” […] what makes writing the opposite of speech is that the former always appears symbolical, introverted, ostensibly, turned towards an occult side of language , whereas the second is nothing but a flow of empty signs, the movement of which alone is significant. […] Writing, on the contrary, is always rooted in something beyond language, it develops like a seed, not like a line, it manifests an essence and holds the threat of a secret, it is anticommunication, it is intimidating. All writing will therefore contain the ambiguity of an object which is both language and coercion: there exists fundamentally in writing a ‘circumstance’ foreign to language, there is, as it were, the weight of a gaze conveying an intention which is no longer linguistic.”
Ronald Barthes, “Writing degree zero”
reblogged it from my dearest Pitsirikos
