changl@ntu.edu.tw

This paper will address the role of ideologemes (Bakhtin, Kristeva) in controversy, on the basis of Emile Benveniste’s theory of discourse and subjectivity, and Francis Jacques’s failed attempt to generalize it. It will then apply this discussion to an ancient Chinese text.

According to Benveniste, subjectivity is a pronominal category, and discourse as socialized language necessarily presupposes the participation of interlocutors, i.e. the participation and interaction of two parties which are reciprocally registered as pronominal I-Thou. Now, since dialogue suggests logos carried across by multi-vocality rather than shared by bi-vocality (as suggested by the corrupted understanding of the word), the subjectivity of dialogue is multi-faceted and multi-voiced. The interlocutors that constitute this trans-subjectivity are mutually implecated, interfered, and contaminated in ideology and shape of belief.

The paper will then discuss whether is ideologemes that constitute discourse or, the other way around, whether discourse lays formal constraints upon ideology. It will further enquire, following a celebrated argument on human/fish intersubjectivity between two philosophers in the third century B.C., whether human ideologues are capable of discursive intersubjectivity.