The Body Sliding Meanings: The Discursive (Inter)(En)lacement of the Political on the Frontiers with the Social / O corpo deslizando sentidos: o en(tre)lace discursivo do político nas fronteiras com o social

This article aims to discuss the question of the signifying materiality of the body in the discursive interlacement of the political imbricated on the frontiers with the social, based on the works of Dan Halter. To this end, we propose a theoretical-analytical dialogue between the dialogical perspective developed by Russian Mikhail Bakhtin and the historical-materialism perspective, based on the theoretical assumptions of the French Discourse Analysis, in order to analyze the object of this study in its relation with body, memory, and discourse. In this sense, by working with the imbrication between verbal and non-verbal materiality, we intend to focus on two specific works by Zimbabwean artist Dan Halter, considering the meaning effects that slide metaphorically and metonymically to other senses of the body that unfold in different images of the subject, in view of the processes that structure the conflict and tensivity of the social from the spaces occupied by these bodies and crossed by the symbolic, by ideology, and history.


Introduction
When observing the signifying materiality of the body in its relationship with language, history and the social, the dialogue with Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin is advantageous and appropriate. In this sense, the influence of his work and the Circle is broad and rich, considering the appropriation of the Circle's concepts by several authors, such as Julia Kristeva, Jacqueline Authier-Revuz, and Tzvetan Todorov. Besides, unlike the notions of polyphony, chronotope and exotopia, for example, Bakhtin's perception on the question of the body (as a support for discourse) is not organized centrally in one of his books, but briefly commented in some of his works, such as the essay Aвтор и гэрои в эстэтичэскои дэиатэльности [Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity], 1 from 1920-1924, in which the problem of the body's cultural value appears in Bakhtin's work for the first time. This noncentrality provokes a significant a priori effect: the need to consider the question of the body in all its complexity: in its social, discursive, political, historical, and ideological dimensions. However, considering his early manuscripts: [...] Bakhtin was exploring a more dynamic notion of how the body relates to the environment, one based on the notion of endless movement and interaction. In his early thinking meaning was based on fixed position and moment; later it was in endless flux and process. I argue that even though Bakhtin is still dealing with images of bodies, his emphasis on materiality opens the possibility of a dialogue with what Guy Claxton called a New Materialism […], and more generally a more dynamic conception of the body that extends into the world (MACCAW, 2019, p.38). 2 Thus, in this article I intend to elucidate this complexity, resuming some of the main points of Bakhtin's theory (presenting concepts appropriate for this discussion) in  Press, 1990. pp.4-256. 2 MACCAW, D. Bakhtin's bodies. Bakhtiniana, v. 14, n. 3, pp.36-54, julho/set, 2019. Available at: http://www.scielo.br/pdf/bak/v14n3/2176-4573-bak-14-03-0035.pdf. Accessed on: 06 Jan. 2020. 3 Not failing to consider here the divergences and approximations between Bakhtin's theory and the French perspective of Discourse Analysis, we decided to establish a possible dialogue, which is challenging and productive at the same time, based on current discursive studies.
All content of Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-type CC-BY 4.0 the idea of art as a responsible act), which helps us to reflect on the dialogical projections of the body in/through art, considering the meanings mobilized by the body sliding through/on the frontiers with the social. To do so, the analysis is based on some snapshots of street protests in South Africa, in different historical moments, captured from Untitled -Zimbabwean Queen of Rave (2005;3:33s) and Beitbridge Moonwalk (2010; 5:24s), videos by Zimbabwean artist Dan Halter. By mobilizing the question of the body occupying different social spaces, in these videos he builds his critique of the political situation of Zimbabwe in its postcolonial era. Based on the videos, I examine how the artist perceives the demonstrations for the end of Apartheid and the xenophobia directed at refugees who left Zimbabwe to South Africa.
In this sense, considering the discursive materiality and modes of representation of the social and political body in the videos, first, I turn my attention to Bakhtin's thought regarding the question of the body. For Bakhtin, the body is the materiality of singular events and a type of signature of individuals, constituted by language, ideology, and history. It is always an unfinished body, which becomes a "whole" when contemplated by the other. Thus, according to the understanding of the Russian philosopher, what makes the body an ideological sign is its materiality -as an object -, as well as its historical materiality and ideological value. In this sense, by approaching this signifying materiality of the body 4 as a support for the discourse of struggle, militancy, resistance and protest on the frontiers with the social, I reflect on the important words of the Russian philosopher that "both body and meaning can do a cartwheel" (BAKHTIN. 1984, p.415). 5 In this vein, Bulgarian scholar Galin Tihanov outlined some phases of the Bakhtinian understanding of "body," reviewing how the idea of body was getting shape in the development of Bakhtin's and the Circle's works and taking into consideration the question of the body as a philosophical problem.
According to Tihanov (2012), 6 the 1920-1924 essay of M. Bakhtin (already mentioned here) seeks to initially delineate the limits of the individual body, which is, however, inaccessible to oneselfresulting in the idea of the "inner body" (the element All content of Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-type CC-BY 4.0 of self-consciousness, controllable) and the "outer body" (fragmented, with which one cannot act in an immediate way). The inner body completes itself through the outer body.
It is not enough in itself, but needs, above all, another one. The external body, under the Bakhtinian light, embraces the inner body, shaping a kind of unarticulated mass into a whole. This feeling of wholeness and separation "becomes the prerequisite for a desirable human existence in which the body assumes cultural value" (TIHANOV, 2012, p.168). 7 Thus, [...] Bakhtin's division of the body into internal and external originates in Max Scheler's phenomenology. Scheler speaks of the 'animate' body (Leib) and the 'physical' body (Körper)[…] to suggestsimilarly to Bakhtin -that it is someone else's feeling of sympathy directed towards my physical body that endows me with the sense of unity and with the gratifying experiencing of the boundaries of my body as a whole. Bakhtin's term sochuvstvie is a precise rendition of Scheler's Sympathie. We hear the echo of this significant concept in Bakhtin's contention that "I myself cannot be the author of my own value, just as I cannot lift myself by my own hair. The biological life of an organism becomes a value only in another's sympathy and compassion [sostradanie] with that life (BAKHTIN, 1990, p.55)" (TIHANOV, 2012, pp.167-168). 8 After his initial view on it, Bakhtin would reconsider his thinking about the body, moving it from its individual to its social and collective aspects. According to Tihanov (2012), 9 Bakhtin, under the influence of his friendship with Kanaev in the 1930s, turned to a different idea of the human body -especially in his book on Rabelais, written in the second half of the 1930s. Then, in the 1940s, Bakhtin began to reflect on the "collective body, whose identity is shaped not by drawing a boundary between the self and the other, Although Michel Pêcheux has hardly ever mentioned Bakhtin and his Circle, 12 the French philosopher highlights, in his epistemological position, that all science is opposed to an ideology. He considers the Russian philosopher studies as a type of "return to a pretheoretical state" (i.e., pre-scientific). Moreover, Orlandi (1997), based on Pêcheux, criticizes Bakhtin and Voloshinov's Ideology of Life, and what she calls a "sociologist dialogism." As a disciple of Louis Althusser: [...] Pêcheux expanded Althusser's reflection to think about the role of language in society: for him, language "inevitably reflected the class struggle, bringing, closely linked to its production, the marks of formation / reproduction / transformation of the conditions in which it was produced" (INDURSKY, 1997, p.20) since language was one of the forms of ideology manifestation. Moreover, the ideological apparatus of the State were places for the transformation of production relations and not simply the reproduction of the ideology of the dominant class, as Althusser argued (PORTO; SAMPAIO, 2013, p.99-100). 13 Perhaps a possible point of convergence and approximation of their thought refers to the relationship between language and ideology. Although, in his last writings, the French theorist incorporated "notions of Bakhtin, such as constitutive heterogeneity (GREGOLIN, 2008), it was not possible for him to develop this dialogue, probably because he had no access to other texts by Bakhtin and the Circle" (PORTO; SAMPAIO, 2013, p.92). 14 Maybe it would be more appropriate to think about a shift: in Pêcheux's proposal, it leads to the notions of meaning effects and imaginary formations; in 12 One of the few instances occurs in Pêcheux's La langue introuvable (1983), coauthored with Françoise Gadet. 13 In original: "[...] Pêcheux ampliou a reflexão de Althusser para pensar o papel da linguagem na sociedade: para ele, a linguagem "refletia inevitavelmente a luta de classes, trazendo, intimamente ligada à sua produção, as marcas de formação/reprodução/transformação das condições em que foi produzida" (INDURSKY, 1997, p.20), porquanto a linguagem era uma das formas de manifestação da ideologia, e os aparelhos ideológicos do Estado eram lugares de transformação das relações de produção, e não simplesmente a reprodução da ideologia da classe dominante, conforme argumentava Althusser. By building bridges between the I and the other, I propose a dialogue between Bakhtin's thought and the historical materialism perspective of Pêcheux that he calls "a materialist theory of discourse" (1982, p.60), 15 considering their different epistemological positions. This dialogue will help to broaden the purview of my theoretical-analytical take on the body present in different textualities, from its representations in Art.

Body, Chronotope and Discourse
Starting from the thought developed throughout the work of Bakhtin that the collective body is established through an experience of transgressive union (not being a mere unitary entity), I will focus on the question of the body as discourse and on the body textualized in different signifying materialities, such as the artistic image, film and documentary scenes, video snapshots. In this sense, I seek to show "that corporality itself is also a signifying materiality: it is discursiveness inscribed in boundary conditions of production" (AZEVEDO, 2014, p.322). 16 In the research corpus, the body is marked by the political and the symbolic. It occupies different spaces of protest and meaning in different ways, given the different conditions of meaning production, in the relation between body, space, time, and subject.
Thus, for Bakhtin, on the one hand, the body "is not separated from the rest of the world. It is not a closed, completed unit; it is unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its own limits" (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.26). 17 Then, on the other hand, it is essential to observe it from the materialistic discursive perspective, as reflected by Azevedo (2014) In the case of art, it is possible to observe different representations of the body. Some of them, which are the object of our analysis, appear in certain prototypical scenes of protests (bodies marching, raised fists, crowds on the streets, hands raising banners and posters). Therefore, such representations of the body are not only constituted in its performative aspect, in the dialogical confluence and imbrication between bodies and images, but they also interpellate different meanings (around)(of) the body in the interlacement between the verbal and nonverbal (ORLANDI, 1995), crossed by the political, the ideological, occupying different spaces, different temporalities that are determinant in the processes of signification.
All content of Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-type CC-BY 4.0 Taking into account, for example, the time-space relation, the Bakhtinian notion of chronotope leads me towards the reflection on how body and subject are placed on borders of meaning, from the experience of the streets and public spaces and from the discursiveness of the protests, which is forged in the temporality of manifestations and social-political struggles. The spaces of protests are the meeting point between heterogeneous bodies discursively crossed by ideology and history. In this sense, as Marilia Amorim points out, " [...] in the encounter, the temporal definition (at that moment) is inseparable from the spatial definition (in that place)" (AMORIN, 2006, p.102). 22 Hence, it is possible to understand that the protests are the chronotope from which transformations stem and in which (as observed) bodies and individuals are placed, displacing themselves and (re)signifying different meanings, such as "union," "struggle," "confrontation," "resistance."

Art, Protest and Body in the Works of Dan Halter
In some of Dan Halter's works 23  Using an artistic technique of overlaying images in scratch videos, Dan Halter created Untitled in a music video format (3m32s). The soundtrack is the hit song Everybody's Free (To Feel Good) by the Zambian singer Rozalla, whose stage debut was in the 1980s in Zimbabwe. She reached international fame with this dance-style song released in 1991. In the interlacing between the verses of the song and the video images, the visual and verbal materialities are articulated together in dialogical links which constitute Dan Halter's work. The chorus Everybody's free (to feel good)repeatedly reiterated, (re)sounds the production of meaning effects as of a "mouthpiece song" that moves in the discourse threads. It stands on the borders between the scenes of the European raves in contrast to the different movements of resistance and protest in the streets of Africa against the Apartheid regime, which appear in parts of the music video.
The Apartheid policy, led by successive National Party governments in South Africa over the years of 1948 to 1994, was a regime of racial segregation in which the rights of the majority of the population were curtailed by the government formed by a white minority. After the massacre in Sharpeville on March 21, 1960, in the context of the period of decolonization, international critics against that segregationist political regime began to emerge. As a result, many of the popular movements of the anti-Apartheid ideology gained ground in different African countries. In this sense, the first scenes of the video (0:08s) of Untitled, in which many bodies of militants appear in protest, 24 trying to break down the iron railings of the gates in a public space (Image 1), are thus crossed by an ideology of social struggle, the struggle for freedom against a segregationist political system (in contrast to images of crowds of young people gathered at rave festivals on the streets of Europe, indicating, in this case, not a political struggle only, but also a form of "expression" and "celebration" of freedom). 24 Here the question of the discursiveness of the protest in the constant work of the political is considered in its relation with the symbolic. [...] In real-life speech the social essence of discourse stands out more clearly, more distinctly, and the connection between utterance and the surrounding social environment is more readily susceptible to analysis. Discourse in life is obviously not self-sufficient. It arises from the nonverbal real-life situation and maintains a very intimate connection with it. Moreover, discourse is directly filled with that life and may not be detached from it without losing its sense (VOLOSHINOV, 1983, p.10). 26 Based on the author's reflections on the indissociability between life, discourse and art, it is possible to observe, on the other hand, that "it is the material interlacing between the verbal and the visual that enables the formulated criticism" (LAGAZZI- RODRIGUES, 2011, p.11). 27 In this case, it can be said that this is a criticism that goes points out, highlighting that: The dynamic editing, reminiscent of 1980s British scratch videos, draws a parallel between two situations that lose their confrontational potential upon being recontextualized through media. The rave movement, once linked to a denial of the yuppie lifestyle, becomes an empty fad; the contestation of African movements seems devoid of a cause. The freedom of dancing as a manner of protesting and of protest as a dance is framed by the rectangle of television, which is made into a metaphor for a process of appropriation and emptying. 28 This emptying (deleting) effect, put in evidence, passes inevitably through the process from which other senses are silenced (ORLANDI, 1992), producing certain textuality. We can see the superposing of images of young people (and their bodies) in the crowd, in Europe, and the bodies of militants occupying the streets of Zimbabwe in South Africa:

Image 2. Crowd of young people in European raves
Image 3. Bodies gathered in Zimbabwe protests These scenes (Images 2 and 3) mark, thus, the confluence between different temporalities and different spaces, which passes through the filming spectrum of the All content of Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-type CC-BY 4.0 dynamic edition through art, and operates discursively, producing these meaning effects.
Reflecting with Nilton Milanez, images register "the movement of bodies in a succession of scenes [...] making other images resurrect in us, which form a chain of displacements in the movement of meanings" (MILANEZ, 2011, pp.36-37). 29 From this analytical perspective, it is important here to emphasize, according to Lagazzi (2011), that both the "intersection of different materialities" and "the significant material imbrication": […] emphasize that it is not a matter of analyzing an image and the speech and musicality, for example, as additions to each other, but rather of analyzing the different signifying materialities one intermingled with the other (LAGAZZI, 2011, p.402). 30 Hence, the visual language which is also the place of failure, holes, mistake, erasure is constituted by producing such meaning effects that escape from the total apprehension of the symbolic, being that something which always returns through different modes of signification. According to V. Vološinov: A sign does not simply exist as a part of a realityit reflects and refracts another reality. Therefore, it may distort that reality or be true to it, or may perceive it from a special point of view, and so forth. Every sign is subject to the criteria of ideological evaluation […] (VOLOŠINOV, 1986, p.10). 31 In this analysis, considering the important parallel between the materiality of the Thus, by observing the images of these bodies in struggle, the author describes that: [...] the approach of the protesters is announced by a sharp cry: "Amandla!"which, in zulu and xhosa, means "power." The answer comes from the crowd, in chorus: "Awethu!" ("For us!"). The images start to [...] focus on the movement of resistance to apartheid. They are young people who at gunpoint sing songs of protest, evoking their leaders: Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela. They carry posters in which we read: [...] "Freedom, justice and peace, now!"; "How long will we be humiliated, kicked, strangled, beaten, raped, and killed?" (BRAZ DIAS, 2012, pp.110-111 Taking into account the discourse of the body mobilized in the relation with the other, there is the sliding and (re)displacement of meanings in the memory paths in which the said, the already said and the pre-constructed meanings are reformulated.
In this sense, the imbrication 39 between the verbal materiality (the watchwords, the chants sung in the marches) and the visual formulations of the body (fists in the air, arms given in movements together) seems to resonate also Voloshinov's reflection that the intonation establishes a firm link between the verbal discourse and the extraverbal contextgenuine, living intonation moves verbal discourse beyond the border of the verbal (VOLOSHINOV, 1983, p.18

Bodies and Subjects Under Surveillance
At There is the body that watches another body under surveillance. And there is also the surveillance of the body and the body being watched by the eye of the "guards." Meanings slide, and others are being slid. There is the body, the image of the body and Metaphorically, it is observed how image projects, in the object in focus, the repressed meanings in condensation (LAGAZZI, 2014b). Thus, it is possible to notice, from these scenes, a relation of otherness by a drifting process. Metonymically, the image marks the lack in the meanings sliding by the reiteration of the close-up view of the object in focus: the guns (in hands or at waists) of the policemen watching the crowd. Being metaphorized into prototypical images of protests, these sense-of-vigilance effects work on the boundaries between saying and not saying, silence and gesture in an ever-moving structure.
Another work of Dan Halter that I have selected for this analysiswhich also addresses this crucial issue of the body under surveillanceis the video Beitbridge Moonwalk (2010). In it, the artist portrays the political-social problem of xenophobia directed at Zimbabwean refugees living in South Africa. The video (part of the Videobrasil Cultural Collection since the 17th edition of the Festival) is inspired by the story of an immigrant who illegally crosses the border between these two countries, without being noticed by the police authority and without leaving traces that pointed to his direction. The immigrant states that he has crossed the bridge between the two countries. In this case, its mention to Michael Jackson's "moonwalk" dance reinforces the ironic tone of Dan Halter's sociopolitical and cultural criticism.
Here, I try to understand, according to Vološinov, that if a "word is a bridge thrown between myself and another. If one end of the bridge depends on me, then the other depends on my addressee. A word is the territory shared by both addresser and addressee, by the speaker and his interlocutor" (VOLOŠINOV, 1986, p.86), body language is also the link of this relationship, for example, through the reconstitution (artistic intervention) of the crossing of the Zimbabwean immigrant, who is seen at the border between the citizen and the refugee (image 8). The allusion to the moonwalk steps in Michael Jackson's dance is an invitation to this exteriority of the discourse that runs through space, time, and visuality, and works as a strategy used by the refugee. The steps backwards in dance, in relation to the origins of the "moonwalk," have historically been used by different artists since the 1930s, such as This relation between different bodies is configured from a set of angles, in an interplay of images and reference. The spectator of the video, from an X-angle, can observe the immigrant doing his moonwalk. For an observer in that scenario this perception is only possible in a certain position and in a certain angle.
Similarly, this relation of walking backwards cannot be grasped by the static image (as observed here), but only through a succession of moving body scenes. It is important to make this observation to elucidate precisely from the thoughts of Lagazzi (2012) that language "is structurally flawed, constitutively incomplete, and capable of (re)associations" (LAGAZZI, 2012, p.1 During the video, the body-landscape-silence relationship comes into play, contrasting with the sound of the wind and the noise of some vehicles passing by the bridgeas it is possible to observe in one of the video scenes (0:29s), in which the image of a refugee walking backwards when crossing the bridge is represented. Body, space and individual divide the screen with the passage of a white truck (Image 9). In this sense, to think about the silence, according to Sabino (2008, p.14): [...] is to consider the other meanings (that are also possible) [...] It is to pose, as Orlandi tells us, "questions about the limits of the dialogue" [...]: "the relationship with the other as being a contradictory relation" (p.49). In this case, to understand the connection of the subject with the silence is to see the opacity of the other manifest, which, like silence, is not visible, but becomes visible by discursive theoretical-practical methods. 46

Final Considerations
The marches and the bodies on the streets and the public spaces, the meanings of the dance (the raves, the Toyi-Toyi, the moonwalk) slide in the discourse threads, for example, in the crossing of the refugee, which has, in the bridge, the symbolic place (space) of reference marked by an instant (temporally) marked by the very duration of the crossing, which allows this body to mean differently from its movement: movements of meaning, meanings in movement, bodies that place discourse in the borders with the social (also in movement).
In view of these considerations, therefore, what is perceived, in the fabric of the social, political and discursive, is that both the immigrant's account and the South African movements against Apartheid are rebuilt by the gaze of Art as a sort of (re)constitution of movements that are indissoluble in history and interpellated by (re)formulated senses that are updated in memory. Thus, one can observe the experience, for example, of a refugee operating "in confluence with memory as a type of discursive window where meanings overflow: many are revealed; many are silenced" (SABINO, 2008). 47