DEFINITIONS OF PALIMPSESTAssorted Short Definitions
http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/ShortDefs.html
Palimpsest
From Greek roots meaning "again-scraped." A palimpsest was a manuscript which was re-used. Presumably the original writing was no longer valued and/or easily read, and a scribe decided that the expensive parchment could be better used for something else (almost all palimpsest are parchment; papyrus and paper are not suitable for re-use). In most instances the parchment would be washed and/or scraped and resurfaced, then overwritten, although there are instances of manuscripts which were overwritten without being cleaned. The under-writing of palimpsests is, of course, often difficult to read, although modern tools such as ultraviolet photography help somewhat. (Earlier chemical reagents often damaged manuscripts without doing much to improve their legibility.) But almost all palimpsests are illegible at certain points, and most have lost leaves as well. Among the more important New Testament palimpsests are C, Pe, Papr, Q, and 048 (the latter a double palimpsest -- it was overwritten twice).
http://sweet-tea.net/corina/definition.html
So the first question that I'm sure is leaping to everyone's mind is "What the *heck* is a palimpsest, anyway?" Well, to answer that, let me first refer to Webster:
1. Writing material or manuscript on which the original writing has been erased for reuse.Cool. So the first and most obvious meaning is that I've had a site before, and while I haven't exactly erased the first site this is the second version of my online journal. Also the bit about it referring to an object that reflects its history is pretty neat, too. But what drew me to the name was the pronunciation. Hah! Kidding. I know it's an unwieldy mouthful. Seriously though, what really appealed to me was the definition I found on the web:
2. An object, a place, or an area that reflects its history
PalimpsestSo that really spoke to me. I believe whole-heartedly that every word we write, every thought we commit to the page, is heavily influenced by our surroundings, our speech, our language, and (most important of all) our past. I am the sum total of my past experiences, and there is no way that I could ever extricate myself from what I have seen/heard/done, and my writing, whether it be inspired or prosaic, is the direct result of that.A palimpsest is a manuscript on which an earlier text has been effaced and the vellum or parchment reused for another. It was a common practice, particularly in medieval ecclesiastical circles, to rub out an earlier piece of writing by means of washing or scraping the manuscript, in order to prepare it for a new text. The motive for making palimpsests seems to have been largely economic--reusing parchment was cheaper than preparing new skin. Another motive may have been directed by the desire of Church officials to "convert" pagan Greek script by overlaying it with the word of God. Modern historians, usually more interested in older writings, have employed infra-red and digital enhancement techniques to recover the erased text, often with remarkable results.
Among the many important palimpsests, the most notable is the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus of which only 209 leaves have survived. Over the original fifth century text of the Bible, is written the twelfth century sermons of St. Ephrem.
For poststructuralist literary critics, the palimpsest provides a model for the function of writing. Like Freud's discussion of The Mystic Writing Pad, the palimpsest foregrounds the fact that all writing takes place in the presence of other writings--that it is not people who "speak" language, but language which "speaks" people. Palimpsests subvert the concept of the author as the sole originary source of her work, and thus defer the "meaning" of a work down an endless chain of signification.
© 1995 Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, robin
robin.escalation@ACM.org
And that, dear readers, is my palimpsest.
ERASURE IN ART: Destruction, Deconstruction, and Palimpsest.
By Rich J Galpin
February 1998Chapter 3. Palimpsest.
Figure 10. Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1960
Roland Barthes, writing in relation to Cy Twombly, who he describes as a “painter of writing” (see figure 10 left), discusses the application of marks onto a dirtied surface in terms of graffiti:
what constitutes graffiti is in fact neither the inscription nor its message but the wall, the background, the surface (the desktop); it is because the background exists fully as an object that has already lived, that such writing always comes as an enigmatic surplus... that is what disturbs the order of things; or again: it is insofar as the background is not clean that it is unsuitable to thought (contrary to the philosopher’s blank sheet of paper)... (Barthes, 1985, p.165)If we interpret erasure as graffiti in these terms, the erasure is an ‘enigmatic surplus’ to the original text. Although it could also be seen as an attempt to re-clean the background, to move it towards the blank sheet which is more ‘suitable for thought’. Except that the thought that it prepares the way for is inevitably polluted by the traces of the background that is never successfully cleaned. The erasure perhaps moves the background, the text, into a state which is more suitable to thought, but only thought in relation to itself. This can be seen as an extension of my earlier argument that the erasure invites a departure that is founded on the original text. The word palimpsest has been used frequently in the writing about the works I have been discussing:
Derrida’s erasing-erased writing - his palimpsest - is the reinscription that continually displaces the reversed hierarchies of metaphysics. (Leavey intro. to Derrida, 1980, p.11)The word palimpsest originally referred to “writing material or manuscript on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for a second writing; monumental brass turned and re-engraved on reverse side”(Conscise Oxford Dictionary, 1976). For clarity, I want to define this in terms of three stages, that is - the initial writing, then the erasure, and then the rewriting. (Phillips’ A Humument fits this structure) However, the term now often seems to be used to suggest just the first and third stages, writing directly over the top of the old text, without an erasure:..the hand has drawn something like a flower and then has begun “dawdling” over this line; the flower has been written, then unwritten; but the two movements remain vaguely superimposed; it is a perverse palimpsest...(Barthes, 1985, p.165)And more interestingly, in a form where the second and third stages, the erasure and the rewriting have merged to become one - so that the erasure is the rewriting. This use of the word is evident in Neville Wakefield’s writing about Ann Hamilton’s Tropos:...as each line is read it is singed out of existence with a small heated implement, language and text disappearing in a thin arabesque of smoke - the delicate imprint of the erased text, a palimpsest of language and the body. (Wakefield in Hamilton, 1994, p.12)The ‘palimpsest of language and body’ is the imprint of the body’s actions (the burning out) onto the book’s language. Here the erasure of the old text, and the imprint of a new sign is carried in the same action. Kosuth’s and Derrida’s erasing lines can also be seen as a ‘writing’, the inscribing of a new sign. A piece of work that I am in the process of making has a different dynamic within this structure. In this piece the second text is carefully written over the first text in a way that renders both texts unreadable. This would mean that the third stage, the rewriting, had brought about the second stage, the erasure, rather than the erasure bringing the rewriting as in the examples above. These two ideas are closely linked, but differentiated by the initial intent (even if this is fictional) and the sense of a linear progression (although obviously the erasure and the rewriting in both cases actually happens simultaneously).Freud finds a particular surface or a mechanism, which fits his theories of the human ‘perceptual apparatus’. This is a device that was marketed under the name The Mystic Pad. It is something that has now become a common children’s toy. It has the appearance of a shiny whitish-grey card that can be written on with any blunt instrument, and then erased by lifting the top two layers of the card. The device actually consists of three layers - a dark waxy base card, a thin translucent layer of waxed paper in the middle, and a transparent piece of celluloid on top. The marks made by the blunt instrument are made visible by the waxed paper and the wax card being pressed into contact. When the paper has been lifted away and returned, the close contact does not resume, and the surface appears blank once again.
The top celluloid layer is a protective layer (it prevents the waxy paper from being worn away), and the layer beneath receives the scratching. Freud makes the link:
...the perceptual apparatus of the mind consists of two layers, of an external protective shield against stimuli whose task it is to diminish the strength of excitations coming in, and of a surface behind it which receives the stimuli, namely the system. (Freud, 1976, p.230)He goes on to explain that although the device seems to erase the writing, the wax card underneath does actually permanently record the marks, which are readable “in suitable lights”. So the wax card (or slab in Freud’s writing) represents the unconscious. He then draws a further analogy that is to do with the time of writing. (Freud, 1976, p.230). This concerns the breaking of the link between the consciousness and the unconsciousness. Intermittently the consciousness is detached from the unconsciousness, leaving the consciousness in a fully receptive state, and the unconscious still bearing the knowledge of previous marks. But there is some sense of movement out towards the consciousness. As Derrida says:This hypothesis posits a discontinuous distribution - through rapid periodic impulses - of “cathectic innervations” (Besetzungsinnervationen), from within toward the outside, toward the permeability of the system. These movements are then “withdrawn” or “removed”. Consciousness fades each time the cathexis is withdrawn this way. (Derrida, 1987, p.225 - refers to Freud, 1976, p.231)This movement from “within towards the outside” is represented in the device because it is the contact of the wax card pressing up onto the paper layer that makes any scratching visible. In this scenario no consciousness is possible without the unconscious reaching out to the receptive apparatus.The analogy finally fails when it becomes apparent that the waxed paper (the consciousness) is not able to bring back writing from the wax card (the unconscious mind), that it had previously held. (Derrida, 1987, p.227 - refers to Freud, 1976, p.230)
My interest in this device is in its dual role that fills the gap between traditional writing surfaces. As Derrida says: “A sheet of paper preserves indefinitely but is quickly saturated. A slate, whose virginity may always be reconstituted by erasing the imprints on it, does not conserve traces.” (Derrida, 1987, p.222). The Palimpsest, like the Mystic Pad, fulfils both these roles, conserving traces, and being receptive to new writing. In my work that uses tippex (correction fluid) to erase text, such as No News Is Good News there is the retention of more than just traces. The original writing is preserved in it’s entirety (behind a screen of white). With correction fluid there are also physical traces on the re-prepared receptive surface. The screen (the correction fluid), which constitutes the erasure, carries a trace of the original writing in its physical shape, which is formed by the shape of the words.
The Palimpsest introduces the idea of erasure as part of a layering process. There can be a fluid relationship between these layers. Texts and erasures are superimposed to bring about other texts or erasures. A new erasure creates text; a new text creates erasure.