CHAPTER FIVE

INTERTEXTUALITY

5.1. On Intertextuality

After having discussed linguistic and narratological aspects of Isa. 52:13–53:12, I shall now turn to its intertextual relations. Saussurean linguistics, with its emphasis on the difference, arbitrariness and con- vention of the linguistic sign, also challenges the significance of text, narration and culture. The universality of a linguistic model has been expressed by, among others, Barthes: “[C]ulture, in all its aspects, is a language”.1 This is related to an extended concept of text: a text does not exist as a closed system, but is bound up in relations of similarity and difference with other texts and with readers (cf. 3.7. and 3.8). This also has consequences for a concept of intertextuality. Intertextuality has been elaborated by various interpretative strategies. While some focus on the author and reference to stabilise the signifieds, others claim that if all signs are in some way differential, they convey a vast number of possible relations, all arbitrary and indeterminable, and no reading can be exhaustive or complete. The concept of intertextuality is characterised by being interdisci- plinary, influenced, for example, by linguistics, psychoanalysis and philosophy. “Intertextuality” is employed in structuralism, post- structuralism, deconstruction and Marxism, as well as cultural, post- colonial and gender studies.2 After Saussure, the linguistic sign has become a non-unitary, non- stable, relational unit, which leads into a vast network of relations of similarity and difference. Claiming that there is stable relationship between signifier and signified is the principal way in which dominant ideology maintains its power and represses marginal thoughts. If we regard the intertexts themselves as signifiers, an alternative appears.

1 R. Barthes, Mythologies (London: Vintage, 1972). Saussure also calls for the appli- cation of semiotic principles to all aspects of culture, cf. 3.7. 2 For an overview of intertextuality in biblical studies, see G. Aichele and G. A. Phillips, “Introduction: Exegesis, Eisegesis, Intergesis”, Semeia 69/70 (1996) 7–18, and P. K. Tull, “Intertextuality and the Hebrew Scriptures”, CRBS 8 (2000) 59–90. intertextuality 221

No sign, i.e. no word, phrase, sentence, plot, trope, text, genre, etc. has a meaning of its own. As is clear already, this concerns the signifier “intertextuality” as much as anything else. Also, concepts of intertex- tuality are beset by a power struggle, mixed with apologetics for and polemics concerning who “owns” its definition.

5.2. Dialogicity

The concept of intertextuality is associated with the Russian literary critic Michael Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism, by which he means that a writer when writing enters into dialogue with other texts and with reality. Bakhtin opposes a Saussurean tradition in which la langue is prioritised over la parole. He claims that without attention to a con- crete social context, Saussurean linguistics becomes just “abstract objectivism”.3 Moreover, all utterances are in dialogue by being responses to previous utterances and addressed to specific addressees.4 Due to this dialogicity, utterances are neither abstract nor individual- ised, but social, ideological and addressed to a subject by a subject. According to Bakhtin, language reflects and transforms class, insti- tutional, group, national and interests. He describes a struggle in lan- guage between centripetal and centrifugal forces. He explains this as unifying and disunifying forces and as oppositions between mono- logical and dialogical utterances.5 Monological utterances are related to the dominant ideology within society, which assumes that there is only one unified and unifying language and in which literature is dominated by the author’s voice. Dialogical utterances are character- ised by a heterogenity of voices not subject to the author’s control.6 Allen explains this argument as self-contradictory in that Bakhtin also

3 Volosinov (and Bakhtin), Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, pp. 58; 65–82. Bakhtin’s studies have been labelled “sociological poetics”, see P. M. Morris, “Intro- duction” in P. M. Morris, The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Volosinov (London: Arnold, 1996) 18. The authorship of Bakhtin and his relation to the possible co-authors Volosinov and Medvedev are disputed issues into which I will not go into further detail, but merely refer to the discussion in Morris, p. 18. 4 Volosinov (and Bakhtin), Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, pp. 86; 93–95. 5 M. M. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel” in M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagi- nation: Four Essays (University of Texas Press Slavic Series, 1; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981) 272. 6 M. M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Theory and History of Litera- ture, 8; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).