Thoroughly postmodern Pynchon

[jbor]

on 7/1/01 2:03 AM, Richard Fiero at rfiero at pophost.com wrote:

> However by 1939 or so, Benveniste had removed
> psychollogisms from the Sausserian dichotomy by noting that
> both the signifier and the signified are mental constructs.

Benveniste's work wasn't much known until the mid-60s either, certainly it
wasn't available in English until the early 70s, but he was indeed an
influence on Lacan, Barthes, Kristeva &c.

Interestingly, a key element in Benveniste's theory of language as discourse
is his theory of pronouns, and in particular the discursive immediacy and
"uniqueness" of the I-you polarity:

    *I* can only be identified by the instance of discourse that contains it
    and by that alone ... by introducing the situation of "address", we
    obtain a symmetrical definition for *you* as "the individual spoken to
    in the present instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance
    of *you*". (_Problems in General Linguistics_ Vol 1, publ. 1966,
                                                trans. 1971, p. 218)

Beneveniste also saw that the third person (he/she/it/they) is in effect a
"non-person" in terms of social discourse, a status revealed by the neutral
voice of narration, or description -- the voice of denotation. All this
certainly bears thinking about in relation to the ubiquitous "you" and
"They" in _GR_.

best