The Relation between Reader/Viewer and Writer/Artist - Article Example

What impact does Barthes's notion ly text' have on the relation between reader/viewer and artist The intellectually tumultuous twentieth century saw the emergence of various theoretical approaches, which were contesting each other and the same time mutually enriching. Psychoanalysis, Marxism, critical theory, structuralism and post structuralism were the prominent streams among them. As a theorist of writing, Roland Barthes best represents the transitional stage between structuralism and post structuralism. However, it is possible to identify the 'Barthes in the making' (as he always was) with the structuralist trend that was prominent among the intelligentsia(s) in France in the early decades of cold war period, along with other intellectual stalwarts such as Julia Kristeva, Levi Strauss and TzvetanTodorov. The present essay seeks to examine the central tenets of Barthes's philosophy and the impact of his notion of 'writerly text' on the relation between reader/viewer and writer/artist. Since Barthes's formulation on reader-writer relationship could easily be replicated into art without modifications, the essay does not intend to mention the viewer-artist relationship exclusively: however, the reader may understand them interchangeably. From the very beginning of his intellectual life, Barthes actively propagated the view that criticism should be treated as equally as a creative process on par with fiction and poetry. Traditional criticism as procedurally linear and goal oriented was left without vigour. Barthes was not attracted into conventional criticism because it just interprets. It considers the author as the subject of the text and the reader as a passive receiver who has no role in the writing of the text. Besides, traditional criticism looks upon the text as if it is a 'closure' (Barthes, 1974, p.21). In turn, he introduced a criticism that is multiple, scattered and subversive. For him, criticism does not stand in a closed or finished system. Conversely, it is a liberating act of the production of meanings, independent of the will of the author. Ideology has to be detected at the very moment of its production as a way to resist the invasion of the author. Otherwise, criticism will cease to be criticism. Barthes conceived the ideal type of criticism as something always in the making. The spirit of literary criticism needs not seek the revelation of any hidden structure from the text. Obviously, it has to identify the patterns of the 'structuration' of the text. For Barthes, the prevalent author-reader relationship is the reproduction of capitalist relations of production that permeate every sphere of human production. Therefore, as reproduction of the bourgeois relations, 'readerly texts' presuppose and depend upon the presumption of innocence' and the 'unquestioned relationship between signifier and signified that those presumptions reinforce' (Hawkes, 2003, p.93). No human being is innocent because everyone modifies and reconstructs what is given in the world. The experience of the so-called 'real' is neither pure nor objective. In reality, 'structure derives from an interplay of codes(Hawkes, 2003, p.91). Moreover, bourgeois ecriture shapes reality in its own image so that bourgeois way of life and ethics are institutionally carried, disseminated and encoded. Not only Barthes questions the existence but also the possibility of bourgeois notion of 'white-writing' that is supposed to be natural and neutral. There is no final decoding or reading of a text. While traversing through a writerly text, the reader gets acquainted with the enabling nature of the text, about the infinite semiotic possibilities. It enables the reader not only to see the world in a new way but also to construct a new world. Thus, the reader ceases to be a sheep that follows the author, the shepherd. Barthes considered semiotics as a rigid scientific discourse and found a way out through a new discursive formation, i.e. the production of signs. S/Z is the result of Barthes's original synthesis of various approaches and perspectives. It draws its tools from different streams of semiotics. In S/Z, Barthes analyses Sarrasine, a novella written by the renowned French writer Honore de Balzac who claimed to be a crass realist. The story is, basically, about an ageing castrato. His analysis broadly follows the structuralist paradigm. Still, one could argue that S/Z stands at a twilight junction between structuralism and post structuralism, subsequently it gives a number of path breaking insights about codes of meaning and their functions. According to Barthes, Sarrasine is a readerly text, therefore, he gives a thoroughgoing criticism of the 'totally signifying nature of Balzac's work'(Hawkes, 2003, p.94). In S/Z, the 'textual signifiers' of Sarrasine are analysed in terms of five codes. The five major codes together become a network of meaning(s), a 'topos'. At first, the 'hermeneutic code' examines the central questions and concerns of the story around which the plot develops. It involves a 'story-telling' code where revelations, suspense and mystifications are the methods of creating a grand narrative. Secondly, the 'semic code' scrutinises the 'hints' or 'flickers of meaning' that are generated by a 'structure of signifiers'. Thirdly, the 'symbolic code' is the code of recognisable 'grouping' or configuration that reproduces dominant figures and themes. The 'proairetic code' traces the plot through the actions and behaviours delineated in the story. Finally, the 'cultural code' indicates the (il)legitimised forms of knowledge and the moral and scientific bases where such knowledge is located. None of these codes is extrinsic to the text. Rather, they are sorted out from the distinctiveness of the text. Since a text is open to interpretation(s), as many codes as required for the deepest analysis could be formulated (Hawkes, 2003, p.94-95). The hegemonic conception of authorship is a product of the dominant discursive practices that incorporate existing power relations and social practices onto itself. Needless to say, history even is a web of such discursive formations and formulations. However, no author can fully control a text. At maximum, author could take part in the discourse as weaker subject, not as an absolute creator. Here, Barthes ruthlessly negates the conception of author as an overwhelming presence in a given text. In nineteenth century, Nietzsche declared the death of god. Barthes did the same for twentieth century, declaring the death of the Author-God. Thus, the reader is liberated from the dictatorial discursive powers of the Author-God. In his seminal work 'S/Z', Barthes radically redefines the relation between author and reader. What he defines as 'writerly text' in opposition to 'readerly text' is the key to understand the unconventional role of the reader. Literally speaking, while 'writerly text' denotes a text that is 'scriptible', a 'readerly text' is a lisible one. A readerly text is characterised by the presence of a linguistic order imposed on it. It is crafted upon certain presumptions of innocence. Readerly texts are 'normally' considered as readable because they need no real reading. 'And paradoxically, where readerly text (which require no real reading) are often what we call 'readable'. Writerly texts (which demands strenuous reading) are often called 'unreadable' (Hawkes, 2003, p.93). The crux of Barthes's argument is that a text is not created as an eternal product for once and ever by an omnipotent Author-God, but written anew in each reading. Here, the traditional metaphysical status of the author collapses and the reader takes over the productive role of writing. The misconception of a definite and determined relationship between author and reader is a reproduction and reinforcement of a structural misconception that there is a linear and monolithic exchange between the signifier and the signified. The signifier/signified dichotomy confirm the logic of a predetermined meaning represented through the signifier, which in reality is a mere illusion. The preconceived certainties about the relationship between signifier and signified is in a way the unconscious reproduction of bourgeois-individualistic social order. Here, reality is constructed in accordance with the needs of the (literary) establishment. Institutionalisation of a particular perception of reality is carried out through the literary establishment and its compradors, the critics. The 'raw material' of this establishment is 'text'. Moreover, each text is appropriately interpreted through the education system as perpetual truth (Hawkes, 2003, p.98). Writerly texts are commonly perceived as 'unreadable' because they are not as docile as readerly texts. Reading writerly text requires active reflection and deliberation. A writerly text allows diverse readings and, as a result multiple meanings, discourses and dialogues. Furthermore, the experience of reading writerly text and readerly text are qualitatively different. In Barthes's terms, the reading effect of writerly text is jouissance. It could be bliss, ecstasy or even sexual delight stemming out of a sense of breakdown or interruption. On the contrary, plaisir is a kind of superficial pleasure deriving from a straightforward reading, which is the only possible way to 'read' a readerly text. While 'pleasure inheres in the overt linguistic ordering imposed by the readerly text on its material, bliss comes about in 'writerly texts', or at climatic moments in 'readerly' ones, when that order breaks down, when the garment gapes, when overt linguistic purpose is suddenly subverted, and so 'orgasmically' transcended'(Hawkes, 2003, p.93). Curiously, Barthes states that 'In readerly texts the signifiers march: in writerly text they dance' (Hawkes, 2003, p.93) Besides, writerly texts have the subversive potential to uproot a reader from his/her historical, psychological and cultural certainties. It enables the reader to establish a new relationship with the language itself. In capitalist society, while the majority of the population is degenerated as mere consumers, a minority triumphs without actually engaging in the process of production. Barthes sees the replication of same crisis into the realms of art and writing where readers are considered as passive consumers of 'finished cultural products' delivered constantly to them. The practice of considering the author as the producer is, in the ultimate analysis, the source of cultural corruption. Barthes challenges this dominant formulation by asserting that 'the text is experienced only in an activity, a production'. A text is a 'galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds' (Barthes, 1974, p.5). Actually, the text is an infinitely varied fabric, there is no inherent meaning embedded in it. A text is just a surface. Weaving is the logic of writing, not copying. Hence, Barthes's assertion that writing is a process through which a galaxy of signifiers is created. Consequently, the reader has nothing to decode from a text for the fact that meaning itself is a construct of reading. Therefore, reader cannot be seen as a passive receiver of what is coded in the text. A writerly text democratises the relationship between the reader and writer and ensures the active participation of the reader. The dichotomies, which are constructed through the mainstream discourse of a self-elect(ed)ing literary establishment, 'between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its customer' must be challenged (Barthes, 1974, p.4). While exposing the idea of a fragmented reader, Barthes has pointed out that 'this 'I' which approaches the text is already a plurality of other texts, of codes which are infinite' (Barthes, 1974, p.10). Clearly, the reader is not a homogenous, monolithic entity that is malleable in accordance with the craft of the text. Not only the text, the reader is also multiple. Such a productive relationship between text and reading makes reading a rhizomatic activity. Hence, it does not occur in a striated space. Reading does not and cannot be subsumed to any codes set by the (so-called) author. Writerly text produces pleasure infinitely; writing (producing) is primary so that Barthes saw the Japanese culture as 'an ideal status as a way of life in which signifiers have a higher status than signifieds'(Hawkes, 2003, p.98). In the last analysis, it is writerly text that gives birth to the conditions for the conception of reader. Nevertheless, the reader comes to existence only through rereading. Without rereading, one cannot connect to the network in a writerly text. 'We gain access to it by several entrances'; 'the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach, they are indeterminable' (Barthes, 1974, p.5-6). What Barthes conceived as writerly text and its reader (real writer) theoretically has been materialised through the invention of internet where networks and nods proliferate and authors perish. We live in an era of hypertextuality where the reader triumphs over the author and making the very process of writing more and more democratic. To conclude, it is possible to argue that Barthes set the terms for the birth of the reader and, subsequently the death of the author through his masterly enunciation of the concept writerly text. No more our understanding of reader-writer dialectics stands on its head. The world of writing is no more inverted. Now, readers write. The author, of course, is dead. Works Cited Barthes, R., S/Z., (1974). Transl. Richard Miller. New York : Hill & Wang. Hawkes, T., (2003). Structuralism and Semiotics. 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