Terry Eagleton’s formulations re text and production can be less daunting when edited within their central premises. 1) Production is key. 2) Text is a production of ideology. 3) Text and performance — a production of a production (such as a theatrical performance of a text, Eagleton’s example, or critical interpretation of a text, my example) – texr and production are “analogous to the relation between grammar and speech.”

Speech is a product, not a reproduction, but of grammar; grammar is the determining structure of discourse. The character of discourse cannot be mechanically derived from it... In studying the relations between text and performance... sigh... we are studying a mode of determination which is precise and rigorous, yet one that cannot be accounted for in terms of a ‘reflection’ or ‘reproduction’. We are examining, in short, the conditions of an a priori production.