brookes77, 4/14/09

In class on Tuesday we talked about how human beings are controlled by words. They construct everything we do, say, and who we are individually. For example a signature, these letters put together defines who we are to the rest of the world. No one can have the same to signatures, it makes us different from the rest. A signature allows us legally to exist, and they are just words.

Another notion we discussed in class was how we can play with language. This reminded me of Barthes notion of jouissance, and how we should take what we comprehend from a text and do what we want with it. This also relates to Macherey’s explanation of intertextuality and how we view text/words/language. This is where binary oppositions come in when certain words mean one thing to someone and different definitions to another, allowing people to work with different words how they interpret them. When people interpret words a different way this allows the words to leave a trace, and someone will hold on to the idea they grasped from what they understand which causes difference. This notions allows names and words to have different meanings everywhere, it is a cycle. Jaques Derrida’s quote “ Every concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a chain or a system, within which it refers to another and to other concepts, by the systematic play of differences”; allows us to see that it is not the written word that is important it is the spoken word which perpetuates intertexuality to which the word never is stabilized and the meaning of the word continues to change. It is really interesting that Derrida speaks of language as a sand box, showing that people can make what they want of words, for they are always changing with no fixed meaning. He states: “ There never has been and never will be a unique word, a master name.”. This allows people to no longer be absent minded observers in our culture but participate in culture from ones own intertexuality. There is no right or wrong meaning, noting is black and white only shades of grey.