From Barthes’s “The World of Wrestling”: “The gesture of the vanquished wrestler signifying to the world a defeat which, far from disguising, he emphasizes and holds like a pause in music, corresponds to the mask of antiquity meant to signify the tragic mode of the spectacle” (14).
This is only one of several examples in this piece, but I wonder what sort of differences, if any, there might be between “signifies” and “means”; that is, what the difference might be between “The ‘vanquished wrestler’ SIGNIFIES the spectacle of ‘defeat'” as opposed to “The ‘vanquished wrestler’ MEANS the spectacle of ‘defeat.'” I have some ideas, but even in light of them, I’m still not entirely confident as to whether there is such a notable difference between the two. It seems at least mostly right, if not entirely so, to say that the signification of something refers to the “thing that is meant.” And it is this “thing that is meant” that stands vulnerable to Derrida’s critique of logocentrism – that there is something (stable) which “stands behind” the signifier: the signified, what the signifier REALLY “is.”
Also interesting is the relation that structuralist signification has with literary devices (metaphor, simile, allusion, etc.). (Barthes uses “corresponds” in the above quote in a way that analogizes in one way or another the “world of wrestling” with that of ancient theater.)
Maybe what the signifier “discloses” about its signified is the IMAGE of the signified and not the signified “itself” – and this might be one difference between “signifies” and “means” that I asked about in my comment above… (A reminder to myself: signs “emerge” as differences, as distinct from other signs; it would seem that signs are a sort of “negative surface” which only, say, “reflects,” but does not “give” (as “meaning” might do) the signified embedded within itself. Another note – I have a hard time not bringing in phenomenological terms with all of this!)
For Barthes, the wrestler, or wrestling, and Garbo’s face are signs: simply put, both examples seem to represent something outside of what they are. What then would Barthes say about literature in this regard? Would it be a generalized statement about literature as a whole, or dependent on the specific work? With his “The Pleasure of the Text” in mind, would ‘texts of pleasure’ (pleasurable because of their predictability) be similar to wrestling or Greta Garbo (Absolute, Idea) – in other words, wrestling and Garbo’s face ARE texts – as opposed to ‘texts of bliss’ that defy readers’ expectations in their ambiguity etc.?
“As a language, Garbo’s singularity was of the order of the concept, that of Audrey Hepburn is of the order of the substance. The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn, an Event” (Barthes, 57). This passage had me thinking of Bakthin. I’m wondering if it is possible to read this passage by Barthes as transposition of Bakthin’s linguistics to cinema, if their faces are texts, are they an example of heteroglossia?
“As a living, socio-ideological concrete thing, as heterglot opinion, language, for the individual consciousness, lies on the borderline between oneself and the other”(Bakhtin,1025). If we think of Fellini’s “I vitelloni” for instance- – the protagonist are a group of bachelors, coming from a similar background, who refuse to grow up and take on responsibility for their actions. The individuality of the members lies in small details scattered throughout the movie, but looked from afar they look like a a whole. We are led to think of them as a whole also by the title itself, which de-individualises them.
Were we to read this through a barthian-bakthinian lens, should we( could we?) consider them words of the same language?
Throughout the Bakhtin reading, I was intuitively able to grasp the notion of a poet’s unitary language and their attempt to isolate/crystallize the word to produce an unmediated meaning, but theoretically it seems unclear to what extent this narrow definition of poetry exists without being itself implicated by the heteroglossia of novelistic/prosaic discourse. My immediate apprehension would require recourse to either authorial intention (which we know to be rather fraught), or the paratext which identifies the following and preceding text as specifically poetry. Bakhtin acknowledges that the bounds of these genres have begun to blur, but doesn’t explore this problematic in much detail within the excerpt we read. I would be curious to hear what everyone thinks about how we can make determinations as to genre and whether exclusively poetic discourse can exist.
Secondly, throughout all the readings I felt a resonance between structuralism in language and literature to that of modern science, insofar as both suppose an internally coherent and consistent system that can theoretically determine/predict (meaning in the former, motion in the latter), but whose infinite complexity makes this a practical impossibility, so we are confined to rough approximations. As such, I wonder to what extent theorists of structuralism were consciously or unconsciously influenced by developments in science in general and physics in particular.
I was enthusiastic about Bakhtin’s dialectic theory of the novel. I’m assuming he was thinking a lot about Dostoyevsky as he wrote this, who is a real champion of the polyphonic novel. For some reason I got to wondering how Bahktin might help in reading Beckett. Beckett has always irked me, which is maybe just me reacting properly to his intent. But it seems his intent is precisely to eradicate this humanistic type of novel/ writing and to reduce language to code – to write fiction as structuralism. Which feels exactly opposed to Blakhtin’s radical vision of generative multiplicity and excessive, discursive meaning-making. I’m not a Beckett expert so maybe this is totally obvious, but I’ve always understood him as nihilism reflective of the condition of his times, but through Bakhtin I’m wondering if my ick comes more form the sense that he’s seeking a poetic pure language that gives up on the dialogic entirely – not in the direction of the epic but rather the raw data of structuralist linguistics. (also interesting here ot note that Coetzee did his dissertation of Beckett using computational analysis of his grammar, and yet is known to be a rather ambitious writer when it comes to adopting voices other than his own.) Is the belief here to strip language down to its basics in order to build up a fuller heteroglossia? Yet that seems so fascistic when contrasted to Bakhtin’s carnival.
Also I get why Bakhtin was championing the novel as the heteroglossic medium, but today what do we include in (and exclude from) possessing this potential? Is poetry still on the outs? What about video games? Manga? Movies?
My comment’s on the heels of Dana’s. I presented on Bakhtin in my narratology class a few weeks ago, and the professor suggested that the text I should pair Bakhtin with is the “Oxen of the Sun” chapter from Ulysses. This chapter holds over 30 parodies of literary genres, books, and authors. With Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia in mind, which texts best represent this concept, if “the novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even diversity of languages) and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organized”? “Oxen of the Sun” almost seems too obvious of an example, which is why I’m wondering if books in translation fit the heteroglossic bill just as well. How has the novel developed, heterglosically, since Ulysses?
“It is obvious that at such a pitch, it no longer matters whether the passion is genuine or not. What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself. There is no more a problem of truth in wrestling than in the theatre. In both, what is expected is the intelligible representation of moral situations which are usually private.” (Barthes 16)
Firs of all, I was genuinely curious about the wrestling Barthes is referring to- is he talking about WWE? I looked it up and found out that WWE started in the ’50s, which means he was definitely aware of its existence, but maybe he’s also talking about smaller wrestling matches? I am not sure if WWE has always been the way it is today.
Does the public like wrestling because of how exaggerated it is? Barthes argues that the audience does not care about real passion, but rather a mere image of passion. Is this what makes wrestling different than boxing- the fact that boxing is not “thought out” or “orchestrated” (I assume), which would then mean that it produces genuine passion?
Also, where else can this theory be applied, apart from theater and wrestling?
From Bakhtin: “The word, directed toward its object, enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words, value judgments and accents, weaves in and out of complex interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet a third group: and all this may crucially shape discourse, may leave a trace in all its semantic layers, may complicate its expression and influence its entire stylistic profile” (1012).
To what extent is Bakhtin’s theory of how meaning and interpretation occur utopian? How do power and hegemony factor into Bakhtin’s image of “intention” as a “ray of light” or “directionality toward the object,” wherein say a sentence exists in this “spectral dispersion in an atmosphere filled with the alien words, value judgments and accents through which the ray passes on its way toward the object” also create layers of tension and meaning? How does this theory account for absences in signification? Like “alien words,” “value judgements” and “accents” are all these visible, or at least concrete encounters that affect an intention’s directionality toward an object. But what about the repressed forces that are less visible? How would Bakhtin address these forces?
“Temperature is a theoretical concept, and it does not need to exist in a pure state; such is also true for description” (Todorov 72).
Is one of the main interventions of structuralism a blending of disciplinary spheres? (Literary, scientific, anthropological…) to assess literary objects like living organisms tethered to their environmental forces? How did the language of science influence structuralists?
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10 Comments
Alex Riedel
From Barthes’s “The World of Wrestling”: “The gesture of the vanquished wrestler signifying to the world a defeat which, far from disguising, he emphasizes and holds like a pause in music, corresponds to the mask of antiquity meant to signify the tragic mode of the spectacle” (14).
This is only one of several examples in this piece, but I wonder what sort of differences, if any, there might be between “signifies” and “means”; that is, what the difference might be between “The ‘vanquished wrestler’ SIGNIFIES the spectacle of ‘defeat'” as opposed to “The ‘vanquished wrestler’ MEANS the spectacle of ‘defeat.'” I have some ideas, but even in light of them, I’m still not entirely confident as to whether there is such a notable difference between the two. It seems at least mostly right, if not entirely so, to say that the signification of something refers to the “thing that is meant.” And it is this “thing that is meant” that stands vulnerable to Derrida’s critique of logocentrism – that there is something (stable) which “stands behind” the signifier: the signified, what the signifier REALLY “is.”
Also interesting is the relation that structuralist signification has with literary devices (metaphor, simile, allusion, etc.). (Barthes uses “corresponds” in the above quote in a way that analogizes in one way or another the “world of wrestling” with that of ancient theater.)
Alex Riedel
Maybe what the signifier “discloses” about its signified is the IMAGE of the signified and not the signified “itself” – and this might be one difference between “signifies” and “means” that I asked about in my comment above… (A reminder to myself: signs “emerge” as differences, as distinct from other signs; it would seem that signs are a sort of “negative surface” which only, say, “reflects,” but does not “give” (as “meaning” might do) the signified embedded within itself. Another note – I have a hard time not bringing in phenomenological terms with all of this!)
Joanna
For Barthes, the wrestler, or wrestling, and Garbo’s face are signs: simply put, both examples seem to represent something outside of what they are. What then would Barthes say about literature in this regard? Would it be a generalized statement about literature as a whole, or dependent on the specific work? With his “The Pleasure of the Text” in mind, would ‘texts of pleasure’ (pleasurable because of their predictability) be similar to wrestling or Greta Garbo (Absolute, Idea) – in other words, wrestling and Garbo’s face ARE texts – as opposed to ‘texts of bliss’ that defy readers’ expectations in their ambiguity etc.?
Irene
“As a language, Garbo’s singularity was of the order of the concept, that of Audrey Hepburn is of the order of the substance. The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn, an Event” (Barthes, 57). This passage had me thinking of Bakthin. I’m wondering if it is possible to read this passage by Barthes as transposition of Bakthin’s linguistics to cinema, if their faces are texts, are they an example of heteroglossia?
“As a living, socio-ideological concrete thing, as heterglot opinion, language, for the individual consciousness, lies on the borderline between oneself and the other”(Bakhtin,1025). If we think of Fellini’s “I vitelloni” for instance- – the protagonist are a group of bachelors, coming from a similar background, who refuse to grow up and take on responsibility for their actions. The individuality of the members lies in small details scattered throughout the movie, but looked from afar they look like a a whole. We are led to think of them as a whole also by the title itself, which de-individualises them.
Were we to read this through a barthian-bakthinian lens, should we( could we?) consider them words of the same language?
Alex Lleras
Throughout the Bakhtin reading, I was intuitively able to grasp the notion of a poet’s unitary language and their attempt to isolate/crystallize the word to produce an unmediated meaning, but theoretically it seems unclear to what extent this narrow definition of poetry exists without being itself implicated by the heteroglossia of novelistic/prosaic discourse. My immediate apprehension would require recourse to either authorial intention (which we know to be rather fraught), or the paratext which identifies the following and preceding text as specifically poetry. Bakhtin acknowledges that the bounds of these genres have begun to blur, but doesn’t explore this problematic in much detail within the excerpt we read. I would be curious to hear what everyone thinks about how we can make determinations as to genre and whether exclusively poetic discourse can exist.
Secondly, throughout all the readings I felt a resonance between structuralism in language and literature to that of modern science, insofar as both suppose an internally coherent and consistent system that can theoretically determine/predict (meaning in the former, motion in the latter), but whose infinite complexity makes this a practical impossibility, so we are confined to rough approximations. As such, I wonder to what extent theorists of structuralism were consciously or unconsciously influenced by developments in science in general and physics in particular.
Dana
I was enthusiastic about Bakhtin’s dialectic theory of the novel. I’m assuming he was thinking a lot about Dostoyevsky as he wrote this, who is a real champion of the polyphonic novel. For some reason I got to wondering how Bahktin might help in reading Beckett. Beckett has always irked me, which is maybe just me reacting properly to his intent. But it seems his intent is precisely to eradicate this humanistic type of novel/ writing and to reduce language to code – to write fiction as structuralism. Which feels exactly opposed to Blakhtin’s radical vision of generative multiplicity and excessive, discursive meaning-making. I’m not a Beckett expert so maybe this is totally obvious, but I’ve always understood him as nihilism reflective of the condition of his times, but through Bakhtin I’m wondering if my ick comes more form the sense that he’s seeking a poetic pure language that gives up on the dialogic entirely – not in the direction of the epic but rather the raw data of structuralist linguistics. (also interesting here ot note that Coetzee did his dissertation of Beckett using computational analysis of his grammar, and yet is known to be a rather ambitious writer when it comes to adopting voices other than his own.) Is the belief here to strip language down to its basics in order to build up a fuller heteroglossia? Yet that seems so fascistic when contrasted to Bakhtin’s carnival.
Also I get why Bakhtin was championing the novel as the heteroglossic medium, but today what do we include in (and exclude from) possessing this potential? Is poetry still on the outs? What about video games? Manga? Movies?
Francesca
My comment’s on the heels of Dana’s. I presented on Bakhtin in my narratology class a few weeks ago, and the professor suggested that the text I should pair Bakhtin with is the “Oxen of the Sun” chapter from Ulysses. This chapter holds over 30 parodies of literary genres, books, and authors. With Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia in mind, which texts best represent this concept, if “the novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even diversity of languages) and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organized”? “Oxen of the Sun” almost seems too obvious of an example, which is why I’m wondering if books in translation fit the heteroglossic bill just as well. How has the novel developed, heterglosically, since Ulysses?
Paraskevi Gkana-Alberico (She/Her)
“It is obvious that at such a pitch, it no longer matters whether the passion is genuine or not. What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself. There is no more a problem of truth in wrestling than in the theatre. In both, what is expected is the intelligible representation of moral situations which are usually private.” (Barthes 16)
Firs of all, I was genuinely curious about the wrestling Barthes is referring to- is he talking about WWE? I looked it up and found out that WWE started in the ’50s, which means he was definitely aware of its existence, but maybe he’s also talking about smaller wrestling matches? I am not sure if WWE has always been the way it is today.
Does the public like wrestling because of how exaggerated it is? Barthes argues that the audience does not care about real passion, but rather a mere image of passion. Is this what makes wrestling different than boxing- the fact that boxing is not “thought out” or “orchestrated” (I assume), which would then mean that it produces genuine passion?
Also, where else can this theory be applied, apart from theater and wrestling?
Jodie Kahan (she/her)
From Bakhtin: “The word, directed toward its object, enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words, value judgments and accents, weaves in and out of complex interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet a third group: and all this may crucially shape discourse, may leave a trace in all its semantic layers, may complicate its expression and influence its entire stylistic profile” (1012).
To what extent is Bakhtin’s theory of how meaning and interpretation occur utopian? How do power and hegemony factor into Bakhtin’s image of “intention” as a “ray of light” or “directionality toward the object,” wherein say a sentence exists in this “spectral dispersion in an atmosphere filled with the alien words, value judgments and accents through which the ray passes on its way toward the object” also create layers of tension and meaning? How does this theory account for absences in signification? Like “alien words,” “value judgements” and “accents” are all these visible, or at least concrete encounters that affect an intention’s directionality toward an object. But what about the repressed forces that are less visible? How would Bakhtin address these forces?
Coco Fitterman
“Temperature is a theoretical concept, and it does not need to exist in a pure state; such is also true for description” (Todorov 72).
Is one of the main interventions of structuralism a blending of disciplinary spheres? (Literary, scientific, anthropological…) to assess literary objects like living organisms tethered to their environmental forces? How did the language of science influence structuralists?