the index card serves as bothexample and facilitator of the concept of the lexia.

it ispossible to view Barthes’ concept of the lexia as an almost literaltranslation of his own use of index cards for recording various ‘unitsof reading’ and other ideas and associations.

It iseven more obvious in S/Z, where Barthes develops the concept oflexias as ‘contiguous fragments’ or ‘units of reading’ that ‘will notthen be regrouped [and] provided with a metameaning’ (Barthes,1991: 13-14).