Assignment 1

A Frame for Reference:

In S/Z, Roland Barthes examines the notion of stereographic space and the plurality of meaning—text as a semiological multi-verse . The notion of space within text connotes that there exists a positional relationship between signifiers and signifieds, or semiological proximity, within a text; and, that this positional relationship, as it is fundamentally textual (it is read), is contextually defined by the semiological understandings of the reader—at times guided by the author, at times influenced by one’s own universe. However, it is the term stereographic which implies an illusory nature to this space. This space, much like that of the stereograph, results from the simultaneous interaction of two pictures to produce the illusion of depth—plurality is to the text, as depth is to the stereograph.

It is the interaction between the semiological universe of the reader and the semiological universe of the text that produces this plurality; thus, a text exists as the “fragments of something that has always been already read, seen, done, [or] experienced,”—the “one text is not an (inductive) access to a Model, but entrance into a network with a thousand entrances,” (Barthes 12). Conceptually, this is a multi-verse; within this multi-verse the text must exist in a plural form that mediates semiological continuity within and the indeterminance of meanings across universes to remain accessible. The step-by-step method examines this plurality, this multi-verse, by exposing fragments as the fundamental entrances into the multi-verse; by removing the “naturalness of ordinary language,” that presents the text as a “smooth surface, imperceptibly soldered by the movement of sentences,” (Barthes 13) each fundamental fragment is revealed as reversible—it is connotation that gives a text meaning, plurality, and reversibility.