Thoroughly postmodern Pynchon

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Doug Millison wrote:

> Only if you start with the assumption that one word in a given text =
> infinite number of signifiers.  If that's how it's defined, no problem. The
> definition that was offered earlier, "the signifier, to
> put it simply, is the word, and the signified is the thing or idea it
> represents" seems to say something different.

This seems to be the difference between structuralism and post-structuralism.
Structuralism says: One signifier, one signified (mental concept), the relation
between the two is fixed and arbitrary. Post-structuralism, up to a certain
point IMO correctly, states that the relation between signifier and signified is
not fixed, that instead, sorry, I am only familiar with the cute German version,
"Der Signifikant gleitet unter dem Signifikaten", which would translate as
something like "The signified is slipping/gliding under the signifier", and
which sounds like a sexual innuendo in German, especially given Lacan's
identification of the signifier with the phallus, and during the eighties was
the subject of countless dumb jokes I admit to have committed in the presence of
post-structuralists. Nevertheless, taken as a theoretical statement about
language, it is quite correct, methinks. But the signified certainly does not
have an indefinite number of options of where to slip to, if that does make any
sense - possibilities are not, as Lou Reed used to sing back in those days when
he was still capable of singing, "endless".

In any case, I just wrote this post to have an opportunity to quote from the
Magnetic Fields' song "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure":

I am just a great composer
and not a violent man
but I lost my composure
and I shot Ferdinand
crying it's well and kosher to say you don't understand
but this is for Holland-Dozier-Holland.
His last words were:
We don't know anything,
you don't know anything
I don't know anything about love
But we are nothing,
you are nothing
I am nothing without love.

Of course, one has to listen to the music...

Thomas