prevents her from counter-interpellating it, from playing with it by playing
on the proverb. Nothing prevents me from saying, wholly unexpectedly:
‘Pride comes before a vote of impeachment’ – which will force my listener
to exclaim internally (and readers will note the use of the imperfect): so he
was intending to refer to Nixon or Clinton! In uttering this sentence, I accept
my place as authorised speaker of the proverb and at the same time challenge
it – i.e. exploit it for expressive purposes. The nodal point, moment of the
retrospective provision of meaning (‘yes, it’s obviously.. .’), re-interprets a
sentence that is always-already interpreted – that is, always-already endowed
with a public meaning, which enables the speaker to recognise its meaning.
At the nodal point, the social meaning being guaranteed, the interpellated
speaker becomes the fully-fledged subject of her enunciation, for ideological-
linguistic constraints are at once implacable and defeasible, and as fated to
be exploited as syntactical and semantic constraints are.
174 • Chapter Six