Showing papers on "Semiosphere published in 2018"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the ecological and biological dimensions of the semi-osphere and reveal how the biosemiotic undercurrents in Lotmanian thought enable the emergence of a cyclical, homeostatic model of culture that counterbalances a Modernist vision of art as a force working for unquestioned linear progress.
Abstract: The notion of semiosphere is certainly one of Lotman’s most discussed ideas. In this essay, we propose to investigate its ecological and biological dimensions, tracing them back to Vernadsky’s concept of biosphere and to Lotman’s environmental vision of art articulated in his early work, The Structure of the Artistic Text. Our investigation reveals how the biosemiotic undercurrents in Lotmanian thought enable the emergence of a cyclical, homeostatic model of culture that counterbalances a Modernist vision of art as a force working for unquestioned linear progress.
6 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose the treatment of drug trafficking as a semi-osphere of anticulture, and emphasize the contradictions inherent in the actors dwelling in this semiosphere, incorporating reflections from chaotic and barbaric processes designed to wreak havoc in Mexican society.
Abstract: Abstract In this paper we approach a current issue related to the so-called concept of narcoculture. Several works in Latin America and the United States have addressed this matter and not only accept the term narcoculture, but also stress both the symbolic and aesthetic perspectives. In order to rethink the concept of narcoculture from different angles, we appeal to Juri Lotman and Boris Uspensky’s proposals regarding the concepts of culture, non-culture and anticulture. Rather than accept and reproduce the concept of narcoculture, by means of linking Lotman and Uspensky’s approach with the standpoint of complexity thinking and transdisciplinarity, we propose the treatment of drug trafficking as a semiosphere of anticulture. We emphasize the contradictions inherent in the actors dwelling in this semiosphere, incorporating reflections from chaotic and barbaric processes designed to wreak havoc in Mexican society. The common acceptance of the concept of narcoculture does not acknowledge the current devastation and bloodshed produced by narco-traffickers and others in cahoots with the Mexican government and its militarized drug war strategy. During the last few decades, drug trafficking has inspired organized crime and their actors, spurring the representation of everyday societal features such as music, fashion, architecture, or traffickers’ social status.
6 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue for a stereoscopic reading of Lotman's Культура и взрыв (Kul’tura i zryv’) and Wilma Clark's English translation Culture and Explosion, as a second-best application of the two-language principle to Lotman’s cultural semeiotic, and illustrate some of the consequences for the semiotic study of such a reading.
Abstract: Juri Lotman offers an intriguing “two-language” principle for the study of signs, which effectively requires translation as a disruption of the unificatory regimes of individual semiospheres; and yet, problematically, he doesn’t channel his own theorizing of the semiosphere through translation, with the result that his theorizing tends to gravitate toward truth-telling, and so toward unification and stabilization. This article both argues for a stereoscopic reading of Lotman’s Культура и взрыв (‘Kul’tura i zryv’) and Wilma Clark’s English translation Culture and Explosion, as a second-best application of the two-language principle to Lotman’s cultural semeiotic, and illustrates some of the consequences for the semiotic study of such a reading.
5 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzed the relationship between the writer Ismail Kadare and his translator Jusuf Vrioni during the time when the control exercised by the regime had reached its harshest point.
Abstract: In the semiotic perspective of Lotman, a semiosphere goes through a series of explosive and gradual changes. Explosive moments generate innovation in unpredictable ways while gra- dual progress ensures novelty via succession. The fact that the Albanian semiosphere developed from stagnation to explosion is demonstrated through emblematic translation cases. With regard to these milestones, the study analyses the relationship between the writer Ismail Kadare and his translator Jusuf Vrioni during the time when the control exercised by the regime had reached its harshest point. Then, the focus is placed on the feminist author- translator Diana Culi and on the impact that her activism and her translations had during the post-communist time. Together with other young translators, Culi has brought some of the greatest and provocative writers into the Albanian culture and has employed their motifs and themes to raise awareness on gender issues in order to improve women’s life.
4 citations
16 Jan 2018
TL;DR: The authors see the literature classroom as a space where the valuable tensions between "centre" and "periphery" within a given semi-osphere can be analysed and seen as opportunities for the generation and addition of new meanings and ideas.
Abstract: This contribution is rooted in my vision of literary education as a humanistic practice devoted to expanding the students’ ideological and imaginative horizons. My efforts as a lecturer have always been aimed at exemplifying what, from my point of view, could be considered one of the main beliefs articulating ethical literary criticism: the power of literature to bring about meaningful social changes by empowering readers to extend their cosmovision beyond reductionist macro-discourses. This potential of literature can be activated by fostering a teaching practice based on some ethical principles, the anatomy of which will be modestly examined in this essay out of my personal experience and exemplified with references to the works by some writers. From a theoretical point of view, this contribution also drinks from Juri Talvet’s “call for cultural symbiosis” (2005) between ‘self ’ and ‘other’ as a way of overcoming interested separations and impoverishing mutilations. Likewise, and following Yuri M. Lotman’s cultural semiotics, my approach sees the literature classroom as a space where the valuable tensions between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ within a given semiosphere can be analysed and seen as opportunities for the generation and addition of new meanings and ideas.
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest that the economy is a core constituent of the technosphere, mediating between physical processes and human agency, and they posit the principle of bimodality, where technosphere interactions are always and everywhere in the two modes of matter-energy transformations and semiosis.
Abstract: In current debates about the Anthropocene, the notion of ‘technosphere’ has gained analytical traction. It is loosely defined as the conjunction of all technological systems embodied in artefacts that have been created by humans since the domestication of fire and the invention of the first tools. Authors such as Peter Haff argue that the technosphere can and should be investigated as a physical phenomenon. We agree but raise the question of how those features can be accounted for that are often conceived of as specifically human, such as culture, agency, consciousness and creativity. We suggest that technosphere science needs to include semiotics: All physical interactions in the technosphere are mediated via physical signs, and signs also mediate human action. This requires a fundamental rethinking of our common conceptions of doing science; especially, we advocate a richer conceptualisation of causality. We build on two classical approaches to semiotics: C.S. Peirce’s semiotics, as further developed in modern biosemiotics and Yuri Lotman’s notion of semiosphere. We posit the principle of ‘bimodality’, where technosphere interactions are always and everywhere in the two modes of matter-energy transformations and semiosis. In this framework, we suggest that the economy is a core constituent of the technosphere, mediating between physical processes and human agency. To pursue the implications of our approach, we suggest that research into the phenomenon of the city and urbanisation is a central concern of semiotic analysis of the technosphere. In the evolution of urban systems, physical aspects (such as the evolution of material networks and physical flows) always work together with semiotic aspects of social networks, to produce the semiosphere of a city.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the semiotic interactions that constituted the Jury's Court Semiosphere in three sessions of the Judicial District of Porto Alegre, in order to understand how certain fascist characteristics, thought in a micropolitical level, permeate the interactions that occur among the various members of the Jury Court.
Abstract: This paper seeks to understand how certain fascist characteristics, thought in a micropolitical level, permeate the interactions that occur among the various members of the Jury Court. For this, it describes the semioticinteractions that constituted the Jury’s Court Semiosphere in three sessions of the Jury’s Court of Judicial District of Porto Alegre, in order to ascertain how these characteristics are translated and tensioned in the relations that are established between nucleus and periphery of this semiosphere. The paper isbased on the observational method of Antonio Carlos Gil as technical means of obtaining data, that resulted in a descriptive research, according to Cleber Cristiano Pradanov and Ernani Cesar de Freitas. The analysis is based on Semiotics of Culture concepts, mainly addressed by Iuri Lotman and IreneMachado, concerning to the codifications being in several areas of culture. There are also references to reflections of Umberto Eco, on different types of fascism, and Roland Barthes, on political and fascist aspects of language. It also explores the relations between fascism and power based on Deleuze, Guattari, and Michel Foucault. The focus of the work is directed towards a reading of the translations and the tensions that occurred in those trials. It discusses the dynamics established among members of the Jury’s Courtfocusing on the structurality of language, perceiving a strong power dispute that is manifested in the fascist characteristics that permeate those relations. It is noted that micropolitical actions against power are limited by semiosphere high codification and description level, which establish a practically insurmountableborder between nucleus and periphery. This reveals that micropolitical level tends to reproduce what is established macro politically.
2 citations
25 Jan 2018
TL;DR: From an anthroposemiotic perspective, Garcia Gavidia et al. as mentioned in this paper explain why the presence of trade names written in another language different of Spanish in Venezuela is an expression of identity/otherness conflict.
Abstract: From an anthroposemiotic perspective, this paper aims to explain why of the presence of trade names written in another language different of Spanish in Venezuela. The notion of identity by Garcia Gavidia (2005) and Andacht (2001) was used, as well as violence and symbolic efficacy by Bourdieu (2005, 2009), and the Semiotics of Culture by Lotman (1996, 1998, 1999, 2000). An approach was made from the rationalist-deductive epistemological perspective (Padron Guillen, 2001, 2003), and using the hypothetical-deductive method to analyze a corpus represented by foreign trade names observed in Venezuela. This corpus served as an empirical control mechanism of deduction (Chacin and Padron, 1996). Results reveal that such names are an expression of identity/otherness conflict. At the same time, they can be considered as a cultural text that bursts violently into another established text, by acting within the scope of a semiosphere that become them into a device with cultural memory.
1 citations
TL;DR: This paper analyzed the use of music as text in the plays, short stories and novels of Mixail Bulgakov, focusing on the play, Zoya's apartment (Зойкинa квартира).
Abstract: The present article is a modest introduction to a larger theme that analyzes the use of music as text in the plays, short stories and novels of Mixail Bulgakov. The important contribution of Juri Lotman’s theoretical work on artistic space, the semiosphere, and the role of incorporating “texts within texts” (текст в тексте) is fundamental to our explication of the process of understanding Bulgakov’s use of music as text in a variety of its manifestations, resulting in an integrated and full-bodied textual structure that generates meanings critical to the works in which it is embedded. This analysis will focus on defining what “music as text” is for Bulgakov and specifically consider the use of music in the play, Zoya’s Apartment (Зойкина квартира).
25 Mar 2018
TL;DR: In this article, the authors define fractals as similarities between two topological structures, and propose a typology of fractal similarities, based on the topological operations of rotation, translation, and reflection.
Abstract: The article points out that the current expansion of the semiotic focus from signs and texts to whole cultures needs the development of a coherent method. It therefore proposes to establish the method through an application of the topological theory of fractals to the analysis of different kinds of symmetries in the semiosphere. Having defined fractals as resemblance between two topological structures, the article first dwells on what “ resemblance” means in the comparison of both visual and conceptual patterns; it then proposes a typology of fractal similarities, based on the topological operations of rotation, translation, and reflection. Examples of each typology are given from the fields of cultural and political analysis. The article concludes by hypothesizing that cultural semiotics might evolve into a “ pattern science”, challenging the customary disciplinary barriers between the study of regularities in nature and in culture.
27 Nov 2018
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed the semiotic parallels in the works of the Ukrainian and Polish avant-gardists of the first third of the XXth century, in particular in light of the ideas of the Lviv-Warsaw Philosophical School.
Abstract: The purpose of the research. In the first article on the semiotics of the Ukrainian and Polish avant-garde, his philosophical aesthetic and cultural context was considered, in particular, in light of the ideas of the Lviv-Warsaw Philosophical School. To continue this problem, the semiotic parallels (homology) in the works of the Ukrainian and Polish avant-gardists of the first third of the XXth century are being analyzed. On the basis of the unity of cultural, aesthetic-semiotic and art-study analysis of artistic achievements of artistic avant-gard in Ukraine and Poland, an understanding of the cultural and historical peculiarities of the creative dialogue of artists working in similar ideological and aesthetic paradigms is achieved. Research methodology. The research is based on the aesthetic-semiotic concepts of the representatives of the Lviv-Warsaw School of Philosophy (S. Baley, R. Ingardin, S. Lisse, L. Hvysteck) and the founders of the semantic philosophy of art (K. Bell, B. Croce, S. Langer, G. Rickert) and modern semiotics of culture (Y. Mukarzhovsky, Y. Loman, U. Eko). Interdisciplinary synthesis of philosophical and cultural, aesthetic and art-study approaches is used. Scientific novelty. From the standpoint of modern semiotics, for the first time, symbolic complexes and semantic contents in the works of the Ukrainian and Polish avant-garde are analyzed. Models of semiotic parallels (homologies) are created in the works of leading artists of Ukraine and Poland of the first third of the XX century. The method of extrapolation of the aesthetic-semiotic ideas of the Lviv-Warsaw School of Philosophy is used to understand the similarity and dialogism in the artistic imagery of individual artists. Conclusions. Phenomenological, intuitive, neo-positivist orientations of scientific and artistic and aesthetic thinking have caused cubistic, futuristic, abstract, and constructivist quests of avant-garde artists. The aesthetic principles of the semiosis of avant-guardism in Ukraine were laid by V. Kandinsky, K. Malevich, O. Bogomazov, in Poland - T. Piper, V. Steshinsky, G. Stazhevsky. The development of the Ukrainian and Polish avant-garde of these times is, in particular, a kind of "dialogue" between artistic groups and individual artists in Warsaw and Kiev, Krakow and Lviv. The intellectual atmosphere of these creative "competitions" is symptomatic of the scientific and philosophical positions of the Lviv-Warsaw School of Philosophy with its neo-positivist and phenomenological orientations, and especially - the semantic philosophy of art, which corresponded to the establishment of a new semiosphere of avant-garde imagery. The peculiarities of the dialogue of the artists are analyzed on the examples of aesthetic-semiotic and artistic parallels between V. Kandinsky and Y.T. Pyper (theoretical justification of the avant-garde in art), K. Malevich and V. Stshinsky and G. Stazhevsky (the search for suprematist and constructivist artistic language), O. Bogomazov and artists of the "Krakow group" (the path from Cubism and Futurism to expressive and lyrical abstraction). It is summarized that the semiotics of the Ukrainian and Polish avant-garde of the first third of the 20th century coincides in the sphere of "significant forms" of non-classics in fine arts.
TL;DR: In this paper, a model of the neuro-computational implementation of dual grounding in organism and language system is proposed, and an outline account of the interpenetration in the human biocultural niche-complex of semiosphere and technosphere, mediated by the evolution of the niche of infancy is given.
Abstract: This article focuses on the interweaving of constructive praxis with communication in ontogenesis, in phylogenesis and in biocultural niche evolution (ecogenesis), within an EvoDevoSocio framework. I begin by discussing the nature of symbolization, its evolution from communicative signaling and its elaboration into semantic systems. I distinguish between the symbol-ready and the language-ready brain, leading to a discussion of linguistic conceptualization and its dual grounding in organism and language system. There follows an outline account of the interpenetration in the human biocultural niche-complex of semiosphere and technosphere, mediated by the evolution of the niche of infancy. Symbolization (the foundation of the semiosphere) is by definition normative; the normative character of the technosphere is demonstrated by the interrelations in human development between affordance, action schema and canonical functional object schema. A model of the neuro-computational implementation of dual grounding is proposed.
TL;DR: The conviviality of sharing habitat can lead species to learn and benefit from other species' signals, even if those communications are not intended for them as mentioned in this paper, which can be interpreted as a form of modus vivendi ethics.
Abstract: The conviviality of sharing habitat can lead species to learn and benefit from other species’ signals, even if those communications are not intended for them. Purposeful interspecific signaling is also common. Forms of symbiotic semiosis, intentional and unintentional, result from repeated interactions between cohabitating species. Attunement to neighboring species’ dispositions through sharing habitat carves overlapping grooves in the semiosphere predictable for organisms to make some sense of their overlapping Umwelten. Interspecies semiosis may be less generalizable than conspecific signaling, yet these interactions nonetheless can be interpreted as a form of modus vivendi ethics.
TL;DR: Zhang et al. as mentioned in this paper proposed an analytical interpretation of the development of Yuan literati landscape painting at two levels, based on which they made a point that reclusiveness and spontaneity became the artistic pursuit of Chinese artists in the period from late 13th to late 14th century.
Abstract: Abstract Literati landscape painting was the mainstream of Chinese art in the Yuan dynasty; its keynote is the idea of yi, literally, escaping for freedom, which is represented by the notion of reclusiveness at the conceptual level and the notion of spontaneity at the formal level. Based on an analytical interpretation of the development of Yuan literati landscape painting at the two levels, this essay intends to make a point that, under the Mongol rule, reclusiveness and spontaneity became the artistic pursuit of Chinese artists in the period from late 13th to late 14th century. Employing Yuri Lotman’s theory of “semiosphere” in this study, I argue that the blueprint for the solitary world is designed by the early Yuan literati artist Zhao Mengfu, and this world is constructed by the later Yuan literati artists Huang Gongwang and Ni Zan, among others. I further describe the structure of this world as having two levels and three concentric circles, with reclusiveness as the signified central idea and spontaneous brushwork as its signifier. I then conclude that the interaction of the reclusive idea and spontaneous style semioticizes the structure, and completes the construction of the unique artistic world of Yuan literati landscape painting.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a semiological analysis of some images made by enthusiasts shared on social networks in a case of regime change: the so-called "Revolution of the Twitter "from Iran in 2009.
Abstract: The article presents a semiological analysis of some images made by enthusiasts shared on social networks in a case of regime change: the so-called "Revolution of the Twitter "from Iran in 2009. The" Twitter Revolution "is perhaps a model canonical (and archetypal) conception of the semiotic use of social media in through the last decade. The article shows some examples to describe the semiological function assumed - in a certain semiosphere - by the images made by enthusiasts (and in institutions) in construction discourse of the agents in competition in the media arena during the regime change attempt.