Teaching the Postmodern

Brenda Marshall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134976928
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Brenda Marshall engages with both literary texts and theory, providing an accessible and rigorous introduction to everything you wanted to know about postmodernism.

I

Structuralism
and Italo Calvino's
“A Sign in Space”

Fiction and theory in the postmodern moment emphasize the role of language as a constituent of reality. Not surprisingly, then, much of the criticism of the moment is at least conversant with linguistics. More specifically, it is often through a study of Ferdinand de Saussure's contributions to our un-derstanding of linguistic semiotics (in his Course in General Linguistics) that we approach structuralism, and then, poststructuralism. I unpack some of these relationships in this chapter by reading Italo Calvino's short story “A Sign in Space” from Cosmicomics as an introduction to semiotics (the study of signs) and to a general methodology of structuralism. Although structuralism participates in a movement toward a postmodern logic in its critique of representation by way of its emphasis on meaning as relying on difference rather than on essence, ultimately, with its emphasis on closure, it resides outside the postmodern moment. In other words, although structuralist logic denies the empiricist world view privileged by our tradition of Western metaphysical philosophy, it does not engage in the ‘play’ or endless deferral of meaning that poststructuralism brings to the postmodern moment.

Structuralism most indicates a postmodern logic in its suggestion that meaning is based on relationships within a system, and is thus, social: we are defined by language, signs, structures. What I indicate as this book progresses are some of the social and political ramifications of these changing paradigms of meaning. Thus, although much of this chapter remains on the level of providing and explicating terminology, in later chapters, this terminology will be important in identifying the implications of, for example, the critique of representation or of subjectivity. In this spirit I introduce Saussurean concepts on a micro-level (in terms of linguistics) in this chapter in order to generalize these concepts for use on a macro-level (in terms of social relations) in later chapters.

In Calvino's Cosmicomics each story begins with a scientific ‘truth’, that is, an assertion based on a particular community's particular way of looking at the world at a particular time. In “A Sign in Space” that assertion is: Situated in the external zone of the Milky Way, the Sun takes about two hundred million years to make a complete revolution of the Galaxy.

Immediately, we note that the term “revolution” incorporates a series of traditional assumptions: it sets up the sense of closure— what goes around, comes around; and it implies that the circular pattern is determined by a center (that which defines, and thus provides, limits). Although the center (the Sun) is on the circumference, it is the position from which meaning (in this case, the determination of time) emanates. The concept of a center from which meaning emanates is logocentrism. Logocentrism is packed with meaning. The logos is not simply a word, but rather the word, that which comes before all else, that around which meaning must take place, the Law. As such, logocentrism refers to a guiding principle not just of written texts, and not just of human beings, but of the natural universe. It is precisely against this logocentrism that many contemporary critical theorists battle (through structuralism, and then through poststructuralism's simultaneous use and critique of structuralism). As Jacques Derrida, in “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1978) states:

Successively, and in a regulated fashion, the center receives different forms or names. The history of meta physics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. Its matrix … is the determination of Being as presence in all senses of this word. It could be shown that all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated an invariable presence … (essence, existence, substance, subject) … transcendentality, consciousness, God, man, and so forth. (279–80)

The notion of an essential, invariable center, of logocentrism, is that presence from which meaning emanates. A critique of logocentrism, then, must include a rigorous examination of language because within the logocentrism of our Western tradition language provides the mediating system through which thought (or meaning) is physically manifested. And language is not an ‘innocent’ vehicle to express thought; rather, it molds thought into its own conceptual categories which replicate a logocentric pattern. A poststructuralist contribution toward our understanding of language is the realization that language relies on hierarchical oppositions—between presence and absence, reality and appearance, between inside and outside, between meaning and form—and that the first term takes priority, whereas the second is conceived in relation to the first, as derivative and dependent.

In terms of linguistics, there is assumed to be a prior reality or essence that can be represented through some form of signifier; that is, the signifier is a means of providing access to these essences or reality. This is essentially an Aristotelian theory of representation, based on the idea that language represents thought, which in turn represents the world. It is these logocentric, metaphysical assertions about our world and thus, our language, which structuralist thought attempts to undermine. Saussure questioned the basis of logocentrism by positing meaning as arbitrary and determined by ‘difference’ rather than as essential, invariable, self-identical. In linguistic terms, he did not accept the representational view of meaning as that which appeared naturally between the referent (the material thing) and the sign (that which points to or reflects the referent). Rather, Saussure separated the sign itself into the acoustical or graphic signifier (that which does the pointing) and the signified (the idea or concept to which the signifier points). In the process of fixing the site of meaning within this schema, a referent becomes unimportant. To suggest that meaning is not only arbitrary, but determined by difference, is to posit a general category of conceptual meaning that must be described in terms of its outside boundaries, rather than by its contents, but is still viewed, if temporarily, as a closed system. We will be able to see this view of meaning transpire within Calvino's story.

As I slowly present “A Sign in Space,” I discuss changes in our thought about language, knowledge, world views. We should not view this movement as a linear, cause-and-effect progression, but rather as characterized by rupture, change, and chance. I do not suggest that we get closer to ‘true’ knowledge as time progresses; instead, my emphasis is on shifting paradigms of thought. In this story, we first see the character Qfwfq (I will call her/him/it ‘Q’) working within an empiricist framework, as evidenced by a positivist confidence in the representational connection between referent and signifier (i.e., without referents language is meaningless) and an assertion of the subject's control. ‘Subject’ in this context means the subject of experience, the ‘I’ that thinks, perceives, speaks. As the story progresses, Q's assumptions indicate a shift toward a structuralist paradigm, with its emphasis on meaning as arbitrary and determined by difference or relationships. This structuralist emphasis on difference then shifts into the inevitable play of poststructuralist différance. In linguistic terms, although poststructuralism adheres to structuralism's tenet that meaning is based on difference, it finds structuralism's concept of the sign—based on the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible, that is, the signifier and the signified— to be just one instance of a reliance on binary logic which continues the logocentric tradition (of basing a binary hierarchy on presence versus absence). Whereas structuralism separated even further the referent from the sign, the poststructuralists separate the signified from the signifier, speaking now of chains of signifiers (each signified becomes itself a signifier), and thus, open what had been a closed system of meaning. Poststructuralist différance (see Chapter 2) refers not only to the difference between signified and signifier (to differ), but more so, to the endless deferral of meaning as each signified becomes itself a signifier (to defer).

In short, I present “A Sign in Space” as an allegorical construction and deconstruction of Saussurean structuralism. But mine is certainly not an innocent, unbiased interpretation. In fact, this story, as well as my entire work here refutes the possibility of such an interpretation. Keep in mind that this text is dedicated to the process of reading (in the sense of opening up meanings), not of interpreting (in the sense of closing in on a particular meaning). This is a reading of a story simultaneous with a reading of some contemporary critical theory.

Right, that's how long it takes, not a day less,—Qfwfq said,—once, as I went past, 1 drew a sign at a point in space, just so I could find it again two hundred million years later, when we went by the next time around.

Our first thought here may be that Q decides to make a sign in order to tell time, but that's not the case: Q already knows (somehow) that the revolution takes 200 million years. Our first task, then, is to define ‘sign’ as presented in this context. It is, first, something that is created, and thus, controlled, by the subject, and its purpose appears to be communication and thus language, but only with Q himself: he makes the sign “just so I could find it again.” As such, the sign performs as a mirror, as that thing created by a subject which reflects and represents the subject. The sign is, at this point, a symbol or icon; that is, it is a fusion of content and form. When Q draws a sign which acts as a mirror, content and form are identical. His sign is a unitary thing.

What sort of sign? It's hard to explain because if I say sign to you, you immediately think of a something that can be distinguished from a something else, but nothing could be distinguished from anything there; you immediately think of a sign made with some implement or with your hands, and then when you take the implement or your hands away, the sign remains, but in those days there were no implements or even hands, or teeth, or noses, all things that came along afterwards, a long time afterwards. As to the form a sign should have, you say it's no problem because, what- ever form it may be given, a sign only has to serve as a sign, that is, be different or else the same as other signs: here again it's easy for you young ones to talk, but in that period 1 didn't have any examples to follow, I couldn't say I'll make it the same or I'll make it different, there were no things to copy, nobody knew what a line was, straight or curved, or even a dot, or a protuberance or a cavity.

Q's point is well taken. If we are thinking in structuralist terms, we can't yet think Q's sign. Q posits his sign as pure essence. For Saussure, however, objects are defined by their relations with other objects and not by essences of some kind. Saussure states that

the ultimate law of language is, dare we say, that nothing can ever reside in a single term. This is a direct consequence of the fact that linguistic signs are unrelated to what they designate, and that therefore a cannot designate anything without the aid of b and vice versa, or, in other words, that both have value only by the differences between them, or that neither has value, in any of its constituents, except through this same network of forever negative differences. (in Culler, 1977, 64)

Saussure would say that we can never think an ‘original’ sign: since meaning is determined by difference, every sign has to have something that is different from it in order to come to be, in order to make sense. So with sign as difference (which presupposes other items within the system for comparison), we seem to be unable to conceptualize Q's sign at all. Unless, of course, we think of the difference between sign and space. Q suggests, in fact, what our understanding of the sign will become: that which has meaning because of difference, “something that can be distinguished from something else.” But already we have moved ahead (as Q suggests) into a later paradigm of thought. In this and the following passage we see that Q positions his sign more comfortably within traditional metaphysical thought, with the sign still as symbol, where referent and sign are unitary. I conceived the idea of making a sign, that's true enough, or rather, I conceived the idea of considering a sign a something that I felt like making, so when, at that point in space and not in another, I made something, meaning to make a sign, it turned out that I really had made a sign, after all.

In other words, considering it was the first sign ever made in the universe, or at least in the circuit of the Milky Way, I must admit it came out very well.

While we could allow Q this moment of glory, we must also be allowed to question, as must he: what makes him think it's the only sign? Where did the notion of sign come from? Still, his pleasure has a familiar ring to it as we hear the echo of God's pleasure in his creation, “And He saw it was good.” First sign, The Word. In this replication of God's creation, thought and becoming are simultaneous. This is the basis, ultimately, of the ontology of Western logocentrism. God is the Word and the creator of the Word. Q thinks a sign, the thought and sign are simultaneous, and it was good.

Thus, we have the situation of the subject who, in his actions, becomes the center which determines meaning by creating a sign. Within this logic exists the possibility of the origin as something that dwells within and emanates from the subject. As well as the subject as creator of meaning, the sense of meaning here is that which is immanent with the sign. Intent and being, content and form, are inseparable; the sign consists of a referent (what something is, what can be pointed to) and the sign (that which refers to the referent, that which does the pointing). The referent and the sign—the latter of which in structuralist terms will become signified and signifier— cannot be thought separately because the sign represents exactly the referent. The ontology of Western metaphysics, and the basis for humanism, is intact at this point in the story: Q is the subject creating meaning and meaning is immanent in Q's sign. Visible? What a question! Who had eyes to see with in those days? Nothing had ever been seen by anything, the question never even arose. Recognizable, yes, beyond any possibility of error: because all the other points in space were the same, indistinguishable, and instead, this one had the sign on it.

Q's sign has ‘value’ or meaning because of its place within the (solar) system: it is not what everything else is. In Saussure's words:

concepts are purely differential, not positively defined by their content but negatively defined by their relations with other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic is that they are what the others are not. (in Culler, 1977, 36)

Q, however, looks at the sign in terms of a Western metaphysical sense of representation: he intended to make a sign, and having intended to do so, he did; the sign is the representation of his intent and the meaning is mirrored by the form.

So as the planets continued their revolutions, and the solar system went on in its own, I soon left the sign far behind me, separated from it by the endless fields of space. And 1 couldn't help thinking about when I would come back and encounter it again, and how I would know it, and how happy it would make me, in that anonymous expanse, after I had spent a hundred thousand light-years without meeting anything familiar, nothing for hundreds of centuries, for thousands of millennia; I'd come back and there it would be in its place, just as I had left it, simple and bare, but with that unmistakable imprint, so to speak, that I had given it.

Q's delight is that of the acting subject who is responsible for language, “that unmistakable imprint,” which represents him. Through ownership Q is able to recover and secure the sign's meaning from that which is ‘different’ into that which is ‘familiar’, or same. With the word “imprint” Q suggests that his sign is, to him, a material referent. But with Q's remove from his sign, we may begin to think of the terms signified and signifier as a definition of sign: the signifier as the “imprint,” the form which signifies, and the signified as the concept indicated. In this case, the idea signified is that moment of familiarity to which Q wants to return. In structuralist terms, the referent needn't be thought (or present) at all for the sign proper to be understood.

The relationship between that concept of sign (as signified) which Q remembers and the ‘graphic’ sign (signifier) by which Q tries to remember the signified, brings to the fore the first principle of Saussure's theory of language: the linguistic sign is arbitrary. Any com- bination of signifier and signified is an arbitrary entity. In our story, for example, we do not even know the form of the “imprint” Q has left behind; clearly the form itself has no direct representational bearing on the concept of sign that Q intended. This arbitrariness goes hand-in-glove with the definition of meaning or value as difference. That the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary suggests that we need to think outside the realm of fixed or absolute universal concepts. Nevertheless, Q still sees his sign as ‘fixed’.

Slowly the Milky Way revolved, with its fringe of constellations and planets and clouds, and the Sun along with the rest, toward the edge. In all that circling, only the sign remained still, in an ordinary spot, out of all the orbit's reach (to make it, I had leaned over the border of the Galaxy a little, so it would remain outside and all those revolving worlds wouldn't crash into it), in an ordinary point that was no...