언어와 계급 = Literal Reading as Resistance : Language, Class, the Rhetoric of Power

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper is an attempt to approach symptomatically de Man's theory of "impossibility of reading" ("metaphorical truth paradigm) in terms of Freudian obsessive neurosis. Semiologically speaking, the signifier for the obsessive neurotic is not anchored to the signified and is slided into another signifier, thus the reference being lost in the endless process of signification, that is, reality being replaced by the process of reflexive thinking, the real or the imaginary by the symbolic. Then the question to be asked is how the signifier produces reality effect, how its signified is determined in a way to act upon the reference pragmatically. This paper argues that the reference lost in the obsessive neurotic's discourse asserts itself again or reappear when the sign is read by the hysterics. The hysterics have a function of determining meanings, and of mediating the gap between the symbolic and the real, between the intellectuals and the world. The hysterics justifies the obsessive reading, and the latter parasitically depends on the former for its existence. To put it another way, metaphorical truth paradigm is unsubstantial without literal truth paradigm. In Marxist terms, the former is surplus value produced by the latter. While the obsessive reading revolves on the symbolic signification, the hysterics, whose memories are engraved on and transferred to their body, connect symbolic meaning to the real. The hysterics represent literal truth paradigm, in that they read signs as things. This paper ends with a suggestion that the intellectual's as well as the bourgeoise's obsessive reading should be transformed into the laborer's and the women's hysterical reading.