Amanda Mikeska

“The old Romans, as well as the rest of the heathens, were expert at making distinctions by names, where, according to their own notions, there was no difference in the things. The thinking part of them believed that there was one great Being, who made, preserved and actuated all things... When he thundered, they called him Jupiter; when he calmed the seas, Neptune; when he guided their counsels, it was Minerva, and when he gave them strength in battle, it was Mars. This was their first great distinction without difference... In time, as distinct acts and characters were attributed to them, and as their figures of each were multiplied and varied in different places, they came to consider each of them too in different views, and this was their second distinction without difference.”
― Joseph Spence, Polymetis, London, 1747

“The ‘healthy’ sign, for Barthes, is one which draws attention to its own arbitrariness—which does not try to palm itself off as ‘natural’ but which, in the very moment of conveying a meaning, communicates something of its own relative, artificial status as well. …Signs which pass themselves off as natural, which offer themselves as the only conceivable way of viewing the world, are by that token authoritarian and ideological. It is one of the functions of ideology to ‘naturalize’ social reality, to make it seem as innocent and unchangeable as Nature itself. Ideology seeks to convert culture into Nature, and the ‘natural’ sign is one of its weapons. Saluting a flag, or agreeing that Western democracy represents the true meaning of the word ‘freedom’, become the most obvious, spontaneous responses in the world. Ideology, in this sense, is a kind of contemporary mythology, a realm which has purged itself of ambiguity and alternative possibility.”
― Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction

“But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know, who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That's the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true.”
― Zadie Smith