Trapdoor

Barbara Godard in the introduction to Tessera Volume 9 observes

This position for the feminine as the spoken subject, rather than the subject of enunciation or subject of the utterance, poses difficulties for the woman writer.

The French version differs slightly

Cette position pour le féminin comme le sujet parlé, plutôt que comme le sujet de l’énonciation ou le sujet de l’énoncé, consitute une impasse pour l’écrivaine.

It is the claim in an earlier passage that jars

le sujet de l’énonciation est toujours excessif par rapport au sujet de l’énoncé.

the subject of the enunciation always exceeds the subject of the utterance.

The classic passage on three subjects is found in Kaja Silverman The Subject of Semiotics

[...] to distinguish between the the speaking subject (i.e. the agency of the discourse); the subject of speech (i.e. the discursive element); and the spoken subject (i.e. the subject produced through discourse). The first and third subjects may or may not coincide. The linguistic example tends to obscure the last of these categories since it projects a protagonist who functions simultaneously as speaking and spoken subjects.

Impasse and excess. Coincidence.

A speaking subject and a subject of speech can be localised. A spoken subject has other coordinates.

A translating subject, a storyteller. A translated subject, a story told. A translation subject, a virtual teller and told.

And so for day 143
06.05.2007