Secret Coherence

Is there something holding a text all together? Some sort of hidden pin or clip that clasps the text, vice-like, in an unquestioned cohesion of intrinsic meaning? Structural discourses posit a rationality to texts that make them cohere. Such coherence precedes the text: this rational cohesion is somehow stowed away, secreted, between the noggins and behind the panels of a polished text so that no customs officer would question its passage. What happens, though, if you squeeze the clip and unclasp this cohesion?: shine a torch and tap on the thin veneer of the seemingly upright text? Out pops a whole family of vagabonds, rife with excess meaning, all unaccounted for and bewildered in the bright light of questioning. Alas, with this traffic of unharmonious meaning the borders of our poststructural sensibility are a sham.

A Surplus of Meaning

Poststructuralism is fond of talking about surpluses of meaning: namely, that differing readings of the same text produce differing meanings, all of which are tenable. I say let's redistribute these surpluses of meaning to the meaning poor. Rather than the meaning piling up rotting by the wayside we should shed it, ship it and truck it to the meaning famished around the world. In fact, why not factory farm surplus meaning so that the supply is always greater than the demand. Meaning could be our prime exported commodity, shipped, like coals to Newcastle, to meaning lean economies - those economies of discourse in need of stout butresses (not unlike fortified wines) to their weak tropes. Distilleries of stills, in intoxicating fumes of meaning labour pumping out text after text, would soon rehydrate the most meaning drained husk of authoritative interpretation.

A Garnish of Verbs

In a poststructural 'reality' (scare quotes intended) - distinct from the one where language dishes up, unproblematically, our experiences and environment whole - language not only flavours the referent; the referent becomes language. That the world were not just served up with a seasonal garnish of verbs that one can push to the side of the plate, but that the entire feast comprises the textured, earthy and medicinal language garnish. In a linguistic universe reality is only mediated reality. Bon appetite!