I don't know if it is my over-wrought brain or if I am genuinely getting stupider per crazy weekend, but honestly, I have been struggling big time with Gadamer and S/Z. It was only in class that I begin to grasp what Gadamer was driving at, despite spending much time pouring over his pages, and I'm thinking S/Z is much the same. Why does Barthes freak out about Balzac's story about a hermaphrodite? Why spend so much time obsessing over every damn word?
In Barthes' section IX 'How Many Readings?' he talks about types of readers, types of interpretations, something about pluralities.... What I liked best was his point that rereading was somehow going against societal expectations of capitalist consumption. I feel like a lot of time, when we read texts for classes that we are made to swallow them whole, then push them off into crevices in our intellectual stomachs until we regurgitate them for class or the seminar paper. Once done with those....thankfully perhaps... they fade (can any of the second years in the class really remember all that we read in our theory class or even the am. fiction class?). Maybe by freakishly analysing this story by Balzac, Barthes was making a serious attempt at preventing total consumption. The savoring of each bite of a good meal (or maybe I'm just hungry..I don't know).
In this passage Barthes touches on the idea of playing with the text, just like Gadamer did. That was sort of neat (but I'm not sure I quite understood all he was saying... can anyone help a sister out?)
Alright, enough from me.

-Corey