Overcoding

The reason lies in the peculiar efficacy of the state in utilizing overcoding and rendering its principles and categories society-wide.

Stylistic and ideological conventions are examples of such rules used in overcoding.

The scientific world (Welt, as opposed to the Umwelt of the animal) is the translation of all of the flows, particles, codes, and territorialities of the other strata into a sufficiently deterritorialized system of signs, in other words, into an overcoding specific to language.

Identification of the semantic status of overcodings is a necessary preliminary to translation because it serves to identify those inferences which it will be necessary to supply in the shape of informal translation (in this case, in the shape of supplementation of the formal translation).

Representation is established through successive overcodings, and the meaning of a phenomenon is given by the dominant overcoding, through a process of one code (or signifier) replacing another.

The story of Sade reminds us of the overcodings of eroticism and politics, particularly in turbulent times and acrss highly contested political terrain.