The question, then, is to insert the signs of language into this already-produced reality-sign---the painting; we must open out, release, and set side by side what is compact, condensed, and meshed. We must then find our way through what separates the place where “I” speak, reason, and understand from the one where something functions in addition to my speech: something that is more-than-speech, a meaning to which space and color have been added. We must develop, then, a second-stage naming in order to name an excess of names, a more-than-name become space and color---a painting. We must retrace the speaking thread, put back into words that from which words have withdrawn.


(Kristeva, 1980: 210)