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Page 148
6. The Temptation of Deconstruction
So far, it seems that the ideal Joycean reader affected by an ideal insomnia is a paramount model of a decontructionist reader for whom any text is an inexhaustible nightmare. For such a reader any true interpretation is a creative misprision, every reading of a text cannot but be a truly creative one. For such a reader there will be no critical interpretation of Finnegans Wake but, rather, an infinite series of original re-creations.
I think on the contrary that Finnegans Wake is a satisfactory image of the universe of unlimited semiosis just because it is a text in its own right. An open text is always a text, and a text can elicit infinite readings without allowing any possible reading. It is impossible to say what is the best interpretation of a text, but it is possible to say which ones are wrong. In the process of unlimited semiosis it is certainly possible to go from any one node to every other node, but the passages are controlled by rules of connection that our cultural history has in some way legitimated.
Every short circuit conceals a cultural network in which every association, every metonymy, every inferential link can be potentially displayed and proved. By setting the speakers free to establish an immense number of connections, the process of unlimited semiosis permits them to create texts. But a text is an organism, a system of internal relationships that actualizes certain possible connections and narcotizes others. Before a text is produced, every kind of text could be invented. After a text has been produced, it is possible to make that text say many thingsin certain cases a potentially infinite number of thingsbut it is impossibleor at least critically illegitimateto make it say what it does not say. Texts frequently say more than their authors intended to say, but less than what many incontinent readers would like them to say.
Independent of any alleged intention of the author is the intention of the text. But a text exists only as a physical object, as a Linear Text Manifestation. It is possible to speak of text intentions only as the result of a conjecture on the part of the reader. The initiative of the reader basically consists in making a conjecture about the text intention. A text is a device conceived in order to produce its Model Reader. Such a Model Reader is not the one who makes the only right conjecture. A text can foresee a Model Reader entitled to try infinite conjectures. But infinite conjecture does not mean any possible conjecture.
How to prove that a given interpretive conjecture is, if not the only right one, at least an acceptable one? The only way is to check it upon

 
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