Speech, Writing, Print…
Within the context of postmodern theoretical writing, (phonetic) writing is a limiting medium. From Plato to Saussure and onwards to a bevy of structuralist and post-structuralist writers, words are acknowledged to have only an insecure relationship to the objects or concepts they seek to represent. For Jacques Derrida, the Western philosophical tradition has prioritised the spoken word over the written; a conditioning cultural factor he identifies as logocentricism. In the presence of a speaker we hear not only the author but the authority of a statement: written and, even more so, printed texts are denied this authority. However many claims are made in support of handwriting as an authentic representation of an individual, not least the authority invested in an autographic signature, writing, it has been claimed, does not possess the same degree of conviction as the spoken word. The printed word is, therefore, seen to be at yet one further remove from the authority of the speaker.
Given this logocentricism, it is not surprising that classical literary criticicism has focused its attention on identifying the intentions of an author in order to arrive at the authentic interpretation of a text. Where possible, this pursuit has frequently involved the use of extra-textual sources, most usually biographical or anecdotal material. Difficulties arise when there is little or nothing known about the writer and are further exacerbated when doubts are raised about the very existence of the said author, as with Homer. But, as Roland Barthes, Michael Foucault, Derrida and others have observed, if language itself lacks any certain hold on what it seeks to represent, there can be no reliable investment of authority in an author. Any possible meanings reside not in the author’s intentions but in the text and the interpretations of the readers. Quite clearly, we are all involved in this as writers, readers or both and there are forceful implications for graphic, especially typographic, designers.
Not surprisingly, it has often been writers themselves who have sought ways of breaking out of this linguistic straightjacket. A number of these in the early 20thC. sidestepped the expected semantical use of words and gave emphasis instead to the sounds themselves. At much the same time as Dadaists, like Raoul Hausmann and Kurt Schwitters “Sonate” (1923) , were reciting and printing their phonetic poems, Ronald Firbank in his novel ‘Valmouth’ (1919) invented what is perhaps best identified as pataspeak to provide dialogue between some marginal characters.
‘Yahya!’
‘Wazi jahm?’
‘Ah didadididacti, didadidiacti.’
‘Kataka mukha?’
‘Ah mawardi, mawardi.’
‘Jelly.’
Firbank’s text, like most Dadaist texts, is a literary device. On other occasions, however, the writer has gone beyond the literary alone and embraced the graphic and typographic too. This is spectacularly the case with the Italian Futurist leaders, Filippo Marinetti’s, 1919 ‘ScABrrRrraaNNG’ . In a much less aggressive but equally disruptive way, Firbank, having already had a fictional character announce that in her new novel, “There’s no plot” (Valmouth 1919), anticipating Barthes’ and Foucault’s death of the author by several decades, then represents the response of one of two characters in a short stretch of dialogue in ‘Flower beneath The Foot’ (1923) entirely by typographical (punctuational?) means.
Phonetic speech can be spoken. These examples by Firbank and Marinetti exist only on the printed page.
Likewise with Stephane Mallarme’s 1897 ‘Un Coup de Des’ (English tr.)where the literary and typographical become inseparable. To hear someone speak this text, whether in the original French or the English translation, is to severely limit the immeasurable richness of the printed page. The speaker can give only one interpretation. Mallarme’s language is itself consistently indirect, aiming to invoke, suggest, not state, but the printed text’s use of upper and lower case, italics, flexible spacing, the entire mise-en-page, invite multiple readings.
Mallarme’s poem is usually referred to in most discussions of Derrida’s 1974 ‘Glas’. Widely regarded as the definitive text of deconstructivist literature, it has spawned many off-spring (Ellen Lupton and Abbot Miller discuss several in their essay ‘Deconstruction and Graphic Design’ in ‘Design Writing Research’ (1996). In French, glas means a tolling or passing bell; ‘to toll the knell’, (The Concise Oxford French Dictionary 1970), but Derrida’s text is an open onslaught upon Western logocentricism and its phonetic bias. The mise-en-page is a continuous series of parallel, opposing commentaries and inset paragraphs without any hierarchy. The principal sources of these parallel texts are taken from the writings of Georg Friedrich Hegel (philosopher of absolute reason, the state, Christianity and the bourgeois family) and Jean Genet (convicted criminal, writer, atheist and homosexual). No single definitive interpretation is possible; this bricolage of texts easily demonstrates how printed writing can resist any claims to universal truth.
Post-1968 writers, graphic designers and typographers have frequently embraced the challenge of postmodern theoretical writing. If David Carson and Neville Brody are among the most familiar, they are far from being alone. But what now in 2005 and beyond? The linguistic straight-jacket has not gone away. Might the recent enthusiasm for Bloomsbury culture inspire an enterprising publisher to commission a typographical re-setting of Virginia Wolfe’s ‘The Waves’ (1931), in which the reflections of six characters, intercut with poetic invocations, have to-date been printed consecutively rather then in parallel? Or, more topically, how might the political rhetoric of so much media print today be exposed? Do any writers, graphic designers or typographers have suggestions?
Michael Clarke, June 2005.
Reading this blog in relation so some of the others already posted – I realise that the ‘logocentrism’ at the centre of this blog is, elsewhere here, under attack. To keep with the terminology I feel we see a reinvestigation of the phonocentric world – the earlids piece is a perfect example of showing us how ‘one-dimensional’ the text based world is – this move to a sound/sonic elaborated world is interesting in relation to design – new technology: mp3, internet, recording software etc, will transform the sonic world just like the dtp boom of the 70s and 80s – not only people producing a crass facsimile of what is already in existence – a pop version of a MSword ‘newsletter’ but a exploration of traditional ways of doing things, a wider platform for listening, and increasingly important, a proliferation of sound archives – http://www.ubu.com/ is an example of this.(although it is out of commission at the moment)
One problem tackled in the typographic representations of Marinetti, Mallarmé etc is the collision of temporal frames—reading and listening work differently; the former is always a more mediated experience whilst the latter, immediate with the potential to be unlearned–but maybe I am starting a different argument here!
/stephen styles 27/07/2005