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17.10.06

The intertextual in which every text is held, it itself being the text-between of another text, is not to be confused with some origin of the text: to try to find the 'sources', the 'influences' of a work, is to fall in with the myth of filiation; the citations which go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read: they are quotations without inverted commas.(Ibid)
...Er. So to speak.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is the exact reason why I will not use the term "intertextuality" in my Thesis about references in comics. At least not about those references that are indeed traceable. But then again, most references are of a heterogenous nature, meaning they can be traceable only up to a certain point, after which everything becomes a bit inderminate and wishy-washy. Hence: supplement.
Nerdity-nerd-nerd. Nerd, nerdy nerd - nerding nerdily-dah.

Sorry.

October 18, 2006 12:17 pm  
Blogger Kristoffer Jul-Larsen said...

Aren't the intertextual and Adorno's idea of language very similar?

October 18, 2006 1:11 pm  
Blogger mrtn said...

S: Embrace your inner nerd. He just needs to be held.

I think the difference between a reference and an influence is that a reference is traceable back at least one step, while an influence is a much more diffuse, cultural set of thingies which can't be pointed to or pinned down, because we are only partially aware of them. But references are the products of influences so there you go. I think Barthes' reading of intertextuality is much more subtle and useful than just trawling for references. Unconscious influence is equally interesting, particularly if you're coming from a cultural studies perspective.

Polly:
I don't know. What's Adorno's view of language again? I haven't really read enough of that part of him.

Some schools of thought I know of that incorporate intertextuality well, though, are deconstruction and pragmatism post Rorty. And discourses (Foucault, I suppose?) must be fundamentally intertextual.

October 18, 2006 3:59 pm  

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