Misreading the Quotation (Republic): From Plato to Homer

Abstract

The quotation is normally understood as a discursive practice that makes it possible to establish a dialogue between different texts and contexts, with a polemic tone or with a harmonic one; a dialogue able to evoke new ideas and theoretic developments. In order to problematize this basic scholarly practice, I retake some of Bakhtin’s thesis about a dialogical comprehension of language – in his obstinate criticism of current linguistic models, with their psychological or structuralist approaches. Accordingly, I propound new considerations about the most recurrent forms of quotation, based on a device delineated by Antoine Compagnon, providing a brief catalogue of the types of citation, and I also present some judgments about
texts that employ it, be it in paraphrase or in a direct remission to someone else’s discourse, to elaborate new ideas. From this original catalogue, I revisit a classical case of this tradition – Homer and Plato, mainly in their tense “dialogue” as it is delineated in the Republic. By doing so, I intend to indicate the possibility of a “reading ethics”. Such ethics would mean that through the system of a “reading practice” someone else’s text would be respected in its textual and contextual specificities when used in citation. It is clear that an absolute respect for such specificities is impossible, but I would like to suggest that any ethics – and “reading ethics” could not be different – only have a chance of taking place effectively within the limits
of this impossibility itself.