Xenosemiotics. Toward an Alienist Materialism

Abstract

Intended as a branch of synthetic biology, xenobiology aims to design and build non-standard life forms, that is to constructively venture into biological otherness. According to this creative and speculative character, it challenges the principles of synthetic biology itself, which is tied to a fundamentally reductionist approach. Xenobiology does not treat life as a closed code, but rather as a field of ontological innovation; in this sense, it evokes a biosemiotic paradigm that accounts for sense-making and non-anthropomorphic interactions. Xenobiology, however, can also be intended as the “divergent” and most speculative part of astrobiology, namely as a theory of contact with extra-terrestrial life. According to this second meaning, it searches for and speculates on alien biologies. Building on these two meanings, the paper aims to outline a semiotic theory of otherness, or ‘xenosemiotics’, that shifts the focus from communication to morphogenetic information.