Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

102Demonic Texts and Textual Demonspendent on its specific context does not prevent it from existing. Theproof of this particular form of truth lies in the cure: if there is not truthin analysis, there will be no cure either. Kristeva’s notion of truth, then,emphasizes its effects on the real: it is a dimension of reality, not only ofthe signifier. 98Intertextuality is not “freedom to say everything” – that sort of conceptwould indeed make all textuality inherently demonic, and unable tofind any critical power from its endless transgressions and self-reference.Kristeva emphasised early on that dialogism is dramatic blasphemy or banter[raillerie; Lautreamont], and has rules of its own (it “accepts another law”). 99The particular way Roland Barthes has defined textuality attempts to buildon such an oppositional understanding of intertext to produce a particular,demonic interpretation of text.The Text is plural. Which is not simply to say that it has several meanings,but that it accomplishes the very plural of meaning: an irreducible (and notmerely an acceptable) plural. […] The reader of the Text may be comparedto someone at a loose end [the text is a tissue, a woven fabric] […]; whathe perceives is multiple, irreducible, coming from a disconnected, heterogeneousvariety of substances and perspectives: lights, colours […]. Allthese incidents are half-identifiable: they come from codes which areknown but their combination is unique, founds the stroll in a differencerepeatable only as difference. […] The work has nothing disturbing forany monistic philosophy (we know that there are opposing examples ofthese); for such a philosophy, plural is Evil. Against the work, therefore,the text could well take as its motto the words of the man possessed bydemons (Mark 5:9): ‘My name is Legion: for we are many.’ The plural ofdemoniacal texture [should be: “plural or demoniacal”; la texture plurielleou démoniaque] which opposes text to work can bring with it fundamentalchanges in reading, and precisely in areas where monologism appears to bethe Law […]. 100Barthes’s characterisations of the text as a new disciplinary object (“TheDeath of the Author,” 1968; “From Work to Text,” 1971) have been popular,and it is important to note how openly these formulations display anambivalent sympathy and concern with the demonic. Barthes has furtheremphasised the role of demonic polyphony for his own thought by adoptingthe same metaphor in his inaugural lecture, as he accepted the Chair of LiterarySemiology of the Collège de France. In this speech he discusses howpower has traditionally been perceived as a single object; the demonic metaphoroffers an alternative – “what if power were plural, like demons? ‘Myname is Legion,’ it could say […]. Some expect of us intellectuals that we98 Moi, “Introduction”; Kristeva 1986, 17-18. Moi is referring specifically to Kristeva’sarticle “Le vréel” (1979; translated as “The True-Real” in Kristeva 1986, 214-37).99“Word, Dialogue, and Novel”; Kristeva 1986, 41.100 Barthes, “From Work to Text” (1971); Barthes 1977, 159-60 (cf. Barthes 1984, 73-74).