S/Z

[Dave Monroe]

"You can put together clues, develop a thesis, or several about why
characters reacted to the Trystero possibility the way they did, why
the assassins came on, why the black costumes. You could waste your
life that way.” (Lot 49, pp. 62-3)

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 9:38 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> From Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay (trans. Richard Miller, New York:
> Hill & Wang 1974 [1970]), Sec. XXXII,  "Delay":
>
> "Truth is brushed past, avoided, lost. This accident is a structural
> one. In fact, the hermeneutic code has a function, the one we (with
> Jakobson) attribute to the poetic code: just as rhyme (notably)
> structures the poem according to the expectation and desire for
> recurrence, so the hermeneutic terms structure the enigma according to
> the expectation and desire for its solution.  The dynamics of the text
> (since it implies a truth to be deciphered) is thus paradoxical: it is
> a static dynamics: the problem is to maintain the enigma in the
> initial void of its answer; whereas the sentences quicken the story's
> 'unfolding' amid cannot but help move the story along, the hermeneutic
> code performs an opposite action: it must set up delays (obstacles,
> stoppages, deviations) in the flow of the discourse; its structure is
> essentially reactive, since it opposes the ineluctable advance of
> language with an organized set of stoppages ... [...]  Expectation
> thus becomes becomes the basic condition for truth: truth, these
> narratives tell us, is what is at the end of expectation." (pp. 75-6)
>
> http://us.macmillan.com/Book.aspx?isbn=9780374521677
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=XpqlCCG73YIC
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/Z
>
> http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10346
>