Blazing a Trail...

In the selection from Roland Barthes’ S/Z, the phrase “flickers of meaning” (p.19), in reference to the illustrative ‘semes’ that pepper any text, seemed to jump out as an unusually animated description. I liked it. A few pages later, in the Citar section (p.22), he further describes the duty of the bits of Semic code in alluding to larger ideas, stating “the semes appear to float freely, to form a galaxy of trifling data in which we read no order of importance” and that “it breaks up the signifier into particles of verbal matter which make sense only by coalescing”. I was really enjoying this imagery and then realized I was thinking of something else, a completely different sort of particle…

Now, this may sound ridiculous, but at the quantum scale of space and time exist virtual particles- earning that name because they flit in and out of existence in such a way that they cannot be directly measured because of the inherent uncertainties in measuring time and space. Although they are fleeting, virtual particles have manifested themselves in many elementary short-range interactions, including the Strong and Weak Nuclear Forces. I realized an unexpected connotation in ‘semes’ - these ethereal bits of descriptive language that singly may not carry much weight, yet collectively describe some idea, are strangely similar to the virtual particles winking in and out of space- individually immeasurable yet together responsible for the strongest fundamental forces.