Process: Barthes and the Tongue Box

Remember studying Barthes' Le Plaisir du texte (1973) in grad school. The professor asked the class which section of the book was their favourite. I answered that the table of contents at the end of the book was the section that pleased me the most, consisting of a mere list of words: Affirmation, Babel, Babil, Bords, Brio, Clivage, Communauté, Corps... Each of his fragmented texts seemed almost self-sustaining yet linked by overarching themes.

This index could serve in a sort as a hypertext with the reader making the relational links through her choices: the fragments that she selects, and the order in which she reads them. Like the web, one could enter and leave at any node in the book, and the reader is not obligated to start at the beginning but could very well choose to start at the end. Choose a word in the index, and "navigate" to the associated page.

Eve Tavor Bannet has described this open-ended and uncentered text succinctly:

“Each fragment thus becomes in effect a poem in prose: each fragment yields a plurality of significations and a number of possible relations between its diverse parts.” ("Barthes' Fictional Politics: Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes” Postscript 6, 1989, p. 23)

Tavor Bannet also emphasizes the active and performative aspect of reading. She points out how Barthes urges the reader to “imagine a discourse which could link [word fragments]” in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (25); how he saw fragments and indexing as “a new cut out (a new mapping) of the real” (Le Grain 168) (24).

In terms of a writing project, I do see the Tongue Rug as an index, a table of contents that structures multiples tongues (texts) situated in time (blog) and in space — a map with geographic/genealogical markers. The web as my medium of choice rather than the printed page means that I can track the writing progress, animate the Tongue Rug. The sladdakavring as a work in progress.