Death of the Author Barthes

"The Death of the Author" (French: La mort de l'auteur) is a 1967 essay by the
French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes (1915–80).
Roland Barthes, in full Roland Gérard Barthes, (born November 12,
1915, Cherbourg, France—died March 25, 1980, Paris), French essayist and social
and literary critic whose writings on semiotics, the formal study of symbols and signs
pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure, helped establish structuralism and the New
Criticism as leading intellectual movements.
In the essay, The Death of the Author, Barthes proceeds a sort of post structuralist
or deconstructive view of the author. He takes different stand through which he
announces the metaphoric death of the author. It also declares the death of
structuralism.

Here, Barthes questions the historical issue regarding the place of author in the text.
He argues that when the author writes the text, his voice is no more dominant in it.
How reader interprets the text is more important. Author is nothing other than
translator and imitator and nothing is original for him. He simply imitates the
materials that were already used.
Writing is the destruction of own voice or erasing of the ' self'. As the writing begins,
the author starts entering in to his own death. It is not the author who speaks in the
text but it is the language that does so. Linguistically, author is nothing; hence it is
language that functions. As soon as the writer starts writing, he is dead because
when he writes he has no control over the text but it depends on the interpretation
of readers. Even though writer begins to write it is not original. Text is fabric of
quotations from thousands of cultural sources. Author uses language to put it in
infinite meanings. He allows the readers to interpret the text. As a result, the reader
produces multiple meanings. So, every text is repetition of repetition.
Writing is not an 'expression' but a ' scription'. The birth of reader must be required
by the death of author. In conclusion, no writer is original: every text is photocopy.
All writers take help of language that is already there in environment. Expressionist
and universalist type of author is dead and it is the scriptor who occupies their place.
Critics/ readers and writers/ novelists share commonalities as they are working on
the same language. Language disclaims any authorial presence. Since the world has
innumerable meanings, this signals to the possibility of multiple meaning of a text
and thus every reading is misreading. So, here, Barthes contrasts with Saussure and
declares to be a deconstructionist. Saussure says there is signifier, which has a
signified but Barthes rejects the possibility of a signified or singular meaning.
To sum up, a writer is nothing because he borrows everything from his cultural
dictionary. A writer is one who just holds the language and has no authority over the
text and meaning. The traditional author who thought himself authority to hold
meaning is dead. In this sense, we can claim that' reader- response' theory is based
on the ground of the notion of the death of the author. It encourages readers for
interpreting any text the way he likes.

Roland Barthes’ Concept of Death of the Author

Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author (1968) plays a pioneering role in contemporary
theory as it encapsulates certain key ideas of poststructuralist theory and also marks
Barthes’ transition from structuralism to poststructuralism. The title itself, in a
rhetorical way announces the liberation of the literary work from authorial-intention
and control, an idea foreshadowed in modernism.

Barthes observed that writers like Mallarme, Valerry and Proust have already
challenged the centrality of the author. Simultaneous with the author’s death, the
reader or the scrip for is born who writes meanings into the text. A deconstructive
close reading dismantles the supposed unity and coherence of the text and leads to
its explosion into multiplicity of meanings. The author’s demise and the subsequent
discarding of the author’s intention, is very much an act of decentering, and it
underscores the myth of the transcendental signified. Barthes described writing as a
“performative act” and that “every text is written here and now”. A text unity “lies
not in its origin, but in its destination”, which is the reader, who according to
Barthes, is without “history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who
holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted”;
he is, like the author, a function of the text.
The text is perceived as a multi-dimensional space where a plethora of meanings,
with a galaxy of signifiers clash and blend. Barthes further develops this idea in
his, S/Z (1970) where he introduces the concept of the “readerly” and the “writerly”
text. In his From Work to Text, Barthes distinguishes the “text” from the “work”, as
fluid, with many levels of meaning, ranging across disciplinary boundaries,
something that is held in “intertextuality” in a network of signifiers. He argues that a
text can never convey a single meaning, but is subject to multiple interpretations,
not only because the readers are different, but primarily because of the instability of
the linguistic sign.

Death of the Author

Many of Barthes’s works focus on literature. However, Barthes denied being a
literary critic, because he did not assess and provide verdicts on works. Instead, he
interpreted their semiotic significance. Barthes’s structuralist style of literary analysis
has influenced cultural studies, to the chagrin of adherents of traditional literary
approaches.
One notable point of controversy is Barthes’s proclamation of the ‘death of the
author’. This ‘death’ is directed, not at the idea of writing, but at the specifically
French image of the auteur as a creative genius expressing an inner vision. He is
opposing a view of texts as expressing a distinct personality of the author.
Barthes vehemently opposes the view that authors consciously create masterpieces.
He maintains that authors such as Racine and Balzac often reproduce emotional
patterns about which they have no conscious knowledge. He opposes the view that
authors should be interpreted in terms of what they think they’re doing. Their
biographies have no more relevance to what they write than do those of scientists.
In ‘The Death of the Author’, Barthes argues that writing destroys every voice and
point of origin. This is because it occurs within a functional process which is the
practice of signification itself. Its real origin is language. A writer, therefore, does not
have a special genius expressed in the text, but rather, is a kind of craftsman who is
skilled in using a particular code. All writers are like copywriters or scribes, inscribing
a particular zone of language.
The real origin of a text is not the author, but language. If the writer expresses
something ‘inner’, it is only the dictionary s/he holds ready-formed. There is a special
art of the storyteller to translate linguistic structures or codes into particular
narratives or messages. Each text is composed of multiple writings brought into
dialogue, with each code it refers to being extracted from a previous culture.
Barthes’s argument is directed against schools of literary criticism that seek to
uncover the author’s meaning as a hidden referent which is the final meaning of the
text. By refusing the ‘author’ (in the sense of a great writer expressing an inner
brilliance), one refuses to assign an ultimate meaning to the text, and hence, one
refuses to fix its meaning.
It becomes open to different readings. According to Barthes, the unity of a text lies
in its destination not its origin. Its multiplicity is focused on the reader, as an absent
point within the text, to whom it speaks. The writer and reader are linguistic
persons, not psychological persons. Their role in the story is defined by their coded
place in discourse, not their specific traits.
A text cannot have a single meaning, but rather, is composed of multiple systems
through which it is constructed. In Barthes’s case, this means reading texts through
the signs they use, both in their structure in the text, and in their wider meanings.
Literature does not represent something real, since what it refers to is not really
there. For Barthes, it works by playing on the multiple systems of language-use and
their infinite transcribability – their ability to be written in different ways.
The death of the author creates freedom for the reader to interpret the text. The
reader can recreate the text through connecting to its meanings as they appear in
different contexts.
In practice, Barthes’s literary works emphasise the practice of the craft of writing.
For instance, Barthes’s structuralist analysis of Sade, Fourier and Loyola emphasises
the structural characteristics of their work, such as their emphasis on counting and
their locations in self-contained worlds. He views the three authors as founders of
languages (logothetes).
The Structure of Narrative
In ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives’, Barthes explores the
structure of narrative, or storytelling, from a structuralist perspective. Narrative
consists of a wide variety of genres applied to a wide variety of substances – for
example, theatre, film, novels, news stories, mimes, and even some paintings. We
can see what Barthes terms ‘narrative’ whenever something is used to tell a story.
People using this theory will often refer to the way people live their lives as
narratives, and some will talk about a right to tell our own story.
Narrative is taken to be humanly universal – every social group has its own
narratives. Barthes models the analysis of narrative on structuralist linguistics. The
structure or organisation is what is most essential in any system of meaning.
The construction of a narrative from different statements is similar to the
construction of a sentence from phonemes. Barthes argues that there are three
levels of narrative: functions, actions, and narration. Each has meaning only in
relation to the next level.
Functions refer to statements in narratives. Every statement or sentence in a novel,
for example, has at least one function. Barthes gives examples like: ‘James Bond
saw a man of about fifty’ and ‘Bond picked up one of the four receivers’.
For Barthes, every statement has a particular role in the narrative – there are no
useless statements, no ‘noise’ in the information-theory sense.
But statements vary in their importance to the narrative, in how closely or loosely it
is tied to the story. Some are functions in the full sense, playing a direct role in the
story. For instance, a character buys a gun so s/he can use it later in the story. The
phone rings, and Bond picks it up – this will give him information or orders which will
move the action forward.
Others are ‘indices’ – they index something which establishes the context of the
story. They might, for instance, convey a certain atmosphere. Or they might say
something about the psychology or ‘character’ of an actor in the story. The ‘four
receivers’ show that Bond is in a big, bureaucratic organisation, which shows that he
is on the side of order. The ‘man of about fifty’ indicates an atmosphere of
suspicion: Bond needs to establish who he is and which side he is on.
Among the former – the true functions – these can be central aspects of the
narrative, on which it hinges (‘cardinal points’ or ‘nuclei’), or they can be
complementary (catalysers). To be cardinal, a function needs to open or close a
choice on which the development of the story depends. The phone ringing and Bond
answering are cardinal, because the story would go differently if the phone didn’t
ring or Bond didn’t answer.
But if Bond ‘moved towards the desk and answered the phone’, the phrase ‘moved
towards the desk’ is a catalyser, because it does not affect the story whether he did
this or not. Stories often contain catalysers to provide moments of rest from the
risky decision-points.
Barthes sees true functions as forming pairs: one initiates a choice and the other
closes it. These pairs can be close together, or spread out across a story. The choice
is opened by the phone ringing, and closed by Bond answering it.
Indices are also divided into true indices, which index things like an actor’s character
or an atmosphere, and informants, which simply identify something or situate it in
time and space. A character’s age is an example of an informant. True indices are
more important to the story than informants.
All moments of a narrative are functional, but some more so than others. Functions
and indices are functional in different ways. Cardinal functions and true indices have
greater functionality than catalysers and informants. At root, however, a narrative is
structured through its nuclei. The other functional elements are always expansions
on the nuclei. It is possible, as in folk-tales, to create a narrative consisting almost
entirely of nuclei.
Functions are arranged into narratives by being attached to agents – characters in
the story who engage in actions. Every narrative necessarily has agents. The actions
of an agent connect the nuclei of the narrative to particular ‘articulations of praxis’ –
desire, communication and struggle.
The third level, narration, occurs between the narrator (or writer) and the reader.
The narrator compiles the narrative in a way which is addressed to the reader, and
‘produces’ the reader as a particular position in the narrative. The positions of
narrator and reader are clearest when a writer addresses a factual statement directly
to the reader: ‘Leo was the owner of the joint’. Narrator and reader are largely
empty positions within the narrative.
Narratives also have a kind of logical time which is interior to them and is barely
connected to real time. This logical time is constructed by the series of nuclei (which
open and close choices), and their separation by other nuclei and by subsidiary
elements. It is held together by the integration of the pairs of nuclei.
Narratives implicitly receive their meaning, however, from a wider social world.
Barthes maintains that narratives obtain their meaning from the world beyond them
– from social, economic and ideological systems.
Barthes criticises the narratives of his day for trying to disguise the process of coding
involved in constructing a narrative. As in Mythologies, he again argues that this
naturalisation of signs, and denial of the process of social construction of meaning, is
specifically bourgeois. Both bourgeois society and its mass culture ‘demand signs
which do not look like signs’. They are reluctant to declare their codes.
Narrative also contains other potentials. Like dreaming, it alters the familiar in ways
which show different possibilities. Although what is ‘known’ or ‘experienced’ is
constantly re-run through narratives, the narratives do not simply repeat what is re-
run through them. They open a ‘process of becoming’. In other words, things can
run differently when run through narrative. Narrative shows that other meanings are
possible. Familiar things can be given different meanings.
What happens in narrative has no referent. It doesn’t refer to something in the real
world. Rather, what happens in narrative is language itself – the celebration of its
many possibilities. However, it is also closely connected to monologue (which follows
in personal development from dialogue).
Barthes is highly critical of realist and naturalist views of writing. For Barthes,
literature is built on emptiness: it represents something which is not really there. All
the arts of fiction, including theatre, cinema and literature, are constructed based on
signs. They function by the suspension of disbelief. They function by calling certain
desires or structures into play, causing people to feel various emotions. They are not
representations of reality, but rather, a way to induce feelings in the audience.
The attempt to convince the audience that the story is real is a way of reproducing
the naturalisation of signs. A supposedly realistic or naturalistic art or literature
never really ‘tells it like it is’. It represents through a set of conventional signs which
stand for ‘reality’.
Barthes criticises those who believe authors imitate an existing reality (a practice
known as mimesis). He is in favour of an emphasis on the creation of a discursive
world (semiosis) rather than mimesis. Hence his interest in Sade, Fourier and Loyola.
Instead of conventional views of the world, alternative presentations can
denaturalise the present and provide utopian alternatives.
Barthes also criticises the idea of clarity in literature, for similar reasons. Clarity is
simply conventional. It is relative to a particular regime of signs. It amounts to a
criterion of familiarity. Therefore, it has conservative effects. Barthes views clarity as
a class attribute of the bourgeoisie, used to signify membership of this class (this
contrasts sharply with the more common claim in activist circles that speech should
be clear so as to be working-class or inclusive).
However, this is not strictly an expressive view either. The actor or author doesn’t
necessarily induce sympathy for their own feelings. Such an effect can amount to
confusing art with reality. Instead, the actor, author and audience all know it’s
fiction.
In some contexts, such as theatre, wrestling, and (in Barthes’s view) Japanese
culture, performance or artifice is recognised for what it is. It is not taken to be
natural or real. In these contexts, signs have no content. Their operation serves to
show the existence and functioning of signs. It also allows an expressive use of
signs, to stand for particular emotions.
In ‘Rhetoric of the Image’, Barthes discusses the different levels of meaning in
a Panzani advert. Firstly, there’s a linguistic message, which has the usual denoted
and connoted levels. Secondly, there’s a connotation, established by juxtaposition,
associating the brand with freshness and home cooking. Thirdly, there’s the use of
colours and fruits to signify ‘Italianicity’, the mythical essence of Italy. Fourthly, the
processed product is presented as if equivalent to the surrounding unprocessed
items. These signifiers carry ‘euphoric values’ connected to particular myths.
According to Barthes, at least the third of these meanings is quasi-tautological.
The language of images is constructed in particular zones or ‘lexicons’. Each of the
connoted meanings refers to a specific body of social practice which certain readers
will receive, and others may not. For instance, it mobilises ideas from tourism
(Italianicity) and art (the imitation of the style of a still life painting). Often the same
signifieds are carried by text, images, acting and so on. These signifieds carry a
particular dominant ideology. A rhetoric of the image deploys a number of
connotative images to carry messages.
All images are ‘polysemous’ – they can be read in a number of ways. In an image
such as this, language is used both explicitly and implicitly to guide the selection of
meanings. The text directs the reader as to which meanings of the image to receive.
Barthes thus suggests that texts have a repressive value relative to images: they
limit what can be seen. It is in this limitation that ideology and morality function.
Ideology chooses among multiple meanings which ones can be seen, and limits the
shifting flow of signification which would otherwise happen.
Euphoria and Affect
Euphoria has both positive and negative meanings in Barthes’s work. As a negative
term, it refers to the enjoyment of a closed system or familiar meaning which is
induced by mythical signifiers. For instance, the fashion system is euphoric because
its persistence as a system defies death. People can partake in a system of
meanings which seems eternal, and thereby experience some of its illusory
universality as euphoria. Myth provides euphoria because it provides a sense that
something is absolutely clear. It aims for a euphoric security which comes with
enclosing everything in a closed system. Tautology, for instance, gives someone the
minor satisfaction of opting for a truth-claim without the risk of being wrong
(because nothing substantive has been said). This can be compared to Negri’s
argument in Time for Revolution that systemic closure yields a certain type of
enjoyment.
On the other hand, it can also signify an experience of fullness arising from actually
escaping the regime of myths. In ‘The Third Meaning’, Barthes analyses Sergei
Eisenstein’s films, suggesting the presence of what he terms an ‘obtuse’ meaning
alongside the explicit denotative and connotative meanings.
These images simply designate an emotion or disposition, setting in motion a drift in
meaning. They don’t represent anything. They are momentary, without development
or variants. They have a signifier without a signified. They thus escape the euphoria
of closed systems, pointing to something beyond.
Indeed, an obtuse meaning is not necessarily visible to all readers. Its appearance is
subjective. It is permanently empty or depleted (it remains unclear how this positive
’empty signifier’ relates either to the ‘mana-words’ of Mythologies, or to Laclau’s
rather different use of the same term). It can also serve as part of mythical
schemes. For instance, ,moral indignation can function as a pleasant emotion.
The obtuse meaning is not present in the system of language, though it is present in
speech. It almost sneaks into speech, on the back of language. It appears as a rare
and new practice counterposed to the majority practice of signification. It seems like
a luxury: expenditure without exchange. And it seems to belong, not to today’s
politics, but to tomorrow’s. Barthes sees such facets as undermining the integration
of characters, turning them into nubs of facets. In other words, the ‘molar self’ of
the character (who, in Mythologies, is connected to social decomposition and
misrepresentation) is replaced by a different kind of connection which is, perhaps,
directly lived and connected to the world, rather than projecting a literary figure
onto it.
It has been read in terms of a moment of emotion prior to thought. I think it might
be better linked to Deleuze’s idea of the ‘time-image’: the obtuse image is a
momentary image which expresses the contingency of becoming. Barthes suggests
that the obtuse image is carnivalesque, and that it turns the film into a
‘permutational unfolding’, a flow of becoming in the system of signs.
Writerly Reading: S/Z
In S/Z, a text devoted primarily to the study of Balzac’s short story Sarrasine,
Barthes proposes a distinction between two types of texts.
A text is ‘writerly’ if it can be written or rewritten today. A ‘writerly’ text is
constructed in such a way as to encourage readers to reuse and reapply it, bringing
it into new combinations with their own meanings. It is celebrated because it makes
the reader a producer, not a consumer, of a text. The ‘writerly’ value restores to
each person the ‘magic of the signifier’. The writerly text is inseparable from the
process of writing, as an open-ended flow which has not yet been stopped by any
system (such as ideology or criticism).
It is necessarily plural. This is a kind of plurality distinguished from liberalism: it does
not acknowledge partial truths in different positions, but insists on difference as
such. Difference constantly returns through texts, which re-open the network of
language at a different point.
Barthes counterposes this view to an essentialist or Platonic view in which all texts
approximate a model. For Barthes, texts instead offer entrances into the network of
language. They do not offer a norm or law. Rather, it offers a particular perspective
constructed of particular voices, fragments of texts, and semiotic codes. Texts have
only a contingent unity which is constantly rewritten through its composition in
terms of codes. A writerly text should have many networks which interact without
any of them dominating the others.
The ‘readerly’, in contrast, reduces a text to something serious, without pleasure,
which can only be accepted or rejected. A ‘readerly’ text is so heavily attached to a
particular system of meanings as to render the reader passive. It is a reactive
distortion of the ‘writerly’ through its ideological closure.
Readerly texts must, however, contain a ‘limited’ or ‘modest plural’ in order to
function. This limited plurality of the text is created through its connotations. There
are also writerly and readerly styles of reading texts, depending whether one seeks
predetermined meanings in it, or seeks instead to inscribe it in new ways.
Instead of treating a text as a single phenomenon which represents something,
Barthes proposes to examine a text through the plural signs it brings together.
Instead of giving a unified image of a text, it decomposes it into component parts.
Such a reading uses digressions to show that the structures of which the text is
woven can be reversed and rearranged.
Barthes calls this style of reading ‘starring’ of a text. It cuts the text up into blocks of
signification, breaching its smooth surface and especially its appearance of
naturalness. It interrupts the flow of the text so as to release the perspectives within
it. Each block is treated as a zone, in which the movement of meanings can be
traced. The goal of this exercise is to hear one of the voices of the text.
Readers should reconstitute texts as plural. Among other things, this means that
forgetting meanings is a necessary part of reading. It ensures that multiple readings
remain possible, and therefore, that signifiers are allowed to shift or move.
One can’t reduce all stories to a single structure, because each text carries a
particular difference. This kind of difference is not an irreducible quality, but the
constant flow of language into new combinations. Analysing the function of each
text restores it to this flow of difference.
He also calls for re-reading, as a means to avoid repetition and to remove texts from
linear time (before or after) and place them in mythical time. Re-reading is ‘no
longer consumption, but play’, directed against both the disposability of texts and
their distanced analysis, and towards the return of difference. It helps create an
experience of plural texts.
In this text, Barthes criticises many of his earlier views. He now claims that
connotation is ever-present in ‘readerly’ texts (though not in some modern texts).
There is no underlying denotative layer. Denotation is simply the most naturalised
layer of connotation.
Further, connotation carries voice into the text, weaving a particular voice into the
code. The writer, here, has more of a role than Barthes previously allowed. Writing
brings in historical context through connotation.
The text as expression for the reader is also criticised. Readers are also products of
prior texts, which compose subjectivity as subject-positions in narratives. Reading is
itself a ‘form of work’. The content of this work is to move, to shift between different
systems or flows which have no ending-point.
The work is shown to exist only by its functioning: it has no definite outcome. To
read is to find meanings within the endless flow of language. We might think of it as
creating particular, temporary points or territories by finding resonances within a
field which is like an ocean or a desert.
Barthes's "The Death of the Author" is an attack on traditional literary criticism that
focused too much on trying to retrace the author's intentions and original meaning
in mind. Instead Barthes asks us to adopt a more text oriented approach that
focuses on the interaction of the reader, not the writer, with it. This means that the
text is much more open to interpretation, much more fluid in its meaning than
previously thought.
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson (August 26, 1936 – December 13, 2015)
was a political scientist and historian, best known for his 1983 book Imagined
Communities, which explored the origins of nationalism. Anderson was the Aaron L.
Binenkorb Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government & Asian Studies
at Cornell University.

National Consciousness - According to Benedict Anderson[edit]

Nations, to Benedict Anderson, are imagined.The idea of the "imagined community"
is that a nation is socially constructed, and the nation is made up of individuals who
see themselves as part of a particular group. Anderson referred to nations as
"imagined communities". He thought nations, or imagined communities, were
delimited because of its boundaries as far as who is in and who is out. Anderson
believed that the nation operates through exclusion. Though, nations do not only
exclude those who are outside of it, but they exclude their members who are not
immediately considered in the collective idea of their national identity.[5] Not only did
Anderson think nations were delimited, he thought they were:
Limited: Because of the mental boundaries, or concepts, we set pertaining to
others are by culture, ethnicity, etc. We do not imagine everyone in one society or
under one nationalism, we mentally separate.[6]
Sovereign: Nations were sovereign because sovereignty is a symbol of freedom
from traditional religious practices. Sovereignty provides the organization needed for
a nation while keeping the nation free of traditional religious pressures.[6]
National Identity & National Consciousness[edit]
National identity and national consciousness are closely related and can often be
mistaken for each other. There is, in fact, a thin line between the definitions of the
two, however, national identity can be defined as the feelings someone shares with
a group of people about a nation. National consciousness is a specific core of
attitudes that provide the minutia of the day-to-day phenomena of life in one's
country. National identity, like national consciousness, is a feeling of recognition of
"we" and "they".[6]
One important distinction between the pair is that the national identity spectrum
embodies Patriotism and Chauvinism.
National identity is more tangible than mental in comparison to national
consciousness. The elements of national identity include the nation's symbols,
traditions, and memories. National consciousness is more sensual and personal; it's
different for each single person. It can't necessarily be seen since it is more mental
than national identity.[6]
Plot Summary
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is a
nonfiction work by historian and political scientist Benedict Anderson. First published
in 1983, the book provides a highly influential account of the rise of nationalism and
the emergence of the modern nation-state. Anderson sees the nation as a social
construct, an “imagined community” in which members feel commonality with
others, even though they may not know them. The strength of patriotic feelingand
the enormous sacrifices people have made on behalf of their nation testify to the
enduring appeal and political resilience of nationalism. Anderson’s argument
identifies the historical transformations that made it possible to “think” of the nation
as a new form of community and traces the development of nationalism from its
origins in the late eighteenth-century to the present.
The original edition of the book is divided into nine chapters, which analyze the
cultural roots of the idea of the nation and provide a historical account of its political
realization across the globe. Two chapters of supplementary material were added to
the second edition, which appeared in 1991. An afterword, in which Anderson
reflects on the history of the book’s reception, was appended to the 2006 release.
In the Introduction, Anderson addresses the paradoxical qualities of nationalism that
complicate its theorizing. He defines a nation as an “imagined political community”
that is limited and sovereign, in which members feel a “horizontal” comradeship with
each other. Anderson then analyzes the cultural roots that enabled the birth of
national consciousness in the modern era. This involved several historical shifts: the
weakening of the medieval worldview and the religiously-based communities of
Europe, the demotion of Latin as a sacred and administrative language in favor of
vernaculars, the decline of dynastic monarchies, and the emergence of a new,
secularized conception of time. For Anderson, this last change is largely due to the
technological innovation of the printing press, which enabled the wide dissemination
of newspapers and novels.
Anderson expands upon this idea in the following chapter, “The Origins of National
Consciousness.” Here, he argues that the convergence of capitalism, printing, and
the diversity of vernacular languages led to the birth of national consciousness.
Print-capitalism created mass readerships, distilled the multiplicity of spoken dialects
into a smaller number of print-languages, and spawned vernacular administrative
languages that gradually replaced Latin. The effect of these changes was to unify
language communities and foster a sense of simultaneity among their members.
Chapter Four, “Creole Pioneers,” traces the origin of the nation-state to the western
hemisphere. Anderson analyzes why many separate nations grew out of the Spanish
colonies in Latin America, while the English colonies in North America (excluding
Canada) coalesced into one. Language was not an issue in the American
nationalisms; rather, the colonies’ distance, size, and age, in combination with
economic factors, fueled the desire for independence. The example of these newly-
established republics inspired national movements in Europe, which threatened the
monarchical dynasties ruling over large, polyglot realms. European nationalism,
flourishing from 1820-1920, was rooted in linguistic identity; it drew popular support
from the academic study of language and the national literatures, myths, and
folklore of many ethnicities.
Popular nationalism threatened to exclude the European monarchies from the new
imagined communities, as the dynasties had dubious and often conflicting national
credentials. They responded with what Anderson terms “official nationalism,” a
Machiavellian appropriation of nationalist ideas to secure dynastic legitimacy and
suppress subject ethno-linguistic groups within their realms. In the European
colonial empires, official nationalism served as a tool of imperial administration.
In Chapter Seven, “The Last Wave,” Anderson analyzes the emergence of post-
colonial nation-states after World War II, following the break-up of the remaining
European empires. These states exhibit a complex fusion of official and popular
nationalisms owing to their colonial legacy and the lengthy, modular tradition of
nationalism that precedes them. In the following chapter, “Patriotism and Racism,”
Anderson argues that racism is not a direct result of nationalism but arises from
class distinction. Chapter Ten, “Census, Map, Museum” discusses colonial
instruments of control and administration that shaped, and were adopted by, the
post-colonial states that succeeded them. The book’s concluding chapter, “Memory
and Forgetting,” is a meditation on how the nation creatively constructs a narrative
of its identity, suppressing certain historical facts while assimilating figures and
events that pre-date the national consciousness.
Nations are (59-60):
– [Imagined] “[…] imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will
never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in
the minds of each lives the image of their communion. […] With a certain ferocity
Gellner makes a comparable point when he rules that ‘Nationalism is not the
awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not
exist’. The drawback to this formulation, however, is that Gellner is anxious to show
that nationalism masquerades under false pretences that he assimilates ‘invention’ to
‘fabrication’ and ‘falsity’, rather than to ‘imagining’ and ‘creation’. In this way he
implies that ‘true’ communities exist which can be advantageously juxtaposed to
nations. In fact, all communities larger than primordial villages […] are imagined.
Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the
style in which they are imagined.”
– [Limited] “The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them,
encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries,
beyond which lie other nations.”
– [Sovereign] “It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age
in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the
divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of
human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were
inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the
allomorphism between each faith’s ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations
dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this
freedom is the sovereign state.”
– [Community] “[…] it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the
actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always
conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.”
Introduction
In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson first and foremost argued for a
cultural conception of nationality and nationalism, contending that the two ‘…are
cultural artefacts of a particular kind’ (Anderson, 2006, p.4). For Anderson,
nationalism emerged at the end of the eighteenth century as the spontaneous
intersection of various historical and cultural forces, and once formed, they became
models to be emulated in a wide variety of contexts. However, and most
importantly, Anderson’s main line of
enquiry was not to ask which political or cultural factors brought nationalism into
being, but rather to demonstrate how and whynations and nationalism elicit such
profound and emotional responses, and how their meanings have changed over time
(ibid., p.4).
Anderson maintained that nationalism should be treated as if it belongs with other
concepts such as ‘kinship’ and ‘religion’, denoting its status as a social grouping,
rather than as an ideological construct such as ‘liberalism’ or ‘fascism’ (ibid., p.5). In
this vein, Anderson coined the concept of ‘imagined communities’, encompassing his
ideas on how humans have conceived, and continue to conceive, of the nation.
Anderson forcefully emphasised that ‘imagining’ does not imply ‘falsity’, countering
this implication in Gellner’s work. For Anderson, communities should be distinguished
not by the degree to which they are false or genuine, but rather by the processes
through which they are imagined (ibid., p.6).
Anderson located the roots of nationalism and the modern nation in the
disintegration of two previously self-evident cultural systems: the religious
community and the dynastic realm. The gradual decline of these systems, beginning
in the seventeenth century, provided the historical and geographical space in which
the rise of nations could take place. In the context of Enlightenment-era rational
secularism, Anderson argued that nationalism would provide a secular alternative to
the previously sacral role of explaining and answering for the weight of human
suffering (ibid., pp.11-22).

Elaine Showalter (born January 21, 1941) is an American literary critic, feminist,
and writer on cultural and social issues. She is one of the founders of feminist
literary criticism in United States academia, developing the concept and practice
of gynocritics, a term describing the study of "women as writers".

Feminist Criticism in Wilderness

The essay by Elaine Showalter is an attempt to study the field of literary criticism
from the feminist point of view. Showalter has tried to study the various aspects of
feminist criticism while also pointing out the aims it should be trying to attain, the
problems it faces and the reasons for these problems.
The essay considers the fact that like feminist creative writers, feminist critics also
face certain obstacles which have got highlighted after the rise of feminism.
Showalter has tried to analyze in detail the belief that feminist criticism is in
wilderness, which means, feminist critics are not capable enough to produce
coherent speculations.
1. Pluralism and the Feminist Critique
Showalter begins this essay by pointing out a dialogue by Carolyn Heilbrun and
Catherine Stimpson. They had pointed out that two poles were identifiable in
feminist literary criticism- one concentrating on the errors of the past and the other
focus on the beauty of imagination. Both these aspects contribute in removing the
effects of ‘female servitude’ that has existed in the society since ages. She also
quotes Matthew Arnold to state that criticism, as a process, has to pass through a
stage of wilderness to reach at the desired standards. Then, taking support from
Geoffrey Hartman’s quote, she forwards the belief that all criticism, and not only
feminist criticism, is in wilderness. Analyzing one of the reasons for this, so called,
wilderness in feminist criticism, she clarifies that the reason is lack of an exclusive
theoretical framework for feminist criticism. It is always seen in association with
some other strategy and, therefore, fails to work consistently. For instance, feminist
critics supporting Marxism treat feminist criticism differently than those opposing
racism.
An early obstacle in establishment of the above mentioned theoretical framework
was the inability of many women to respond to the demand of openness required for
the success of feminist criticism. In some aspects of society, women had been
locked out and in some others they had been locked in. they were not allowed to
participate in some aspects of social interaction and forced to participate in some
others. Thus, some believed feminism to be equivalent to opposition to the establish
canons.
Showalter says that what seemed to be ‘a theoretical impasse’ was actually an
evolutionary phase. During this stage, feminist criticism moved on from the stage of
awakening to the stage marked by ‘anxiety about the isolation of feminist criticism
from a critical community’. The definition of feminist criticism with reference to other
feminist theories has been a serious debate and feminist critics have been unable to
address this issue. They fail to understand the need to think beyond their own
beliefs as well and to communicate with the systems they wish to change. Although
feminist critics have communicated with these systems but the communication has
been unclear being based entirely on the media of feminist critics.
There are two modes of feminist criticism. Showalter calls the first one ‘feminist
reading’ or ‘feminist critique’. It is concerned to the reading of texts to understand
the image of woman in literature and to work out the beliefs and stereotypes
concerned to woman highlighted and publicized by literary texts. This is a mode of
interpretation and has been quite influential in decoding the relationship of women
to literature.
Showalter points out that feminist criticism is revisionist being dependent on male
creative theory, i.e. the creative works and interpretations produced on the basis of
male experience. Feminist critics try to analyze and respond to male creative theory.
This need to be changed to achieve feminist criticism that is ‘women centred,
independent and intellectually coherent’.
2. Defining the Feminine: Gynocritics and the Woman’s Text
It is well accepted that a woman’s writing would always be feminine but defining
‘feminine’ has always been a problem. The second mode of feminist criticism
concentrates on this definition. It analyzes women as writers. It undertakes the
study of ‘history, styles, themes, genres, and structures of writing by women’. It also
studies in details the various aspects of female creativity and female literary
tradition. Showalter has coined the term ‘gynocritics’ for the ‘specialized critical
discourse’ that uses women’s writings as its exclusive subject. However, identifying
the unique elements of women’s writings is again a problem. French Feminist
Criticism has identified the influence of female body on female language and texts.
However, the issue has been approached towards differently in different countries.
Four basic models of difference are being used most commonly-biological, linguistic,
psychoanalytic and cultural. Each of these models is like a school of gynocentric
feminist criticism and has its own preferences for texts, methods and beliefs.
3. Women’s Writing and Woman’s Body
It is one of the clearest statements of gender difference. Theories like that of better
developed frontal lobes in case of males and of the use of 20 percent of creative
energy for physiological functions in case of women have been used in the past to
advocate the superiority of men over women. Many critics have associated the act of
creation of text to the generative process which only male used to be considered
capable of undertaking. The metaphor of literary paternity used to be associated to
penis and, thus, to male. Showalter, however, associates it to womb comparing
literary creativity to childbirth. The level and implication of the mention of anatomy
in text by male and female writers, respectively, has also been different. However,
study of biological imagery in women’s writings could be helpful only when other
factors affecting them are also kept in mind.
4. Women’s Writing and Women’s Language
This concept analyzes if men and women use language differently while creating
texts. It studies if factors like biology, social preferences and cultural beliefs could
affect the language of a gender. It also considers the concept of ‘the oppressor’s
language’, the use of language by men to dominate women. For woman, the popular
language could be like a foreign language which she is unable to be comfortable
with. So, there is a call for development of separate feminine language. However,
the irony is that even in communities where women are believed to have developed
a separate language, their language is marked by secrecy.
The differences in male and female speech in terms of ‘speech, intonation and
language use’ are the most obvious examples of difference in man’s and woman’s
language. Feminist criticism should, most importantly, work for providing women an
access to language so that a wide range of words is available to them. Language is
sufficient enough to give expression to women’s consciousness only if she is not
denied access to all the resources of language.
5. Women’s Writing and Woman’s Psyche
This aspect deals with the connection between author’s psyche and creative process
in general. The difference in creative process in case of a male and a female is then
studied on the basis of this connection. Various psychological theories have
suggested that female is inferior in terms of creative capabilities. Critics have been
trying to establish new principles of feminist psychoanalysis which would try to
differentiate gender identities rather than following Freudian theories. Certain
common emotional dimensions could be identified in texts of women writers
belonging to different countries.
6. Women’s Writing and Women’s Culture
The theory of culture as a factor affecting women’s writing is inclusive of the
theories of biology, language and psyche. The influence of all these factors is guided
by the cultural situation of a woman. History has not included female experience.
Thus, history is inadequate to understand women’s experience. Woman’s culture is
not a sub-culture of main culture. They are part of general culture itself. If
patriarchal society applies restraints on them, they transform it into
complementarity. Thus, women experience duality of culture including general
culture and women’s culture. Women form ‘muted group’ in society and men form
‘dominant group’. Ardener suggested a diagram with two circles representing these
two groups respectively. All language of the dominant group is all acceptable
language. So, the muted group has to follow the same language. The part of the
circle representing the muted group which does not coincide with the other circle
represents that part of women’s life which has not found any expression in history.
It represents the activities, experiences and feelings of women which are unknown
to men. Since they do not form part of men’s life, they do not get representation in
history. This ‘female zone’ is also known as ‘wild zone’ since it is out of the range of
dominant boundary. Women could not write on experiences belonging exclusively on
the wild zone. They have to give representation to the dominant culture in their
texts. There are other muted groups as well than women. For instance, literary
identity of a black American poet is forced upon her by the trends of the dominant
group.
Feminist critics try to identify the aspects of women writers which do not follow the
trends established by the male writers. For instance, Woolf’s works show tendencies
other than those of modernism. However, these tendencies are visible in the
sections which have so far been considered obscure or imperfect. Feminist critics
should attempt ‘thick description’ of women’s writings. It is possible only when effect
of gender and female literary tradition are considered among the various factors that
affect the meaning of the text.
Showalter concludes that the ‘promised land’ or situation when there would be no
difference in the texts written by man and woman could not be attained. Attainment
of that situation should not be the aim of feminist critics.

To define the concept of postmodernism, Jameson states “it is not just another word
for the description of a particular style” but rather “a periodizing concept whose
function is to correlate the emergence of new formal features in culture with the
emergence of a new type of social life and a new economic order-what is often
euphemistically called modernization, postindustrial or consumer society, the society
of the media or the spectacle, or multinational capitalism” (1992: 165). It emerges
as a reaction to modernism and all its symbolism and material representation – the
university, the museum, the art gallery -. The latter ones are regarded as “the
establishment”, the anachronistic enemy belonging in the past however still living
somehow in the present. Postmodernism is a backlash against modernism and is
unified as a movement in its deeply rooted impulse of displace it, of tearing it down.

Fredric Jameson is considered to be one of the most important and influential

literary and cultural critic and theoretician in the Marxist tradition of the English
speaking world. In "Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism"
Jameson attempts to characterize the nature of cultural production in the second
half of the 20th century, the era of late capitalism, and to distinguish it from other
forms of cultural production of preceding capitalist eras. A substantial part of
Jameson's "Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" is dedicated to
differential analysis of works of art and architecture from what Jameson terms "high
modernism" and postmodern works. He characterizes the postmodern mode of
production as a "cultural dominant" in the wake of concepts like "depthlessness" or
the suppression of depth, the waning of affect and pastiche, terms which according
to Jameson relate to the postmodern form of production and experience.

The problem of periodization and the cultural dominant

The concept of postmodernism immediately raises the issue of periodization,
entailed by the prefix "post-" assigned to the time of modernism. When did
modernism begin and when did it end? Is it possible to set clear temporal
boundaries between modernism and postmodernism? Jameson believes that it is
possible to speak of cultural modes with in a defined timeline. Nevertheless, he
restricts his periodization of postmodernism to the unbinding notion of cultural
dominant which has a degree of flexibility which still allows for other forms of
cultural production to coexist alongside it.
In the notion of cultural dominant Jameson stays true to the Marxist tradition of
tying culture with the political and economical state of society. This stance holds that
the socio-economical structure of a society is reflected in a society's cultural forms.

Jamson relies on the work of Ernest Mandel that divided capitalism into three distinct
periods which coincide with three stages of technological development: industrialized
manufacturing of steam engines starting from the mid 19th century, the production
of electricity and internal combustion engines since the late 90's of the 19th century
and the production of electronic and nuclear devices since the 1940's. these three
technological developments match three stages in the evolution of capitalism: the
market economy stage which was limited to the boarders of the nation state, the
monopoly or imperialism stage in which courtiers expanded their markets to other
regions and the current phase of late capitalism in which borders are no longer
relevant. Jameson proceeds to match these stages of capitalism with three stages of
cultural production, the first stage with realism, the second with modernism and the
current third one with our present day postmodernism.

Postmodernism according to Jameson is therefore a cultural form which has

developed in the wake of the socio-economical order of present day capitalism.
Again, postmodernism in Jameson's view is not an all-encompassing trend but rather
a cultural dominant that affects all cultural productions. This approach accounts for
the existence of other cultural modes of production (thus protecting Jameson from
criticism) while still enabling to treatment of our time as postmodern. Other types of
art, literature and architecture which are not wholly postmodern are still produced
nowadays, but nevertheless postmodernism is the field force, the state of culture,
through which cultural urges of very different types have to go. No one today is free
from the influence, perhaps even rein, of postmodernism.

The rest of Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late

Capitalism" is mostly devoted to the illustration of this initial claim by examining
different examples of cultural products while continuing to develop some theoretical
issues.

The first characteristic of postmodernism defined by Fredric Jameson in

"Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" is that
of depthlessness. A modern painting, Jameson suggests, invites interpretation, a
hermeneutic development and completion of the world which is beyond what is
represented. In a postmodern work, to put in simply, what you see is what you get,
and no hermeneutic relations will be developed with the representation. This
depthlessness is seen by Jameson as a new kind of superficiality.
Jameson illustrates his point of depthlessness by two thematically related works: Van
Gogh's "A Pair of Shoes" which represents high modernism and Andy Warhol's
"Diamond Dust Shoes" which are obviously postmodern.

Jameson quotes Heidegger's interpretation of Van Gogh's works as one which invites
the reconstruction of a whole peasant world and dire life and offers another possible
interpretation of his own which follows the basic notion of addressing something
which is beyond the actual shoes in the painting.

In contrast, "Diamond dust shoes" do not "speak to us", as Jameson puts it.
Different associations are possible when looking at a Warhol's work, but they are not
compelled by it nor are they necessarily required by it. Nothing in the postmodern
work allows a lead into a hermeneutic step.

Warhol's work is therefore an example of postmodern depthlessness because we

cannot find anything which stands behind the actual image. Warhol is of course
famous for stressing the commercialization of culture and the fetishism of
commodities of late capitalism, but the stress in not positive or negative or anything
at all, it just is. The depthlessness of cultural products raises the question of the
possibility of critical or political art in late capitalism, especially when Jameson
argues that aesthetic production today has turned into a part of the general
production of commodities, an assertion which will be addressed later on.

Another deference between high or late modernism and postmodernism which

Fredric Jameson locates in "Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism"
is what he calls "the waning of affect".

When we look at modern painting with human figures we will most often find in
them a human expression which reflects and inner experience, such as in Edvard
Munch's "The Scream" which epitomizes the modern experience of alienation and
anxiety. In contrast, Jameson holds to that in postmodern art feelings wane
(therefore "the waning of affect").

The concept of expression, Jameson notes, presupposes a model of inside and

outside, a distinction between ones inner and outside world and the individual
person as a single monad. But when we look at postmodern portrait such as
Warhol's Marilyn we can hardly speak of any expression, and that is because,
Jameson holds, postmodernism rejects traditional models of the depth
(see depthlessness) such as the Freudian model of conscious and unconscious or the
existential model of authentic and unauthentic.

The idea of the subject as a monad, of individualism, is a 19th and early 20th century
capitalistic bourgeois notion. With the rise of global economy this notion began to
fade away with the sole trader, consumer and employee made insignificant, reduced
to statistical numbers. Private human agency plays little part in the faceless era of
corporate economy and Jameson notes how the crisis of alienation and anxiety gave
way to the fragmentation of subject or "death of the subject".
Jameson proceeds to describe the waning of affect through the process in which the
subject has lost his active ability to create a sense of continuity between past and
future and to organize his temporal existence into one coherent experience. This
reduces his cultural production abilities to nothing but random and eclectic "piles of
fragments"

Pastiche is one of the main characteristics of cultural production in the age of

postmodernism according to Fredric Jameson. The existence of an autonomous
subject was an essential part of artistic as cultural production in the modern times,
Jameson argues. It allowed for the artist as subject to the address his consumer as
subject and thus to affect him. But with the waning of affect the artist's unique
individuality, one a founding principle, has been reduced in the postmodern age to a
neutral and objectifying form of communication. With the fragmentation of
subjectivity and subjectivity in a sense coming to a gloomy end, it is no longer clear
what postmodern artists and authors are supposed to do beside appealing to the
past, to the imitation of dead styles, an "empty parody" without any deep or hidden
meanings, a parody that Jameson calls pastiche.

Pastiche, like parody, is the imitation of some unique style, but it is an empty neutral
practice which lacks the intension and "say" of parody, not satirical impulse and no
"yin" to be exposed by the "yang". The postmodern artist is reduced to pastiche
because he cannot create new aesthetic forms, he can only copy old ones without
creating any new meanings.

Pastiches leads to what is referred to in architectural history as "historicism" which is

according to Jameson a random cannibalism of past styles. This cannibalism,
pastiche, in now apparent in all spheres of cultural production but reaches its
epitome in the global, American centered, television and Hollywood culture.

When the past is being represent through pastiche the result is a "lost of
historicalness". The past is being represented as a glimmering mirage. Jameson calls
this type of postmodern history "pop history" – a history founded on the pop images
produces by commercial culture. One of the manifestations of this pastiche pop
history are nostalgic or retro films and books which present the appearance of an
historical account when in fact these are only our own superficial stereotypes applied
to times which are no longer accessible to us.

Jameson lengthily discusses the brilliant "Ragtime" by E.L.Doctorow as a

postmodern novel and notes George Lucas's "American Graffiti" as a movie which
attempts to capture a lost reality in the history of the untied-states.
Pastiche, then, is the only mode of cultural production allowed by postmodernism
according to Jameson.

Depthlessness, pastiche, the fragmentation of the subject and other characteristics

of postmodern culture introduced by Fredric Jameson (see previous parts of the
summary) strongly question the notion of "high culture" as opposed to popular
culture. Jameson notes how boundaries between high and low culture have been
transgressed in postmodern times with kitsch and popular culture integrating with
forms of high culture to produce one big varied consumer culture.

Jameson argues that not only is postmodernism a cultural dominant (i.e. the
dominant form of cultural production) but that it has turned into a prime consumer
product, with the aesthetic production being integrated into the general production
of consumer goods. The growing need to produce ever newer products now
allocates an essential structural position to aesthetic novelty.

Jameson notes to the aesthetic field which has the strongest ties with the
economical system is that of architecture which has strong ties with real-estate and
development which give rise to a tide of postmodern architecture, epitomized in the
grandeur of shopping malls.

Jameson famously analyzes the postmodern features of the L.A. Westin Bonaventure
hotel. His main argument concerning the Bonaventure hotel is that this building, as
other postmodern architecture, does not attempt to blend into its surroundings but
to replace them. The Bonaventure hotel attempts to be a total space, a whole world
which introduces a new form of collective behavior. Jameson sees the total space of
the Bonaventure hotel as an allegory of the new hyper-space of global market which
is dominated by the corporations of late capitalism.
It seems that in Postmodernism Jameson often laments the shortcomings of
postmodern culture, though there is also a sense of inevitability in his writing.
Postmodernism according to Jameson is an historical situation, and therefore it will
be wrong to assess it in terms of moral judgments. Jameson proposes to treat
postmodernism in line with Marx's thought which asks us to "do the impossible" of
seeing something as negative and positive at the same time, accepting something
without surrendering judgment and allowing ourselves to grasp this new historical
form.

Paranoia and schizophrenia are modes of knowledge, or ways of interpreting the

world and viewing the self (Flieger 87). I will define these terms more thoroughly as
they arise in the texts, but on a basic level paranoid characters suspect that there is
an alternative narrative of the world hiding within the accepted narrative, and that
this accepted narrative is just a façade for the “real” narrative. Schizophrenia, as I
refine it within this essay, is a mode of knowledge which interprets the world to be
comprised of multiple narratives. The postmodernist thinkers who associate paranoia
with modernism and schizophrenia with postmodernism believe that paranoia was a
psychological response to the conditions of modernity, while schizophrenia is the
psychological response to the conditions of postmodernity. The experience of
postmodernity is too fragmented, multiple, and overloaded with information to be
understood through paranoia as well as it is understood through schizophrenia. But
paranoia was the mode of knowledge through which modernist citizens understood
their agency and identity, concepts which will be central to my argument.
Postmodernist theory does not propose a new way of interpreting individuality
through schizophrenia (although some theorists try to reconcile agency), which
means that for postmodern citizens to experience the world schizophrenically, they
must interpret the world.
This distinct feature of the nowadays society is fundamental for the development of
one of the crucial concepts in the postmodernist movement, which is the
“schizophrenic language” or “textuality”. Drawing on Lacan’s model, Jameson
understands society as schizophrenic, meaning it is lost within the historical
narrative. For Lacan, language is the fundamental feature of the formation of the
mature psyche (ibid). He accounts schizophrenia as a breakdown in the signifying
chain, “that is, the interlocking syntagmatic series of signifiers which constitutes an
utterance or a meaning” (ibid: 26). Consequently, this rejects the idea that is a one-
to-one relationship between the signifier and signified, reference and concept, but
rather a meaning-effect that emerges through the movement between them both.
When this particular relationship is broken, “then we have schizophrenia in the form
of a rubble of distinct and unrelated signifiers”. This has consequences in the field of
subjectivity since it is itself the result of a temporal unification of past, future and
present. Simultaneously, this unification is a function of language itself (ibid),
therefore if we cannot consolidate the past, present and future of language, we are
also unable to unify our historical self-experience. Hence, “with the bre