S/Z

From “S/Z” (0) by Roland Barthes

The goal of literary work (of literature as work) (1) is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text. Our literature is characterized (2) by the pitiless divorce (3) which the literary institution maintains between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its customer (4), between its author and its reader (5). The reader is thereby plunged into a kind of idleness – he is intransitive; he is, in short, serious (6): instead of functioning himself (7), instead of gaining access to the magic of the signifier (8), to the pleasure of writing, he is left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text (9): reading is nothing more than a referendum. Opposite the writerly text, then, is its countervalue, its negative (10), reactive value: what can be read, but not written (11): the readerly. We call any readerly text a classic text.

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0) If I were to star the entire text (ISE #1), I would be able to comment more fully on the importance of re-reading. Since this starred text assumes that it has been read before, it would seem natural and even necessary that various comments should continually lead the writerly reader back to the text and its starred interpretations.

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1) Why must this text be examined? (ISE #2) Since this passage claims to address “literary work,” which by definition includes itself, it is worthwhile to see how well this passage can be transformed from a readerly into a writerly text. S/Z devises its own system for examining the possibilities inherent in reading one text, but implicates all current literature as being antithetical to literature’s future goal. It is therefore fruitful to examine the text on its own terms; like a doctor treating himself, the text offer no better proof of its own validity than by using its protocol (DIG #0) of metatextuality. (ISE #3)

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2) I will identify instances of textual self-awareness (ISE #4) that invite a potentially infinite cycle of self-referentiality as “ISEs” (Infinite Self-Examinations). In this sentence, Barthes invokes “our literature,” without conditions or parameters. He thereby includes his own text in this category, allowing the sentence to categorize itself. The veracity of his sentence is thereby dependent by the sentence’s conformity to its own mandates, inviting a potentially endless cycle, or an ISE.

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3) Barthes frequently uses the language of opposition and duality in order to emphasize the rupture between readerly and writerly texts. Through word choices, such as “divorce,” this duality manifests itself on the level of the sentence structure. I will identify (ISE #5) applications of ISE and DIG that occur on a linguistic level as (+/-). The oppositional word-pairings also mimic the contradiction inherent in establishing a set of rules to analyze an inherently unknowable matrix of meaning.

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4) Here, Barthes invokes the language of consumption and capital. (+/- #1) Literature is conceived of as a good or service, marketable by an “institution” and “consumed” by its readership. This is a language that denies literature its potential to be mentally liberating, or enjoyable outside the realm of capitalism. The “magic” and “pleasure” belong now to the signifiers and the act of writing. The literature itself is, instead, a labor: “work.” (DIG #1)

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5) By repeating the formula of oppositional words, Barthes’ vocabulary (+/- #2) mimics the coding of binary, in which a bit is defined by presence and absence. This link between Barthes’ language and the properties of binary are introduced early in the paragraph, but become even more obvious during his discussion of “negativity” later.

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6) The punctuation suggests a hesitation to end the sentence; Barthes seems to fear the encroaching terminus of his thought pattern. He seems to want to avoid a sentence with parameters, hoping (perhaps) that he can use punctuation to rethink the conventional boundaries of sentence structure. (+/- #3) This process parallels the system he (and I) hopes the reader will adopt: always seeking to increase the visible referents in a text.

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7) One of the most difficult problems inherent in Barthes’ text is the fact that, immediately after asserting that the future of literature is defined by its infinite potential for the plurality of interpretation, he establishes a protocol for categorizing metatexuality (ISE #6). He wants the reader to “function himself,” yet he structures the process (DIG #2) by which the reader could approach a text such as Sarrasine. The formula for expanding the referents of a text thereby becomes a truly limited process, reducible to a straightforward Wikipedia entry.

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8) The set of potential referents attached to each word or group of words in the text is infinite, and therefore unknowable (ISE #7).

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9) If the reader accepts this statement, he is implicating himself and Barthes in the production and consumption of readerly texts. (ISE #8) He is agreeing with the idea that readerly texts allow their readers to agree passively, thereby enacting the problem even as he diagnoses it. If he rejects the statement, he disrupts Barthes’ dichotomy (DIG #3) (which is itself troubling for a text which would like to encourage a plurality – not a duality- of meaning). He disagrees with the premise of Barthes’ argumentation, and therefore cannot arrive at the same conclusion. Either way, the reader contributes to the stagnation of literature in the act of reading the sentence. In other words, he demonstrates the problem inherent in reading a readerly text BY reading a readerly text.

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10) The text functions as a sort of interface for the invisible matrix of referents it represents (DIG #4). Rather than indicating anything directly, the text would be defined by what is not represented on the page (+/- #4) - like a photographic “negative”. The writerly reader, then, must allow his interpretation of the text to be informed by what it is not.

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11) The text counteracts the very break from conventional reading that it advocates (ISE #9): it’s a readerly text that requires a passive reader to accept its terms in order to realize the necessity of abandoning the readerly text for the writerly text.

The Code of S/Z

In starring the text, I will highlight three semiotic and semantic phenomena that permeate Barthes’ text. Since I am not equipped (or bold enough) to identify a code applicable to all language, I will instead identify a Code of S/Z. Perhaps the most obvious of these phenomena is the ISE.

This "code," is aptly named, since another important phenomenon prevalent in S/Z is Barthes' tendency to describe literature, authorship, and reading as digitized functions. Text becomes the interface for interpretation, readers become the users, words begin to take on binary qualities, etc. This insinuation of a digital mindset within the text's vocabulary and structure lends itself to Barthes' descriptive prowess and strengthens the logic of his arguments. To identify this phenomenon, I will use the symbol (DIG).

Barthes

"We must further accept one last freedom: that of reading the text as if it had already been read. Those who like a good story may certainly turn to the end of the book and read the tutor text first; it is given as an appendix in its purity and continuity, as it came from the printer, in short, as we habitually read it. But for those of us who are trying to establish a plural, we cannot stop this plural at the gates of reading: the reading must also be plural, that is, without order of entrance: the "first" version of a reading must be able to be its last, as though the text were reconstituted in order to achieve its artifice of continuity, the signifier then being provided with an additional feature: shifting."

-Roland Barthes' S/Z, ix. "How Many Readings," 1970, p. 15

Hegel

"But an individual structure necessarily departs from its own ideal of being the universal will, and becomes the will of a faction which may readily be replaced by another faction. It cannot escape the guilt of violating its own principles. Such guilt, being devoid of any objective principle, in indistinguishable from mere suspicion, and its only fit punishment is simple annihilation."

-G.W.F. Hegel, "Absolute Freedom and Terror," Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Self-Aware Homework

This assignment, of course, is itself a writerly text, which is continually constructing itself by establishing a protocol. Protocols, as I have established, must intrinsically restrict the writerly quality of a text. Perhaps the truest writerly text would not define the terms of its own interpretation, but instead would allow all its potential referents to become references themselves, as Hayles describes in her essay.

Hayles

"Thus voltages at the machine level function as signifiers for a higher level that interprets them, and these interpretations in turn become signifiers for a still higher level interfacing with them. Hence the different levels of code consist of interlocking chains of signifiers and signifieds, with signifieds on one level becoming signifiers on another. "

-N. Katherine Hayles, My Mother Was A Computer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Infinity

"Infinity refers to a concept that is beyond human comprehension. The human mind is incapable of grasping infinity in its totality. The term infinity is a finite signification of a concept that overflows the bounds of its signification."

-Quodlibet Journal: Volume 5 Number 4, October 2003
Preface to Totality and Infinity
© Val Petridis; Assisted by: Tom Fatsis