The text (written and oral) is the primary given of […] all thought in the human sciences and philosophy in general[…]. The text is the unmediated reality (reality of thought and experience), the only one from which […] this thought can emerge. Where there is no text, there is no object of study, and no object of thought either.

Mikhail Bakhtin: The problem of the text in lingusitics, philology, and the human sciences