The following article explains what a writable is text. Here, and in most places where the word text is embedded in a semiological context, one ought to read it in an abstract sense. Although, we most often interpret it as a number of interconnected written sentences, the number of which doesn’t matter, as long as they are somehow related, in the context of semiotics the word text stand for, more or less, everything that could be interpreted.
There are two ways of understanding the term writable(writerly) text(s). One is Roland Barthes‘ scriptable, used to distinguish a specific type of literature text. Unlike the readable (lisible) text, the writable is inviting the reader to get involved in the building of the meaning of the text. Such a text is, by definition, challenging. It strives to stir the mind of the reader, as instead of hiding, it displays the codes that are constructing its narratives.
Such texts are Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses both by James Joyce, which are obvious paradigms in the written text. While the reader’s text is displayed as a finished product for consumption, the writable(writerly) one is designed as a continuous process. A process that one can join, should they choose to do so.
Writable texts are designed to be disruptive, and provocative to the dominating behavior of the bourgeoisie society. This behavior (as far as Roland Barthes, and a number of other cultural critics were concerned) is turning everything – including texts – into a product, and the products into fetishes.
These texts are way too provocative to let the reader feel the pleasure of passive consumption.
Related: Bliss(jousissanse), texts of
