Labyrinths, legends, legions: an allergory of reading.

[摘要] This dissertation grapples With the activity of critical production. It answersnot to an interpretation which would constitute the writer within theinstitutionalised category of effect and object of knowledge, but rather to anexplosion, a proliferation of critical paths at the limit of the doxa: a veritablelabyrinth.The terms of my title open up a methodological field within which I enact theplay of associations, contiguities, relations among four texts: The Name ofthe Rose, lost. in the Funhouse, The Naked Lunch and 'The library ofBabel'. The terms themselves disseminate across the text argumentin citations, references, echoes. The labyrinth is used throughout as a tropewhich deconstructs its own performance within the text. Legends aremyths, inscriptions on maps, legenda or things for reading (through anetymological supplement), lesser libraries. Barthes cites the biblical wordsof the man possessed by demons: My name is Legion for we are manyand demonstrates how the demonlacal plural brings with it fundamentalchanges in reading strategies.The notion of the demoniacal plural is used to problernatlse the debatesaround subjectivity. The belief in unitary, rational selfhood is debunked andthe subject is Seen to be plural, irreducible, heterogenous. Subjectivity isfurther problernatlsed by demonstrating the slippage among the labyrinthinemultiplicity of discursive positions occupied by readers: the monoloqlcalmodels of meaning developed from each reading position constantly shift.The discursive position recuperated and sanctioned by the Law or theinstitution is impossible to maintain as Subjects are seduced by languageinto confrontation with other positions through their continuous renarnings ofeach other. Subjectivity and discursive positioning form .their ownlabyrinthine intentionality.The argument then moves towards an exploration of the current calculationof the subject for the writer. (Distinctions between author and critic begin tocollapse here since meaning is shown to be governed by neither). Thereading\writing subject strolls in a vast labyrinth of text - a postmodernflaneur who frustrates the work of exegesis by enacting the play of thesignifier. The line traced by this hypothetical traveller does not engender adefinitive theoretical or discursive map of the domain but rather a contingentand highly provisional, backward turning path.The demoniacal plural is also used to problematise notions of an originaland innovative critical voice which speaks the dissertation. The logicregulating the argument is the already-written, The dissertation plavs witheach text (both critical texts and fictions) looking for a practice whichreproduces them but in another place.My imagined (ideal?) reader wmtreat the argument as that Which. lt was notsimply meant to be,will. follow.the argument and be seduced by it: anechoing. structure with dead ends, wrong turns, false entrances fictitiousexits; misleading threads and deceptive lines,

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand