So-sure

It is somewhat difficult to accept that a concept is inseparable from a sound image. It is more difficult to accept, although, that this concept and sound image, signified and signifier respectively, have no real basis in the material world, in nature. Nothing has an intrinsic name. Nothing is born with a name to represent it. Nothing, nobody, told us that a ‘dog’ is to be called a dog, nobody said that a mountain has the name mountain, intrinsically born with that name; based on the real, a referent has no name. This situation is what must be understood as the arbitrary nature of the sign; that is to say the signified does not follow any rule or adhesive joining it with the signifier. This of course does not mean that they can live independently; they are always together.

If the author, as Barthes proposes, is not necessary to interpret a text, then does that mean language alone can give meaning to a text? Saussure develops the argument that a person alone cannot change or create language because it is the social, communal, side of speech, that is to say that it is the determining factor of a community and organizer or recorder of the discourses that the speakers articulate. Saussure is conditioning, or better said, untangling, an identity, such as that of an author, to be understood only as a speaker and not as creator. The author, or the speaker involved in a speech act, does not create anything, does not create language and therefore is not, or should not be allowed, the right to subjectively assign meaning to a given text. This situation implies a certain relations of power. The analysis of signs, of language, of text, can disarticulate common acceptances of powers. Revealing its self is something of the nature of power, which may start with a speech act and the intent to name, to create and impose a name, a meaning. This is the act of trying to give an essence before something realizes that that essence is not what it thinks of itself.

All of this points me in the direction of thinking of such issues of what is real or what is truth. Is the reality I live truthful? Is ignorance bliss if aware of the implications that a further analysis might divulge? To a certain extent, when we stop thinking of concepts and ideas as natural or preconceived to the articulation of speech, we may actually discover truths in many aspects of our culture, and our creations.

Barthes

I would like to ask Roland Barthes (or rather, in the spirit of what I understand from his texts, ask his texts) a question: is the analysis of language and other signs the answer to all sociological/political issues or to the pursuits of truths? My question doesn’t have the intention of debating or arguing with Barthes; there is no malignant intent by posing that question. Even though I explain that, posing that question or questions like that could cast doubt on or generate some negativity towards his arguments. The question could be seen as the sweat on the characters in the film Julius Cesar that Barthes analyzes; the question is thinking there is some sort of thought behind a question enunciated in such a way. The aggressiveness in the question is enunciates with by the phrase ‘answer to all’. This is a phrase that is totalizing and, contingent upon a negative, whose answer implies the uselessness of the analysis of language as a possible tool for research. Confusing the sign with the signified is, as Barthes writes, a hybrid inserted into the sign which is made to be perceived as nature. Say we have a signified, this signified is the concept of ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ and the signifier is the color black. The sign would be thus that black= bad/evil. Or the fringe= roman-ness, sweat=thinking, which in turn = crime, the author= answers to the work, a work= a specific meaning, Einstein’s brain= thought machine, foam= no violence etc. Thus, if the analysis of language doesn’t answer all the problems than it is of no use and can be completely disregarded. I was careful although to ask the text for an answer and not the author. According to the very arguments of the texts, the texts would never give me one uniform answer. Thus, the intentions or connotations (positive or negative) of question posed would fail against the text; but they would not fail against the author. The author can give you a straight answer, but that limits the possibilities of discourse, the possibilities of meanings, and the denaturalization of the one and only. In essence, my understanding from the Barthes texts is that there are finger prints around the sign and its meaning(s). The task in language (textual) analysis is to untangle or uncover certain truths (or perhaps better, histories of signs and their meanings). This tool is counter to the power of prescribing, the power of ruling with no limit, the power of ‘creating reality without the real’. The death of author= liberation (of many entities).