Filozofski vestnik Letnik/Volume XXIII • Številka/Number 2 • 2002 • 63-73 T H E L I M I T S O F D I S C O U R S E : A L E C T U R E O N T H E R E L A T I O N S H I P B E T W E E N "THEORY," "ART" A N D " B O D Y ' I N T H E X X C E N T U R Y MISKO SUVAKOVIC A writer without a story1 I am going to try, in front of you and on my own body,2 to mirror, index, describe and interpret the uncertain but essential relationship between "art" (literature, music, painting, theatre, opera, film) and "theory" here-and-now. In fact, as "theory,"3 I am going to name different semantically aimed ' Jean Louis Schefer: "I'm a writer without a s tory-someone who chronicles, bit by bit, his own intellectual adventure, which is articulated across a collection of multifarious objects. It's in the capriciousness of my own choices and preferences that I've found my universe, my procedures, my way of b e i n g - m y happiness." from "Preface," in: Paul Smith (ed.), The Enigmatic Body. Essays on the Arts by Jean Louis Schefer, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. xvii. 2 1 have to "admit" that chemicals, cells, tissue {la chair), physiological organisms, ana- tomical body, behavioral body, individuum, figures and my social appearances are not some firm consistent "entirety." Last autumn, while lying in the hospital, I was constantly testing, from one second to another, THAT my brain, my legs or my stomach are living separate lives - that there, in the whiteness of the hospital bed, different subjects were appearing: that of the patient, of the weak, of the reading, of the rational, of one who is stuffed with medications, of one who is indulging in fantasy, of the scared, of the resent- ful, of the humane, of the selfish, of the sick, of the one who survived ... The notion "subject" is not the term denoting entirety in which the multiple "parts" are bound to- gether. "The subject" is the assembly of hypothesis or texts which constitute, contextualize and represent this phenomenal and recognizable "I" in behavior, speech, writing or dif- ferent arts. That is why in this discourse I am speaking about the "relationship" between art, theory and body, and not about the triangle "art," "theory" and "subject." What is being discussed is the subject understood, certainly, not as the speaking individual who pronounced or wrote some text by being "above" the text, but the subject/author as the "principle of grouping discourses, as the unity and source of his meaning, as the focus of his coherency" (according to Michel Foucault). 3 David Carroll (ed.), The States of Theory: History, Art, and Critical Discourse, Stanford, Cal., Stanford University Press, 1994. Tom Cohen, Barbara Cohen, J. Hillis Miller, Andrzej 63 MIŠKO ŠUVAKOVIČ effects and appearances of the procedures of creating (making, manufactur- ing, producing) art, of delaying the effects of the work of art in speech (pa- role) and writing (ecriture); as theory I will name the processes of constructing the jargon inside artworlds, the interpolation of voices of criticism into sensu- ally anticipated figures of art, the bordering identities of different "speeches" within the social sciences and humanities, the exceptionalities and autono- mies of the functions of theory and art and the general interpretative possi- bilities of the philosophy of art. I am going to name the dramatically contradictious "return to the body"4 within classical and outside of contemporary aesthetics, as well. It is indeed a question how to identify this "big" and "difficult" problem, a polysemantic prob- lem which is concerned with the relationship between: (a) "texts" about dif- ferent material formulations (sound musical texts, pictorial painterly texts, audio-visual movie texts, total corporal-behavioural theatre and performance art texts, and texts situated within writing [ecriture]), and (b) delaying and transferring texts on thinking, talking and writing about art. By this approach I intend to persevere in the " diadisciplinarity," in the crossed out or exceeded disciplinarity, which does not allow the objectification of the relationship between "art," "theory" and "body" into a firm method, but, instead, keeps that method in a state of crisis of heterogeneous events or incidents.5 The relationship between theory and art "through" my body is the "event" or "in- cident" of the located representation or presentation. What is at stake here is the "representation" or "presentation," not the literal portrayal of "theory" and "art" through body; the constructs or figures are instrumentalized or used to provoke procedures, forms and functions of theory and art. In fact, "theory" and "art" are related through the body which becomes "I" (body-individuum- subject) in these different, blurred, oblique and flickering momentary rela- tionships. "Credible" images (reflections, iconic signs) of the theory "of ' art o r / and the art "of' theory are not created here and then; this something that is mirrored is the lack, deficit, delay, in fact, it is the "separateness" {differAnce) between theory and art "through" the body which is the "subject" only thanks to this polysemantic and contradictory relationship between art, theory and the body (the body-mind relationship). That is why as a starting thesis of this discourse I have to point to this Warminski (eds.), Material Events - Paul De Man and Afterlife of Theory, University of Min- nesota Press, Minneapolis, 2000. 4 Marina Grzinic, Fiction Reconstructed, Edition selene & Springerin, Vienna, 2000. 5 Kate Linker, "Representation and Sexuality," in: Brian Wallis (ed.), Art After Modern- ism. Rethinking Representation, New York, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1986, pp. 391-415. 64 T H E LIMITS OF DISCOURSE: A LECTURE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "THEORY," "ART" AND . "lack" (to this not entire, inappropriate, overlapping, releasing). This "lack" is created between theory and art "through" my body and it is amiable, that means, constitutive and indexical {indexing) for locating and understanding the uncertain histories7 of the relationships between theories and arts of the XX century.8 This lack, this delay or differentiation is not something that should be neglected or approximated within the "idealised" scientific models of "theory, art, and body," but on the contrary, this is precisely what should be posited as the problem of description, explanation, interpretation and dis- cussion, which should be recognised as the constitutive and bordering dis- course of each approach, in the first place, to art. The relationship between "theory," "art" and "body" is identified as the "discourse" and as the "discur- sive practice" which is established around the "lack" and the possibility of the non-coincidence of "theory" and "art" with respect to my body, which be- comes the "subject" (the section of hypothesis9). The discoursive practice is, in the most generalised semiotic sense, "the act" which posits meaning in the temporal-spatial situation in which some- body for someone is producing meaning. The "temporal-spatial situation" is not the ideal, within the aesthetic contemplation constructed "context" (ideal judgement) for the relationship between "theory," "art" and "body," but the concrete historically and geographically located "world" of material10 institu- tions and social struggles.11 The discourse or the discoursive product deter- mines that which, within the given configuration of relationship between "theory," "art" and "body," has to be said and which could be said, that is, that which can not be said, can not be heard or read. According to Michel Fou- cault, the discourse is the way in which knowledge is articulated in the con- 6 Charles Harrison, "Mapping and Filling" and Terry Atkinson/Michael Baldwin, "The Index," in: Anne Seymour (ed.), The New Art, London, Hayward Gallery, 1972, pp. 14-16, 16-19; Rosalind E. Krauss, "Notes on the Index: Part 1&2," in: The Originality of the Avant- Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge Mass., The MIT Press, 1985, pp. 196-209, 210- 219. 7 H. Aram Vesser (ed.), The New Historicism Reader, Routledge, New York, 1994; Michel Foucault, "On the Ways of Writing History" and "Return to History," in: James Faubion (ed.), Michel Foucault: Aesthetics, method and epistemology (vol. 2), Penguin Books, 1994, pp. 279-295, 419-432. 8 Charles Harrison, Art in Theory 1900-1990. An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1993. 9 Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in: Image Music Text, Nooday Press, 1978, pp. 142-148. 10 Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an In- vestigation)," in Slavoj Žižek (ed.), Mapping Ideology, London, London, Verso, 1995, pp. 100-140. 11 "Editorial," f rom magazine Razprave/Problemi no. 3-5, Ljubljana, 1975, pp. 1-10. 65 MIŠKO ŠUVAKOVIČ crete "section" of the historic society and in the institutions of establishing, regulating, submitting and understanding "power." If the above is accepted, then it can be stated that the histories of relationships between theory, art, and body in the XX century, within the limits of Western culture or its hege- monic domains of influences,12 are the discoursive formations which can be and must be identified, differentiated and anticipated in a discourse which is at the same time "of," "from" and "about" theory, art, and body. That dis- course, thus, is the "sample" by which is anticipated the uncertain "limited" or "limiting" territory and interval of individual and specific resolution of the relationship between "theory," "art" and "my body." It is not a question of some general relationship which is, "through" the universal "voice," given by a schematic (mapped, limited) ideal, whole and foreclosed all-valuable "big and undefined story." What is being discussed here are separate, often schis- matic1^ differend ) solutions, incomparable discoursive practices. The incom- parable attracts me. What has to be taken into account, from the very beginning, is that the notion of "discourse" is not determined by its characteristic metaphysical opposition or adversativity to the unknowable, unpronounceable or unspeak- able.14 The notion of discourse is derived from the "speakable" or "demon- strable" or "representable" relationship between theory and art "through" body within very specific material conditions and circumstances (institutions, apparatuses or, more abstractly, contexts) of centring or decentring some public or private "power" or "sociability." In other words, "unknowable," "un- pronounceable" or "unspeakable" are not the effects of some "pre-human chaos" or "all-human, purely natural existence." These are material discoursive products in the specific historic and geographic conditions and circumstances of social struggle, these are the ways of regulating or deregulating the rela- tionships between "theory," "art" and "body." Therefore, for the philosophy and aesthetics of art, and especially of literature, the fundamental question is not that of the "nature" or "non-nature" of the unknowable, unpronounce- able, and unspeakable, but the question of under which conditions and cir- cumstances and, of course, by what right, is that proclaimed as unknowable, unpronounceable and unspeakable. Foucault is not anticipating the "dis- course" only as "that meaning" of the speech, but as the material regulation, 12 Fredric Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetics. Cinema and Space in the World System, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995; Griselda Pollock (ed.), Generations àf Geog- raphies in the Visual Arts. Feminist Readings. London, Routledge, 1996. 13 Jean-François Lyotard, Le Differend, Paris, Minuit, 1983, p. 5. 14 Manfred Frank, Das Sagbare und das Unsagbare - Studien zur deutsche-franzosischen Hermeneutik und Texttheorie, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1990. 66 T H E LIMITS OF DISCOURSE: A LECTURE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "THEORY," "ART" AND . prohibition, resistance or classification within the society: here is the hypothesis which I would like to present tonight in order to determine the battlefield - or perhaps the very temporary stage - of the work I am performing: I suppose that the production of discourses in every society is controlled, sanctioned, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to disparage its powers and dangers, to govern its incidental events, to avoid its anxious deterrent materiality. Discourse, as psychoanalysis has shown us, is not only that which uncov- ers or covers desire, it is also the object of desire: for discourse - as history con- stantly teaches us - is not only that which expresses struggles and systems of reign, but precisely that which represents the reason and means by which the struggle is fought, and the power worth seizing. In our case, it is the struggle between "theory," "art" and "body" within the concrete historical and geographical society, it is the struggle to determine who is going to reign over the "relationship" between art, theory and body. And this struggle is taking place not only in the domain of the "verbalised," but rather in that material and essential dimension of the discourse, namely, in the dimension of the event and the incident. Thus, a thesis can be advanced, that the "unspeakable," "unpronounceable" or the "unknowable" are not those which "are" outside of or in front of a discourse (discoursive products, acts or institutions), but that they are only "through" the performing of the discourse. Vladimir Jankelevitch has perfectly obviously shown that to us, performing "through" the discourse the situation of the unpronounceable (ineffable) in music as something above, under, around or before music. More exactly, this is demonstrated to us by John Cage in his pro-Wittgensteinian and pro-Zen effort to put the "act" (performance / behaviourality) in the centre of attention when he says: "I have nothing to say and I am saying that."15 "Unspeakable," "unpronounceable" or "unknowable" are as such only in the field of a discourse which enables the indexing of the "absent." Discoursive practices "as " the relationship between theory, art, and body If one pays attention to the formulations regarding the discoursive rela- tionships between theory, art, and body in the XX century, one can notice that four typical ways of indicating, describing and interpreting exist, owing to which the "truth"16 of art is accumulated in the first place: 15 J o h n Cage, "Lecture on Nothing," in: Silence, Middletown Conn., Wesleyan Univer- sity Press, 1973, p. 109. 16 Jacques Derrida, La Vérité en peinture, Paris, Flammarion Press, 1978. 67 M I Š K O ŠUVAKOVIČ (i) a work of art precedes theory, which is mediated by the corporal response to it, (ii) theory constitutes the constitutive scope (context, frames, vignettes) of the work of art, in fact, theory is the constituent of the work of art through which the status of the "subject" for the body (creation, reception) is established, (iii)the relationship between theory, art and body is established postponably through "writing" (ecriture ), and (iv) theory is the object, "through" an unstable relationship between theory, art and body. A work of art precedes theory Intuitively lead artistic creation, "through" the body (of the creator, manu- facturer, producer), leads towards possibilities of establishing the theory of the work of art which is present here for the other body (all other recipients and consumers of the work /values/) . A work of art is a "form," it is that something which is present, like some stable or defined material order, which appears in front of the body (thanks to the specialised sense, the complex sensual body or the behavioural social and psychologically "receptive" body). The relationship between art and theory (in the first place, criticism) can be conceived of as the relationship between the production and the consumer's response to that production, and that means to its products (of work) by which the production is determined as the sensible (meaningful) produc- tion. Theory of art work is "constituted" and called "formalism" if the theo- retical response is anticipated in relation to the presence of a work as a form (of a material order). The theory of the work of art is "constituted" and named "phenomenological," if the theoretical response takes place (happens) in relation to the phenomenality of the work in front of the senses, and, in addi- tion, in relation to the anticipation of that sensual "event" in the conscious- ness of the beholder (auditor, reader, active participant in the event of recep- tion) . The theory of the work of art is "constituted" and called "structuralism" if the theoretical response to the work of art has been proposed to the con- structed model inside some "system" (or practice) within which something that we can call "existence" or "appearance" of the work of art has been inter- preted. With structuralism we are faced with the fundamental "limit" and the "becoming suspicion" in the primacy or originality of the work of art. Formalistic, phenomenal or structuralistic approaches to the relation- ship between art, body and theory are explicitly modernist "voices." In other words, we can consider as "normal," "usual" or "dominant" the centring of 68 T H E LIMITS OF DISCOURSE: A LECTURE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "THEORY," "ART" AND . the discourse on (the voice about ) the relationship of the autonomous pres- ence/appearances of art, body and theory in the modernist culture, which, in order to be connected, must be introduced into some philosophical and rep- resentative relationship of aesthetics as the philosophy of art, the philosophy of the body and meta-philosophy as a discussion of the identity of theory. Precisely upon this threefold nature: (i) the primacy or originality of the work of art in relation to theory, (ii) the autonomy of the artistic in relation to the corporal or theoretical, and (iii) based upon the representative function by which philosophy and its aesthetics secure the meta-legitimacy of the rela- tionship between "art," "body" and "theory," the formalistic-phenomenologi- cal "platform" of modernism in literature, painting, film and music is realised. The second voice: theory is the context of art The second voice17 manifests itself as the voice which the "first" (the su- premacy of the intuitive, that is, the fact that art precedes theory being only the response to the work) identifies and explains as the given and imposed "voice" in the dominant modernist culture.18 In other words, the starting point is the "thesis" that the relationship between art, theory and body is not the consequence of the "special or autonomous nature of art itself' (its "unspeak- able" metaphysical, formal, phenomenological or existentialist centring as being), but that the "concept of art" is a historical and geographical conse- quence or effect of the uncertain organising of the society, culture and worlds of art;19 therefore one can speak of some discoursive environment or atmo- sphere which precedes and prepares the possibilities of relationships between art, theory and body. This approach can be considered as "critical" centring of the discourse on the relationship between art, body and theory in the his- tory of art, culture and society. Art is anticipated as a historical or contextual function of culture and society, and this means that the "creative" and "criti- cal" are not regarded as opposed, but that the "creation" (whatever that may mean) anticipates itself as acting from "interest" or critical acting (thinking, 17 Charles Harrison, "Modernism in Two Voices," in: Essays on Art & Language, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1991, pp. 2-6. 18 Clement Greenberg, "Complaints of an Art Critic," in: Charles Harrison, Fred Orton (eds.), Modernism, Criticism, Realism, London, Harper and Row, 1984, pp. 4-8. 19 In Anglo-Saxon tradition: Arthur Danto, "The Artworld" (1964), in: Joseph Margolis (ed.), Philosophy Looks at the Arts (third edition), Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1987, pp. 155-167. In German tradition: Heinz Paetzold, NeomarxistischeAesthetikI-II: Block, Benjamin, Adomo, Marcuse, Dusseldorf, Padagogischer Verlag Schwann, 1974. In French tradition: Julia Kristeva, La Revolution du language poetique, Paris, Seuil, 1974. 69 MIŠKO ŠUVAKOVIČ behaving, producing, anticipating) within society, culture and the world of art. The fact that art, very often, covers up its theoretical "positions," does not mean that it does not have them, and that it is not, in a fundamental way, projected "through" it. Imagined in such a way, the staging of the relation- ship between "theory," "art" and "body" manifests itself historically, mediated by completely different discoursive formations, ranging from historical avant- gardes and neo-avant-gardes, to critical theory and the heterogeneous post- structuralist presentations of bordering discoursive relationships between art and culture. The function of writing (ecriture) One can advance a thesis that the relationship between theory, art, and body is "possible" and that it is given only as postponed and a relationship set apart "through" writing (ecriture), which is the tireless weaving of differences, provoking a shift and a postponement (differance), unlimited compensation, misplacement and supplementation of meaning. In other words, the subject of the discourse on the relationship between theory, art, and body does not exist, if by this we understand some sovereign loneliness or over-ordering of the writer (philosopher, theoretician) with respect to this relationship. The subject of this relationship between theory, art, and body is the system (or the practice) of relationships between the strata: "wonderful notebooks of that psychic, society, world." The trace is the erasure of the self, of one's own pres- ence, and it is constructed with the help of anxiety or pleasure taken in the inevitability of disappearance. The trace appears because of the disappear- ance of its disappearance: the disappearance of the theory in art, of the art in the body, of the body in theory, of the art in theory. It is about the heteroge- neous "map" of possible conceptions of "writing" (ecriture), from its early20 or late21 Barthesian displacement between "history" and "pleasure." It is the trans- formation of the Bakhtinian dialectical into Julia Kristeva intertextuality,22 that is, the Derridian establishment of the "deconstruction,"23 or the hetero- geneous relativisations of modernist relationships between the centre and the margins, developed by the "new criticism" in the discussions of The Yale School', the latter is the turnover of the theoretical in literature which displays 20 Roland Barthes, Le degre Zero de L'ecriture, Paris, Seuil, 1953. 21 Roland Barthes, Le plaisir du texte, Paris, Seuil, 1973. 22 Julija Kristeva, Lingvistični tekstovi - razprave, Koper, Edicija Hyperion, 2001. 23 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1978. 70 T H E LIMITS OF DISCOURSE: A LECTURE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "THEORY," "ART" AND . the "seducing" or "enjoying" the totally "material" and, often, figurative skel- eton of theory in the narratology or the new historicism, etc... In this wide and uncertain "frame," the question is raised why the relationship between theory, art, and body so fascinantly, so bewitchingly, so pliantly appears in literature? For, literature is writing (ecriture) and not only exceptional and privileged writing, but in fact - as repeatedly pointed out by Jacques Derrida - it is the "threshold" which makes itself evident between "art," "theory" and "body." The question is about the threshold of writing; about the creation of a new notion of writing which other "sciences" of society, man, culture or arts "through" literature have to go through in order to reach the writing inside their own medium - the medium of theory. This notion is called "gram" or " differance" - and according to Derrida whether it is a question of the order of the spoken or written speech, none of the elements can function as the sign without referring to some other element which, by itself, is not simply present. Because of this chaining, each "element" - phoneme or grapheme - is con- structed after the trace of other elements in the chain or system within it. This chaining, this tissue, is the text which is produced only within the transforma- tions of some other text(s). Nothing within the elements nor in the system, nowhere and never is simply present or absent. Everywhere there are only differences and traces of traces. In this way the new theory of "writing" after structuralism was established, and, with Jacques Derrida, it was derived from philosophical metaphysics, only to be conveyed in different ways of discourses on literature, painting, film, music, theatre, opera ... ,24 Theory of theory The theory of literature, but any other theory (of painting, music, opera, theatre, performance art, film) as well, could become a legitimate preoccupa- tion of philosophy, and it has not been assimilated into it, not even theoreti- cally. It contains a pragmatic and performative instant which weakens it as theory in the sense of consistency, but for that reason it gives it the character of unpredictability in the productions of the relationship between "theory," "art" and "body." On the other hand, precisely this unpredictability repre- sents the reason why the "theory" begins to observe, identify, describe, ex- 24 Peter Brunette, David Wills, Screen /Play. Derrida and Film Theory, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1989; Peter Brunette, David Wills (ed.), Deconstruction and the Visual Arts. Art, Media, Architecture. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994; David J. Levin (ed.), Opera Through Other Eyes, Stanford Cal., Stanford University Press, 1994. 71 MIŠKO ŠUVAKOVIČ plain, interpret and discuss, first of all, the "theory itself' with the help of "speech" (parole ) "from" or "about" or "through" the relationships between theory, art and body. These are the situations in which theory appears in the double function of "observing" and "reflecting." This can be regarded as the "auto-theoretical" launching of the discourse about "theory," mediated by different, unstable and altering relationships between art, body and theory within a hypothetical or real moment of history or geographical place, "through" the practice (situation, event) of "reading." Therefore, totally dif- ferent examples of expressed interest in theory in the triadic relationship between "art," "body" and "theory," have been noticed : (i) it is some sort of developed hermeneutic question about interpretation around which theory through body (body - mind1) with respect to art has been constituted, but, in order to ask the question about "theory" itself (its theoreticallity in the pragmatic literary-theoretical, non-post-or-ante-philo- sophical, and philosophical sense); (ii) it is indeed the establishment of a Wittgensteinian position, according to which theory has to be subjected to "therapy" analysis and that, in this way, aesthetics is not seen as "discourse" on art and body, but as the "meta" analy- sis and criticism of any "possible" speech and writing on art, in fact, as the meta-criticism; (iii) it is the confrontation of limits of discourse on science and theory which happened with the "fissure" within structuralism in the process of "walking" towards theories after structuralism (theories of intertextuality, narratology, Lacanian theoretical psychoanalysis, deconstruction, schizo-analysis of Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard's theory of simulacrum, theory of culture/cultural studies/ - it is about the gesture or attempt to locate, identify, describe, ex- plain and interpret the limits of science or, more dramatically, its inversion (reverse, lining) in theory as the pragmatic and material production of mean- ing and sense; (iv) it is the establishment of the concept of "anti-theoretical" as the theoreti- cal problem within the transformation (mirrored multiplication, mutations or metastasis) of the theoretical writing, as the literary writing which mani- fests its horizon of functional-narrative intergenre productions, and the shift of any discourse towards the figurai sight of narrations set in motion,25 and (v) it is the confrontation with the out-of-textual, which leads to the body itself (bio-political, behavioural-social or figurai) that enters the "game" (game or play) of the performative performing of the theoretical on the "stage;" of 25 Kathy Acker, Bodies of Work - Essays, Serpent 's Tail, London, 1997. 72 T H E LIMITS OF DISCOURSE: A LECTURE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "THEORY," "ART" AND . theatricalization as the "second stage" with respect to the sciences of litera- ture, during their long history from Aristotle to Derrida.26 Conclusion Respected ladies and gentleman, indeed, I could not miss this opportu- nity, I could not miss the possibility to, here-and-now, in front of you, on my own body, mirror, index, describe and interpret the uncertain but essential relationships between "art" (literature, music, painting, theatre, opera, film) and "theory" (of speech, writing, science, discourse) of the XX century. I could not resist that fascinating challenge, that almost insurmountable, las- civious and irresistible love triangle of "art," "theory" and "body." This is my confrontation with the discourse, since, really, the "dis-course," is, originally, the act, the here-and- there wondering, the comings and goings, the "fulfilment," the "intrigues." In this love triangle of "theory," "body" and "art," the lover really never stops wondering in his mind, trying new declarations, and constructing plots against himself.27 In the field of "ideology," in the field of the transmittance and flow of notions and ideas whose strength is precisely in that they are not perfectly addressed and that they are not clearly and harmoniously situated in some, even hypothetical centre. 26 Gregory Ulmer, "The Objects of Post-Criticism," in: Hal Foster (ed .) , Postmodern Cul- ture, London, Pluto Press, 1983. 27 Roland Barthes, Lover's Discourse/Fragments d'un discours amoureux, New York, Hill & Wang, 1979. 73