Signing in the Flesh: Notes on Pragmatist Hermeneutics

Abstract

This article offers an alternative to classical hermeneutics, which focuses on discursive products and grasps meaning as the play of difference between linguistic signs. Pragmatist hermeneutics reconstructs meaning through an indefinite triangulation, which brings symbols, icons, and indices to bear on each other and considers a meaningful occasion as an embodied semiotic process. To illuminate the word-body-action nexus, the discussion identifies three basic types of signifying media: (1) the symbolicdiscursive, (2) the somatic-affective, and (3) the behavioral-performative, each one marked by a special relationship between signs and their objects. An argument is made that the tension between various type-signifying media is unavoidable, that the pragmatic-discursive misalignment is an ontological condition, and that bridging the gap between our discursive, affective, and behavioral outputs is at the heart of ethical life.

Olga Shevchenko, Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow

“…That is true of Margaret Mead's inquiry into the coming of age in Samoa where she had discerned the free-wheeling spirit she longed for in her native America. The same can be said about Samuel Heilman's mentor Erving Goffman whose struggle to lift himself from the obscurity of Canadian Manitoba to international stardom is reflected in his numerous publications (Shalin 2007(Shalin , 2008. Olga Shevchenko's quest for meaning in postsoviet Russia reflects the same personal imperative.…”

Making the Sociological Canon: The Battle Over George Herbert Mead’s Legacy

“…In Germany, Joas wrote a comprehensive analysis of Mead's ideas in their historical development (1979,2001), the English translation of this influential investigation appearing in 1985. The heightened attention to Mead mirrored the growing interest in pragmatism around the world (Bernstein 1966(Bernstein , 1972(Bernstein , 1992Rorty 1979Rorty , 1982Habermas 1984Habermas , 1987Campbell 1983;Tugendhat 1986;Shalin 1986aShalin , b, 1988bShalin , 1989Shalin , 2000Shalin , 2007Shalin , 1992Halton 1986;Joas 1993Joas , 1997Shusterman 1991;Kilpinen 2000Kilpinen , 2013. Meanwhile, monographs have been added steadily to the body of Mead scholarship (Goff 1980;Baldwin 1986;Aboulafia 1986Aboulafia , 2001Cronk 1987;Rosenthal 1991;Cook 1993;Feffer 1993;Kravchenko 2006;da Silva 2007da Silva , 2008.…”

Hermeneutics and Prejudice: Heidegger and Gadamer in their Historical Setting

“…Michael Foucault made a similar point in one of his last interviews where he urged that the philosopher's life "is not to be sought in his ideas, as if it could be deduced from them, but rather in his philosophy-as-life, in his philosophical life, his ethos," that "at every moment, step by step, one must confront what one is thinking and saying with what one is doing" (Foucault 1984, p.374). How Foucault's life fits with his theoretical creed is a subject of separate investigation (Shalin, 2001(Shalin, , 2007. What concerns us presently is how the hermeneutical stance outlined above comports with its authors' personal choices.…”