Ginting Munte

(An imaginary conversation between Mr. Luminato and Darco)

This writing presents an imaginary conversation between two dramatic personas, Mr. Luminato and Darco. They are two adult men who accidentally get acquainted to one another, when spending leisure times in the middle of the city park. Mr. Luminato, a man in his seventies, appears to be a blind man; he wears black glasses, dressed in a bright-greyed jacket. Due to his old age, he has to use a crutch to support his two legs, which are now no more able to let him stand or walk long enough. Mr. Luminato talks in a very fatherly manner; the pace of his speech, the cool tone and color of his voice, indicate his fatherly attitude. Between his thick lips is a pipe, no matter the tobacco is lit or not. On the other hand, our Darco appears to be a very cheered-up handsome guy. He is a twenty-four-year-old young man, energetic as he can be. Darco is a want-to-know-all person. It is understandable since he is in the age of thirst for knowledge. He dresses casually, with a pair of sneakers on his feet. He does not really smoke, meaning to say that it is not a habit for him. He speaks in a warm and expressive way; with a dynamic flux of intonation, representing his young, adventurous desire of learning. Continue reading

Introduction

“Texts are therefore not structures of presence but traces and tracings of otherness. They are shaped by the repetition and transformation of other textual structures,” said John Frow in his ‘Intertextuality and Ontology’[1]. These definitive sentences are one of the ten theses he proposed to begin the theoretical discussion upon the term intertextuality.[2] What is vehemently interesting in intertextuality to be talked about when observing the works of art? It is its use of the voluminously spacious and diversified word: text(s). On the condition that we accept the theory of intertextuality, we are then prepared to accept that things, from the atomic to the gargantuan ones, are texts; and thus the prefix inter- indicates the interlocking connection which becomes ‘the blessed tie that binds’. This theory is then igniting a way of thinking that a textual form of creation does not stand alone in vacancy. So long as humans can track down histories, interconnections are more likely of the discovery. Continue reading

It is not excessive to say that human language itself is figurative per se. Surely, it is not uncommon to have metaphoric expression such as “Don’t be a donkey that you fall twice at the same pitfall!” in our daily language. How can then, if not for its figurative quality, our interlocutor understand the meaning of that particular speech? On one hand, when each is alienated, ‘donkey’, ‘fall twice’, and ‘the same pitfall’ might stand alone for their own semantics (and this phenomenon is called ‘literariness’). On the other, when put in the same line, they no longer speak for (and as) themselves. They are sure standing post-semantically for other possible meaningful effects (Culler, 2000:67-68). Continue reading