Intertextual Analysis
The first methodological step to take in performing an intertextual analysis is to assume that any rhetorical artifact exists within a vast network that is more often than not hidden from the view of those who ordinarily consume the rhetorical artifact. Intertextual analysis seeks to unveil this network and by doing so, to some degree, demystify the rhetorical artifact, to reveal it to be constructed from materials and for purposes that preexist the artifact.
James Porter gives us specific terminology to employ. For instance, all texts are composed of traces of other texts. Each trace both iterates and presupposes a confluence of texts, histories, values, audiences, etc., which you are to work to unveil as meticulously as possible.
|
|
"Re-Writing the Classic Text," from Kaja Silverman's The Subject of Semiotics
The following is from Kaja Silverman's Subject of Semiotics, chapter 6, "Re-Writing the Classic Text," which is devoted to explicating Roland Barthes's approach in his book S/Z to transforming a "readerly" text into a "writerly" text.
A readerly text "purports to be a transcript of a reality which pre-exists and exceeds" itself. Furthermore, the readerly text "tightly controls the play of signification by subordinating everything to this transcendental meaning" (242), that is, as McKee argues, a story is good (the aesthetic emotion readers experience is pleasurable) because all of its parts reflect a single controlling idea that "proves" itself against its counter idea.
A readerly or classic text can be transformed into a writerly text because there are always surprising elements that challenge the "transcendental meaning," or controlling value of the text (the combined controlling idea and counter idea). As Silverman defines it, the writerly text emerges at the site of the readerly text as if from an archeological dig, wherein the reader reveals "the terms of its own construction," terms which are rife with contradiction and irreducible differences (246). Rather than a single unified controlling idea (transcendental signified), there are multitudes of controlling ideas or values struggling to assert themselves as meaningful approaches to the text.
Silverman claims that Barthes' study of Balzac's "Sarrasine" succeeds in bringing together "an interpretive strategy which permits the reader (or viewer) to uncover the symbolic field inhabited by a given text, and to disclose the oppositions--sexual and other--which structure that field" (237).
What gives us access to the symbolic field is discerning the connotative or polyvalent dimension of what are normally taken to be denotative or monovalent signs (see the discussion of the polyvalent versus/and monovalent register). In our everyday experience of reading a text, we do not articulate (theorize or make explicit) the connotative dimension of a text, because it is from a connotative dimension (our controlling value) that we read a text. To the degree that we remain unaware of the connotative dimension of a given text, to that degree we are locked into the position of a "consumer" of the text and its denotative (mimetic) meanings. The text is what Barthes calls a "readerly" text.
Barthes distinguishes five codes that serve as connections between texts: the semic, hermeneutic, proairetic, symbolic, and cultural. Examining how a given text employs these codes promises to open up the connotative (the intertextual and polyvalent) dimensions of the text. For, as Silverman argues, the presence of the codes within "one text involves a simultaneous reference to all of the other texts in which it appears, and to the cultural reality which it helps to define--i.e. to a particular symbolic order" (239).
Barthes claims that a series of five codes coexist within any given text, and that reading these codes allows the text to transform from a "readerly" text into a "writerly" one.
|
Controlling ideas and counter ideas participate both in symbolic codes (opposites) and cultural codes (often unquestioned cultural controlling values that are reinforced in the text). The method here invites us to question the intertextual codes that often remain unquestioned, and make them explicit. A symbolic field is constituted by opposites. For instance, what terms would be included as connotations of Robin Hood? Depending on who is regarding this character, he is a criminal or a hero. Then you can ask, what other characters/texts participate in this symbolic field? For instance, how about Batman? In a way, then, an intertextual precursor to Batman is Robin Hood. So, as you read, pay close attention to those moments that you think about something beyond the meaning a word denotes. Being attentive to these moments will help reveal your own rhetorical stance (what you customarily project onto a text) and will help you to notice what is surprising in the text, which will then reveal connotative possibilities that challenge your rhetorical stance. In the article "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community," James Porter explains that intertextuality reveals any given text to be composed of "traces" of other texts. Any given trace "iterates" elements of other texts and at the same time "presupposes" connotative meanings that are both symbolic and cultural. |
Codes
Semic |
Defines characters, objects, and places through repetitively grouping a number of signifiers ("semes": words and phrases) around a proper name. Because this code defines characters, objects. and places, the semic code sets up relationships of power that often reinforce cultural codes.
|
Hermeneutic |
Proposes, maintains through numerous delays, and ultimately resolves enigmas. Barthes analyzes the hermeneutic code into ten parts that expand the semic code. All ten are not necessarily present:
|
Proairetic |
This code determines the causal (cause and effect), narrative sequence and syntagmatic progression. This is the denotative, mimetic dimension of the text, wherein the reader encounters the juxtaposition of events, creates a connection between the two that is already presupposed in the unfolding action, which allows the reader to predict subsequent events that follow from their causes. This code also is a function of generic (that is, formal) conventions and the expectations they generate.
|
Symbolic |
Generates unresolvable oppositions (what are called "antitheses") that structure a given conflict, and ultimately reinforce dominant cultural codes (controlling values), for instance, between male and female subjects, between those who "know" and those who are ignorant, between those who suffer and those who inflict suffering, the rich and the poor, the clever and the stupid, the simple and the complex, the rule followers and the renegades, the responsible ones and the neer-do-wells, the cops and the robbers, etc.
|
Cultural |
Controls (via commonplace controlling values) all the other codes. Cultural codes "speak the familiar 'truths' of the existing cultural order, repeat what has 'always been already read, seen, done, experienced'" (Silverman 242).
|
The following are a series of questions (provided to me by my friend and colleague Zach Warzecka of Arkansas State University) that an intertextual analysis is meant to answer:
|
1) Where/when was your artifact produced/made/developed? Who made it? What were the conditions within which it was made and how did it find its way to you?
2) What larger context is your artifact embedded within/responding to? In other words, is your artifact referencing other artifacts/events? Is it responding to the practices of a particular group of people? If so, what is this response? 3) What discourse communities does your artifact operate within? What more specific contexts does the article operate within? Does it stay predominantly within a single community or particular context? If the artifact shifts from one discursive community to another are there transformations that occur in how the artifact is received/used? 4) What influences inform/compose your artifact? -What genre conventions is your artifact operating within/calling upon? Does the artifact operate within normalized genre conventions or is it offering a fusion of different conventions (or outright disobeying/challenging a particular genre)? -How is your artifact building upon/borrowing/shifting the elements of prior artifacts/phenomena? (In other words, trace out the influences of prior work that your artifact has called upon and or been composed by- Your artifact may call upon and fuse multiple influences- such as combining disparate genres) 5) What conversations/arguments have been made about your artifact? 6) Has your artifact gone on to influence other/future artifacts? If so, what other phenomena has/did your artifact impact/influence and how? |