NARRATIVE STRUCTURES

To seize and annul itself the voice must enter into its own silence, it must produce its own silence. (Alain Badiou, On Beckett)

With the notion ‘shifter,’ Danish linguist Otto Jespersen refers to words that cannot be defined without reference being made to the place in which they were uttered, e.g. pronouns such as ‘I’ or ‘you,’ or words such as ‘here’ and ‘now.’ The word ‘I’ only makes reference to my person if it is I who pronounce it. If you are the one making the utterance, it instead makes reference to your person. Is it possible, then, to locate where on the physical, printed pages of a text the I or the utterance of the I is situated, and from there, to determine the place from which it speaks?