Saussure

Language as arbitrary and differential: implications for literature

Saussure insists that language is “form and not a substance”. Unlike speech, language is not a function of the individual speaker as it belongs in the public sphere where the speaker only passively assimilates it. As a social product, language is “a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others”. For Saussure, words are about ideas not objects, so a word as signifier does not name things but conveys a plurality of meaning that is both momentary and fluid.

There are two sides to the relationship between the signified and signifier. First, it is arbitrary as there is no natural link between words and object. Secondly, it is differential because a sign is not linked to other signs naturally. We cannot know a thing positively as a thing that just is. We can only know it negatively by what it isn’t in relation to all other terms in a particular language system.

Here language as synchrony and speech as diachrony form a thought/moment relationship that allows us to ‘know’ things by what they are not in a conventional context. Signs do not function through their intrinsic value but through their relative position to others. The value of a sound can only be determined by its context.

The paradox, as Saussure points out, is that if a dissimilar thing can be exchanged for another thing (a toonie for a muffin), but can also be compared with similar things (a toonie and a loonie), then its value is not fixed. “Its content is really fixed only by the occurrence of everything that exists outside it.” Following Saussure’s argument then, language is never fixed in time by an individual speaker. On the contrary, the ability to communicate an idea depends on those who are receiving the communication. In this way meaning is constructed from any utterance by its context, by who is speaking to whom at which moment in time. This “momentary” character of language has interesting implications for our understanding of art, in all its forms, which seeks dialogue with an audience, whether an observer, listener, reader, etc…

If we apply Saussure’s argument to literature, the author cannot communicate an individual interpretation of the world to the reader because the reader’s interpretation at a particular moment of time also creates the “message”. In other words, a text does not have meaning in itself and separate from the reader.

Therefore, we can say that a piece of literature is not an object of art but a continually morphing “language”.

Another idea I find very interesting is that if we can only know things by understanding what they are not, perhaps this is how we create our own identity within a conventional space. We construct identities by establishing what we are not. I am female because I am not male, or I am white because I am not black. Paradoxically, I need the ‘other’ to create my identity.

 Barthes

Signs infinitely deferred: the death of the author

“Language knows a ‘subject’ not a ‘person’, and this subject, empty outside of the very enunciation which defines it, suffices to make language ‘hold together’, suffices, …to exhaust it.”

For Barthes, the notion of the author as creator of meaning in a text is dead as it is a multiplicity of writings that make up a text which is interpreted and given meaning by the reader in the “here and now”. In other words a text is never original and never reveals a fixed meaning.

This idea corresponds with Saussure’s conception of language as dependent on ‘momentary’ context; however, wouldn’t Saussure include the author’s voice in the production of language? Also, Bakhtin does not wholly do away with the author, whose ‘style’ is always evident in a text. Perhaps they would view the author as co-author with the reader rather than originator/genius of the text.

Interdisciplinarity and the epistemological slide: Barthes’ propositions on the relativization of writer reader and critic.

Barthes differentiates between the work as a fragment of substance that displays reality and can only be moderately symbolic, and the text, a methodological field that demonstrates the real and is radically symbolic.

Unlike the work, the text cannot be contained in a hierarchy as it is continuously being created and therefore experienced only in the act of production. Thus, text is language that subverts dominant discourse

Coinciding with Saussure’s definition of language, text is always paradoxical for its creation depends on the differences between discourses. As Bakhtin observes, the text cannot exist with a unified voice. The infinite deferment of the signified relies on the play of readings that abolishes the distance between writer and reader.

In this playing, or jotrissance, the writer becomes a guest reader who adds to the palimpsest of perspectives that form an irreducible and metonymic/stereographic plurality. Not organic or hermeneutic, this irreducible quality is due to the overlapping of difference produced in the act of reading. Moreover, the difference is only repeatable as difference and therefore the experience is semelfactive.

In other words there is no Father of the text, which is a network that is repeatedly being broken through the practical collaboration between readers. The separation between reader and author in a work reduces it to a product for consumption whereas a text produces a space of pleasure where circulating languages blur the lines between reader, writer and critic.

Hello interdisciplinary studies!

I’m very interested in the notion that if ideas are handed to us on a platter, so to speak, we are not creatively engaged and therefore not producing meaning. With a simple wooden toy a child can be creative; however, a complex toy that requires no imagination to operate soon becomes boring. Similarly, when all the actors have fringes in a film about Caesar, we are being told that they are Roman. In other words, someone is doing the interpreting for us. The sign is confused with the signified.

“Language…shot through with intentions and accents.”

Bakhtin asserts context is the key to language, for every word is inseparable from the context it was first used in, the context of its first reading and every reading after that ad infinitum. For Bakhtin it is dialogized heteroglossia that characterizes the novel as art form.

Heteroglossia indicates the inclusion of multiple socio-cultural perspectives. In any given reading of a text, the stratified voices of past and present signifiers and the signified coexist to give it meaning which is constantly being reconstructed as new voices are added to the mix.

This ever-morphing text then can never have a fixed meaning because of the diversity of perceptions it both expresses and engenders. In fact, for a text to function as art, heteroglossia is inevitable as dialogue is not possible when there is one unified voice. The novel “denies the absolutism of a single and unitary language.”

With plurality there is dialogue and the possibility for new realities and conceptions of identity. Dialogue recognizes the existence of other consciousnesses beginning with the “two language intentions, two voices and two accents participating in an intentional and conscious artistic hybrid.”

In Toine, we read the language of the narrator and his literary language as well as the voices of the characters and their vernacular. In addition, it is impossible not to hear the voice of the author and the authority he criticizes. (We could also add the voice of the translator in translated texts. For example, cognac in the French original becomes pepino in the Spanish text.) The juxtaposition of voices in Toine “expresses the author’s intention in a refracted way” to undermine dominant or authoritative discourse.

Bakhtin points to the “multi-languagedness” of prose that “undermines the authority of custom …[and the]…system of national myth that is organically fused with language.”

In Maupassant’s text, the religious mythology of the Catholic Church and feudal culture is subverted with his use of a multiplicity of languages. The inversion of Christian images and values presents a warped view of the ‘known’ world and its inhabitants. The perplexed reader recognizes something of himself or herself in the ‘other’, adds his or her voice to the conversation, and the dialogue intensifies. (see notes on Shklovsky)

You could say that the reader is an author of the text.

The author is also a reader as when Maupassant writes, he is ‘reading’ the many voices of the past and present.

This does not mean that there is no author, or that Maupassant has no language of his own. His language is made up of many languages and has its own particular style that he uses to “refract” his intention.

The Problem

My difficulty with Bakhtin, if I understand him correctly, is his describing poetry as a static art form that unifies language. Is this because the poetry of his time was more restrictive?

Doesn’t poetry offer the author a form that allows for polyphony? Dialogism and heteroglossia are not foreign to poetry, or am I missing something? Many poets have used the language of others in their work to challenge authority. Poetry can also personalize the every day with language that reaches beyond the boundaries of space and time.

Thoughts on Shklovsky

Shklovsky argues that art must create “a shock effect that disrupts habitual ways of seeing and thinking” because if we perceive things automatically, it is as if they do not exist in any manifestation of their form.

“Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life…The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known.”

In Toine peasant life as it is ‘known’, that is fixed in time by a supposed universal perception of it, is deconstructed by Maupassant’s use of the unfamiliar. Once the innkeeper becomes paralyzed, there is a shift in a previously construed understanding of the world. In this way, the reader is forced to question what he or she knows about society and in doing so is actively engaged in creating another view of present reality.

“The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar”, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an esthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important.”

When art makes objects or familiar situations unfamiliar, art and the observer necessarily engage as the observer attempts to reconcile what he or she perceives with his knowledge of the world. This interaction is what makes an object art, and it is therefore a continual process that is never fixed in time as the observer’s perception changes with the various experiences of life. Thus, when we read Toine next year, or ten years from now, we will perceive the text differently with past and present perceptions transforming the reader’s conception of what is perceived. When language is no longer habitual, each iteration is an experience of life.

“Defamiliarization is found almost everywhere form is found.” And an image “creates a vision of the object instead of serving as a means for knowing it.”

So if we cannot know an object when we perceive it unconsciously, and we cannot know it through an image of its likeness, can we know it at all as having a fixed meaning? And does this not imply that nothing exists without an observer?

In other words it seems that we can’t perceive an object as existing without our conscious perception of it. (Why am I thinking of String Theory and Schrödinger’s cat?)

We give things meaning, and because we are always changing, meaning is always in flux.

(This view coincides with Bakhtin’s idea that language does not exist without a speaker.)

Karen O’Regan

The Uncanny in Guy de Maupassant’s Toine

In Toine, Guy de Maupassant’s realistic style evokes the familiar images of peasant life only to subvert reality with the uncanny predicament of a paralyzed innkeeper forced to hatch eggs. Initially, the humorous description of rural life entertains the reader as impartial observer. Soon, however, the author’s use of the absurd forces his audience to participate in the creation of the text and reflect on the unresolved denouement.

While the linear narrative begins in a deceptively traditional manner, interpreting the text becomes increasingly problematic as the tale unfolds. An omniscient narrator introduces the characters and the environment that governs their behaviour. As with the rest of the natural world, the peasants’ physical needs are the focus of their lives. Thus, Toine resembles a pig, his wife a bird of prey, and later their friends are compared with a fox and a tree. The dehumanizing descriptions are humorous at first while the reader retains the position of spectator. However, the distance between the observer and the observed soon diminishes.

The reader begins to identify with the characters when they display certain human qualities. The innkeeper is first likeable because of his social nature and his affinity for physical pleasure, and his wife less so for her puritan work ethic. However, when the second and central action of the text reveals the unsettling strangeness of Toine’s situation, his weaknesses appear less comical and more disturbing. The unfortunate innkeeper has become a rather pathetic figure, inspiring both sympathy and revulsion. This ambivalence undermines a binary world of good and evil, and reflects the ambiguity of social mores. In this way, the text presents a mirror (the same yet different) image of the world that challenges the reader’s perception of reality. As a result, the reader participates actively in the narrative in an effort to interpret the text.

The rupture with reality is complete when Toine is asked to hatch the eggs. A plausible situation becomes fantastical, and the resulting confusion of the reader reflects that of the villagers. This blurring of the line between the possible and the impossible creates a liminal space in which the reader can create a new ‘truth’ or understanding of the world.

The concluding scene invites the reader to contemplate a reality outside of common experience. The protagonist has come to terms with his fate, yet the reader remains unsure of the outcome. Accustomed to the short story format, which traditionally propels the narrative towards closure, the reader is left perplexed and forced to examine why it is difficult to appreciate the character’s happiness. Ultimately, the innkeeper is imprisoned in a hell of his and his puritanical wife’s making. Moreover, all those around him are both products of and fodder for his insatiable pursuit of pleasure and her determination to control this weakness. Even Prosper Horsville falls victim to Toine, the progenitor of all his gendres, for his cleverness has turned him into yet another of Toine’s chicks. The characters in Maupassant’s looking glass are both victims and perpetrators of the violence done to them, and as their doubles his readers must re-evaluate their conception of reality.