Hey Digitalers,
I'm on the third page of the Roland Barthes article, "From Work to Text," and am finding it difficult to read. At first I thought the "text" was some sort of abstract category from which the physical "thingness" of a book was separated, but as the article went on, I started to get the impression that there was some hierarchy going on--are all things written works, but not all works texts? I am only saying this (a) to ask if anyone else does have an idea of what the text says so that he/she may explain to me, and to put it out there that I'm having trouble with this work.
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I also found the reading really difficult, but after rereading it I think that I at least partially understand it. I took his use of the word "text" to be sort of an untangible essence provided by the ideas and feelings implicated by the work, but he says that the "text" cannot be defined so maybe I shouldn't be trying to define it. From what I got, your "thingness" theory is similar to my understanding of the "text." I thought that the hierarchy was kind of saying that all written things are works that have authorship in some way but not all things have the essence required for Barthes to consider them texts. I started trying to apply the idea to humans where the work was the body and the text the soul or the life essence, but I don't know if that comparison helped anything or if it is really applicable. The most that I could make myself understand was that many works may be the same text, so it was kind of like a single idea/emotion/essence may be expressed in a series of works but they are all the same text because the ideas/emotions/essence expressed is essentially the same. It makes sense that there are works that could lack text, I think...maybe a work that cannot be interpreted lacks text. Unfortunately it is very hard for humans to accept and/or discuss a concept that cannot be defined (I don't know if you've overheard Keaton and Taylor arguing about the definition of "play"/ whether or not a definition exists).
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