Figurative Versus Objective Semiotics: An Epistemological Crossroads

Special report

“…What I am suggesting, to use some more metaphors, this time nautical ones introduced by Donald Preziosi's paper at the 'Social Theory' colloquium, is that we may not 'be up the creek without a paddle' but that, as someone suggested on that occasion, 'we have perhaps already landed and don't know it'. What is more, it may be our own discursive practices, for example, the disjunctions we have established (as naming practices) between semiotics, literary theory, structuralism, post-structuralism, feminism, and deconstruction, or between figurative and literal (Bouissac 1981), political and ecumenical (Herzfeld 1985;Sebeok 1979), or materialist and idealist semiotics (Anderson et al 1984), which inhibit our recognition of where we are at.…”

“…This is the context within which semiotics is produced, within the Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technic Authenticated Download Date | 6/25/15 2:47 AM mode of repetition. Models of semiosis must move from object-oriented to process-oriented varieties: and this is the source of the dramatic metaphors of a figurative semiotics (Bouissac 1981).…”

“…The problem is not the frequently invoked dichotomy materialist/idealist, to be overcome by way of systems theory in a unified perspective within the ambit of an 'ecumenical semiotics' which would overcome the divide between 'the two cultures' (Anderson et al 1984), or by an 'epistemological position'... Outside' such controversies (Bouissac 1981) which would reinscribe that very divide within semiotic practice in the form of the dichotomy figurative/literal with which the seventeenth century ushered in the era of the cogito. What is at issue is whether semiotics, masquerading as a product, artefact, and concealing the intertextual processes in and through which it is produced, will be reduced to a scientism -a semiotics of representation -which will safeguard such meaning as the mode of repetition allows, or whether it will be a critical practice which will explore the mode of production of repetition and its own history and position within that process.…”

Guest editorial. L’institution de la sémiotique: Stratégies et tactiques

“…L'authenticite de ces lignees est sujette ä caution car elles sont souvent fabriquees dans le contexte des strategies de legitimation en vue de la paradigmatisation des disciplines (Bouissac 1976). La maniere dont le passe centenaire de la somiotique actuelle est organise historiquement ä partir de Peirce et Saussure releve en grande partie d'un processus de differenciation sociologique.…”

“…Objet d'editions critiques et de commentaires interpretatifs ce texte a ete plus souvent cite qu'il n'a ete lu et medite dans sä totalite, et il est principalement connu ä travers sa glose. On oublie facilement la nature problematique de la pensee de Peirce et de celle de Saussure, et les incertitudes inherentes aux textes disponibles, quand on fait reference ä leurs oeuvres comme a des fondements a partir desquels s'est edifice la semiotique moderne (Bouissac 1982).…”