ABSTRACT
Derrida argues that the interlinear space of literal translation is utopian and uninhabitable; it is sacred and untouchable space (1985:115). The reading provided by literal translation is a readme from the outside. Literal translation does not transfer meaning from one text to another, but it provides an intertextual site from which meanings emerge. The non-reader, the literal translation presents an unachievable goal, but also like the nonreader, literal translation points to an important limit-condition of language and meaning. It is this ideological dimension of Mark its resistance to the reader's understanding which is uncovered by a materialist reading. By playing the culturally determined pressures toward signification over against the writerly resistance, Belo's materialist reading of the gospel of Mark treads a fine line. What this postmodern theology of reading seeks is to understand the tensions between the resistance inherent in the physical aspects of a text and the ideological pressures brought to bear upon the text by its readers.
