While being read, in the classic sense, the text undergoes natural movements—it seems to be linear, constant—it follows the natural course of life: simplicity to complexity, beginning to end, open and continuing to closed and finished; however, the step-by-step method reveals that text exists as the simultaneous infinitude of meanings-in one universe, one connotation; in another universe, another connotation. Thus, because “connotation is a secondary meaning, whose signifier is itself constituted by a sign or a system of primary signification,” the text is plural because it is interpreted in each universe: the universe of the text, the reader, the fragment itself. In essence, the author, as they ‘finish’ a text, does not create something finished, something closed; instead, the widely accepted view of writing is reversed—the writing does not present you with perspectives to accept or reject, it is a perspective itself that enables you to write, in the writerly sense.
Barthes uses five codes:
(1) The Hermeneutic Code
(2) The Proairetic Code
(3) The Semantic Code
(4) The Symbolic Code
(5) And the Cultural Code
(6) However, I propose an additional code, Juxtaposition.
For those who do not know, you must finish to begin.
