The Invention of the Text

Book excerpt: The notion of text is perhaps themost used and discussed withinsocial and human sciences. Nevertheless,it is surprisingly one ofthe worst defined. Philology andLinguistics, Literary Criticism andAesthetics, Philosophy of Language,Hermeneutics, Ethnology,Psychoanalysis, Sociology, Semiotics:all these disciplines referin various ways to the “text”, tomake of it the basic object of theiranalysis or to measure the distancethey keep from it. So whatdoes “text” mean? What genealogydoes this concept have? Whyis there “no salvation outside thetext”? This book shows why thetext should be the formal model toexplain all human, social, culturaland historic phenomena and, asa consequence, the product of adouble invention: first as a socioculturalconfiguration, secondlyas an analytical reconstruction.