Noise as (non-text)

It would be an easy concession to grant noise a space in the methodological field of textuality. Noise maps superficially to a number of textual 'characteristics'. Quoting Barthes:

"The Text practices the infinite deferment of the signified, is dilatory; its field is that of the signifier [...]. Similarly, the infinity of the signifier refers not to some idea of the ineffable (the unnameable signified), but to that of a playing; the generation of the perpetual signifier in the field of the text is realized not according to an organic progress of maturation or a hermeneutic course of deepening investigation, but, rather, according to a serial movement of disconnections, overlapping, variations" (Barthes, 171).

Noise does not aim to 'get at' meaning, to represent, nor even to carry a message. It is ultimately the negation of a message, the disruption of meaning, an obstacle that blocks or interferes with transmission. In that sense, noise appears textual. However, noise is more than just 'dilatory', creating intentional delay. The aim is total disruption, dislocation, and disorientation, even at the level of subjectivity. Noise is also more than mere play, as if the listener might flit across the multi-dimensional surface of a text, assembling coherence 'on-the-fly'. Instead, play devolves to resignation and submission. Noise becomes a total condition:

"This is music about resignation and its impossibility, and is seemingly without any logic, other than to exist. It removes the listener's resources, forcing imagination, but making itself an obstacle to imagining away from the persistence of the sounds" (Hegarty, 145).