The Stroke of Writing

Abstract

The relationship between writing and space in which it is distributed is of a reciprocal presupposition. One cannot exist without creating the other. In this article we analyze three gradual forms of this relationship. In the first, which we will call normal, writing preexists before the page as a materiality and the latter is produced with the only purpose of being the receptacle of the former.

In the second, exemplified by a man that finds himself drawn to write a name on the wall, it is the space which first actively proposes itself before the subject as a page in waiting. In the third, it is the eye that selects an object of the world (a dove in flight) in order to change it into a sign and therefore the sky becomes an inscription space. These three forms involve a movement from the linguistic to the symbolic.