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How can one discover truth I thought and that thought led me nowhere. No one would tell me the truth.
-Mr. Rochester in Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea 62
Truths must be told. As an object of discovery, truth is often linked to language. However, as the presumed Mr. Rochester figure in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea states, the truth is elusive and can often lead to dead ends and few guideposts. Similarly, meaning as a related object of discovery also engages with language. As Jacques Lacan outlines in Écrits, the arch of meaning between the signifier and the signified is a f luid and potentially infinite arch of analysis. When meaning cannot be fixed to a single signifier, confusion abounds. However, at what Lacan terms the point de caption, or the "bow tie," meaning is fixed so that articulation and analysis are made possible in language (681-82). Thus, as a semiotic system, language engages with structures. Importantly, these structures can also become unstable.
One theorist at the epicenter of linguistic and semiotic criticism and its effects upon social theory is Julia Kristeva. Traversing through the levels of language, her theories provide critics and scholars alike with several points de caption by which language can be explored and analyzed. This essay will discuss her analysis of language as a structure of social codes that create false ending points. Specifically, this essay traces the development of her theories of the ideologeme and intertextuality as a way to approach knowledge and perspective from multiple utterances. In so doing, textual readings, particularly of narrative, multiply from different viewpoints. As Kristeva asserts, the intertextual is not simply stories building upon other stories. Intertextuality is a process, a f luid state of oscillating interpretations that seeks to expose the plurality of meaning, both in texts and, indeed, at the most basic level of the signifier. The value of intertextual readings or re-readings of stories lies in their ability to open up a text to new perspectives while at the same time avoiding hierarchical categoriza- tions. Interrogating the structure of truth as an object of language allows the polyphonic to replace the logocentric. Therefore, the last section of this essay examines how intertextual readings can be used as tools to explore...