the textual space on the notion of text

Midwest Modern Language Association

The Textual Space: On the Notion of TextAuthor(s): Jenaro Talens and Juan M. CompanySource: The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Autumn,1984), pp. 24-36Published by: Midwest Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1315046 .

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The Textual Space: On the Notion of Text

Jenaro Talens and Juan M. Company

One of the most important problems faced by theorists who deal with the analysis of "signifying practices" is the ambiguity of the key term upon which, in one way or another, their discussions hinge: the notion of "text." Ever since the early activities of OPOYAZ and the Moscow Linguistic Circle, literary theory has functioned with three models of semiotics. The first two are based on the work of Saussure as well as on the mathematical theory of information presented by Shannon and Weaver (1949); for both models, the text has an autonomous system of signification, whether in terms of "structure," as in the first case, or in terms of "message," as in the second case. The third model derives from the work of Peirce and does not define the "sign" on the basis of entities or relationships. Rather, it confronts the semiotic problem from a different perspective, namely, the analysis and description of the conditions that are necessary for actions, facts, or objects to function as signs. The first two models belong to a semiotics of communication and are dedicated to the study of the means and processes used by sign producers, not only to affect others in various ways, but also to gain recognition and acceptance from them. In a broader sense, the third model belongs to the semiotics of signification and includes all uses and behaviors that become signifi- cant only because they take place in a social context.

In this essay, we wish to address ourselves to the productive manifestations of the work of "signification." It is perhaps after May 1968 in France that semiotics ceases to be understood as a "science of signs" and starts to function as a critical discipline. Because its critical objects come to be defined as (a) communication, (b) the structures of communication, and (c) the languages that are implied within communication, semiotics appears no longer as a study of the signified, but rather, as a study of the operations of signifying. Yet there is no human science (and semiotics is no exception) that does not compromise those who practice it, since a scientific practice necessarily situates its practitioners in a fixed zone of knowledge ("saber") and obliges them to select among cultural options that in turn act upon the very process of investigation. So it is that the dominant ideologies in capitalist modes of production not only determine the models of communication but also the instruments used to analyze the structure and function of those models. There are no neutral sciences: the myth of scientific neutrality is an ideological illusion that arises with the "scientific man" of the Renais- sance. There is implicit in any process of the production of meaning ("sentido")

24 The Textual Space



an entire system of aesthetic, economic, and ideological conditions. The par- ticular production of a scientific discourse that we will urge, therefore, cannot be

thought of as an intuitive or neutral activity in search of "real" knowledge ("conoci- miento").

The so-called exact sciences can neither ignore nor avoid these problems. These sciences are historically linked to various state apparatuses and are subject themselves to an economic law of supply and demand. Today, for example, one does not investigate nuclear physics in the abstract; rather, one investigates nuclear physics within the context of specific geopolitical practices of power. We could also make similar observations about the world of the human sciences, especially since the ideological determinations upon research in those disciplines are even more obvious. All scientific discourse is a process of meaning production and, as such, is at the same time subject to the same conditions as are the texts, speech acts, or utterances that constitute their field of investigation. A scientific

practice such as that of semiotics, therefore, cannot disregard its own inscription into a determinant ideology.

Saussurean and information-based theories can be said to err, then, in this initial

respect. Semiotics is born here primarily as a discipline dealing with critical

metalanguages; it claims to offer a scientific base to a kind of work formerly characterized by a lack of method (as, for example, in the case of evaluative

analyses of poetic language). Its aim initially is to reduce critical intervention to the translation of utterances from one discursive system into a language different from the one in which such utterances are constituted. In this view, reference to the reality implied in the process of communication is disregarded; the semiotic project is limited to an analysis of systems of "communication" (and/or "significance"). The eventual appearance of a third model does not really solve much. The work of Peirce differs from the proposals of Saussure, not because it re-

opens the question of the recurrence of an exterior reality in the communicative

process, but rather, because it introduces the concepts of "interpretant" and of "semiosis." By means of this second concept, the communicative process is

opened up to the field of signification; by means of the first concept, a semiotic mechanism is instrumentalized through which the signified is predicated by a signifier.

In the Hjelmslevian concepts of "expression" and "content," for example, semiotics passes the problem of content onto semantics, while, with the same appearance of neutrality, it continues to analyze the systematic mechanisms of expression. The naive quality of Morris's behaviorism, moreover, causes his semiotic theory to refer Peirce's third model back to the two earlier ones, insofar as it also tends toward the translation of one language into another. The only external appearance of the process of communication (and/or signification) figures as embodied within the universe of thought and not within the universe of socially and historically determined reality: it is conceived of, therefore, as an external

Jenaro Talens and Juan M. Company 25



appearance immanent to the act of communication. Consequently, when analyzed from without, the sum of contents adds an ideological component, which nevertheless has not been theorized as reaching the level of expression. In a crude way, we might say that a semiotics so understood would end up as the consequence of articulating two different practices, which we could label "formalist" and "sociological."

If the process of the production of meaning ("sentido") is confronted as a work

("trabajo"), investigation must refer back critically to the cultural, political, and

ideological systems that have caused the process to occur as it does. Investigation, then, is no longer a question of defining codes, but rather, of discerning the ma- trices (with their dependencies and contradictions) that have formed them and that govern their operation. We must take into account the concrete process of the

production of meaning, in which not only the elements belonging to the discursive objects of analysis are touched upon, but also others, such as the relationship to other discourses, and so forth. Because all of this relates to concrete factors, it is not possible to delimit the field or even to touch bottom within it.

All discourse is the product of a transformation produced from previous or

parallel discourses which, simultaneously, is the result of converting matter into a signifying element. The analysis of the concrete process must take into account this characteristic of discursive practice. The functioning of this double transformation that is a live process, and for which discourse lives, has been defined by Tel Quel as "'criture." This concept stresses the material form of a discourse by linking that discourse with other discourses; that is, by fixing discourse as a signifying practice, it is related and articulated with other practices such as politics, economics, psychoanalysis, etc.

The analysis of a concrete process of the production of meaning must touch

upon three aspects: (1) the semiotic formalization of texts, with the analysis of the communication systems that act within them; (2) the semiotic formalization of the system of production of meaning, because the text in question is a concrete manifestation of it, and (3) the relationship of the text with the context of cultural objects insofar as this context conditions the way in which the text is manifested. All of this can be articulated through a multidisciplinary rule for the analysis; but, because of the very character of a practice, even though it is specific and differentiated, this rule only exists when it is articulated in relation to, superimposed on, and traversed by other practices, in a fixed social formation. This is why semiotics has currently shifted its field of action from signs to systems ofsignification by focus- ing its gaze on the object called text. Although such a shift has permitted an initial atomism to be overcome, it has not solved all the problems; this is due to the essen- tial vagueness with which text, as a notion, is used by semiotic theory.

This is how "text" is defined in the Dictionary ofPhilological Terms: "A special- ized term (Glossematics) which indicates any group of analyzable signs: a piece of conversation; an entire conversation; a line of poetry; a novel; language as a




whole; etc." (Lazaro Carreter 1968). This definition is in fact a dense synthesis of various definitions proposed up to now and, as such, it sets up its own possibilities as well as its own problems. Even if we can derive from such a definition Lotman's identification of "text" and "sign" in the case of artistic texts (1973: 53ff), we still cannot escape the fact that the features that set boundaries around it turn out to be excessively vague and generic.

The following comments are meant as more thanjust another standard attempt at establishing a possible epistemological boundary for the notion of "text" as an operational instrument in the field of verbal activity. Our purpose is to orient present research toward a notion of "text" that can be used, without metaphoric transcendence, in the analysis of any kind of practice of the production of meaning. Such analysis implies: (1) that the notion of text should not be limited only to verbal languages (whether these are artistic or not); and, (2) that the function of texts should include "non-verbal" languages (whether these are artistic or not) as well as those areas that we can call "paralanguages" (for example, "body discourse," "discourse of desire," "daily life").

We shall here define language as a system of organized signs that can transmit information. We acknowledge that this definition is only preliminary and perhaps superficial; it is a reformulation of Lotman's views coupled with some of our variants. Yet the definition is useful because it puts into play three elements: (a) the "sign" as a "differentiated" function from the "mark" ("seflal"); (b) the existence of a "code" that can bring about the "articulation"/"organization" of such "signs"; and, (c) the information that such signs "transmit"/"communicate," since such information is the "signified" that a code grants to the signs both in isolation and in its articulation with other signs.

We establish, then, limits to the concept of "communication." It is defined here as the concrete actualization of "communicativeness" already anticipated by the code (and only that). We also distinguish between "signified" (which every language bears and in some ways is) and "meaning" ("sense"). Now, language lacks such a "meaning" ("sense"), but its production is possible whenever it is ac- tualized as a language in texts. Yet with a proviso: that these texts are understood (and here we have an operative definition [Coseriu 1977]) not as manifestations of language, but rather, as its superior modalities, in which language as such becomes expression for contents of another level.

This distinction between "signified" and "meaning" ("sense") does not cor- respond to the classic opposition established by Frege (Bedeutung/Sinn), which relies on the opposition between "semantic referential value" and "semantic linguistic value." We understand by the term "signified" the unity of the "semantic linguistic value" (that which is communicated) and the "semantic referential value" (that which is produced), because, as a language in actual performance, it brings into play the role of the explicit context. By the term "meaning" ("sense" or "sentido"), we understand (following Garroni 1979) the implicit context of the




explicit context, that is, the product of a process as it is individualized by the appropriation/reading of what is "signified." We shall return to this question later.

The present proposal for defining language is a way of substituting the broad and ambiguous field of communication (which is closer to the Lotman model) by the more limited and manageable field of "transmissible information." In the first place, there is the triple division of "nonlanguages" elaborated by Lotman:

(a) systems which utilize nonorganized signs as communications; (b) organized systems that serve for communication but do not use signs; (c) systems that use organized signs but do not serve as communication. These three factors can be reduced to only the first double possibility: the transmission of information can be given as long as there is an organization of utilized signs, that is, a code which serves as "organizer/decipherer." In the second instance (of systems which do not utilize signs even though they might be organized), we shall speak of "nonlanguage." In the other instance (of systems which utilize signs that are somewhat or not at all organized), we shall refer to "paralanguages": a "use" always ends up by establishing its own code because it grants meaning to that which did not have it.

The proposed definition has other advantages. Consider the concept of the "real" (in Lacan, the "real" is that which cannot be hallucinated by the subject: all that is left outside consciousness, or unconsciousness, and has no possibility to be represented by language). How is the "action" or "object" of the "real" suscept- ible to the production of meaning? This is a challenging problem because the "real" does not start by having a "signified" and, consequently, it cannot communicate anything. Now, what our definition proposes to do is to explain how and why the "real," even though without signifieds, is involved in the daily production of meanings.

We are thus dealing with the possibility of "meaning" because meaning is a

part both of languages and of the above mentioned variants of nonlanguage. We have to attempt viable definitions of the "text" which could function in both areas of "language"/"nonlanguage," yet without being limited to any one of the two.

Contemporary semiotic theory contains different notions about "text." We need to establish two clearly differentiated paradigms: (a) one which considers the text as a "closure" so that a structural point of view can be formalized; and (b) one which confronts the text in the area of signifying production in order to formalize a functional point of view. * Two representative positions of the first paradigm can be clearly perceived in the proposals of Todorov (1972) and Lotman (1973).

For Todorov, what defines a text is the notion of "autonomy/closure," even

though, in another sense, some texts might not be "closed." The text constitutes

*A larger description of uses of this concept is developed by Jorge Lozano (1982). For our purposes, however, this proposed double model, in spite of its generic and simplistic nature, is more useful, because the intelligent and highly suggestive proposals of Lozano continue to accept the operative validity of the notion of text.




a system that is not to be identified with the linguistic system but which, nevertheless, is related to it. This relation is one, simultaneously, of proximity and

similarity. As articulated by Hjelmslev, the text is a "connotative" system because it is secondary to another system of signification. Such a definition, on the one hand, limits the notion of text to the field of verbal languages while, on the other, it does not manage to clarify the distinction (text of) "closure"/"closed" even as far as its own presuppositions are concerned. As for the notion of autonomy, Todorov relies on Hjelmslev, which is to say, Saussure's binomial set of "signifier"/"signified" that underlines his theory; he thus excludes the trial-like, experimental character of compromised sense, that is, the presence of the subject and of the space outside the text (hors-texte), as articulated by Lotman (1970).

For his part, Yuri M. Lotman establishes conditions which might be necessary but, not really, sufficient for the existence of any text. In a 1969 article, Lotman

accepted Pjatigorskij's 1968 formulation of two properties as defining the existence of texts: (a) the expression within a determined system of signs ('fijacidn"); and (b) the capacity that the subject enjoys to present himself under certain orien- tational relationships - deictic markers-which allow the utterances to function as a whole. A year later, in his fundamentally important Structure of the Artistic Text, Lotman's definition of "text" becomes more explicit in terms of three conditions: (a) that it be composed by "signs" ("expression"); (b) that "signs" be

hierarchically structured ("structural character"); and (c) that "signs" occur between a beginning and an end ("marking out the boundaries").

The condition of necessity but not of sufficiency to which we have alluded now could be explained with two arguments: (1) the ambiguity of Lotman's notion of

hierarchy, which depends on a type of articulation that does not make clear whether such an articulation is inherent to the text or whether, on the contrary, it

belongs to the subject outside the text (hors-texte); and (2) the absence of a clear definition of the value of the notions of beginning and end. Whether temporal or

symbolic, it is this gap that later theoretical work by Lotman tries but fails to eliminate.

We must indicate next the so-called "functional" approaches to defining textuality as represented by positions taken by Schmidt (1971) and Kristeva (1969). Schmidt distinguishes between "textuality" and "text"; he uses linguistics to con- struct his theory of the text and then situates both concepts in their field of reference. He defines textuality as the structure of socio-communicative actions among interlocutors. A text, therefore, is the corresponding concrete realization of "structured textuality" in a determined medium of communication. Schmidt succeeds here in broadening the field of application beyond that of verbal language. He does so, however, in an ambiguous and contradictory way. He merely extends written language to language-in-situation, that is, to all those actions whose form of manifestation implies and includes verbal language. His position is part of the polemic surrounding "competence"/"performance" and is




related to the discovery (by Lieb and Henne) that competence, which is suppos- edly capable of engulfing performance, can only be developed as a performance of implicit competence.

In addition, Schmidt's conception presents two points that have in common a reduction and simplification of the nature of the problem. Everything seems limited, strictly, to the theoretical area of the so-called theory of communication. Moreover, the presentation of the problem in these terms (which are at the same time broad and vague) does not allow for a clear distinction between the level of what is "expressed utterance" ("enunciado") and the level of "expression" (speech act; "enunciacidn"). For Schmidt, the question is one only of a "trans-

missible"/"decipherable" message. In this way, he sets aside the problems involved, first, in determining the space "subject-from-where it is expressed," and, next, in the space "subject-producer-of senses." Such considerations no longer posit a mere "inter-locutor" which happens to function in an extratextual position.

For her part, Julia Kristeva defines "text" as a certain type of "signifying production" which occupies a definite place in history and which emerges from a

specific science that must in turn be defined. From this standpoint, she opposes structuralist positions because they eliminate from their horizon the character of

signification. She considers signification as an ongoing process at a time when structuralists propose only a mechanical and static conception of signification as a

totality made up of diverse parts. Her proposal ties in with that of Lacan (1966). Lacan defines "letter" as a material base which a concrete discourse borrows from

language; that is, "letter" is a structure essentially located in the "signifier." For Lacan, the relation "signifier"/"signified" is presented as a relation of insistence in the flow of the signifying chain and not as a relation of consistence. No one of the links in the chain can consist of the "signification" of which the same "moment"

(as a whole) is capable. Kristeva also returns to Saussure: in his conception of

Anagrams, he bases the search for "signification" on a "signifier" that has been dismantled by an insistent meaning ("sense"; "sentido") in action. Kristeva's discourse focuses on the area of verbal language. Yet her proposal is closer to the one which we are sketching here.

In the two positions sketched above ("structural" and "functional"), "function" must, in one way or another, play a role. The structural position seems more rigorously autonomous because demarcation signs are provided to the "reader"/"receiver" with the help of contextual markers. On the other hand, the functional position derives from a pragmatic focus. It is thus evident that a "definition of types of texts depends on the description of types of relations between texts and contexts" - provided, of course, that "the text is not in the

materiality of the writing ("escritura") but rather in the conventional

sign/oriented values" (Segre 1978).




To the question "what constitutes a text?" Segre answers lucidly by eliminating such a question; in its place, he proposes a more general definition of that which is "expressed." The following considerations should be kept in mind:

(a) the type of "pragmatic" context within which a given text is produced; (b) the

type of "illocutionary" function which the text can develop in that context, whether it was meant to develop it or not; (c) the modality of the communication of the text ("improvised"/"nonimprovised," "with"/"without" appeal to non- verbal codes or direct actions, "monological"/"dialogical," "oral"/"written," etc.); (d) the existence of precise norms concerning the constitution of texts

(norms that are especially rigorous for "written" texts); and (e) the measure of

repeatability ("repetibilidad") (Segre 1978). This developing classification demands differentiated procedures for each level

(as Lotman has shown, 1973). The manner of its articulation is, for Segre, "paraphrasis," that is, "the individuality of the text could be affirmed, whenever it permits, on any level a unitary paraphrase." This position is richly articulated: the "superficial" structure (the "textual" one) has a linguistic order, while the

"deep" structure, which makes a paraphrase possible by introducing the context in a text, has a semiotic order. It is this condition that makes impossible the existence of so-called "rules of transformation" between the two of them.

Nevertheless, whether it deals with "writing" or "orality," Segre's position moves in the terrain of the "verbal." It is necessary, therefore, to broaden the sense of his conclusions. To begin, we can distinguish between differentiated notions: (1) textual space, which corresponds both to what is communicated, that is, to textual structure, and to what is signified, that is, to the results of the cited paraphrase; and (2) text, which corresponds to meaning ("sense" or "sentido"). The terms "signified" and "meaning" are to be understood as they were defined above.

Lyotard (1979) emphasizes one of the main aspects of the problem.

Whatever exists is not a text. . . . It contains a certain kind of density, in other words, a constitutive difference that we should not read, but see. This difference, to- gether with the immobile mobility which reveals it, is what is continuously neglected in the act of signifying. . . . The fact that the world is legible brutally means that there is an "other" in the other shore, writing the things that exist, and it also means that from a proper standpoint, I should be able to unravel it.

Whatever exists is not a text, therefore, but a place to which all of us have given meaning, in the effort to reconstruct/unravel the presence of the "other." We shall call that place "textual space," as opposed to "text," in order to distinguish the double form manifested in whatever exists. This space can be organized and fixed - according to Lotman's definition of what a text is - between a beginning and an end (TS). It can be a simple proposal open to several ways of organization/fixation (TS'); or, finally, it may not imply any kind of fixation/organization, lacking the limits or frontiers that would make possible its fixation (TS ").




The first case is that of such textual spaces as: the literary work (there is a specific linguistic organization between the obvious limits of the first and last pages); canvas or painting (realist or non-realist painting: color is organized following a specific code within the limits of the canvas space);film (or video); etc. The second case is that of such textual spaces as: play (the so-called "dramatic text" is only a proposal open to multiple ways of temporal and spatial organization, varying in every setting and show); music (in this case, as well as in the forms, the flexibility of the proposal, which is not even considered as such- happening, aleatory score, jazz, etc.- makes only a subtle difference, the same as in those aleatory literary "texts" which Umberto Eco has called open works (Eco 1962); performance; etc.

The third aspect (TS"'') is that of such textual spaces as: nature (open to be read as landscape, for example); conversation (open to be analyzed as a dialogue concerning delimitable relationships); free association (which is used in psychoanalysis in order to decode what a patient does or says); the love relationship (open to be read as the historical repetition of a rite); a lecture (open to be confronted as a performance of an actor, here called professor); etc.

Following what we have said, "text" now can be defined as the result of a reading/transformational labor made over the textual space. The aim of this labor is not to extract an "inherent" meaning from the textual space by actualizing language-TS and TS'-so as to add a textual space to another textual space; rather, the aim is to produce meaning. We are talking about a task of reading and transformation, not about decoding or unraveling. It must be clear that this specific point is disconnected from what we have previously quoted from Lyotard. What remains to be shown is how this task of meaning production operates.

In the case of TS and TS' we will use the word "system" in order to define a manner of organization or patterning (unitary in TS, variable in TS'). This organization as system imposes limits and directions on the production of meaning by means of what one of us has previously called "semantic restriction"

(Talens 1978). Such restriction prevents the arbitrary and vivid multiplica- tion/manipulation of meaning, thus establishing limits of pertinence. The transformation of the textual space in various texts is made by reorganizing (re- systematizing) the elements constituting this system, which is sustained by a pattern of articulation that is as complex as one could wish but which still is analyzable empirically. Such reorganization implies the projection over the system of a new pattern that cannot be contradictory to (even if it is different

from) the earlier one. We call the articulating pattern of the system its "organ- izing principle" (Talens 1975), and the new organizational pattern its "semantic gesture" (Mukarovskij). This so-called "semantic gesture" does not belong to the textual space; therefore, it belongs not to the realm of the signified (po- tentially contained in the code, as previously indicated), but to the realm of the real subject, the person who transforms his or her lesson into a reading, his or her




sight into a vision, or his or her hearing into listening. In doing so, he or she implies in the meaning, not only the signified itself of the textual space, but everything that consciously or unconsciously constitutes his or her existence as a subject. We will call this way of organization a "structure." The transformation of the system on a structure(s) is thus an appropriation (individual or generalized, but not foreseen by the code) of the textual space. This justifies, within the framework of a given set of semantic restrictions, the different possible meanings of the concrete work or act for all those concrete subjects facing it.

In the case of TS ', where we cannot properly speak about a system because we have defined it as lacking organization/fixation, the transformation will work on the basis of an implantation/projection of a certain system model over its elements. This system model is taken from a textual space (TS or TS') with which the other textual space (TS') maintains some kind of relationship. In this way, for example, it is possible to project over a panorama of mountains the system canvas, making feasible the production of a landscape, which "means" an aesthetic feeling. Bertolt Brecht exemplifies this process quite accurately in a famous poem from the Buckower Elegien.

Der Rauch

1 Das kleine Haus unter Baumen an See 2 Vom Dach steight Rauch 3 Fehlte er 4 Wie trostlos dann waren 5 Haus, Baumen und See

("The cottage between trees beside the lake / a wire of smoke / If it is not there / what a desolation / house, trees and lake")

What gives meaning to what the poematic protagonist sees is not so much the possible "natural" disposition of its elements as the emotional values that the observer projects over it, placing, therefore, a pictorial model over reality. This mechanism explains the possibility of giving coherence (in other words, of pro- ducing meaning) to an ordinary gesture as happens, for example, in the analysis made by Freud of the symptomatic act of Dora's playing with her purse (Freud 1948).

As a corollary, a two-fold distinction can be established between the "textual space" and the "text": as a system, the textual space characterizes itself by having a precise empirical existence, whether stabilized (as in the case of TS), or as a changing proposal (as in the case of TS'), or as a presupposition elaborated a posteriori (the case of TS "). In contrast, the text does not have a fixed structure, or, more exactly, there are as many texts as structure; that is, there are as many texts as reading appropriations of the corresponding system. Opposite to what occurs in the case of the textual space, the existence of the text is not the result of describing an articulation of relationships, but rather, the outcome of a new articulation, individualized and unrepeatable.

Jenaro Talens and] Juan M. Company 33



Nevertheless, the borderline that separates the notions of TS and T is not a rigid one and, if both concepts are approached as functions rather than entities, it will allow us to understand the processual character of the production of discourse. For instance, in the case of the so-called "creative practices" (poetry, fiction, film, music, painting, etc.), the raw material elaborated by the artist (biographical ex-

perience, cultural or existential memory, sounds or colors from nature) will function as a textual space of the third kind (TS "). The process of artistic production transforms this raw material into a text (Ti) which in turn constitutes a textual

space of the second kind (TS') for the function "reader" which every process of

production entails, thus allowing the artist to go back to his draft in order to cor- rect it. The correction or revision of a text implies in fact the elaboration of a new text (T2), which is what we understand as the "author's work." For the reader, considered as an entity outside the discourse, this text (T2) operates as TS or TS', depending on the modality in question.

If this final result belongs to the second type (TS'), as happens, for instance, with a play, the process of transformations occurring until the moment of performance in front of an audience could be schematized in the following fashion:

a) TS' (Dramatic text) Ti (story board)

b) (Ti = ) TS1' T2 (proposal of articulation T2 and what the actors, choreographers, etc., exhibit as final version after rehearsing)

c) (T2 =) TS2' T3(n) (what every member of the audience sees at

the performance)

A first theoretical result of this process is the need for redefining the concepts of author and receiver, since both constitute elements of process rather than entities; that is to say, they are to be considered as inscriptions of the discourse and not as

physical persons. That is why the use of conventional concepts such as "author," "reader," or "message" is highly problematic for the analysis of signifying practices. When we speak of a "reader," for example, are we referring to the reading- function, or to Bousofio's "ideal reader" (1977), or to Eco's model reader (1979), or to the "social reader" positioned in a given collectivity, as sociological schools and reception theory understand it? The same ambiguity and confusion could be found in the terms "author" and "message."

The combination of diverse methodologies which have developed on the basis of an ambiguous determination of their own subject of inquiry cannot achieve

complementarity, since we are not facing a variety of approaches that deal with different aspects of the same object, but with methodologies that entail different

objects. This is not the case with the analysis proposed in this essay, since our approach places all the elements in the same space (the discourse) and relationships can be established without dangerous metaphysical transpositions.




A second theoretical result concerns the clarification that an approach of this kind can make regarding the role of criticism and translation in the process of production of meaning. In fact, from the point of view of the operational mechanism, there is no difference between the critic's work and the reading- function performed by the author while correcting his/her manuscript. They both operate on a TS in order to produce a T. However, while the T of the reading-function lies inscribed in the object as a new form of TS, the one elaborated by the critic remains outside of it. And this means that, in the first instance, the text of the reading function on the part of the author transforms its meaning into signified, while the reading function of the critic does not. Yet it must be kept in mind that the work of the critic, being part of the cultural heritage of the readers, also remains integrated in the process; it should not be considered, therefore, as a marginal addition. This is why we could propose that Brecht is reflected in Cervantes, or Valle-Inclin in Shakespeare, since within the limits imposed by the textual spaces of Don Quijote or The Merchant of Venice, our reading develops from a perspective in which Brecht and Valle are present. Fi- nally, it can be argued that translations work similarly to critical discourse; they do not inscribe themselves in the TS in which they operate, but they create a new TS within the boundaries of a new language and a new culture. Therefore, the traduttore is never a tradittore, but rather, another kind of autore who, instead of working free of restrictions, as does the original author, is subjected to them (TS). Reading, writing, and translating arejust three variants of the same process of discourse production.

Translated byJenaro Talens

University of Valencia (Spain)

References

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