Those Who Fail To Reread Are Obliged

In 1850, August Salzmann Photographed, Near Jerusalem, The Road To Beith-lehem (as It Was Spelled At The Time): Nothing But Stony Ground, Olive Trees; But Three Tenses Dizzy My Consciousness: My Present, The Time Of Jesus, And That Of The Photographer, All This Under The Instance Of 'reality' - And No Longer Through The Elaborations Of The Text, Whether Fictional Or Poetic, Which Itself Is Never Credible Down To The Root.

Whereas The Work Is Understood To Be Traceable To A Source (through A Process Of Derivation Or "filiation"), The Text Is Without A Source - The "author" A Mere "guest" At The Reading Of The Text.

It Is As If The Photograph Always Carries Its Referent With Itself, Both Affected By The Same Amorous Or Funereal Immobility, At The Very Heart Of The Moving World: They Are Glued Together, Limb By Limb, Like The Condemned Man And The Corpse In Certain Tortures; Or Even Like Those Pairs Of Fish (sharks, I Think, According To Michelet) Which Navigate In Convoy, As Though United By An Eternal Coitus.

All Official Institutions Of Language Are Repeating Machines: School, Sports, Advertising, Popular Songs, News, All Continually Repeat The Same Structure, The Same Meaning, Often The Same Words: The Stereotype Is A Political Fact, The Major Figure Of Ideology.

Even Hidden In The Most Squalid Parisian Halls, Wrestling Partakes Of The Nature Of The Great Solar Spectacles, Greek Drama And Bullfights: In Both, A Light Without Shadow Generates An Emotion Without Reserve.