surfaces and n o domes. Pure luminosity b athes each figuration, including those t h a t firmly m ark the fragmented spaces, and thus allows blinding light to pre­ dominate through the yellows. It m arks the limits of representation in and for which a few colored-obj ect elem ents condense-unfa ilingly, but so as t o escape a l l the m ore easily-as reds, greens, blacks, and b lues, in lieu of robes, trees, sky, m ountains, hu m an and animal figures. Now a l l figural represen tation appears a s a m irage under a yellow, desert sun .

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This allegorical painting is said to represent Saint Bernard's com m entary on the first fourteen verses of Psalm 84, the "rest oration o f I srael . " As Grace, Truth, J ustice, and Peace discuss hum anity's salvation t hrough the I ncarnation, a finally nonthreatening Yahweh himself appears, announcing the arrival of justice and peace. The th ree women in the painting incorporate t hree a spects of this sacra con verzatione: on the left, M aria Aeterna represents Grace and Peace; on the right, a secon d figure represents a condensation of Truth and Jus tice; and on the throne, M ary assu mes the place of the Father. If this in terpretation of the painting is correct, we are in fact confronted with a both t hem atic and ch romatic represen tation of harm ony . Far from suppressing spatial or color dif­ ferences, such harmony distributes them within an open infi nity as integ ration of the limits separating figures, d rawings, and nuances in color and as their endless b o nding toget her. This is the sublim ation of a totalizing power, pushed to the limits of represent ability: form and color. The interplay of m irrors confronting the nude Venus, as understood t hrough Bellini, shows t hat prim ary narcissism is the threshold o n which pictorial experience ceases and whence it work s its effects. If primal repression is just anot her ex pression for prim ary narcissism, then provok­ ing one and the other, work ing on them, and analyzing them-without ever being able to rem ove them-must be the cause of jouissance, and here, m ore precisely, of j ouiss ance through and within pictorial represen­ tation. It can only result in a shattering of figu ration and form in a space of graphic lines and colors, d i fferentiated until they disappear in pure ligh t . Our long biographical a nd historical, sacred and figural journey h a s s h o w n t h a t for Bellini, motherhood is nothing m ore t h a n such a luminou s spati alization, t h e ultim ate language of a jou issance at the far limits o f repression, whence bodies, i dentities, and signs are begotten.

Notes I . " Dorm ition" refers t o the p e r iod or the V i r g i n M a ry's death, w h ich is v iewed m erely as a period or sleep, before she was carried to heaven ( Assumption). The word originated in the Transitus Maria, a firth-century Byzan tine apocrypha. [ E d . ] 2 . T h e French w o r d "enceinte" h a s been k ept as the o n l y w a y t o preserve the p u n :

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"enceinte" i s a protective wall around a town: " fem m e enceinte" i s a preg n a n t woman. [Ed . ] 3 . C f. G . Fi occo. G iovanni Bellini ( M ilan: S i l v a n a . 1 9 60); R. L o n g h i . Viatico per cinque seco/i di Pittura veneziana ( Fl orence: Sansoni. 1 946); L. Coletti. Pittura veneta de/ quattro

cento ( N ovara : 1 9 5 3 ) ; and ot hers. 4. Dan te, Paradisio, x x 1 , 58-63.

10.

P LACE NA M ES

C H I LD H O OD

LANGU AG E , INFANTILE LAN G U A GE

Twice during the past few centuries Western reason perceived that its role of being a servant t o m eaning was im prisoning. Wishing to escape, it turned t oward and became h aunted by childhood. Witness Rousseau and Freud-two crises of classical and positivist rationality. And two revolu­ tions loomed on its horizon: one in polit ical economy (seek ing its status in M arx), the other in the speak ing subject (articulated today by m o dern li terature's disruption of t h e Christian Word). Before Sade and Solzhe­ nitsyn, who spell out j ouissance and horror, analytic discourse was given a privileged foil, a nexus of life and language (of species and society)-the child. It was as if Reason were suddenly neither satisfied sim ply to test its restraining bonds by confr onting t exts, nor to strain m eaning by writing the speaking being's identity as fiction; it was forced, instead, to face reproduction o f t he species (the boundary between "nature" and "cul­ ture") and the varied atti tudes toward it . Reason was thus tran scended by a h eterogeneous elem ent (biology: life) and by a third party (I/you com munication is displaced by it: the child). These challenge the speaker with the fact t h at he is not whole, but they do so in a m anner alt ogether different from that in which the obsessed person's wretched consciou sness ceaselessly sign i fies his bondage to deat h . For if death is the Other, life is a t hird party; and as this signification, asserted by t he child, is d i sq u iet­ ing, it might well unsettle the speak er' s paranoid enclosure. With out this advent of the real (im posed by the child but b locked by the myth of the Place Names w a s fi r s t published as Noms de Lieu in Tel Que/ 6 8 (Winter 1 976): i t appeared in a revised vers ion, from which this translation was made, in Polylogue (Paris: Seuil, 1 977), pp. 467-9 1 .

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child), o n e belief still persists: either m e n a n d wom en exist in a n d for the romantic or surrealist exchange of ideas or sex ; or else sublimation can occur with nothing left over, instinctual drive being t otally comm itted (in Existen tialist fashion) to Lifework or History-when it does not foster perversion as t he final guarantee of order. Two thousand years ago the child Jesus came to circumvent these two dead ends, but having become a ritual, like all rituals he quickly became a substitute. He even became a whole history-Christianity. By uncover­ ing childbirth from beneath kinship st ructures, whose subj ective and political outgrowths are traced in the Bible, Christianity m ay have interfered with Judaism's att ract ion to obsessional and paranoid confine­ ment. At the same time, it gave a place to women-not necessarily a sym bolic progress but certainly a biological and social necessity. And yet , by celebrating M a n in the child, that is, by m aking the child into a u niversal fetish, Christ ianity fo reclosed the possibility ( o f which it nevertheless had an inkling) o f break ing the cycle of religion; just the same, it was the last possibility of doing so. For where life and discourse come t ogether, that is where the destiny of subj ect s is caught up in the chain o f civilization. Today, the pill and the Pope know this indeed . The discovery of the Freudian unconscious severs the always possible umbilication of man to the child; the notion of "infantile sexuality" allows for the exam ination, not of he who does not speak (in-fans) but of what within the speaker is not yet spok en, or will always rem ain u nsaid, unnamable within the gaps of speech . It is true that the child butt resses the fundamental premises of Freudian thought (the theory of instinctual drives, rejection-negativit y, the em erg ence of sym b olism, the stages marked by the Oedipus com plex, et cet era). The child was, h owever, by Freu d's own ission, the place of an "error" that we shall now try t o read m ore closely. Such an error cannot be righted when t h e m ind allows itself to be taken in by the inextricable alternative of "cause" and "effect , " as Freud rarely did; compared with which Freu d's " errors" h ave the advantage of sh owing his t hought to be rooted in the eternal return of parent/child: "Am I parent or child, cause or effect, chick en or egg?" So that one might observe, perhaps, that the child is a m yth (Oedipal) told by parents t o their parents, without which there would be nothing but children, that is, Oedipi u nbek nownst to t hemselves. Were the Greeks, who t a lked am ong them selves of having been children, the

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m ost lucid parents of history? This might have perm i tt ed them t o cir­ cum scribe aggression (childlike, hereafter term ed Oedipal) in o rder to proceed t owards law in the City. Let us restate a few facts. Freud m arried in 1 8 86 and had six children (three girls and three boys) between 1 8 8 7 and 1 89 5 . During this period he completed his neu rological research , published his findings on aphasia and infantile paralysis ( 1 89 1 ), and began his research on h ysteria, through hypnosis at first, leading t o the publication in 1 895, with Breuer, of Studies on Hysteria. That same year marked the birth of Anna (whose analytical research would essent ially center on ch ildhood), the end of the family's reproductive cycle, and the beginning of Freud's friendship with Fliess. He would soon begin a self-analysis within the fr amework of that relat ionship whose hom osexual tenor he later emphasized . He u sed the word psychoanalysis one year later, in 1 896. Yet, it was only a fter the death of his fat her in 1 8 97 that Freud wrote the inaugural work of psychoanalysis, which set it free o f the substantialism , m edicine, and catharsis that were still perceptible in Studies on Hysteria; The In terpretat ion of Dreams, o f 1 897, which situ ates it within the field of signifying articu lations, was published in 1 89 8 . At t h i s m o m ent, Freud i n t roduced a change in t h e concept ion of what he had th ought to be the cause of hysteria: parental seduction . 1 FIRS T A S S U M P TION: hysteria is set o ff by parental seduction during childhood. F reud promoted that theory until 1 8 96, the year of his father' s death, suggesting that J acob Freud must have seduced him (letter t o Fl iess, Feb. 1 1 , 1 897), and recognizing that his eldest daughter, M athilde, was possibly the obj ect of his own attem pts at seduction (letter to Fliess, May 3 1 , 1 897, several m onths before his father's death). 2 S ECOND AS S UMP­ TION: that seduct ion was only a hysterical fantasy m erging with a paranoid attitude, and thus serving as a screen for his childhood auto­ erot icism . Thus the conception o f an essentially aut oerotic childhood sexu ality emerged . THIRD MOVEMENT : Freud also all owed for the child's genital desires and proceeded t owards the concept ion of the O edipus com plex . Although this happened in the last years of the century, writt en evidence for such a stand d oes not em erge until 1 905 ( "Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neu roses " ) and in 1 906 ( Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality). Between the first assumption (the parent seduces t h e child and leads it

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to neurosis) a n d the second (the seducer i s t h e autoerotic a n d polym or­ phous perverse child), two events occurred : Freud ceased having children and his father d ied. T h e revers al of his position with respect to the parent-child relationship (the child becom ing the agent o f seduction), thus corresponding to those events, is dram atically evoked in two sub­ sequent texts: On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movem ent ( 1 9 1 4) and A n A u tobiographical Study ( 1 92 5 ) . Here, Freud t erms parental seduction an "erroneous idea" that cou ld have been " fatal to the young science. " 3 The distress provoked by the discovery of that mistaken path was so great th at he wrote, "Like Breuer, I almost gave up analysis." Why did he nevertheless continue? The expl anation is succinct , t o say the least : " Perhaps I persevered because I no longer had any choice and could not then begin again at something else. At last cam e the reflection that, a fter all, one had no right to despair because one has been deceived in one's expectations; one must revise those expectations." 4 Acknowledging an end ("one cannot begin again": to have children?) and a feeling of despair (the father is dead: no m ore seducer?), he at the same t i m e recovered control ("one does not have the right": t o abandon the father, no longer to be father, to abdicate paternity?). Such a reading seem s to be ed by an ex amination of his later tex t, A n A u to­ biographical Study ( 1 925): " When, however, I was at last obliged t o recognize t h a t these scenes of seduction h a d never t aken place I was for some time com pletely at a loss [from 1 897 to 1 900 approximately] I had in fact stu mbled for the fi rst time upon the Oedipus com plex [in its disguise of sedu ction fantasy ] . "5 C ould the discovery of the Oedipus complex, and thereby of infan tile sexu ality, and t h u s the begin­ ning of the m odern conception of the child, have been produced th rough an inverted Oedipal com plex? Could the "Oedipus com plex" be the dis­ course of m ou rning for his father's death? As neurosis is the negative of perversion, could that discourse represent, in like manner, the negative of the guilt experi enced by a son who is forced by the signi fier to take his father's place? The Freudian conception of the child would thus provide the basis for paternal discourse, the solid foundation for the paternal function, and consequently the guarant ee, both present and ultim ate, of socializat ion. That may be a paternal vision of childhood and thus a limited one; it is, however, lucidly presented to the inevitability .

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of the sym bolic and/or social code. I t is, therefore, an ethical, biblical visi o n. So, a fter having fathered six children in eigh t years, loving them as a devoted father (there seem s to be agreement on this), having it t ed to being the possible seducer of his daughter but also the victim of his fa t her's sedu ction, "one can no longer begin agai n . " In addition t o this recognition of closure, of disillusionment with respect to the hysterical body, the libido as substance, and "seductive eroticism "-is it the recognition of a sexual dead end?-there cam e his father's death and Freud's feelings of guilt t oward him (no, the seducer cannot be my fa ther, the seducer is me, the child of this father; now I am also the father [of M athilde]; th erefore the sedu cer can only be the child); this is accom panied at once by the desire t o take his place, t o assume the m oral, paternal fu nct ion ("One has no right to despair because he has been disappointed ," Freud writes). The fa ther is dead, long live the fat her that I am : there where it (id) was shall I (ego) com e to be.6 The "child" is what remains of such a becom ing, the result of subtracting the utterance of guilt fr om the u t t erance of mastery: "Seduction during childhood ret ained a certain share, though a humbler one, in the etiology of neu roses. But the seducers tu rned out as a rule t o have been older children . " 7 We thus come to the shaping of this image of the child­ parent, the seducing child, a child always already older, born i n t o the world with compound drives, erogen ous zones, and even genital desires. With the end of the reproduct ive cycle and spurred by his father's death, Freu d ' s self-analysis led him to that telescoping of father and child, resulting in none Qt her than Oedipus: "I had in fact stumb led for the first time upon the Oedipus com plex . " 8 The child-parent o r t h e parent-child, thus presen ted t o analytical practice, j oins cause and effect, origin and becoming, space and time, to produce that s peci fic twist of psychoanalytic discourse that brings to mind the H eraclitan aiwv : cyclical time and also space where the G reek thinker happened to see the poet at play-the poet who alone maintains the discourse of a child giving birth (to a father?) .9 Instinctual ity is simult aneou sly revealed as innate and hereditary, but, within the Freudian framework , it is already protected from substantialist inter­ pretations. For alt hough t h e child enters the world with polym orphous

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instinctual drives, t hese conflict with repression a n d the latter produces the several variants of libido fix ation (" subj ective structures"). It follows t hat neurosis--or the speaking subj ect-can never be dealt with at the level of drive, or t hrough a child at zero degree of symbolism , but rat her always t hrough a narrative "texture, " t h at is, a t exture of la nguage and phantasm : "It was only a fter the int roduction [within childhood's instinctual experience] of this elem ent of hysterical fantasies [the parental seduct ion fant asy ] that the texture of the neurosis and its relation to the patient' s life became intel ligible . " 1 0 Nevertheless, t h i s dismantling o f t h e Christian-Rou sseauist m y t h o f childhood is accompanied b y a problem atic endorsement. Proj ected into the supposed p lace of childh o od, and t h erefore universalized, one finds the features t h at are particular t o adult discourse; the child i s endowed with what is dictated by adult memory, always distorted to b egin with; t he myth of hum an continuity persists (fr om child to parent, Sam eness prevails). In like m anner, the function of the fa m ilial context in the pre­ cocious development of the child (before puberty, before Oedipus, but also before the "m irror stage") tends to be minimized. This is only too evident i n ego-centered t rends i n child psychology, b u t also in a psychoanalytic practice t h at posits t h e subj ect as dating from the "mirror stage." The m ost important debates and innovations in psychoana lysis have consequently and necessarily b een centered in this problem . The point is indeed to em phasize the heterogeneity between the libidin al- signi­ fying organization in infancy (let us call it the " semiotic disposition") and t h e "sym b olic" functioning of the speaker foll owing language acqui­ sition and the consequent parental identifications. On the other h and, and at the same t i m e, this precocious, presym b olic organization is grasped by the adult only as regression-j ouissance or schizophrenic psychosis. Thus, the difficulty, the im possibility that beset such an attem pt at gain­ ing access to childh ood : the real stakes of a discourse on childh ood within Western t h ought involve a confrontation bet ween t hought and what it is not, a wan dering at the limits of the thinkable. Outside of poetic practice (thinking a dissipat ed langu age, Heraclitan limit, reinven­ tion of materialism ), t h e analytical solutions to this question (this Freudian "error") always appear problematic: Jung's dead end with its archetypal configurations of libidinal substance t ak en out of the realm of sexuality and placed in bon dage to the archaic m ot her; the empiricist

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prec1s10n of M elanie Klein's "partial objects" and subsequently the effort, by Winnicott and his followers to posit within the "potential space" between m other and nursing infa nt a libido without drive, t herefo re without obj ect, goal, or tim e-all of which remain speci fic attributes of the adult speaker's libido; the desiring m achines of schizophrenics without signifiers; or fi nally, in a new and radical way that nevertheless rem ains all-encom ing within the Name-of-the­ Father (as with Lacan), removing the unnam able from childhood and placing it within the real, which is at the same time im possible and inevitably persistent within the real-imaginary-symbolic triad. As distingu ished from speculation, transference, h owever, seem s t o indicate t h a t the signifying disposit ion t hat Win nicott c a l l s the "pre­ obj ective libido" (therefore not the Freudian libido), 11 which can be detected in t h e nonspeaking child, persists beneath the second ary repression imp osed as soon as langu age is acquired; it also conti nues, through the formation of t he Oedipus complex , in all speak ing beings, esta blishing their psych otic fo undation or their capacity fo r j ouissance­ of which the aesthetic is one am ong several. This d isposition is set out and articulated, from its very beginning (which remains with us as space become permanent t ime), by the solu tions that parents recently dis­ co vered in ans wer to the sexual inan ity manifested by the child. For the hysteric child to attribute its neurosis to parental seduction is probably an instance of paranoia. But , t hrough the seduction myth, it sees itself as being attached by drive (even before desire) to this object of love ex tolled by its parents in t heir denial of the sexual nonrelation that the child's coming punctu ates. Freud's error, h owever, has still not a ffected lingu istics, which rem ains u niversal and Cartesian in its study of individual "languages," phenom­ enological i n its approach to discourse. "Childhood langu age"-a t heoretical m i rage-has become for psycholinguistics the privileged ground where the contradictions and dead ends of linguistic rat ionality are attested . Some see in "childhood language" an em pirical demon stra­ tion of generative gram m ar ' s pertinence (deep structure exists because it functions as such in the child). Others posit a difference between lan­ guage and l ogic in children, on the one hand, and in adults on the other. But, in t rying to describe the former, t hey use categories and even unquali fied models (always m ore or less t aken from generat ive gram m ar)

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contingent u p o n t h e l atter. T h is leads, in t h e first i nstan ce, t o t h e use o f c h i ldhood langu age a s an il lustration o f t h eory, probably amput ated, b u t i n tended to be com pleted t h ro ugh m atu r a t i o n . T h e resu l t , in t h e second, is a flo u ndering i n em pirici s m , for no concept of the s u bj ect, other t h an o n e b o u n d to Car tesian l ogi c, is a v ai l a b l e to acco u n t for t h e di fferen ces o n e su pposedly detects in t h e ch i l d's logic or syntax. T h e presy n t actic ph ases o f c h i ldhood semiosis rem a i n o u tside o f this i n v est igat i o n ; b u t also excluded a r e a l l sem a n t i c l a t encies d u e to sex u a l a n d fa m i ly d i f­ ferences, which are i ntegrated or short- circu i ted, each ti m e in speci fi c fas h i o n , with i n t h e s y n t actic repression constitu ting th e g r i d o f a n y l a n ­ gu age a s u n i versal system , an d w h i c h b ecom e m an i fest i n eith er syntactic

l ib erties or lexical variations o f c h i l dhood dis course. 1 2

It m i gh t , on th e o t h er hand, be possi b l e to pos i t as " o bj ec t " of an alysis not " c h i l dhood l an g u age" but rat h er " i n fantile l an gu age, " i n t h e sense that Freud spea k s o f i n fa n t i l e sex u al i t y - a telescoping o f paren t and c h i l d . We wou l d t h en b e concerned w i th the atten t i v en ess t h at t h e adu l t , through h i s sti l l i n fantile sex u a l i t y , is a b l e t o perceive i n t h e disco u rse o f a c h i l d ( b o y o r g i r l ) w h i l e i t refers h i m to t h a t l e v el w h e r e h i s " o w n " lan­ g u age is n ever totally r ational ized or norm ated accordi ng to Cartesian l i n gu i s t i cs, b u t where it always rem ains an " i n fa n t i l e l anguage . " Thus it would consti t u t e an a n alytical atten tiven ess to language, within the dual rel a t i o n s h i p transference b etween adu l t a n d child; a n a n a l ysis t h at is appl i ed through phant asm i c or m y t h i cal contents (which have been u n t i l now t h e so l e obj ects o f psycho analysis a n d c h i l d psy chology) t o th e " m i n i m a l " com ponents o f l anguage (phonic, lex i c al , a n d syn t actic opera­ tions; logico-syntactic catego ries). The c h i l d therefore becom es the real from which we b egin our a n a l ysis, through m i n i m al com pon e n ts, of ou r (any) l anguage' s infantile attri b u tes. T h is particu l a r attent iveness to the psycho a n a l y t i c con ditions u n derly­ ing language structu res m i ght i n v ite a probab l y transferential, or m or e precis ely, m at ernal attitude toward t h e c h i l d . C a n n o t th e history o f post­ Freu dian child psychology, c u l m i n ating in t h e works b y S pi t z an d W i n n i ­ c o t t , b e su m m arized as a s h i ft from t h e pa ternal, Freudian attentiv eness to a m a t er n al attention? With all the progress an d setbacks such a phan­ tasmatic attitude indu ces in m e n a n d women anal ysts . . . For a wom a n , t h e arrival o f a c h i l d b reak s t h e a u toero t i c circle o f pr egn ancy (wh en her j o u issance recalls t h e saint w h o beco m es o n e with

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her god, inaccessible and yet consu bstantial with her instinctual drive during her ion) and brings abou t what, for a woman, is the di fficult of a relationship with an other: with an "object" and with love. Is i t not true t h at a woman is a being for whom the One, and t herefore the Other, is not taken for granted? And that in order to reach this constantly alt ered One, to have access to the sym bolic-thetic level, which requ ires castration and obj ect, she m u s t tear herself from the daughter­ m other sym biosis, renounce the undifferentiated com munity of women and recognize t h e father at the same time as the sy mbolic? . . . It is precisely the child that, for a m o th er (as opp osed to a genetrix), constitutes an access ( an excess) t oward the Other. The child is the removal o f what was only a graft during pregnancy: an alter ego capable (or not) of replacing a m aternal narcissism henceforth integrated within a "being fo r i t . " Neither for itsel f nor in itself, but for it . . . The m ot her of a son (henceforth the generic "infant" no l onger ex ists) is a being confronted with a being-for-him . The m other of a daughter replays in reverse the encounter with her own m other: differentiation or leveling of beings, glim p ses of oneness or paranoid prim ary identification phan­ tasized as primordial sub st ance. In both cases, t h e well-kn own relation­ ship with an object-which exists only a s obj ect o f love-is founded only as a th ird-person relationship: neither I nor you within a relationship of identification or lust, but he (she). Love replaces narcissism in a third person that is external t o the act of discursive commun ication. H ence, "God is love" : it is for this very reason that he does not exist, except to be im agined as child for a woman. H ere again one acknowledges the brilliant inspiration o f Christian tradition. From this point on, for t h e m ot her-not fo r t h e genetrix-the child is an analyzer. H e releases t h e hysteric woman ' s anguish, often hidden, denied, or deferred in its paranoid course, directing it toward others or toward the array of consu m er goods. I t is an angu ish t hat brings the m other t o grips with castration (that very castration that a num b er of "women" or genetrices deny, because for t hem t he child is the cork that stops, seals the community of the species, and a llows for the usurpation of the father's place while refusing to recognize i t). The death drive is loosened across its entire dramatic gamut extending from the fury of Lady Macbeth to self-sacrifice, always for the same love obj ect, the third person, the child. Throughout these meanderings where the ana lyzer

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leads h i s m other, acknowledgment o f castrat ion prevents m urder; it is its opposite and opposes it. For this very reason the m other is able to analyze where the genetrix fa ils (by block ing, with the "baby", any access to the symbolic disposition through the fantasy of a substantia list fusion within that generative matter where m others incorporate their children) and where the saint succeeds (when, in her ion fo r the sym­ bolic, her own body becom es the exalted, sanctioned sign of denial): she k eeps o pen the enclosures where paranoid persons anchor t hemselves. M aternity k n ots and unknots paranoia-the ground on which hysterics stand. It is clear that "neuropsychological m aturation " and language acquisi­ tion cannot be taken for granted under these conditions. In all lik elihood, the structures of any language inevitably carry the imprint of t he m other­ a nalyzer relat ionship. A n d t h at is enough to confo und any linguistic theory.

S P A C E C AU S E S L A U G H T E R Current attempts t o p u t a n end to hum an subjecthood (to the ext en t that it involves subj ection to m eaning) by proposing to replace it with spaces ( Borromean knots, m orphology of catast rophies), of which the speaker would be m erely a phen om enal actualization, m ay seem appealing. We m ust not fo rget, however, that such formants (even if their refi nements lead only to t he addressee's catharsis, and t hey do not function as "m odels" of a referent-obj ect) have their particu lar source in the "logical activity specifically linked to language ." 1 3 Husserl's considerations on the spatial intuitions o f the Greek s leading up to Euclid have lost none o f t h e i r epistem ological force: the hist ory o f hum an forming is roo ted i n language as a system of propositions. 1 4 N o fo r m i n g c a n transcend its origin-meaning, as it is posited by that predicat ion peculiar t o language. If the m etaphysical solidarity of "meaning, " "origin, " and " forming" is thus posited a s the limit of any attempt at clarification (and also, therefore, of li nguistics), and perhaps also of all analysis (and perhaps of psycho analysis), it still seem s clear t h a t any spatial represen tation pro­ v ided for within a universal language is necessarily subject to t eleological

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reason, contrary to what "rom antic m inds" might maintain, attracted as they are to the "m ythico-m agical . " 15 The history o f the speaking being (spatially bound precisely because he speaks) is only spatial variation, 16 never shattering the limits of the speaking/ forming, but rather displacing it by m eans o f a praxis or a techne. I t is henceforth clear that meaning's closure can never be challenged by another space, but only by a di fferent way of speaking: another enu nciation, another "literature." There exists, on t h e other hand, an epistemological bent t oward elucidation that is not, as H usserl postulates, the "destiny" of the speaking being; rather, it is one of its practices, one variation of signifiance not limited to what is "universa lly intelligible" -madness and literature are its witnesses. If we remain with this tendency, we must choose between two direct ions: either we delineate the history of spaces (we practice epistem ology), or we investigate what Husserl calls "human fo rming." The second alternative inevitably m erges with Freudian preoccupations: the analysis of the " origins" of form­ ing/ speaking foll ows the path of the Freudian "error" ment ioned above. Any atten t iveness to "infa ntile language" (as defined above) seems to be located at that ambiguous point where psychoanalysis opens up the limits of phenom enological m eaning by indicat ing its condit ions of production, and where phenomenology encloses the transferential disin­ t egration of m eaning-as soon as the latter is b eing articulated as either demonstrative or simply "un iversally int elligible" clauses. To repeat the question that the infa nt-analyst puts t o matern a l atten­ tiveness before any m i rror shows him any representation whatsoever, before any language begins to encode his "idealities" : what about the paradoxical sem iosis of the newb orn's body, what about the "semiotic chora," 17 what about this "space" prior t o the sign, this archaic disposi­ tion of primary narcissism that a poet brings to light in order t o challenge t h e closure of meaning ("nothing will have t aken place but the place , " certainly, i f not "at heights so far rem oved that a place fuses with the bey ond [ . . . ] the bewildering successive clash of a whole in formation . . . " - M allarme). N either request nor desire, it is an invocation, an anaclisis.18 M em ories of b odily , warmth, and nourishment: these underlie the b reath of the newborn b ody as it appeals to a source of , a fulfillment of

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care that Spitz properly termed the "diatrophic mother . " Vocal and mus­ cu lar cont ract ions, spasm s of the glottis and m otor system-all m ake up for the absence of intrauterine life components . Voice is the vehicle of that call for help, di rect ed at a frustrated memory, in order t o insure, first through breath and warm th, the survival of an ever premature hu man being; and this is undoubtedly significant fo r the acqu isition of language, which will soon be articulated along the same vehicle. Every cry is, p sychologically and proj ectively, described as a cry of distress, u p t o a n d including t h e fi rst vocalizations, which seem t o constitute distress calls, in short : anaclises. The newborn body experiences t hree m onths of such anaclitic "facilitations" without reaching a stable condition. Faced with these anaclises, the adult-essent ially t h e m other-o ffers a disturbed reception, a m o bile receptacle, which fashions i t self on the invocation, fo llows its winding course, and eventua lly accent s i t with a surge of angu ish that the newborn analyzer's body produces in the analy­ sand. From this time on, we must reckon with the mother's desire, beyond which it is hard for her to go, to maintain the qewborn child within the invocation: the child as adju nct to the breast, a wealth of her own, m ay be an analyzer, but it is an analyst lack ing any int erpret ation and who thus lock s m other and child within the regression of primary m asochism . Th is is the precise moment for either the "optimal frustra­ tion" t h at Spitz requi res of the mot her with regard to the child, or Win­ nico tt's m y sterious "good enough mot her" : they are intended t o break the prim ary narcissism wit hin which mot her and child are wrapped up, from anac/isis to diatrophy, so that, wit h t he advent of autoeroticism, the door is finally open to a rel ationship with the obj ect , at the same time as representation and langu age make t heir appearance. Before this step becomes effect ive, however, and within the subtle drift from primary narcissism to aut oeroticism , the "good enough m other" with her "optimal frustration" scores a poin t : laughter. It is perhaps enough that the mother know both how to respond to and to stop the anaclisis, so that she m ight stall, settle, and anchor herself there . Providing an axis, a proj ection screen, a limit, a curb for the infant ' s invocat ion may be what , in the maternal fu nction, relates t o the paternal one, p robably characterized , at best, by absence or refusal encoded in presence itsel f. As the nervous system matu res, it probably assumes (and sometimes takes over) the m obile su pport fu nction pro-

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vided by t h e m other/the father, while being i n fluenced by i t in other instances. Voice, hearing, and sight are the archaic dispositions where the earliest fo r m s of discreteness emerge. The breast, given and withdrawn; lamp­ light capturing the gaze; interm ittent sounds of voice or mu sic-a ll these meet with anaclisis (according to a tem poral sequence probably pro­ gram m ed, too, by the particular aptitude of each child), hold it, and thus inhibit and absorb it in such a way that it is discharged and abated through them : early "defenses" against the aggressivity o f a (pseudo-) drive (without goal). A t that point, breast, ligh t , and sound become a there: a place, a spot, a m arker. The effect, which is dram atic, is no lo nger quiet but laughter. The imprint of an archaic m oment, the threshold of space, the "chora" as prim itive stability absorbing anaclitic fa cilitation, produces laughter. There is not yet an outside, and the t hings that made the newborn laugh at about two and one-half m onths (after the satisfa ction of i m m ediate n eeds produced the hallucinatory laughter of t h e first weeks) are sim ply m arkers of something in the process of becoming stability. But neither ext ernal nor internal, neither outside nor inside, such m a rkers are not iceable only because t h ey slow down anaclisis: they do not stop it. One m ight detect in t hem the inception o f spatiality a s well as sublima tion. Those scattered a n d fu n ny m om en t s become projected-archaic syn­ thesis-onto the stable of the mother's face, the privileged receiver of laughter at about t hree m onths. It is then that the narci ssism of the initial mother-child symbiosis slips toward autoeroticis m ; here one observes the em ergence of a body parcelled into erot icizable "obj ects" (essentially oral). Oral erot icism, t he smile at the mother, and the first vocalizations are cont empora neous: Spitz's well-k nown " first point of psychic organization" 19 is already one com plex sem iotic phenom enon presaged by others. The inaugural sublim ation, in m ost cases visu al, brings us not only to the fou ndations of narcissism (specular gratification) but to the riant wellsprings of the im aginary . The im aginary takes over from childhood laughter: it is a j oy without words. Chronologically and logically long before the m irror st age (where the Same sees it self altered t hrough the well-k nown opening that constitutes it as representation, sign, and death), 20 the semiotic disposition m akes it start as riant spacious ness.

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During t h e period of indistinction between "same" a n d "other, " infa nt and m o ther, as well as between "subject" and "obj ect , " while n o space has yet been delineated (this will happen with and after the m irror stage-birth of the sign), the semiotic chora that arrests and absorbs the m otility of the anaclitic facilitations relieves and produces laughter. Orality plays an essential role in this prim ary fix ation-subli mation: appropriation of the breast, the so-called "pa ranoid" certainty of the nursing infant t hat he has been in possessi on of it, and his ability to lose it after having had his fill. What should not be obscured is the im portance of the anal "instinctual drive" fr om this period on: the child has a secure anal discharge while, b alancing that loss, i t incorporates the breast . Anal loss, accompanied by considerable expenditure of muscular m otility, combined with t he satisfaction of incorporating the breast, probably encourages proj ecting facilitation into this visible or audible point that gives the infa n t a glimpse of space and produces laughter. The simultaneity of l aughter with fi rst vocalizations has long been recognized . 21 And the visual m otility / fixation art icu lation as substratum of archaic semiotic spaciousness as well as laughter seem s, m oreover, to be borne out by belated childhood laughter. A s we k n ow, children lack a sense of humor (humor presupposes the superego and its bewildering). But t hey laugh easily when m otor t ension is linked to vision (a ca ricature is a visualization o f b odily distortion, of an extreme, exaggerated m ove­ ment, or of an unmastered m ovement); when a child's body is too rapidly set in motion by the adult (return to a m o t i lity defying its fixation, space, and place); when a sud den stop follows a m ovement (someone stum bles and falls). The speed-continuity of m ovement and its check s-punctua­ tion of the discontinuous: an archaic t opos that produces laughter and probably s Bergs on ' s psycho logy of laughter and Freud's j okes as well. The chora is indeed a st range "space" : the rapidity and violence of t h e faci litations are localized at a point that absorbs them, a n d they return like a boomerang to the invoking b ody, without, however, signify­ ing it as separate; they stop there, impart the j o lt-laughter. Because it was bounded but not blocked, the rate of fa cilitation discards fr ight and bursts into a j ol t of laughter. Instability, "bewildering clash , " "a whole in form ation" . . . We have either a riant, porous bou ndary, or a blocking barrier of earnest sullenness-the child gets one or t h e other from its mother. Either a hysterical m o ther defying her own mother

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through parental identi fication, or a m other subjugated to her's, per­ petually seek ing symbolic recognition. Either one determines, as early as t h i s " first p o i n t of psychic organization ," attitudes whose pea k s lie in imaginative freedom on the one hand, and ritualistic obsession on the other. Even more belated disposit ions o f laughter22 seem to com m em orate stages o f this archaic laughter-space-the am bivalence of facilitation ( fright/ peace, invocation/ discharge, mot ility/ check) as well a s the porou sness of boundaries or of the point of fixation. A sense of humor seems to build up, beginning with such sem iotic underpinning, both u pon the inhibition of aut oerot icism (prescribed by parents) and upon its rem oval wit hin childhood situations where parental authority or its sub­ stitute is weakened. The su perego recognizes the ego as faltering vis-a-vis inhibition but, by a leap-shattered m ovement, space-reconstitutes i t as invu lnerable and therefore laughing. The person a l (ego, body) depends on or is constituted by a counterpoise (the point of proj ection: lamp, m o ther, parents) t hat burdens and domina tes it but, without being definitively separated (neither barring nor blocking facilit ation), by its perm issive distance allows the body to discover itself again, relaxed and free of anguish, which is rem oved elsewhere; a nimble sort of fun is what rem a ins. An inhibit ion is thus built up for laughter, but as existing elsewhere: a set place, always there, but separate from the body, which can, only under th ese condit ions, constitute itself as "personal" and reach j ouissance at a distance. At this stage we have the necessary conditions that, avoiding inhibition through laughter, constit ute the semiotic dis­ position and insure its maintenance within the sym bolic. The precondi­ tions for language acquisition are given at this point ; t heir m odulations involve the entire neurotic gamut of inhibitions and anguish that charact erizes t h e speaking being's destiny. This distant place that absorbs, de fers, 23 and therefore sublim ates angu ish is the prototype o f the object m uch as it is of the "perso nal " : the body that rem oves fear to a constant and distant location (the m other) can transfer it s place over to what had been an amorphous m ass and henceforth becomes a territ ory of markers, points of fixation, and dis­ charges: the au t oerotic body, the b ody proper. I n order, h owever, that this point o f discharge m ight acqu ire another, different existence, one which will form a space, it must be repeated.

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Rhythm , a seq uence of link ed instants, is immanent t o the chora prior to any signified spaciousness: henceforth, chora and rhythm, space and time coexist . Laugh ter is the evi dence that the instant took place: the space t hat su pport s it signifies time. Located elsewhere, distant, permissive, always already past : such is the chora that the mo ther is called upon t o produce w i t h h e r child s o t h a t a sem iotic disposition m ight exist. In the same way, later, after the acquisition of language, the chi ld's laughter is one o f a past event: because a prohibition has existed it can be overcome and relegated t o the past-thus a weak ened and m asterable replica represents it from then o n .

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Winnicot t's " p otential space," 24 elaborat ed b y a " t ransitional obj ect," 25 perfects the necessary conditions for semiotic functio ning and transition t o language acquisition. One m ight, following M. A . K. Halliday, 2 6 say that prior to t h e appear­ ance of a truly articulated language, vocaliza tions are used and endowed wit h "linguistic fu nctions." Halliday calls them "m eaning" fu nctions, but a reformulation of Winnicott's position with respect to language could supply a better phrase: "potential m eaning fu nctions. " A potent i al mean­ ing, then, ed in its an alytic circumstances by transitional objects, would be, somewhere between the ninth and sixt eenth m onths, dif­ fe rentiated into a ful l range of fu nctions, described in adult term s as instru­ mental, regu latory, interactive, personal, heuristic, and im aginative.27 " P otential meaning" appears phonically in a variety of vocalizations (in varying and specific degrees, according to the chi ld),28 which even tually grow weaker and are redu ced to a rising-falling intonation approximating that of the adult sentence. According to Halliday, two new functions appear before the second year-t he pragm atic function (a fusion of instrumental and regu latory functions) and the mathetic fu nction (fusion of the personal and heuristic ones). That already im plies a com plex process of ideation and transforma tion of the "potential space, " a fter the "m irror stage, " into a sign ifiable space of representation. The child, in ter vening (as it performs one of those functions) and observing (as it per form s another), encodes

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t h e m i n t o intonation (rising in the former case, falling in the lat ter) but, bet ter still, it encodes th em into a com plex gestural sem iotics that is dif­ ficult t o describe. While i t is true t hat pseu domorphem es and even pseudophrases em erge during this period, they rem ain h olophrastic: they a r e vocaliza­ tions, they designate the place or obj ect of enunciation (the " t o pic" ), whereas the m ot or or vocal gesture (intonation) serves as predicate (the "com m ent"). We note that beginning w i t h the " first point of psychic organization," light-giving m a r ker or m other's face, which produced laughter along with the first vocalizations, t he fu ture speak er is led to separate such points into objects (transitional at first, then sim ply obj ects) and add t o them no longer laugh ter but phonation archetype of the morpheme, condensa­ tion of the sentence. As if the laughter that makes up space had become, with the help of matura tion and repression, a "place nam e." Primitive naming very oft en makes use of adverbs of position, ana­ phoric demonstra tives (this, that) or, m ore gen erally, " topic" anaphora referring t o an obj ect either external or internal to the body proper and t o the pract ical, i m m ediate environment; observable in the first childhood verbalizations, it is always related to a "space"-a poin t that henceforth becomes object or referent. Cu rrent research on the language of children between two and three years old has shown that 50 percent of the utterances of two-year-olds are of the type, that's a foll owed by a noun phrase, the percent age falling t o l 5 percent at the age of t hree to three-and-a-half yea rs.29 The archaic appearance of anaphoric demonstratives is accom panied by other archaic phenomena t h a t have their roots in the first vocalizations and echolalias concomitant to the constitut ion of the semiotic chora: glottal st ops and stress ( a play on in tensity as well as on frequencies of vowel sounds) . Psycholinguists are well aware that the child, before using m ore o r less regular syn tax, m ak es utterances that come closer to the topic-com ment m odel than to the subject-predicate one. 30 Although ittedly the rele­ vancy of t he two syntactic m odels could be discussed ad nauseam , we see here a recu rrence of the spatial m arker, which not only initiates the sem iotic disposition but also s hores up the first syntactic acquisitions. I t m ay be worth going over the sem antic fu nctions of the anaphoric dem onstratives that are found in the topic position in utterances of 50 -

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percent o f young French-speak ing chi ldren. A s Dam ourette and Pichon point out, dem onstratives (ce, cet, cette, celui, celui-ci, celui-10., eux: from the Latin ecce) provide a determination resu lting from a state of presence and proxim ity; but they also have an inciting value, thus relating to the subject of enunciation, beyond what is being signified (such a value in­ for ms <;a: " <;a, donnez-moi que j'aille acheter votre esclave" M o l i er e, L' Etourdi, I I , 6); the spatial function can becom e temporal ("d'ici demain," "en de<;a," "en <;a"); finally, dem onstrat ives have a function t h at could be termed " m eta linguistic, " for t h ey refe r t o other signs within the utterance or in the context ("ii faut faire ci, ii faut faire <;a"; "un secret aussi garde que celui garde dans ce m essage"; "accepter, dans des circonstances comm e eel/es actuelles, u n pou voir ecrasant par son poids"; or the pleonastic expression, "c 'est le prendre qu'elle veut"). Finally, let me restate the position of Benveniste, for whom the shift er (deictique) i s t h e m ark of discourse within t h e system of a particular language-mean­ ing that it is defined essentially through its use by individual speakers. Thus the dem onstrative, i n modern French, points to the enunciation rather than the utterance ( summ oning the subject; referring to a place outside of the system of discourse/referent), to a sign (it b reaks up the signifying chain and refers t o it metalinguistically), or to itself (it can be auto-refe rent ial). All t hese funct ions, taken collectively, make o f the ana­ phoric demonst rative a com plex "shifter", straddling several fu nctions of language, keeping the enu nciation at a dist ance in several ways-away from t h e subject, the referent , signs, and itself. A true "catastrophe" in the sense this word has taken on in m orphological theories o f catastrophes: g oing over fr om o n e enunciative sp ace into another. While it i s true that the childhood utterances that have been collated do not all display those sem antic latencies of dem onst ratives, one could posit that they harbor t hem unconsciously:3 1 the child lodges i tself within a lan­ guage, French, that has gathered such modalities o f spatialization into one category-"catast rophe. " These modalities, h owever, remain imm anent to any u sage of the dem onstrative, as in all languages, since it is true (as I have observed since the begi nning of this investigation) that the archeology o f spatial naming accom panies the development of autonomy of the subjective unit . The discourse of a two-year-old girl demonstrated what I think is -

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psychoanalytic underpinning o f the archaic nam ing of referential space by dem onstra tives. Each time she organized the space of the room in which we played together by m eans of dem onst rat ives or shi fters (c'est, ici, la, hau t, bas, ceci, cela), she felt obliged to "analyze" that place (those places) thus fragmented by giving them a person's n ame: "mamma" or the m other's first nam e. Precocious and quite advanced in language learning, ext rem ely att ached to her father and, probably, im pressed by her m other ' s new pregnancy (most likely for all of these "reason s," and to assert herself in opposition to her fem ale interlocutor who could not help but rem ind her of her mother), the littl e girl est ablished her "mamma" in all the locations designa ted by these recently acquired spatial t erm s. This discourse leads to t h e hypothesis (which m ight be confirmed or disproved by other transferences) that spatial naming-including al ready syntactically elaborated form s such as dem onstratives and adverbs of position-ret ains the mem ory of the m a ternal im pact al ready evoked within the const itution of semiotic rudiments. G iven the fr equency of topic demonstrative utterances beginning with the first gramm at ically constructed sentences, we m ight submit t hat the entry into syntax cons titutes a firs t victory o ver the mot her, a stil l uncertain distancing of the m other, by the simple fact of naming (by the appearance of the topic and m ore exactly of the dem onstrative c'est). The distance seem s u ncert ain, for while the child experiences pleasure in repeating utterances of this type, it also evidences postu res of subm ission, humiliation, and vict imizat ion in relat ion to adults as well as to peers. It is as if a certain masochism ap peared, along with the introject ion of an archaic m other, which the infant is not yet satisfactorily able to designate, name, or loca­ lize. What is striking is that later, at about three years, the composition of the m ost freq uent utt erances changes at the same time as t he m ain behavioral characteristic. The topic is henceforth less the ana phoric dem onst rative c' est than a personal pronoun sh i fter-essentially M oi je. While 1 7 percent of t h e two-year-old children ' s ut terances exhibit this structu re, the figure increases to 36 percent with three-year-old children . A t the same time, I note the appearance of the possibility of negating the dem onstrative: pas <;a, c'est pas-a game in wh ich the children indulge

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w i t h a pleasure leading t o freq uent glossalalias ( "pas qa, c' est casse, c' est a papa, pas casse, c' est pas qa, c' est a papa, " etc . ) . At the sam e time that the father is evoked, nega tion and the designation of protagonists of enunciation ( personal pronouns) begin to a p pear. This ex plicit negat ivity connotes an inc reased independence within the symbolic and the capacity for au to-designation (' '.je" -object of discourse); aggressiveness is the underpinning of that negativity. An often unmistaka ble "sadism," which could be interpreted as a devou ring of the archaic mother, succeeds the previou s "masochism . " Significantly, the generic demonstration (<;a c'est) occu rs less frequently at this age: only 1 5 percent of <;a c' est followed by a noun phrase, as opposed to 50 percent at two years. The psychic cathexis of the child breaks away from the place and refines the spatialization of the enu nciation as well as that of the sign i fying chain it sel f. The well-k nown "reel game" with its fort-da, observed around the age of eigh teen m onths, finds, over a period of time, its lingu istic realiza­ tion first in demonstrative or localizing utterances and fi nally in personal and negative ut terances. One cou ld relate to this archeology of naming (the spatial reference point, the dem onstrative, the "topic," the person's name) and to the eq uivocal subj ect/ object relationship that is its psychoanaly tical coun­ terpart (" potential space," primary narcissism, autoeroticism , sado­ masochism ) , the perplexed notions of logicians on the sem antics of proper names. According to some-Stuart Mill, for instance-pro per names have no significat ion (they denote but do not connote): they do not signify but point to a referent. For others like Russell, they are ab brevia­ tions of descri ptions for a series, class, or system of particulars (and even for a "cluster" of definitions) and are equ ivalent to dem onstrat ives (ceci, cela). For Frege, on the contrary, the shifter does not yet designate an "object ." From our point of view, h owever, the proper name is a subst antive of definite reference (therefore sim ilar t o the dem onst rat ive) but of indefinite signification ( "cogniti ve" as well as "emot ive" ) , arising from an u ncertain position of the speak ing subject's identity and refer­ ring back to the pre-obj ectival state of nam ing. The em ergence of per­ sonal design ation and proper name in close relation to the shifters and semantic latencies (of the "potential space") of this period un derpin (and in that sense explain) the dynam ic and semantic am biguity of proper

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names, their lack of preci sion as to the notion of identity, and their im pact within unconscious and imaginary constructs. As the Logique o f Port- Royal points out, ceci marks a "confu sed idea of the im mediate thing , " while allowing the m ind to add ideas "stimu­ lated by circu msta nces . " 3 2 Hence it provides a presence, posited but indisti nct , and an evocation of uncer tain mu l tiplicities, which would therefore ex plain why this, in its well-k nown evangelical usage, is at the same time Bread and Body of Christ: "This is my body . " But the be­ lievers in the "Cartesian subject , " the logicians of Port- Royal, cannot ration alize the age from one to the other un der the same shi fter ceci except through recourse to tim e: Before, ceci was bread and now, ceci is my body. Reason is unscathed only at the expense of an obsessional shackling to time and, by the same token, of erasing "mystery" as b odily and/or nom inal mutation under the sam e signifier (despite all the precau­ tions taken wit h respect to t heology in the Logiques). C ould trans-substantiation ( for this is what we are dealing with, and the child cannot help leading all of us, men and women, to it, for it is indeed such a key fantasy of our reproductive desires) be an indelible theming of this same fold between the "space" of need ( for food and sur­ vival) and a symbolic space of designation (of the body proper)? Could it be a fold that the archeology of shi fters summarizes and is produced in all a rchaic designations o f the mother, as well as in all experiences a t the limits of corporeal identity-that is, the identity of meaning and presence? Child hood la nguage, if we need an "object " of study; infan tile lan­ guage, certainly: it is within our "adu lt" discou rse that these potential meanings and t opological latencies are at work . We suggest that nam ing, always origi nating in a place (the chora, space, "topic, " subject- predi­ cate), is a replacem en t for what the speaker perceives as an archaic m other-a m o re or less vict orious con front ation, never finished with her. By indicating, as precisely as p ossible, how the units and m inimal opera­ tions of any language (and even more so t hose of discourse) revive, model, transform , and extend the preg nancy that still constitutes the ulti­ mate limit of meaning where, if analysis is lack ing, tran scendence takes root.

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Notes I.

Er nest J o nes. The Life a n d Work o.f Sigmund Freud ( New York : Basic Books,

1 9 5 3 ). 1 : 2 6 3 . 2 The "seduct ion" i s perhaps directed towards Fliess; .Qirough the children as i n terme­ diaries (the young Sigmund and M a t h ilde); notice that Freud cha nges position i n m id-rou t e ( fr om seduced to seducer; from son t o fat her) w h i l e t h e object o f seduction changes sex ( from boy t o girl). This should be added to the dossier of the Freud- Fli ess analysis. 3. Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Works of Sigm und Freud (Lo ndon: H ogarth P ress & The Institute o f Psycho-Analysis. 1 9 5 3), 1 4 : 7 .

4.

Ibid. Ibid., 20:34. 6. Wo Es war, sol/lch werden. 7 . Freud, Standard Edition, 20: 34- 3 5 . 8 . Ibid. 9. H eraclitus, 52; AlclJv ?rail' t<JTI ?ra1jwv, 1r E<J <JEOwv-"Life is a newborn who bears, who plays" ( from the Wiss m a n - Bollack French translation. Heraclite OU la separation ( Paris: Editions de M inuit, 1 972). Paizon (1rai!wv), the present participle of the verb to play, u sed with pesseuon (1r E<JuEJwv: pushing pawns) can only be redu ndant. as t h e standard 5.

translation shows; the writers a l l ow themselves to differentiate between the signi fiers i n order t o break this redu nda nce and to reveal an etym ological m eaning o fpaizon: " m a k ing a child, engenderi ng, bearing children . " 1 0. "Sex u ality in the Neuroses," Freud, Standard Edition, 7:274 (emphasis added). 1 1 . "Libido" devoid of object or goal, a paradoxical state of facilitation, t h u s prior t o the constitution o f subject, object, and sign. N ot e t h e ideological and fem i n izing anth ropo­ m o rphizations of Winnicott's argument: the obj ect's exist ence presupposes "separation" and " doing" and i s defi n ed as the " m ale element" o f sex u a l ity; the o bj ect's u ncertainty ( t h e "transitional o bj ect," to which we s h a l i return la t er), i n w h i c h " ident i t y requires so l i t t l e mental s t r uct ure" em erges from " Being" w h o s e "foundation . . . can be laid from the birth da te" a n d which, contrary t o the m a l e element progr a m m ed by frustration, i s susceptible to m u tilation and is defined as t h e "fem ale elemen t . " D . W. W i n n icott, Playing and Reality ( N ew Y o r k : Basic Books, 1 9 7 1 ), p. 80. 1 2 . C f. " P sych olinguistique et grammaire gener at ive," the theme o f a special issue of Langages edited by J acques M ehler, vol. 16 ( D ecem ber 1 969), a n d "Apprent issage de l a syntaxe chez l'enfa n t , " edited b y L aurence Lentin for L angue Fran<;aise, vol. 2 7 ( September 1 97 5 ) , which also includes an i n t eresting article by Christine Leroy o n presy n t actic i n t ona­ t ion. For an h i storical survey of the principal linguistic works on language, cf. Aaron Bar­ Adon and Werner F . Leopold, eds., Child Language, a Book of R eadings ( New York: Prentice H all, 1 97 1 ). 1 3. " H ere we m ust t a k e i n t o con sideration the peculiar l ogical activity which is t ied specifically t o l anguage as well as to the ideal cogn i t i ve structures that arise s pecifical l y w i t h i n i t " - E d m u nd H u sserl, "The Origin o f Geometry" in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenom enology, David G arr, trans. ( Evanston, I ll . : Northwestern U n iversity Press, 1 9 70), p . 3 64. 14. "It is clear that the m ethod of producing original idealities o u t o f what is prescien­ t i fically given in t he cultural world m u st have been written down and fixed in firm sentences prior to the existence of geometry" (ibid., p. 3 66). And further: " Every explication and every t ransition from m a k ing explicit t o mak ing self-evident (even perhaps i n cases where

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o n e stops mu c h t o o soo n ) is nothing other th a n historic al disclos u re: in itself, esse n t ially, it is something historical (ein Hiszoriches), and as such i t bears. with esse ntial n ecessity, the horizon o f its history (Historie) within itself" (ibid., pp. 3 70-71 ) . W h i l e "w e can also say now t h a t history is from the start n o t hing other than the vital movement of the coexistence and t h e in terweaving of original fo r ma tions a n d se dimen t a t ions of mean ing" (ibid� p . 3 7 1 ). 1 5 . Ibid., p. 378 . 1 6 . Is i t not t rue t h a t the o n l y (historical) events today, outside o f m urder (that is, war) are s c ien t i fic e vents: t h e inven t ion of spaces, from m at he m a tics to ast ronomy? 1 7. Cf. " La Chora semiot ique, " in La R evolu1ion du /angage poetique ( Pa ris: Seu il, 1 974). pp. 2 3-30. For a br ief accou n t , see the i n t roduction t o t his volu m e . [Ed . ) 1 8 . R . S p i t z . " A u toeroticism re -ex a mi n ed ," Psychoana�)'Iical Study of t h e Child (I 962), 1 7: 2 9 2 . 1 9 . R . S p i t z , The First Year of Li/'e: A Psychoanaly1ic Study of Normal and Deviant Development of Objec1 R elations (New York : I n tern a tion a l U n iversities P ress, 1 96 5 ) . S o m e i n t eresting developments i n pediatrics and c hild psyc hology are d isc ussed by I . Kre isler, M . Fain , a n d M . Soule i n L'Enfant e t son corps ( Paris: Presses U niversi taires d e , 1 97 4). and S . L e bovici a n d M. Sou le in La Connaissance d e /'enfant par la psych­ analyze ( P a ris: Presses U niversitaires de Fra n ce, 1 970). 20. C f. J acques Lacan, "The M i rror Stage as Formative of the Fu n c tion of the I." in Ecri1s: A Se/ec1ion, Alan Sheri dan, t r a ns. (N e w York : Norton, 1 9 77), pp. 1 -7. 21. D a rw i n notes that a ft e r t h e first c ries of su ffe ring, laughter a ppe ars towards the t h i rd mo n t h , accom p a n i ed by imita tion of sou n d . before the appearance of gestures ex press­ ing desires ( a t about o n e year) and fin ally intonat ions, a l l o f which are archaic, p reverbal mod a lities (Charles Darwin. "A B iological Sketch o f an I n fa n t , " Mind, 2 : 2 8 5 -308 [ 1 877)). W . W u n d t notes the dependence that I have m e n tioned between vocaliza tion a n d vision: i m i t a t ive artic u l a t io n i s d e t ermined b y sounds heard a s well as by sou n ds s e e n to be art icu l a t e d , b u t t here is a predominance o f visual perception over acousti c perception i n the i n i t ial st ages, and t his might ex p la i n the precocity o f la bial and dental conson a n ts ( Vo/­ kerpsycho/ogie [1 900 ] , 1 9 1 1 , 1 : 3 1 4- 1 9 ) . 22. C f. Edith J acobsen, "Th e Child's L a u ght e r , " in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, ( 1 946), 2 : 3 9-6 0. 2 3 . This d eferring facilit ation of "ins t i n c t u a l drive" before the le tter has been considered, from a p hilosophical perspe ctive. by J acques D errida in OfG rammaw/ogy, G. Spivak, t rans. (Baltimore: J ohns H o pkins U n iversity Press, 1 977). 2 4 . " I refer to the hypothetical area that e xists (bu t c a n not e x ist) between the b a by and the obje ct (mother or part of mother) during t h e phase o f t h e repudiat ion o f t he object as not-me, that is, at the e n d of being merged in with t he object" ( W i n n i co t t , Playing and Reality, p. 1 07 ). 2 5 . "The t ransitional object represents t h e mother's ability t o pres e n t t he world i n su ch a way that the i n fa n t does not at first k now t h at the object is not created by the i n fa n t " (ibid., p. 81 ) . 2 6 . M . A . K . H alliday, Learning H o w t o Mean: Exp/orations i n the Development of Language ( Lon don: Edward A rnold. 1 9 7 5 ) . 2 7 . Ibid. p p. ! 8 ff. 28 . C f. my "Co ntra intes r yt hmiq u es e t la ngage poetique" in Polylogue ( P a ris: S e uil, 1 977) pp. 4 37-66. 29. This research i n volves two groups of children: for c hi ldren observed from age t hree mo n t hs to t hree years. and for c hildre n obs e rved from age two to three years. T he resu l ts,

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NAMES

statistica l l y meager a n d solely applicable a s hypotheses for fu t u re work, m u s t be tested against a nalyses of a la rge num ber of cases. Verbal exchanges are recorded during collec­ tive games where an individual ized relationship potent ially grows between adu l t analyst and each of the children. The analysis also in volves the regression that this play-attentiveness induces in the researchers and students as a prerequisite for the deci phering and in terpreta­ tion of chil dhood-infan t i l e discourse.

30. On topic-comment interpretation of i n fant syntax, see J effrey S . G r u be r . "Topicali­ zation in Ch i ld Langu age," in Foundations of Language ( 1 967) 3 : 37-65 ; as well as M artin Braine, "The O n t ogeny of English Phrase Structure." in Language, ( 1 96 1 ) 39: 1 - 1 3; Braine notes that t h e first i n fant utterances are determ i ned by relat ionships of order fall ing into t w o categories (pi1•or words plus "X") which include pronouns, prepositions, and a u x i li­ ari es, and that children first learn localization of u n i t s before being able to associate t h e m , through a process o f "contex tual general izations," i n t o morphemic pairs and fi nally into normative syntax. Thomas G. Bever, J erry A . Fodor, and William Wexsel, in "Theoret­ i ca l N otes on the Acquisition of Syntax: Critique o f 'Contextual G en e ralizat ion,"' Psychological R e 1•iew, ( 1 965) 72 :476-82, cri ti cize this position and st ress that positionality is only t h e result of innate gra m m a t i cal classes; in t h e beginning would be classes, not places. Wh atever t h e met hodological and psych ological interest o f this discussion in its own right, I should like to point out that the spat iality ing the sem iotic fu nction (which I referred to above) is echoed, at t h e t i m e of t h e sym bolic, linguistic, fu nctioning of the s u b­ ject, in that positionality determines t h e organization of t h e si g n i fying chain itself. The semiotic chora or t h e potential space that. within the equivocal aspect of prim ary nar­ cissism, played between fl u id "" ( I /other, inside/ o u tside), is hencefo r t h replaced by with precise positions, which draw their logical and syntactic value from that very position. Bu t is t h e genesis of t h e posi tionality of (I am outlining a few o f its psych oanalytic aspects) as c o n ferring value, a supplementary argument i n favor of t h i s t h eory, t o the detriment of t h e th eory (currently widely debated) of the u n iversa l i ty of gram m a tical categories? 3 1 . C f. J. Petito!. " I dentity and Catastrophe," a paper read a t the sem inar of Claude Levi-Strauss on Identity, J a n u a ry 1 97 5 . 32. A . A rnauld and P. Nicole, Logique ( P aris: Presses U n ivers itaires d e , 1 965), p. I O I .

I N D EX

Ack erm ann. Robert. 70 Ad amov. A rt h u r . 1 1 A eschines. 80 A eschylus. 1 35, 202 A l thusser. Louis, 1 5 Am bivalen c e , 68-72, 73, 79, 86. 8 9 A m brose. S a i n t . 39 A n aclisis. see L a n guage learning: S em iot i c disposit ion An agrams. S aussu re's. 4. 1 3, 1 5. 69, 7 1 . 1 22n., 1 28 A n a x agoras, 2 3 5 A n glade, J oseph, 6 1 n. A n t a l . Frederick , Flore mine Painring and Its Social Background, 233, 2 34n., 2 3 6n. An tigon e , 1 66. 1 92, 1 93 A n tis t he nes. 80, 8 2 A n to n e llo d a M ess in a. 252 A poc aly ps e . 1 59 Aqu i t a i n e . 1 59; P r i n c e or. in Nerva l's poem. 202. 209n. Arabia. poe ts o r. 1 59 A re n a Chapel. see S crovegni Chapel A ristotelian logic. 70, 72. 88, 8 9 , 91 n. A r istotle. 202 A r n au l d . A nt o i n e . Logique or Po rt Roy a l . 29 4n. Artaud, A n to n i n . 5. 7, 25. 34, 80, 8 4. 1 2 5, 132, 1 33, 1 36, 1 39, 1 4 1 , 1 42 . 145, 1 47n. 1 64, 1 86. 1 9 1 , 207; Theater of Cruelty, 84 Au gustin e . S a i n t . xi. 39, 52, 1 59, 1 90, 1 94, 223; City of G od, 1 94; De Trinitate, 1 90 A u thor: derined, 1 3 ; origin. 60n.; t ra n s formation or s u bject or n a rration i n to. 75 A u toe rot icis m . 2 20. 2 8 3

A verroism. 2 3 2 A vicenna. 5 2 B a c horen, Johan J akob, 202, 209n. Ba illie, J. B .. 1 23n. Bakh t i n . M ik h a e l. 2. 4, 5 9 n .. 60n, , 62 11 . , 64-89. 90n., 9 1 n. Balza c . Honore de, 79, 100, 1 05. 1 07. 1 1 8; Sarrasine, 107 Bar-A den. A a r o n . Child Language, 292n B a rt hes. Rola n d . I, 4, 8, 1 1 , 20, 20n .. 91 n .. 92- 1 2 1 Bataille, G eorges. 29. 82, 86, 1 02. 1 37, 1 66; La Li11erature et I e ma/, 1 37 Bau delaire, Charles, 1 49, 1 58 n . , 202 Baudry, J e a n - L ou is, 7 Beckett, S a m u e l . viii, 1 1 , 1 42, 1 48-58, 202; First Love, 1 48-52, 1 53 ; Not /, 1 42, 1 48-49, 1 52-58 Bee thove n . Ludwig v a n . 207 Be ing, beings: te rms defi n e d , 1 4 Bellini. G e n tile. 244. 246, 247, 252 B ellini. G iova n ni, 10, 1 55, 1 56, 1 57, 1 58, 243-69; Adoring Madonna and Child, 259; A doring Madonna Before Her Sleeping Child, 2 5 3; Christ's Agony in the Garden. 253; Christ Blessing the People, 2 5 3 ; Crucifixion, 253; Dead Christ in the Sepulchre, 2 5 3; Dead Christ ed by His Mother and Sai111 John, 258 ; Ecstasy of Saint Francis, 248, 259, 266, 268; Feast of the Gods, 264, 266; Madonna and Blessing Child, 2 59, 265; Madonna and Child, 2 54, 2 59, 260, 263; Madonna and Child with Cherubs, 260; Madonna, Child, Sai111s and A ngelic

INDEX

296

B e llini. G iovanni ( Conr.) Musicians, 262; Madonna With Infant Jesus and Saints Catherine and Magdalene, 262, 267, 268; Madonna With Two Saints, 265; Madonna With Two Trees, 259, 260, 263; Mother With Child and Sainr Jerome, 253: Polyp tych of Saint Vincent Ferrer, 264; Presenta tion in the Temple, 2 54; Sacred Allegory, 268; Saints Christopher, Jerome, and Augustine, 264; Tryp tychs in San ra Maria dei Frari and San Zaccaria, 262 Be lli ni, J acopo. 2 44, 246, 248; Christ Before Pilate, Funeral of the Virgin, Jesus and the Doc1ors, Madonna and Child, 248 Bellini, N icolosia, 246 Bely, A ndrei, 7 1 Bembo, P iet ro, 253, 264 Benj a m i n , Walter, 233, 2 36n. Benve niste, E m i l e, v i i i , 4, 68, 7 4, 1 1 3, 1 1 6, 1 3 1 , 288 Bergson, H enri, 284 Bernard of C l airvaul(, Saint, 52, 269 Bever, Thomas G., 294n. Bibie, 40, 1 7 1 ; Gospels, 52 Biturige t ribe, 202, 209n. Black S eptember Organization, 209n. Blan chot, M au rice, 5, 1 00, 1 04, I 06, 1 22n. B l azons, 53 Bocheta, Gin evra. 244, 263 Boehm, R ., 1 47n . Bonaparte, M a ri e, 2 3 9 Bonave n t u r a , S a i n t : T he Mind's Road to God, 2 1 1 - 1 2; Commen tary on the Sentences, 223, 235n. Boo le, George, 70 Booth, W ayne: Rhetoric of Fiction, 9 1 n. Bopp, Franz, 1 26 Borromean k n o ts, 280 Boude, E. F . To ward a History of Russian Dialects, 90n. Bounded: bounded te l(t, 36- 59; d e fi n ed, 1 3- 1 4 Brahmins, 202 Brai n e , M artin, 2 94n. Bremond, Claude, 9 ! n. Breuer, J oser. 273-74 .

B rik . Ossip, 5, 20n . B roca , A n dre. 225 Bu ddhis t paint ing, 2 1 1 , 21 5 Burnou� Eug&n e , 1 2 5 B urrou ghs, W illiam, 202 Butor, M ic hel: A Change of Heart, 87 Byza n t ine art, 2 1 2, 220, 224; apocrypha, 2 50; represen ta tion, 2 5 1 ; t ra d ition, 2 5 2 Cage, J ohn, 1 68 Cai rnes. H u n t ington, 235n. Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, 8 3 C a m p aul(, A n toi n e Fran�ois, 6 1 n. Cantor, Georg, 72, 1 73 Carnival and c arnivalesque tradition, 43, 4 4, 46, 60n ., 69, 70, 72, 73, 77, 1 48, 1 5 5; as o pposed to discourse o r represent a t ion and comm u n ication, 65, 82, 85; as related to structure or dream and desire, 78-80 Cartesian el(te nsion , 1 86 Cartesian l i n g u istics, 278 ; see also L a n g u age Cartesian logic, 278 Cartesian subject, 6, 24, 1 2 8 , 29 1 C a rt esian t rad i t io n , 277 C ast ration, 1 64, 1 65, 1 8 2, 1 87, 1 89, 1 93 , 279 C a tast rophe t heory, 7, 1 3, 1 4, 28 0, 288 C a to the Elder. 52 Cav alieri G a u d e n t i , 234n. Ce line, Lou is-Fe rdinand, v iii, 7, 1 1 0, 1 25, 1 36, 1 38, 1 39, 1 40-47, 202; Death on the Jnstalmenr Plan, 1 4 1 , 1 43; North, 1 44; Rigodon, 1 44 Cervantes Sa avedra, M ig u e l de. 79 Cezan ne, Paul. 22 1 , 266 Chang Chen- ming, L' Ecriture chi noise et le geste humain, 62n. Chang Hsii, 1 82 Chang T ung-su n . 70, 9 1 n . Chanson d e geste. 38 C h a p l i n , Charles. 1 8 1 Charac ters (i n novel), 7 3 ; birth o f, 74-75 Charcot, Jean- Baptiste, 202, 209n. Charl emagn e's P i lgrimage, 49 C hild: as a n alyzer, 279-8 0, 2 8 5 ; as cou n terpart to masc uline obsession with d e a t h, 1 52, 1 56-57; as o bject or love ,

297

INDEX

1 5 5-56. 24 5 . 2 5 3-64. 27 8-80; a n d t h e other, 2 39. 272-73, 276-77. 279-80. 2 9 1 China. People's Republic of, 8-9 Chinese philosophy. 89 Ch inese poetry: ana logy with m edieval French poetry, 49 Ch inese prints. 229 Chomsky. Noam, 4, 6. 1 2 , 1 72 Chara, semiot ic. 6- 7; see also Semiotic

Descartes. Rene, 9 9 . 1 2 8 . 2 0 2 ; see also under Cartesian Desire: in critical writing, 1 1 7- 1 8: as index of heterogeneity, 1 1 6- 1 7: in painting. 244-4 5: see also Carnival Desonay. F . . 59n. D ' H aucourt. G . . Le B/ason. 6 1 n. Dialectics: defined. 1 4 Dialogism, 66. 67-72. 74-76. 7 7 , 79. 8 0-8 I .

8 3 . 87. 8 8 , 89

disposi tion Christ. xi. 2 50-5 1 . 272; Christian dogma and a r t, 2 1 1 - 1 5 . 222-23; Christian

Diderot, Denis. 1 44. 18 I. 1 84; Ram eau 's

t radition, 279; C h r istianity and rationality, 1 24-30. 2 37-38; Ch rist's l i fe . 39; G olden Legend, 39 Ch uang Tzu, 1 59 Church. A l onzo. 70 Cicero, M a r cus Tullius. 8 2 Cim abue, G iovanni, 2 2 4 , 2 5 1 Colet t i . L . , Pittura veneta de/ quattro cento.

Diogenes Laertius. 82 Dionysius, 1 5 9. 1 92 Discourse: novelistic discourse within t h e subj ect-addressee chain, 74-76: typology of. 72. 76-89 Dodd, Wil l i a m . 1 6 Doon de M ayence Cycle, 49 Dostoievsk i. Feodor M ik h a ilovich, 7 1 , 80,

270n. Colonna. sco: Hypnerotomachia Po/iphi/i ( Polyphilus' Dream), 2 5 3 , 264 Color: According to the m etapsych ological tr iad, 224-3 1 ; vs. object, 224-2 5 . 247-48; space as effect of, 22 5-29; chrom a t ic treatment and l u minosity, 262-69 Colson, F . H., 2 35 n . C o m m u n i s t party, 1 -2. 7, 8. 9 ; Twent ieth Congress of, 2 Continuum, power of the, 7 2 C opernicus, N icholas, 202 Coulet, J . , Le Troubadour Gui/hem

Montahagal. 6 1 n . C roce, Benedet to, 8 5 Cyrano de Bergerac, 2 9 Czerba, L . V . , The Eastern Loujiks'

Dialect, 90n. Dada, 1 3 3 Dahl, Svend, Histoire du /ivre de /'antiquite a nos jours. 62n. Damourette, J . . 2 8 8 Dante Alighieri, 1 4 9, 1 5 8 n . . 2 34n .. 250.

262, 270n. Darwin. Charles, 293n. Derrida. J acques. 1 1 , 1 5 , 77; Of

Grammato/ogy, 63n., 90n .. 293n.

Nephew, 1 84

87; Crime and Punishment. 87 Double: fascination with, 8 3 ; language as, 66, 69: as spatialization, 69 Drive: defined, 14; oral drive, 30; represen tation a n d symbolization, 2 1 6- 1 9; see also Subject Duccio di Buoninsegna, 2 5 1 D u champ, M a rcel. 1 5 1 Du rivault, G . , L e B/ason, 6 1 n.

Eckhart. M eister, 2 5 1 Eco, Um berto, 1 8 , 9 1 n. Eik henba u m , Boris, 62n .. 67 Elisions: non-recoverable syntactic, 1 34 ,

1 4 1 -42. 1 5 2. 1 69 Engels. Friedrich, 4. 1 5 . 202 Enlightenment, 99 En thoven, Jean-Paul. 20n. Epic. 38, 76-78 ; novel tending toward, 87; monologism . 77-78 Epicurus, 52. 1 59, 1 83 , 202, 239 Erl ich, Victor, 3 5 n . Este, Isabella d ' , 244, 2 5 3 . 2 64 Eth ics. ix, 23-34 Euclid, 80. 280 Eu rip ides. 202 Evreux, cathedral of, 39

INDEX

2 98

E xisten t i a lism, v i i Ezek iel's vision , 25 1 Fascis m . 2 3 , 203, 209 Fain, M . , L' Enfam et son corps, 2 9 3n. F a u lk ner, W illiam, As I Lay Dying, 1 3- 1 4 Fay e , J e a n Pierre, 7 Feminine n a rcissism . 1 64 Femi nine proble m a t ic, 1 65 Fem inine viol ence, 1 6 4 Femi n i n i t y and th eory, 1 4 5-46. 1 6 4-66; myth of the fem i n in e , 1 58 Fere nczi , Sandor, 239 Fe tishism and represe n t a tion. 2 44-45 Feuerbach, P a u l Johann A n se lm von , 19 Fevrier, J a mes G., Histoire de Ncriture, 62n. Figaro. Le, 202 Findlay, J. N 1 47n. Fi occo, G., Giovanni Bellini, 270n. Flaubert, Gustave , 1 1 0 F l etche r, A n gus, 1 1 Fliess, Wilhelm, 273 . 2 92n. Flocon , A lbert, L 'Univers des livres, 62n. Fodor, J erry A., 2 9 4n. Folk tal es, 3 8 Fomigy, I v a n . 1 23n. Formalists, Russian, 5, 58, 64. 67. 70. 76, 95, I O I , 1 24: post-formalism. 2. 3 Form a n d Space, 220, 226-28 Fouca u l t , M ichel, 2. 5, 1 1 Fou rie r. Charles, 1 00, 105, 1 07, 1 1 2 Francis. S aint. 2 1 1 . 2 34n. Fra n k l i n . A lfred, Vie privee d' autrefois. 6 1 n. Frege, Gottlob. 70. 290 Freud, J acob. 27 3 Freud, M athilde, 2 73, 2 75 Freu d . Sigmu n d . vii. i x . 4, 1 0. 1 2. 1 4. 23, 26. 90n., 1 09. 1 1 7. 1 1 9. 1 22n .. 1 35, 1 55, 1 57. 1 62. 1 66. 1 7 1 . 202. 208n . . 2 3 9 , 244, 245. 27 1 . 272-78. 28 1 : " L us t - lch ," 220: Autobiographical Study, 274: Interpretation of Dreams, 273: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. 1 8: J okes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. 1 22n .. 2 3 1 -32, 284: On the History of the Psychoanalytic ..

Movement, 2 74: Papers on Metapsycho!ogy: The Unconscious, 2 1 6- 1 8, 2 34n. : Studies on Hysteria, 2 73: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 273: Totem and Taboo. 1 1 . 3 1 , 35n .. 1 99 Frye, N orthrop, 1 1 Fu turism. i x , 28, 32-33 Gaidoz. H . Blason popu/aire de la , 6 1 n. Garin de M onglan Cycle, 49 Garr. David , 2 92n. Gelb, l. J A Study of Writing, 1 5 Ge n e r a t ive grammar. 26. 34 G e n e t t e , Gerard. 9 I n. G e notext. 7. 208n. Gi bso n . W. R. Boyce. 1 47n. Gide. Paul (Etude sur la condition privee de laji?mme). 6 1 n. G iorgion e, 2 43, 264, 2 6 5, 266 Giot to, 10, 2 1 0-34. 2 5 1 ; A nnunciation to A nna, 2 2 9: Apparition t o the Brothers at Aries, 2 2 8: Betrothal of the Virgin, 2 29: Crucifix of Saint Damian Speaks to Saint Francis. 2 2 7-28 : Dream ofPope /nnocem Ill. 2 2 8 : Dream of the Palace and Arms. 226: Expulsion of the Demons ji·om Arezzo, 226: Meeting at the Golden Gate, 2 2 9 : Massacre of the Innocems. 2 30-3 1 : Mocking ofChrist. 22 9: Saint Francis Preaching before Honorius III, 228: Saint Francis Renouncing the World, 228: Visions of Friar Augustine and the Bishop ofAssisi, 2 2 8 : Vision of the Thrones at Assisi, 2 1 2 Glossolalia, 30 Goethe, J o h a n n Wolfgang von, Dichtung und Wahrheit. 202 Gogol. Nikolai Vasil yevich. The Overcoat, 67 Go ldma n n , Lucie n. 2, 3 Go rgias, 202, 209n. Gra m : defin ed, 1 4- 1 5: see also A n agram Gran et. M ichel, La Pensee chinoise. 60n. Green. Andre. 1 37 Gregory t h e G r e a t . Saint. 39. 52 Greimas. A. J . , 1 1. 59n .. 9011., 9 1 n. Grimm, J acob. 1 26 .

.•

INDEX

Grimmels hausen, H . J . C. v o n , Der Satyrische Py/grad, 6 1 n. Gris, J u a n , 1 1 Gritti, J u les, 9 1 n. Gru ber. J e ffrey S . , 29 4n. G u ido da S i e n a. 2 5 1 Guth rie. K . 235n.

299

European Sciences and Transcendental Phenom enology, 2 92n.-2 9 3n.; Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Ph£nomenology, 1 30, 1 47n. ; Logical Investigations, 1 2 9 H yde. G M " 3 5 n .

.

H a lliday. M . A . K . 2 86; Learning Ho w to Mean, 293n. H a m ilton. E d ith, 2 3 5n. H arvard U n i ve rsity. 27 H ayakawa, S., Language, Meaning, and Maturity, 9 1 n. H egel. G . W. F . . vii. v iii, 1 4, 1 6- 1 7. 32. 55, 88-89. 1 00, 1 06, 1 1 0- 1 1 . 1 1 2- 1 4. 1 2 3n .. 1 2 9. 1 45, 1 6 1 , 202; H eg elian consciousn ess o f self. 1 26. 1 27. 1 28 ; Hegelian dialectic, 1 4, 9 9; He gelian transcendence, 9 9; Phenomenology of the Mind, 1 2 3 n .. 20 1 ; Philosophy of Fine Art. 2 2 3-24, 2 3 5n.; Science of Logic, 1 23n. H e idegger, M a rtin, vii, bi: , 14. 25. 1 35 H elle n is tic civil iz ation, 2 2 3 Heraclitus, 8 2 . 1 83. 1 84, 2 02, 2 39. 2 76, 2 92n. Hete rogeneity. 24-2 5. 1 63 , 1 84. 1 89 H ilbert. David. 7 9 Hippocra tes, 8 2 H i rsch m a n , Jack, 35n. H istory: ambiva lence of texts, 68-6 9; history and t h e sign ifying s u bj ect. 1 0 3 ; pe rcei ved th rough words as i n tersect ion o f t exts, 65; t ransform a tion of d iachro nic into synchron ic h istory t h rough dialogica l word, 65-66 H i t l e r, 1 64 H i t lerian ideology, 1 4 5 H old erl i n . Frie drich, 1 4 5 . 1 5 9, 202. 207 Hom er. Th£ Iliad, 2 02 Homosexua lity. 1 99. 244; fem i n i n e . 2 3 9-40 Horatian Sat ires. 82 Howard, Rich ard. 1 2 \ n . H u m a nis m: classica l. 8 0; Florentine. 2 5 1 -52; Ren a issance. 80 H usse rl. E d m u n d , v iii. 6. 1 2 8-30. 1 3 1-32, 13 4 , 1 35. 1 46, 183. 2 80-8 1 ; TM Crisis of .

Ideologeme, 2 . 36-38 Ideology, defi n ed, 1 5 I m age and transcendence, 2 1 4, 222-23 Incest : daugh ter- father incest. 238-39; po e t ic la ngu age and a r t as m aternal i ncest, 30, 1 3 7, 1 4 3, 1 50, 1 56, 1 9 1-92 Inquisition, 50 I nstinct. see Dr ive I n t ertextua lity: defined, 1 5; text of the novel as, 36. 37, 38; t ra nsposit ion o f a n t erior or synchronic stateme nts i n to commu nicative speech. 5 1 -55; polyphony, 7 1 . 82-83. 85-86; writing a n d speech i n n o v e l . 3 8 Ionesco, E u gene, 1 1 I r igaray. Luce . 9 \ n. I rony. 27. 1 09 Isa i a h . 1 89 Iswolsky. He lene, 9 0n. J acobsen, Edith. 2 9 3 n. J a kobson. Roma n . i x , 4, 26-34. 68. 77. 78 J a rry. A l fred. 1 8 1 J erome. Saint. 39. 43. 45 Jocasta. 1 66, 1 9 2 Joh n of Damascus. S a i n t . 2 5 0 J o h n t h e A post le. 1 27 Jones. Ernest. Th£ Life and Work of Sigm und Freud, 292n. J osqu in des Pres, 1 8 1 Jou issance. x . 1 42 . 1 4 8 . 1 5 1 . 1 54. 1 8 1 . 2 24, 232. 2 47; art as language of maternal jou issance. 1 56. 1 92-95. 2 2 4. 2 42. 247-48. 254. 263; d e fined. 1 5- 1 6 J oyce. J a mes. 7 1 . 80. 8 2 . 1 0 2 . 1 09. 1 1 4. 1 4 2 . 1 5 7. 1 66. 1 9 7 . 2 0 2 : Finnegans Wake. 9 2 . 1 36, 1 5 1 . 1 5 4 ; Ulysses, 1 4 8 . 1 5 1 . 1 54 Joyce. No ra. 1 66 J u binal. Ach ille. 3 9 J u n g. Carl G . . 276

INDEX

3 00

K a l'k a , Franz, 71, 8 0 , 82, 86, 1 00, 1 5 1 Kage l. M a uricio. 1 68 K a n t , I m m a n u e l, 9 9 Kastner, J . G Les Voix d e Paris, 6 1 n. K h lebnikov, Velimir, 24, 27, 29-30, 32-34, 71 Klein, M el a n ie, 277 K n udson, Charles A . , 60n. Konrad, Nikolai, 6 1 n . Koran, 1 7 1 K osk i m ies, R a fa e l , Theorie des Romans, 9 1 n. Kre isler, ! . , L'Enjam et son corps, 2 93n. Krush chev, N i k i t a Sergeyevich. 2 Ku rylowicz, J erzy, 1 7 2 ..

L a c a n , J acques, v i i i , 4 , 1 6 , 1 7, 1 9, 20 n., 76, 1 28. 1 35, 277, 293n. L a Fon t a i n e , J e a n de, 208n. Laius, 1 99 L anguage: Cartesian subject in generative grammar, 1 28; enunciation a n d the Freu dian u n conscious, 272-78; l ingu isti c structur alism, 1 27-28, 1 3 1 ; psyc hoanalysis and language a n alysis, 278; as system of signs, 1 2 7 L a n g u a g e learning: anac lisis, 2 8 1 ff.; a na p hora, 287-89, 29 1 ; childhood l anguage/i n fantile langu age, 27 1 -78; entry in to syn tu a n d victory over the mot her, 289; ge nesis o f the signifiable object, 276-77, 28 1 , 28 5-87; m irror stage; 1 95, 1 98-99, 282-84; presyntactic pot e n tial mea n in g , 286; proper na mes, 290-9 1 ; syn t a x an d negat io n , 289-90; topic/comment, 287; vocaliz a t io n of l a c k , 28 1 -8 2 l . a o Tzu, 1 9 1 Laplanche, J e a n , Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse, 1 3 La Sale, A ntoine de: La Salle, Le11res a Jacques de Luxem bourg sur /es zournois, and Reconforz a Madame de Fresne, 4 1 ; a n d L e Petit Jehan de Sainzre, 2 , 4 1 -46, 50-5 1 , 5 3-59 Lasalle, Ferdinand, 2 02 L aughter: vs. absolute k nowledge , 1 42, 1 45; a utoe rot icism a n d imagina tion, 283;

color and the burlesque, 223; a n d gestu r ality, 284-85: a s primer for sem io t i c chora, 282-84; w i t h i n meaning and cast ration, 1 8 1 - 8 2 Lau trea mon t, 5, 1 0 . 2 9 . 6 9 , 7 1 , 80. 8 6, 1 09, 1 38 , 202 Lavers, A nn e t te. 1 22n. L e bo v i c i , S., La C onnaissance de fenjam par la psychanalyse, 2 93n. Lecourt, M . , 6 1 n.-62n. Le ibnitz, Got t frie d Wilhelm von, 1 86, 202 Leopold, W erner F., Child Language, 292n. L e n in, V l ad imir l lyich, 14, 1 84, 202; Materialism and Empiriocriticism, ! ;· Philosophical N ozebooks a n d What ls 10 Be Done?, 1 84 Lentin, Lawr e n c e , 292n. Leon ardo da Vi nci, 1 57, 1 7 1 , 243-46, 247, 265; Madonna With the Carnation, 245 ; Mona Lisa, 244; Virgin and Child With Saint A nne, 244, 245 Le roy, Ch ristine, 292n. Levi-S t ra uss, C laude, 3, 1 00, 1 03, 1 1 6, 122n., 1 24, 1 37, 294n.; L'Homme nu, 1 47n. Le wis, P h i l i p E. 2 0n. L e w y , H a ns, 2 3 5n. Lichachov, D . S . . Man in the L iterature of Old Russia, 6 1 n. L i n g u is t i cs, vii, viii, I , 4, 1 3 , 23-34; l i n g u is t ic code, 94 L i n Piao, 203 Lon g h i , R., Viatico per cinque secoli di Pi11ura veneziana, 210n. Lovitt, Carl R., 22n. Loyola, Ignat ius o f, 1 05, 1 1 8 L u c a n , 82, 8 3 Lucretius, 1 8 3 L u k acs, Gy!lrgy, 4; Theory oj zhe Novel, 9 1 n. L u k as ie wicz, J an . 70 M acciochi, M ar ia-A ntonie tt a , 8 M al e , E m i l e , L'Arl religieux de la fin du moyen-iige en , 59n. M a llar me, M arie , 1 66 M allarme, S tepha n e , S. 1 0 , 25, 76, 79, 80, 1 00, 1 1 0, 1 33, 1 38, 1 39, 1 62, 1 93, 202,

301

INDEX

208n., 2 8 1 : Un Coup de des . . . , 1 34, 141 M alraux. A n dre, 8 M an h e im, Ralph, 1 47n. M ann, I. C . , Developmenz ofzhe Human Eye, 2 3 6n. M a ntegna, Andrea, 2 44. 2 52, 2 54 M ao Zedong, 8, 1 0, 1 23n., 1 59, 1 8 2 , 2 02, 203 M arx. K a rl. a n d M arx ism . vii, I, 4, 9. 1 2 . 1 3. 1 4, 1 5, 1 6. 1 9, 23, 1 00, 1 59, 1 84. 2 02, 2 7 1 : German Ideology, 9 0n. M aterialis m; avant-garde as always a lready politic ally dissid ent, 2 03-4: bre ak i n g up political discou rse, 1 24-2 5 , 1 32 -33, 1 44-45: conditions for a dialectic, mate rialist discourse, 1 46-47; 1 83: defined, 1 6; Fascism and S t alinism as return of t h e repressed, 1 2 5, 1 40-45, 2 05-7: h istory and the t c mporality o f t h e t ext, 2 0 1 -8; h istory as an alysis o f speak i n g s u bj e c t , 2 03; l it erature a n d e vil. 1 37, 145; timelessness a n d su icide, 2 06 M atc rn a l fu nction: mot h e r vs g c n c t rix, 2 47. 249, 278-80, 2 8 2-83 M at isse, He nri. 1 62. 2 1 9, 2 2 1 , 2 34n., 2 3 5n., 2 50 M ay 1 968, 1 60 M aya k o vsk y, Vladim i r Vla d i m i rovic h , 2 4, 27, 2 8-34. 7 1 , 1 25, 2 0 6 ; Eleclric Iron, 29; H o w A re Verses Made, 28, 33 M e a ning: mean ing, structu re, and t ra nsccn dcncc, 1 24: nonsense and s u r m c a n ing, 1 02 ; stru c t u re and the production of mean ing, 1 03 ; s u bj e c t 's r e l a t ion to, ix-x M cdvcdcv, P. N The Formal Method in Lilerary Scholarship, 5 9 n., 62n. M eh l e r. J acques, 292n. M cl ville, H e rm an , 1 78, 2 02 M cnendcz-Pidal. Ramon, Poesia juglaresca, 60n. M enippean disco u rs e . 82-8 9 M cn ippcan satire. 60n. M eni ppe an trad ition, 69, 73. 77, 79-80 M en ip pus of Gadara, 82 M essm e r, Pi erre , 2 03, 20 9n. M et z . C h ristian. 9 1 n. .•

M ichelang e lo Buon arroti, 1 57 M ichelet, J u les. 1 05, 1 07 M il l , John Stuart, 290 M ill er. A . V . 1 23n. M il le r. Richard, 1 22n. M i s rahi, J ean, 60n. M o ndrian, Pict. 22 1 M onologism, see Novel M onologu e. i n t erior, 90n. M onotheism: a nd art, 2 1 1 - 1 6. 2 22-24, 2 5 0-5 1 ; and w riting, 32 M on taiglon, A n atole de, Recueil de poesies fram;oises des X Ve ez X Vie siecles, 6 1 n. M onteverdi, Claudio, 202 M orin, Violette, 9 1 n. M oth erhood: C h ristianity, 1 5 5-57, 272 ; a n d paranoia, 2 3 9 , 2 8 0 M o z art , Wolfgang A m adeus, 1 75, 202 .

N apolcon, 202 N a rc issism, 1 62 , 1 64, 214; see also Prim a ry n arcissism Narrat ive: a n alysis o f, 64; modes, 67, 67-68, 69; pictorial. 2 1 1 - 1 3; as prohibition. 70, 72-73, 74-76, 77, 80, 85-86; representat ion without narrative, 2 1 4- 1 5; spe c u la rization in, 2 1 1 - 1 2 ; u n its, 66, 67 N e e d h am, J oseph, Science and Civilization in China, 9 1 n . Ne gation: a s a ffirmation, 6 9: a n d t h e double, 69-7 1 : a n d non-disj u n ct ion, 78-79, 8 2-8 3; non-disj u n c tion in t h e n o v e l . 47-49 Negativity: dcri ncd, 1 6 ; and h et eroge n e it y, 1 63, 1 85, 206-7; language as, 1 07-9; a n d ncgat ion , 1 6 1 : in writing, 1 1 1 Ncrval. Gerard de, 1 5 9, 1 9 1 , 202, 2 07, 209n. N e u rosis: see S u bj ect Nicole, Pierre, Logique of Port-Royal. 294n. N ietzsche, Frie dric h, 2 3 , 78, 8 1 , 1 9 1 , 202 Notre Dame o f Avioth, 39 Novel: modern, a n t irepresent ation al. 8 5-87; monological, 67, 69-70, 72 , 74, 76-77, 85, 87; polyphonic, 69, 7 1 , 79, 84, 8 5-86: rea list, 60n., 70, 84, 85; see also Text

·

302

INDEX

Nyk l . A l o i s R ichard, Hispano-Arabic

Poetrr a n d Its R elation With the Old Pro 1•en1;al Troubadours, 6 1 n . Obsession i n writing, 1 49-50 Oedipus: Oedipal aggression, 273: Oedipus complex, 272-73, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277: Oedipal experience, 1 96, 1 99: Oedipal maternal body, 1 95-96: Oedipal m other. 1 04, 1 92, 1 9 3 : Oedipal myth, 272: Oedipal narrati ve, 1 74, 1 92-93, 1 96: Oedipal stage, 1 60. 1 9 5 Orestes, 1 92. 1 96 Orpheus, 1 92 Otaka, Y . , 59n. Overney, Pi erre, 202. 20 3. 208n. Ovid, 82 Piinini. 1 2 7 Paradox, 3 8 Paragram s, 4 . 1 5 . 69. 1 2 2n . : see also A nag rams Parody, 3 1 . 73 Paternal fu nction, 1 5 1 -52, 1 54-5 5 , 1 99, 244-45, 248-49, 273-7 5 : t h e dead father, 1 49-50: death and meaning, 1 49: disintegration and renewal, 1 4 5 -46: fa ther as obj ect o f l ove, 1 42. 1 5 0. 1 5 5 , 1 97 : and poetry, 29: a n d w r i t i ng, 1 37-39.

1 49. 1 5 1 -52. 1 54-5 5 . 1 63. 20 1 Paul, Saint. 52. 1 85 Peano. G i u seppe, 70 Peirce. C h arles S . , v i i i , 3. 4 Perspect ive, 2 1 1 , 226, 2 6 5 Petitot , J . , 294n. Petro n i u s Arbiter, 82 Phaedo of Elis, 80 Phallicism, 1 64, 1 9 1 : phallic and i m aginary mother. 1 9 1 . 242-43, phallic mother, 1 9 1 .

1 93, 1 94, 1 99, 200. 206, 2 3 8 . 242 Phenom enology, vii, viii, 6 Phenotex t, 7, 208n. Philo J u daeus. On the Creation of the

World. 2 3 5n. Philology, as discourse o f identi ty, 1 2 5-26 � honic differen t i a l . 1 74, 208n. i aget . Jean, 3, 20n. P icasso. Pablo. 1 1

�

Pichon, Edouard, 2 8 8 Pi ndar, 2 02 Pisano, A ndrea. 225 P i t t acus o f M isselene, 5 2 Plato a n d Platonism, 6 . 2 0 n. • 3 1 . 5 0 . 62n . .

8 0 . 8 1 . 8 4 , 2 0 2 : Apology, 8 1 ; Theaetetus, 2 3 5n . : Timeus, 1 3 3 Pl eynet, M arcel l i n , 7 . 8 ; Enseignement de la peinture, 234n.-2 3 5 n . P l o t i n u s and Plot i n i s m , 2 2 3 ; Enneades, 235n. Poetic l a nguage, 5. 7, 24-2 5. 2 6 . 64, 69, 70, 1 2 5 . 1 32. 1 3 3. 1 34. 1 3 5. 1 36. 1 45 . 1 74 Poet i c word. 65 Poet i c l ogic. 70; as dialogue a n d ambiva lence. 7 2 : as dramatic permu t a t i o n o f words, 79; and t h e i n fi n ite, 7 1 -72 Polem ic. hidden i n t erior. 73 Polylogu e : consciousness w i t h i n rhythm and drive, 1 73 , 1 75-83, 1 86; dialogue of subject of enunciation w i t h i tself, 1 73-74,

186 Polynom ia, 1 1 1 . 1 1 2. 1 69-7 1 . 1 74 Pompidou, G eorges, 1 59. 203. 209n. Ponge, Francis, 74 Pontalis, J . - B. , Vocabulaire de la

psychanalyse, 1 3 Port - R oyal: Logique, 29 1 : u n i versal gr a m m ar o f, 1 26. 1 27 Post - formalism, see Formalists, R ussian Pound, Ezra. 202 Poussin, N icolas, 266 Pregnancy as i n s t i t u t ional ized psych osis,

1 94, 2 37-40 Prague, Linguistic Circle of, 1 2 8 Prevert. J acques, 1 1 0 P r i m a l scene and representation, 249 Prim ary narcissism, 220. 225. 245, 265.

269. 282 Productivity: text as. 36: t ra n s linguistic. 36.

66. 69 Prose, medieva l . 78 Proust. M arcel. 7 1 . 1 1 0. 1 5 1 . 20 1 Psychoanalysis, ix-x, I . 4, 6. 1 3. 32. 74, 97. 1 3 5 - 36: sem i ology and, 1 1 9 : the critic's transference. 1 1 7 Psychosis. see S u bject

303

INDEX

Purce ll. H e n r y , 2 0 2 Pu r k i nje. Johan nes. 2 2 5 Queneau, Raymond, 1 1 0 Rabelais. Fran�ois, 7 1 , 79, 83. 86. 1 09. 1 1 4.

1 8 1 . 224 R a cine, J ean, 5 . 1 49. 1 58n. R a o u l de Cam brai, 49 Raphael Santi, 246 Realism. see Novel Reich, Wilhelm, 1 40 Reilly, Ann, 22n. R e n a n , Ernest, 1 2 5 -27, 1 40; A veroes et

l'A verroi'sme, 1 26; The Future of Science, 1 4 7n. Renaissa nce representation in painting.

245-46 R epressi on, 24. 93, 1 36. 140. 145. 1 54, 1 57 .

205, 206. 207, 2 1 5, 2 1 7, 2 1 9, 2 2 0 , 242-43; prim al, 2 3 9, 243-50. 262, 263, 269 Revol u t ion. Soviet, 2 7 , 3 2 , 33, 7 1 Ri cardo u , J ean, 7 Ri chards, I . A . , 1 1 Ri nversi, Anna, 246, 247 Ri sset, Jacqueline, 7 R obespierre, M ax i m i l i e n , 1 62 Roche, Denis, 7 Roman de R enart, 7 8 R o t h k o , M a r k , 2 2 1 , 2 50. 2 6 6 R otsel. R . W., 90n. Rottenberg, Pierre, 7 Round Table, Cycle or, 49 Roussea u , Jean-Jacques, 2 7 1 , 276 Roussel, R aymond, 1 8 1 R u m i , Jalal ed- D i n , 202, 209n. R u s k i n , J ohn, G iotto and his Work in Padua, 234n . . 2 3 5n.- 236n. R u ssell, Bertrand, 290 Ryazanskaya, S . , 90n. R ysselbergh. Maria van. 1 66 Sade, D. A F. de, 5, 79, 86. ! 00, 1 0 5 , 1 1 2 ,

1 1 8. 1 3 8, 1 62 , 1 66, 1 84. 2 0 2 . 2 7 1 ; ldees sur /es romans, 1 36 Saint Mark's Church (Venice). 2 1 2 Salome, Lou. 1 66

San Fr ancesco (Assisi), G iotto's frescoes i n .

2 26-28. 2 30-3 1 Santa Croce ( F l orence). 2 2 8 S a n t a M a r i a M aggi ore ( R o m e), 2 1 2 Sant'Apollinare Nuovo ( R a venna), 2 1 2 Sartre. Jean - P a u l , 8 , ! 00. 1 04. 1 05-6;

Critique of Dialectical Reason, l 2 2 n . , 1 23n. Saussure, Ferdi nand de, v i i i , 4, 1 2 , 1 5 . 24, 34, 69, 7 1 , 1 00. I O I . 1 22n . . 1 2 7. 1 2 8-29, 1 39 Schlei cher, August, 1 26 Schnitzer, L, 3 Sn. Sch reber, Senatspriisident Daniel, 29, 1 38, 208n. Scrovegni, Enrico, 2 1 3, 234n. Scrovegni Chapel ( Padua): G iotto's frescoes in, 2 1 2- 1 5, 2 24. 2 2 5-26. 2 28-30. 234n. Sebillot, P., B/ason populaire de /a ,

6 l n. Semanalysis, v i i , viii, 4, 9; criticism a n d m etalanguage, 1 1 5 . 1 1 6, 1 20-2 1 ; criticism and writing. a fli r m a t ion, and irony, ! 0 8-9; rationalization or t h e signifying process: 1 06; rhetorical seduction vs. style, 1 38-39 Semantic analysis. 74 Sememe, 37, 59n. S e m i ol ogy, 1, 34; dissolving phenomenological sig n i fy ing and m y t h ical ent i t ies. 1 0 1 -2 , 1 02-3. 1 0 5-6; ethics of l iterary science, 1 06, 1 1 6- 1 7; or l i terature, 94-9 8 , 1 1 8- 1 9, 1 2 1 ; l i teratu re's " absence or pl ace" with respect to social sciences, 96, 98; and psychoanalysis, 2 6; semi ological nega t i v i t y , ! 0 1 -2 ; see also Semanalysis; Sem iotics Semiotic disposition: anaclisis, 2 8 1 -8 2 : the chora and i t s m aternal connect ion, 1 3 3 ; dance, m u s ic, t heater. 1 33 , 1 4 2 , 1 44, 1 75-79; defi ned, 6-7; as determ i n ed b y t h e sym bolic. 2 9 ; gestures, 284-8 5 : l anguage learning, 2 8 1 -8 3 ; primal repression, 2 1 8 , 239, 24 1 , 249-50; sem iotic chora, 6, 1 33 . 1 74, 2 84, 2 8 6- 2 8 7 Semiot ics, 3 ; de fined, 1 7- 1 8 ; or i iterary texts. 67. 7 1 ; translinguistic practices, 36, 59n.; see also Semiology

3 04

INDEX

Seneca, 5 2 Seneca t h e Y o u nger, 8 2 S e t theory, 1 3 . 78, 9 I n. Sexual difference, 1 5 1 , 1 5 3-54, 1 5 7,

1 64-66, 1 97-98 Shak espeare, William, 5 , 83; Macbeth, 279;

Romeo and Juliet, 1 98 Shepard, W. S. 60n. Sherida n-Smith, Alan, 1 2 3n., 293n. S hklovsky, Victor, 5 , 20n., 60n . Sien ese frescoes, 224 Sign: evolution from symbol t o sign, 3 8-4 1 ; non-disj u nction within t h e n ovel 's temporal ity, 47-48; present tense in inferential enunciation, 54; predication and, 1 29-30, 1 32, 1 68 ; Saussurian notion of, 69, 1 28 Signifier / sign i fi ed : addressee as signifier and signi fied, 74-75, 1 28-29, 1 2 9-30, 1 39-40; word as signifier, 65 Signifying differential, 208 n . Signifying practice: defined, 1 8; typology o f discourse a s , 38-4.1 , 49-50, 1 33-34 Signifying pr ocess, ix, 3, 6-7, 1 24-25 Signifying syst em, t ranslinguistic, I 0 I Sm i t h , Colin, 1 22n. Socialism, 9 Socrates, 52, 84, 202 Socratic dial ogue, 80- 8 1 Soderhjelm, W . P . , L a Nouvelle fran<;aise

au X Ve siec/e, 60n. Sollers, Philippe, viii, 3, 7 , 8, 9; Drame, 87, 1 1 3 , 20 1 ; H , 1 59-208; Lois, 1 60 , 1 90 ,

1 96, 20 1 ; Nombres, 20 1 ; The Park , 63n.; Sur le materia/isme, 1 83 Solzhenitsyn , Aleksandr l sayevich, 2 7 1 Song of Roland, 48-49 Sophists, 84 Sopocani M onastery, 2 5 1 Soule, M . , L'Enfant et son corps, La Connaissance de l'enfan t par la psychanalyse, 293n. Sphinx, 1 93 Spinoza, Baruch, 1 4 5 , 1 86, 202 Spitz, Rene A . 278, 282, 283; The First Y'ear of Life, 293n. Spivak, G ayatri, 90n., 293n. Stalin, Joseph V., 2, 1 6 1 , 202

Stalinism , 2 3, l 6 1 Starobinski, J ean, Les Mots sous /es mots,

4, 1 5. 20n., 90n., 14 7 n. Steinbec k, J oh n , 20 Stockhausen, Ka r l heinz, 1 68 Strawson, P. F . , 1 72 Stru ct u r alism, viii, 3, 4, 6, 24, 64-65, 1 2 7,

131 Subj ect: anal d rive, 284; Cartesian subject and generative grammar, 1 28 ; defined, 1 9 ; as distinct from subject of fet ishism, 1 39; o f enunciation, 1 2 7 -28; a s historical s u bject, 96-97, 1 60, 203; and instinct u a l drives, 142, 1 62-63, 1 78 , 276-77; its impossible ident ity, 1 24-2 5 , 1 46, 1 8 5-86, 1 89; a s operating conscious ness, 1 3 1 ; oral drive, 283-84; as questionable and in process, 97, 99- 1 00, 1 24-2 5 , 1 3 5-36, 1 6 1 , 1 79, 1 90, 237-4 3 , 249; relation o f oral drive to rhythm and m u s ic, 1 7 5 , 1 9 1 ; speak ing and split s u bj ect, 6 , 24, 25, 74; the s u bject and death drive, 1 4 2 , 1 62-63,

1 87 , 205-6, 2 2 1 ; s u bj ect of text a s differ e n tiated from subject o f neurosis and p sychosis, 97, 1 25 , 1 39, 1 5 3-54, 1 82, 1 96, 2 1 8 ; subject of narration, 74; as t r a nscenden t al ego, 1 24 , 1 29-30, 28 1 ; S u b l i m ation, 240, 249, 267-69, 2 8 3 Surrealism, 8 , 1 33, 1 7 1 Suyin, Han, The Morning Deluge, 20n. Swift , J onathan, 7 1 , 79, 83, 86, 1 09, 1 8 1 Sym bo l ic disposition: defined, 6-7; 29, 1 37-38, 1 74; as determining t h e semiotic disposition, t heir contradict ion, 1 34, 1 36,

1 39-40, 1 63-64, 1 67-68, 1 80-8 1 , 1 84-85, 1 95-96; t hesis as predication, 1 30 Taoist painting, 2 1 1 , 248

Tel Que/, 3 , 7, 8, 1 00 Tesniere, Leon, Esquisse d'une syntaxe

structurale, 60n . Tex t : defined, 2, 1 5; fascination and objectification, I 04-5; language and biog r aphy, 1 0 5 ; the novel as text, a) i n ferential enunciation, 4 5 -47, b) bou nded text blocked by non-disju nct ion, 42-44, 47-5 1 , c) program m i ng, 42, d) structural and com positional fi nit u de,

305

INDEX

5 5 - 5 6 . e ) narrative a n d lit erature, 5 8-59. j) ch aracters as stages in the meta morphosis of t h e subject of narrat ion. 44-4 5 : t h e novel as transposition o f M e nippean a m b i valence, 4 1 -47. 68-72, 7 8 -80: text and dissol u t i on of Christian ideology. 2 1 2- 1 5 . 2 2 1 -2 2 . 2 5 3 . 2 6 5-66: text a s fuzzy set, 1 3 5; textual logic vs. Hegelian dialectic. 99- 1 00; text vs. k i nship rules. 96-97; typology of texts vs. rhetoric of genres, 36-37 Thales o f M ilet u s . 52 Theater: medieval theater. 78; text a s theater. 78-80. 8 4 Thebes. 1 93 Theodoric t h e Great, 2 1 2 Thibaudet. Albert. Reflexions sur le roman.

9 1 n. Thibaudeau, J e a n . 7 Thom , Rene, 7 T i m ides. 5 2 Titian. 2 4 3 . 264. 266 T i t u n i k , I . R., 62n. Todorov. Tzvet a n .. 2, 1 1 , 9 l n . ; Theorie de

la /itterature, 20n . . 60n . ; Questions de poetiq u e, 3 5 n . Tolstoy, L eo : m onological novels o f, 7 0 , 8 7 Tonnelat, M. A . , Evolution des idees s u r la nature des couleurs, 2 3 5 n . Tra n s ference, 1 08, 1 60. 1 74, 2 77. 2 7 8 . 2 8 1 Transfi n ite, 72, 1 67, 1 8 3 . 1 90 Transgression of codes, 7 1 Trotsky, Leon. 2 9 Tru t h , i x , x-xi, 2 4 , 2 5 Tucker, R obert C . , 90n. Ty nanov. J . . 3 0 Tzara. Tristan, 1 1

Varro. M a rcus Teren tius. 82. 83 Vasari. Gi orgio. 2 1 1 , 246 Vedas. 1 8 7 Venetian Gothic st yle. 25 1 Veneziano. Paolo. 2 5 2 Verdigl ione. Armando, 20n. Vergil. 45: Aeneas and Dido, 45 Vietnam war. 202 V i n ogradov. V . V .. 90n.

;

Volt ire. Fram;:ois M a rie Arouet de. 83. 1 8 1 Wahl. Fran�ois. 8 Webern. Anton, 1 59 Wehrle. Albert J . . 59n. Wexsel, William, 294n. Whitaker. G . H .. 2 35 n . White, J ohn. Birth and R ebirth of Pictorial Space, 2 2 6. 2 34n . . 236n. Wilson. Edmund, 1 2, 20 W i n n icott, D. W . , 277. 278, 2 8 2 , 286;

Playing and Reality, 292n., 293n. Wolfson. Lou is. 5 Woman. x, 9- 1 0; as other in medieval poetry, 49-50; and t h eoretical reason, 1 46; loss of identity in jouissa nce, 1 64 ; h e r place w i t h i n Christianity, 2 7 2 Word: direct, denotative, a n d object­ oriented, 72- 73: dialogica l , 66. 72- 7 3 ; see also Signifier /sign i fied Wright. G eorg Henrik von, An Essay o n

Modal Logic, 60n. Writing: defined, 1 9-20; and the law, 1 1 0- 1 3 , 1 1 8- 1 9; and real ism. 60n . Wundt, W . ( Volkerpsychologie), 293n. Xenophon, 8 0 , 8 1

Van G i n neken. J . . L a R econstitution

Yi n-yang. 70 Y o u ng, La M o n t e, 1 6 8 Y ii eh- fu. 6 1 n . Yii-t'ai hsi n-yung, 6 l n.

typo/ogique des /angages archafques de /'humanite. 6 2n . Van G ogh, Vincent. 1 8 6, 202. 207

Zhdanov, A ndrei Aleksandrovich, 24 Zoroastrianism , 2 2 3

U t terance. 1 1 3 . 1 69-7 1 , 1 74, 1 86-87