Roland Barthes’s continuing project was meaning. The way societies make meaning,
the way meaning surrounds and imprisons us, as we were some fly in some Wittgensteinian fly-bottle.
The notion of meaning,’ Lavers remarks, ‘can be said to govern the whole of his thinking,’ and she shrewdly comments that his attacks on single meaning may well be attacks on ‘meaning altogether’.
‘The act of writing is racked by the need for meaning.’ We are tempted by meaning, we celebrate meaning, meaning has an itinerary, but no matter how many meaning enticements
and traps that are pointed out, meaning does not die.
But why should we want to kill meaning? WE spend our lives with a compulsion to make sense
as I watch for meaning, like some endless spell of sentry duty.
But what about a holiday from meaning and its relentless teleologies. Barthes looked at ritual in Japan but the found that the rituals referred only to each other, their place in an overall ceremony, not to a deep or ultimate meaning-beneath-the-meaning...beneath the meaning....into infinity.
To reflect on 'meaning' is to expose the flimsy, compromised nature of all structures of thought.
'Meaning' might then become a ‘methodological horizon’ rather than a goal with its strong universalising streak.
To take the reflective approach to meaning we can then appreciate what Roland Barthes was pursuing as he confessed his addiction to the charms of thought.
We have a great deal to learn about the way we manufacture and consume meaning – ‘it is not the object but the name that creates desire; it is not the dream but the meaning that sells’.
But Meaning haunts us even when it’s gone
the way meaning surrounds and imprisons us, as we were some fly in some Wittgensteinian fly-bottle.
The notion of meaning,’ Lavers remarks, ‘can be said to govern the whole of his thinking,’ and she shrewdly comments that his attacks on single meaning may well be attacks on ‘meaning altogether’.
‘The act of writing is racked by the need for meaning.’ We are tempted by meaning, we celebrate meaning, meaning has an itinerary, but no matter how many meaning enticements
and traps that are pointed out, meaning does not die.
But why should we want to kill meaning? WE spend our lives with a compulsion to make sense
as I watch for meaning, like some endless spell of sentry duty.
But what about a holiday from meaning and its relentless teleologies. Barthes looked at ritual in Japan but the found that the rituals referred only to each other, their place in an overall ceremony, not to a deep or ultimate meaning-beneath-the-meaning...beneath the meaning....into infinity.
To reflect on 'meaning' is to expose the flimsy, compromised nature of all structures of thought.
'Meaning' might then become a ‘methodological horizon’ rather than a goal with its strong universalising streak.
To take the reflective approach to meaning we can then appreciate what Roland Barthes was pursuing as he confessed his addiction to the charms of thought.
We have a great deal to learn about the way we manufacture and consume meaning – ‘it is not the object but the name that creates desire; it is not the dream but the meaning that sells’.
But Meaning haunts us even when it’s gone
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