The Interpellation of the Text: Between ‘Pleasure’ and ‘Bliss’

Responding to Roland Barthes’s "The Pleasure of The Text". Trans. Richard Miller

Response Paper

John Ossa
ID. 917347593

Tel Aviv University

Department of English and American Studies
Wrong Language as/in Poetry
Dr. Roi Tartakovsky
March 21, 2016
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In the introduction to his Lectures on Aesthetics, the German philosopher Friedrich W.

Hegel, stated that “a work of art, at the moment of its exposure, no longer belongs to its
maker, but rather escapes from his dominion and becomes object of contemplation, of
subjective insight, before the expectation of multiple sides to be revealed” (6.i.d)1. Echoes
of this assertion are offered to us when reading Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, insofar
“[we are] offered a text” (4), of which we become addressees, “a field or a vessel for its
expansion” (6). This pair of simple affirmations, leads us to think of a text not much as just
a formal written expression, but rather as reality itself, shaped into many different ways,
and appearing right before our also multiple capacities of perception and understanding,
eventually also submitted to suffer the caprices of our interpretations. We can occupy
whether the position of the unaware spectator, who does not notice the intricacies of that
text (what Barthes will denominate “interstices” (9)), or the position of a committed reader
who goes beyond the immediate and lets himself be driven to any possible contradictions
and indecisions, experiencing also a sense of incompleteness.
It is precisely within this dialectics or better, within this struggle, where the text is exposed
and released, becoming object – perhaps also even subject (as a free entity,) – of our own
quests for making sense and of our own impulses for experiencing the richness of its
manifestation. Whatever the case it seems the text does not get shaped in itself, but rather
when having permeated us, having crossed our senses and conscience: “the text must prove
to me that it desires me” (6); and also –with regards to us as readers, – it seems we are not
complete until we face the challenge of being interpellated by the text: “the text is always
for someone [who needs to be unsettled]” (14).
Barthes will reflect on these moves by inviting the contrast between ‘pleasure’ and
‘bliss’, being the former the experience of a more canonical approach to the text, whereas
the latter, the experience of mobility, disruption and dismantling of narratives (7, 9).
Situating one’s self in this necessary tension, opens several suggestive endeavors: grasping
the rhythm of the text, occurring in those precise interstices between the read and the not
read (11); enjoying “the abrasions of the text” (12), “catching its fire” (16), getting into the
“untenable and the impossible” (22) and eventually being immersed in how language
“wounds us and seduces us” (38), by the also struggle between being accustomed to the old
and becoming anxious for novelty (40).

1
For this quotation see: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/introduction.htm. Web.
19 March 2016.
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A poem also slides away from the hands of the poet, and perhaps –because of its
specific way of having been ideated, constructed and expressed, – faces more variable
readings, even being squeezed by the interpretative capricious mood of us readers, or of our
pretended imposition of a context to frame it. While standing before a poem, we happen to
strive more between ‘pleasure’ and ‘bliss’, between scratching meanings contained in the
language of the poem and the unavoidable escapes to which the poem leads us to. A
journey could be starting if we are ready enough to get involved. That possibility might
scare the more objectivistic reader lying within us, or motivate and launch the
nonconformist reader who dares to get into the unknown. I do consider that to whoever
stands before a poetic expression, the conflict certainly needs to be experienced, if the aim
is to read poetry as it is. And here I stand with Barthes, to certainly incorporate the
following elements to endeavor the journey:
 “To denude, to know, to learn the origin and the end [of the text]” (10). I here
remain with ‘denuding’ the text, which means not stripping it off leaving it
meaningless and tasteless (totally nude and vulnerable,) but rather “gradually
unveiling” (10) what it contains inside. It might therefore mean a reading of poetry
with delicate passion (not voracity,) with a fine and tactful approach, appreciating
every single possible layer, and not rushing into understanding but getting into
contemplating. This is what I would call the ‘eschatology’ of the text: experiencing
how it provides us with its purpose, its ends, its scope and its multiple and variable
communications.
 “To make itself heard indirectly” (24): that is, inviting the surrounding
circumstances into conversation, but also allowing the many possible voices of the
poem to speak; because it certainly does not speak univocally. What is resounding
or what reverberating when reading the poem? That could be perhaps the most
interesting and appealing: the apparently tacit, the non spoken, the hidden, the
richness between the lines, the parallel dimensions therefrom opened.
 Re-signifying or re-dimensioning “the stereotype of the word repeated” (42). Poetry
is, in much, constructed out of repetitions: motifs, sounds, forms… and words.
Repetition has actually a purpose: to draw our attention as readers. But, with
Barthes, repetition needs to entail “magic, enthusiasm”, in order to strike us, to
dislocate the regular readings we make of the poetic text, and to recreate language
which “does not find its death” (6) but rather “reconstructs itself” (8).