zblog

a long overdue post on the infamous z of Roland Barthes S/Z:

of which the title S/Z refers to the clash between the ‘S’ of ‘Sarrasine’, the male protagonist of the work, and the ‘Z’ of ‘La Zambinella’, the castrato with whom Sarrasine falls in love. But there is much more to learn of interest to learn of z from the XL VII. S/Z section:

SarraSine: cutomary French onomastics would lead us to expect SarraZine: on its way to the subject’s patronymic, the Z has encountered some pitfall. Z is the letter of mutilation: phonetically, Z stings like a chastising lash, an avenging insect; graphically, cast slantwise by the hand across the blank regularity of the page, amid the curves of the alphabet, like an oblique and illicit blade, it cuts, slashes, or, as we say in French, zebras; from a Balzacian viewpoint, this Z (which appears in Balzac’s name) is the letter of deviation (see the story Z. Marcas); finally, here, Z is the first letter of La Zambinella, the initial of castration, so that by this orthographical error committed in the middle of his name, in the center of his body, Sarrasine receives the Zambinellan Z in its true sense - the wound of deficiency. Further, S and Z are in a relation of graphological inversion: the same letter seen from the other side of the mirror: Sarrasine contemplates in La Zambinella his own castration. Hence the slash (/) confronting the S of SarraSine and the Z of Zambinella has a panic function: it is the slash of censure, the surface of the mirror, the wall of hallucination, the verge of antithesis, the abstraction of limit, the obliquity of the signifier, the index of the paradigm, hence of meaning.

and to think z machine was powerful!
and for those further curious about what Balzac said of z in Z. Marcus

There was a certain harmony between the man and his name. The Z. preceding Marcas, which was seen on the addresses of his letters, and which he never omitted from his signature, as the last letter of the alphabet, suggested some mysterious fatality…Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does it not prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life? What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in, begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas’ name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin is highly venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton.

Andrew Byrom’s BandAid Z becomes quite interesting with the wounding/cutting and healing/repairing oppositions coming together in one z!