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1. Problems of Language in Welby's Significs
2 Bakhtin's Semiotics as Philosophy
of Language
3. Rossi-Landi
between Ideologie and Scienze Umane
4.
Schaff's Theory of Meaning, Knowledge and Ideology
5. Art,
Humanism and Otherness in Lévinas 6. Sebeok's Doctrine of Signs as Global Semiotics
I. Authors referred to
Introduction The term "significs" was coined by Victoria
Lady Welby (1837-1912) toward the end of the last century to designate the
particular bend she wished to confer on her studies on signs and meaning.
Significs trascends pure descriptivism and emerges as a method for the analysis
of sign activity, beyond logico-gnoseological boundaries, and, therefore, for
the evaluation of signs in their ethical, esthetic and pragmatic dimensions. To carry out her work Welby was convinced that the
instrument at her disposal, verbal language, should be in perfect working order.
Consequently, the problem of reflecting on language and meaning in general
immediately took on a double aspect as it also surfaced in her mind as the
problem of the condition of the specific language through which she was thinking. After her death Welby was very quickly forgotten as an
intellectual and until recent times, if she was ever remembered it was as
Charles S. Peirces correspondent and not necessarily in her own right as the
ideator of significs. Her influence has gone largely unnoticed having been most
often than not unrecognized. In addition to her publications, Welby was in the
habit of discussing her ideas in her letters and to this end corresponded with
numerous intellectuals, many of whom she knew personally, including a part from
Peirce, M. Bréal, B. Russell, H. and W. James, H. Bergson, R. Carnap, A.
Lalande, F. Pollock, G.F. Stout, F.C.S. Schiller and C.K. Ogden, G. Vailati, M.
Calderoni and many others. Ogden promoted significs as a university student
during the years 1910-1911, and contrihuted to spreading Welby's ideas. Recent
research (cf. Gordon 1991; Petrilli ) has documented the influence exerted by
Welby and her significs on Ogden, and yet the importance of this relationship is
not recognized by him in The Meaning of Meaning (1923), where she is very
quickly disposed of in a footnote. A part from scattered mention of her name,
Welby's ideas in fact gave rise to the Signific Movement in the Netherlands
thanks to mediation bt the Dutch psychiatrist F. van Eden. Significs today is a fascinating topic for diverse
researchers and is gradually winning the attention it deserves. Significant
events in this direction are the re-editions of her main works promoted by A.
Eschbach and H.W. Schmitz (cf. Welby 1983, 1985), to which are connected a
series of other initiatives including publication of the volume Essays on
Significs commemorating the 150th Anniversary of Welby's birth (cf. Schmitz
1990), the International Conference of November 1986, Significs, Mathematics
and Semiotics. The Signific Movement in the Netherlands, which is also the
title of the corresponding proceedings (cfr. Heijerman-Schmitz 1991), the
publication of an anthology of her writings in Italian translation (cf. Welby
1986), my own monograph on Welby (cf. Petrilli 1998a), papers by different
scholars on various aspects of the signific movement considered both in a
historical perspective as well as the theoretical, and further work in progress
by myself as mentioned by Augusto Ponzio in his introduction to the present
issue. Welby's unpublished manuscripts, correspondence included, are available
at the York University Archives, Special Collections, in Ontario, Canada. Language problems in the study of language Welby discovered the philosophy of language as a
consequence of her interest for problems of a moral, religious and theological
order. Her first book, Links and Clues (1881), focuses on problems of
interpretation relatively to the Sacred Scriptures. Her interests in
ethico-social and pedagogical issues merged with or developed simultaneously
with her philosophico-linguistic concerns (see also the collection of her
thoughts,Grains of Sense, of 1897). As anticipated, Welby was faced with
the problem of constructing a language in which to adequately formulate her
ideas. And, indeed, a fundamental problem in reflexion on
language and meaning, on signifying processes at large, as Welby was quick to
realize, concerns the language itself in which such reflexion takes place. The
very need to coin the term "significs"–difficult to translate into
other languages, as discussed in her correspondence with such scholars as Michel
Bréal or André Lalande for the French or Giovanni Vailati for the Italian–was
a clear indication in itself of the existence of terminological obstacles to
development in philosophico-linguistic analysis. As tackled by Welby, the problem of language
immediately took on a double orientation to concern not only the object of
research, but also the very possibility of articulating discourse, that is the
medium through which reflexion on language was articulated. Welby considered the
linguistic apparatus at her disposal as antiquated and rhetorical, subject to
those same limits she wished to overcome and to those same defects she intended
to correct. Her condition was typical of a thinker living in an era
characterized by the transformation and innovation of knowledge: she was faced
with the task of communicating new ideas and to achieve this she aimed at
renewing the language through which she was communicating. Welby was particularly sensitive to everyday language
and its improvement. Indeed, on proposing the term "significs" she
kept account of the everyday expression "What does it signify?", given
its focus on the sign's ultimate value and significance beyond semantic meaning.
In her commitment to logical, expressive, behavioral, ethical and esthetic
regeneration, she advocated the need to develop a "linguistic conscience"
against the bad use of language which inevitably involved poor reasoning, the
bad use of logic, argumentative incoherence. Largely under the influence of Darwinism which she read
critically, Welby viewed the development of expression and meaning in an
evolutionary perspective. For instance her concept of "sense" is
fundamentally organismic: beyond her use of the term "sense" to
indicate the overall value of experience, the connection between sign and sense
is compared to an organism's response to environmental stimuli. Analogies of the
organismic type serve to underline the potential in language for expressive
plasticity and renewal which goes hand in hand with the development of
experience and knowledge. Welby had already turned her attention to such problems
in papers published toward the end of the last century, such as "Meaning
and Metaphor" (1893), and "Sense, Meaning, and Interpretation"
(1896). This work was developed in a volume of 1903, What is Meaning?,
and subsequently in another of 1911, Significs and Lanquage as well as
throughout a great quantity of unpublished papers available at the York Archives
(cf. Petrilli 1998a). Welby's decision to coin a new term "significs"
was largely determined by the wish to name the specific bend she conferred on
her studies of signs and meaning. And, as already mentioned, the need to coin
new terms is already an indication in itself of the terminological obstacles
holding up new developments in linguistic analysis. Given that such terms as
"semiotics" and "semantics" were already available, Welby's
commitment to this new term risked appearing as the expression of a whimsical
desire for novelty. Peirce and Vailati may be counted among those who did not
initially understand Welby on the belief that new terms could be avoided,
however she was quick to convert them to her own views by showing how
terminological availability was in fact only apparent, for none of the words in
use adequately accounted for her own special approach to the problem of signs
and meaning. Welby intended to describe aspects of the problem of language,
expression, and signifying processes at large which had not yet been
contemplated, which had largely been left aside by tradition, or, more correctly,
she was proposing a reconsideration of the same problems in a completely
different light, from a different viewpoint, in a different perspective. In her effort to invent a new terminological apparatus
Welby offered alternatives to terms sanctioned by use. She introduced the term
"sensal" for sense in its prevalently instinctive aspect, remembering
also its close association with the concept of signifying value, as opposed to
the term "verbal" for specifically linguistic, that is, verbal signs,
whether oral or written. The term "interpretation" appears in the
title of her 1896 essay and is initially used to designate a particular phase in
the signifying process. Subsequently, however, on realizing that it designated
an activity present in all phases of signifying processes, the term "interpretation"
was replaced with "significance", this being another illustration of
the fact that Welby's untiring terminological quest was motivated by concrete
problems of expression. Differently from "semantics", "semasiology"
and "semiotics" the word "significs" was completely free
from technical associations. As such it appeared suitable to Welby as the name
of a new science focusing on the connection between meaning and value, pragmatic
value, social value, as well as value in the esthetical and the ethical sense.
In a letter to the German philosopher and sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, Welby
claimed she was searching for a word able to express the link between sign and
sense, a word which did not exist and which she thought she could obtain with
"significs". Other neologisms related to "significs"
include "significian" for the person who practices significs; the
verbs "to signify" (in Italian "siqnificare") and
"to signalize" ("segnalare") which indicate,
respectively, maximum signifying value and the act of investing a sign with
meaning. In her 1896 essay Welby had proposed the term "sensifics'"–with
the corresponding verb "to sensify"–which, however, she subsequently
abandoned in favor of "significs" because it too closely recalled the
world of the senses. But even when Welby used readily available terms including
those forming her meaning triad "sense", "meaning" and
"significance", she did so in the context of an impressively
articulate theoretical apparatus clarifying the sense of her special use of
these terms. (For all these aspects with considerations on the correlation
between Welby's trichotomy and Peirce's own tripartition of the interpretant
into "immediate", "dynamic" and "final"
interpretant, cf. Petrilli 1998a). When Welby turned her attention to problems that are
still today animating debate in the linguistic sciences and the philosophy of
language, it was because these problems were no doubt the privileged objects of
her significs, but also because the conceptual instruments through which she was
operating needed improvement. She was concerned with such problems as the value
of the "ambiguity" of words; the role of "definition" in the
determination of meaning; the relation between literal meaning and metaphorical
meaning; the possibility of using metaphor and analogy to the end of augmenting
the expressive import of language (cf. Petrilli 1989, 1990a; Ponzio 1990a;
Schmitz 1985, 1988). It should be observed that even though Welby proposed new
terms for the study of language, she did not fall into the trap of technicalism,
that is of making excessive use of technical terms, just as, in spite of her
constant efforts to render expression as precise as possible, her aim was not to
(fallaciously) eliminate the ambiguity of words, their polysemy, which on the
contrary she appreciated. As to technicalism, Welby was intent on achieving the
opposite objective, that is of coming as close as possible to common, everyday
expression. As we have already observed, with her proposal of introducing the
terms "significs" and "signify" Welby kept account of the
expression "What does it signify?" as used by the man in the street,
to indicate not only expression meaning, but also its value and significance.
From this viewpoint, Welby (like Vailati) was particularly sensitive to what
Rossi-Landi called "common speech", that set of expressive modalities,
techniques and practices forming mankind's common linguistic patrimony, often
unjustifiably neglected where the taste for technicalism prevailed. Moreover,
like Vailati Welby did not believe in definition as a panacea for the reduction
of linguistic equivocation. In fact, though definition is useful in the field of
technical languages, this is so precisely because it eliminates the expressive
ductility of words rendering them inert and lifeless, instead of keeping them
alive and dynamic (cf. Rossi-Landi 1998). On the topic of the polysemy and ambiguity of words,
Welby was on similar positions to Vailati and Rossi-Landi after him, as well as
to Adam Schaff and Mikhail Bakhtin (see below). She too valued plurivocality as
a positive aspect of language–apart from the fact that, of course, it cannot
be eliminated–and maintained that expressive precision could only be reached
by exploiting resources offered by language with the presence of words that in
spite of apparent similarity need to be differentiated, and of word meanings
which though not clearly differentiated require instead recognition and
explicitation. Welby's language "Common speech" is not "ordinary
language" as described by the British analytical philosophers. So-called
"ordinary language" or "everyday speech" regards only one
aspect of what is intended by "common speech". Welby was aware of the
distinction and not only drew on everyday language (which she gave serious
consideration) for her own terminology, but also on the language of different
fields of knowledge and human experience–religion, biology, cosmology,
ethnology, physiology, musicology, the figurative arts, etc. Her approach was
motivated by the intention to overcome the tendency toward technicalism and the
division of knowledge into separate compartments by pooling together their
linguistic reserves and viewpoints. Her critique of the bad use of language connected with
the bad use of logical processes led Welby not only to describe but to analyze
language to the end of transforming, regenerating and converting it to conscious
and critical use. In her commitment to this work of logical, expressive,
behavioral and therefore also ethical regeneration, Welby often pointed to the
behavior of children as a possible model, whom she considered as critics par
excellence thanks to their freshness, enthusiasm, taste for exploration and
experimentation (as revealed by their candid whats?, hows?, and whys?). In addition to referring to the child's "logic",
Welby also underlined the need of recovering what she called "mother-sense"
or "prirnal-sense", the source of the interpretive and signifying
capacity, of humanity's propensity for inventiveness, creativity, innovation,
for problem solving, critique and discernment among the multiple meanings of the
word and sign activity at large: [...] the mother-sense never "sets its heart"
on any "pet hypothesis": if it had done this in the original days of
its reign, you and I would never have been here. The race would have been
snuffed out. No: it takes one hypothesis after the other, treating the one it
"cares" for with a more uncompromising scrutiny and severity than the
others. The very life of its owner and her children once hung on this instinct
of suspicion and of test. It is sheer mothersense–instinct of intellectual
danger–which in you, as in Dewey, Peirce and James, calls out the pragmatic
reaction! (from a letter of Oct. 20, 1907 from Welby to F.C.S. Schiller, in
Welby 1985:ccxlix) Welby did not deny the overwhelming importance of logic
and of the symbolic order, but while recognizing the immense value of cognitive
methods, she urged, in the spirit of significs, that our attitude toward logic
be critical, that we use cognitive instruments and interpretive models
consciously and, therefore, conscientiously, that we reflect on the feminine
component, the very source of our intellectual capacity, present–though not
necessarily operative–in the human person, whether male or female, that is,
transversally across gender. Regardig the established order of discourse, Welby
emphasized the importance of the provocation of a question, the inclination for
critical interrogation, recourse to a plurality of different viewpoints for
innovation and creativity and, therefore, for continual revolution or
regeneration of the established order. On a more personal stylistic level, while
Welby largely formulated her ideas in the form of essays or essaylets, at the
same time she made an abundant use of images, metaphors and association with
reference to varying fields of human experience, which rendered her language
suggestive, highly expressive in the manner of literary language. Not only did
she theorize polylogic and plurilinguistic discourse, but she effectively put it
into practice through her ongoing dialogue with other fields of discourse, with
other discourse genres. Welby went beyond the limits of the study of meaning in
terms of philologico-historical semantics as developed, for example, by her
contemporary Bréal, whom she took into direct consideration, to focus not only
on what today falls within the domain of speech-act theory or text linguistics,
but also with a view to the dynamics of expansion and potential for
transformation of the signifying process, being determining conditions for the
evolution of the human being's sensorial and cognitive capacities. In this
respect, Welby anticipated studies on the relation between semiosis and
evolution as developed especially by Thomas A. Sebeok (cfr. 1986, 1991a, 1998)
in his own approach to semiotics. Welby's evolutionary perspective on meaning and the
cognitive capacity is closley related to her interest in the cosmological and
biological dimension of existence and the sciences that study them. As we have
already observed, her concept of "sense" is fundamentally organismic.
She identified "sense in all 'senses' of the word" as the appropriate
term for what constitutes value in the experience of life on our planet. She
associated her definition of the link between sign and sense to an organism's
immediate, spontaneous reaction to environmental stimuli: a process leading to
the production of signs endowed with a value of their own, with implications and
references, which stimulate a reply in their turn, whether direct or indirect.
Analogies of the organismic type helped to underline the expressive plasticity
and potential of signs and of verbal language in particular as their fundamental
characteristics. Welby aimed at recovering such qualities where they had been
lost as a consequence of poor expression and the bad use of language, or where
such qualities were neglected in language theory. Words and their contexts adapt
to each other reciprocally, similarly to the relationship between organisms and
their environment. Critical as she was of any tendency toward anthropocentrism
or glottocentrism, Welby's perspective on signifying processes was not only
organismic and biological but, as stated, cosmological, for she was interested
in signifying processes in the universe and, therefore, in the action of
cosmological forces on human expressive, interpretive and signifying resources.
In order to convey the idea of the expansion of experience and knowledge
throughout the universe, paraleled by an increase in expressive value and
psychical development in the human being, Welby identified "three levels of
consciousness," which she named with terms from cosmological or
astronomical language, precisely, "planetary", "solar", and
"cosmic". To this division corresponds her triadic division of the
signifying process into sense, meaning and significance, so that sense is mainly
"planetary", meaning "solar", and significance "cosmic". A recurrent image in Welby's writings concerns our
scrutiny of signifying proceses in the universe and comes from the field of
physiology and astrology, being associated to vision with reference to our use
of such instruments as the telescope: Two things must, of course, be borne in mind. One, that when we use analogically the physiological processes of vision, we are bound to take the true ones so far as they are known. Thus we have no right to speak of the eye as though it were adjusted to the near, and needed to strain with painful effort to discern the far (as we so often do when contrasting philosophy with science or practical life), but rather as 'focussed to infinity'; while what requires muscular effort is the vision of–the tangible. Another, that not merely do we look through our sense-window at a vast star-peopled universe as real as our own world,–a universe of which the telescope reveals further depths but no limits,–but also that we can devise a mechanical eye (the sensitive plate) which shall "see" and record a further world of suns and nebulae beyond even the power of the telescope to reveal to the human eye. That is a triumph of indirect evidence. And after all, as Professor Tait says, "it is to sight that we are mainly indebted for our knwoledge of external things. All our other senses together, except under very special conditions, do not furnish us with a tithe of the information we gain by a single glance". (Welby 1983:103-104) Analogy is described by Welby as an interpretive method
based on the relation of similarity, which she divided into six different types
(cf. ibid.:19-20): 1) Casual likeness; 2) General likeness of the whole;
with unlikeness of constituents; 3) Likeness in all but one point or feature; 4)
Valid analogy ringing true in character throughout, bearing pressure to the
limit of knowledge, and yet remaining analogy and never becoming equivalence, or
identity in varying senses; 5) Equivalence; 6) Correspondence in each point and
in mass or whole. Furthermore, she distinguished between "analogy"
and "homology" or what she signaled as a "stronger" type of
analogy endowed with more effective signifying valencies, a distinction
commontly practised in biology as the distinction between superficial similarity
(analogy) and structural-genetic similarity (homology), and associated these
concepts with various types of inference–deduction, induction and hypothesis
–, characterized on the basis of their role in the development of knowledge,
research and inventive potential. The linguistic-cognitive mechanisms of analogy (and
homology) typical of metaphor and association play an important role in
translation, the latter being a fundamental aspect of sign activity. In a
significal perspective "translation" not only alludes to the passage
among languages, fields of experience, sign systems, but is also recognized as
"a method turned both to discovering and evaluating, as well as to using
analogy (or in some cases homology)". Homology is constantly dealt with by Rossi-Landi a
theorizer of the so called "homological method": the relationship
identified by him between language and work, his theory of "linguistic
work" is based on similarity of the homological type. His "philosophical
methodics" (see Rossi-Landi l985) largely centres around the concept of
homology. The ongoing work of transfere and translation from one
sign into another which contains the previous sign, enriching it with new
meanings and values, was recognized by Welby as a fundamental mechanism in
cognitive development. Her conception of translation is obviously far broader
than is ordinarily intended in terms of the passage from one language to another.
Going a step further Welby focused on the possibility of interpreting a sign
through its encounter with other signs, with different sign systems, verbal and
nonverbal: The more varied and rich our employment of signs
(so long as such employment be duly critical securing that we know well what we
are doing, also the indispensable condition of humour), the greater our power of
inter-relating, inter-translating various phases of thought, and thus of coming
closer and closer to the nature of things in the sense of starting-points for
the acquisition of fresh knowledge, new truth. (ibid.: 150) These words recall the interpretive-cognitive model
theorized by Peirce, founded on the sign-interpretant relationship, that is, on
"the translation of signs in another sign system" (CP 4.127).
In fact, according to Peirce the determination of linguistic meaning and
consequent cognitive development is achieved through an "equivalent"
or possibly "more developed" sign (the interpretant). And Welby too
views translation above all as an interpretive method which as such invests all
semiosic processes. I. Authors referred to
Alterity of Bakhtin's word In the preface to the French edition of Marxism and
the Philosophy of Language (signed by Voloshinov but attributed to Bakhtin),
Roman Jakobson (1977: 8) says of Bakhtin what Bakhtin said of Dostoevsky: "rien
ne lui semble accompli; tous problèmes restent ouverts, sans fournir la moindre
allusion a une solution definitive". From this viewpoint, Bakhtin's style recalls that of
another great master of signs, Charles S. Peirce, who significantly declared
that only once as far as he could remember had he experienced the pleasure of
being praised, even if it was meant as a reproof in the intention of the author:
this happened when a critic accused him of not being absolutely sure of his own
conclusions. Bakhtin's tendency to continually recommence his
research is what Todorov calls "repetition": "un ressassement
eternellement recommencé" (1981: 25). Bakhtin's work, says Todorov, does
not know development in the true sense of the word: the centre of interest and
formulation changes, but despite certain changes and shifts (even if they are
hardly perceptible), Bakhtin's discourse continually returns on itself. It is as
though each part contains the whole, the open totality of which it is a part. For this reason, entre son premier et son dernier ecrit, entre 1922
et 1974, sa pensée reste fondamentalement la même; on trouve aussi des phrases
presque identiques, écrites à cinquante ans de distance. (ibid) This lack of development is not dogmatic reiteration of
the same thesis. On the contrary, it should be understood as intended by Bakhtin
when on discussing Dostoevsky's novels he maintains that the spirit of the
author does not evolve, it does not "become". The dialectic
development of a single spirit according to the paradigm of thesis, antithesis
and synthesis is absent, there is no tension toward a single and definitive
conclusion for which all the various parts of the work must be functional. The
very object of Bakhtin's research makes the application of dialectic of the
Hegelian type inappropriate: this object remains constant throughout his
analyzes even though the materials and problems change: the sign in its
wholeness and not as a single element, an isolated term endowed with meaning.
This conception of sign with its polysemic, dialogic and polylogic character
makes Hegelian dialectic figure as a unilateral, rigid, and fossilized
conception, in the last analysis as pseudo-dialectic. Bakhtin alludes frequently
and polemically to Hegel and the monologic dialectic of his system. As far back
as Marx's critique of 1843 of Hegelian philosophy, Hegelian dialectic has been
shown to be full of contradictions only fictitiously overcome with the word
arrogating an absolute viewpoint. In "From the Notebooks of 1970-71"
Bakhtin describes the development of monologic dialectic as it originates from
the dialogic character of the word: In dialogue we take out the voices (the division
of the voices), we take out the intonations (personal and emotional), concepts
and abstract judgements are drawn from the living words and responses, all is
mixed inside a single abstract consciousness and this is how we obtain dialectic.
(Bakhtin 1970-1971: 363) Unidirectional logic which looks to a single end is put
into crisis by the sign's polysemy, polylogy and ideological pluridirectionality.
It is difficult to say where a sign begins and where it ends once it is no
longer reduced to the single element or broken up into its various component
parts. This is so because it is not a thing, but a process, an interweaving of
relations. The overall, unitary sense of the sign is inseparable from the
concrete communicative context, social interaction, and relation to specific
ideologic values and orientations. The interpretation of a sign cannot be
limited to its identification. It requires "active comprehension". The
sense of a sign consists in something more with respect to the elements that
allow its recognition: it is made of those semantico-ideological aspects which
are in a certain sense unique, special and indissolubly connected to the
situational context of semiosis. Sign comprehension is active comprehension
because it requires a reply, a standpoint, it arises from a dialogic relation
and in turn provokes a dialogic relation: the sign flourishes as a rejoinder in
a dialogue (see "From the Notebooks 1970-71"). These aspects of the
sign are analyzed in the perspective of general semiotics in Voloshinov 1929,
but are still more amply studied in two essays, one of 1926 and the other of
1929, also signed by Voloshinov though substantially Bakhtin's. Referred to the verbal, the sign is a complete
utterance, it is not isolated from the social context, ideology or the discourse
genre to which it belongs ("the unending variety of discourse genres",
says Bakhtin in the "Notebooks": among the titles of his unfinished
books, Discourse Genres). The utterance is a constitutive part of a
socially and historically specified relation, a living text and not an inanimate
thing; not an isolated monologic expression to be interpreted on the basis of
the relation between linguistic units and language understood as an abstract
unit.Writes Bachtin (1974) in one of his most recent papers included in his 1979
collection of writings: The text lives only through contact with another
text (context). We underline that this contact is a dialogic contact between
texts (utterances) and not a mechanic contact of opposition between abstract
elements [...] behind this contact there is contact between people and not
between things. (Bakhtin 1979: 378) Conceived in this way, the text is the main hero of his
two important monographs on Dostoevsky and Rabelais and of his theoretical and
methodological studies in general. For this reason we could say that not only is
Bachtin's theory a theory of the text, but more specifically the literary text:
a theory of dialogue as dialogue flourishes in literary writing. The text is the specific object of all human sciences
concerned with man as a producer of texts (written or oral, verbal or nonverbal).
It is in relation to this particular object–the text–that Bachtin's method
achieves its specificity. Active comprehension, that is, responsive and dialogic
comprehension is the main component in this method. The specific logic of the
text is a dia-logic, a dialectic between texts. The text's sense is
decided in the logic of question and answer, not the abstract, absolute and
impersonal categories of logos, but concrete and dialogic. Dialogue
presupposes a reciprocal asymmetrical distance between two interlocutors: it
presupposes that question and answer come from time and space differently
experienced, different chronotopes for he who speaks and he who answers. The word's alterity is an essential element in Bakhtin,
and this is true not only of the object of his analysis but also of his own
word: Bakhtin's word has its own alterity relatively to the historical
period he belongs to. A word that remains other in the 1920s relatively to the
two poles of current literary debate–formalism and sociologism–; opposition
between individualistic subjectivism (Humboldt, Vossler, Croce, Potebnja) and
abstract objectivism (De Saussure 1916) in studies on language; and opposition
between Marrism and Antimarrism; furthermore, with reference to the study of
ideology relatively to individualism and mechanistic materialism. Bakhtin's word
is also other relatively to contemporary schools of semiotics, including the
trend he explicitly refers to, the school of Tartu (Lotman, Ivanov, etc.). The
result is that Bakhtin's theory of the social sign, the ideological sign and in
particular the verbal sign represents a term of confrontation rather than of
mere confirmation and anticipation regarding official semiotics and its
Saussurean, Peircean, Morrisian and Husserlian, etc., matrixes. On the relation between philosophy of language and
semiotics While it is possible to distinguish between philosophy
of language and specific areas of semiotic research (including linguistics)
viewed as grammars of particular sign systems, the distinction between general
semiotics and philosophy of language is more problematic given that general
semiotics is necessarily philosophical. Nor can the problem be solved by simply
stating that general semiotics is concerned with all types of signs, while
philosophy of language only turns its attention to verbal language (natural and
specialized) and to the disciplines that study them. Apart from a few exceptions,
owing to the need of a contingent and temporary restriction of the field of
research more than to the attempt of defining it, philosophy of language has
concentrated on verbal and nonverbal signs in the perspective of semantics,
logico-syntactics or pragmatics. The problem of the relationship between philosophy of
language and semiotics is related to the more general problem of the relation
between philosophy and science. As the general science of signs and, therefore,
as one among the many sciences of language, semiotics may be distinguished from
the philosophy of language, even if general semiotics, as opposed to the various
specific semiotics, cannot prescind from a philosophical study of its own
categories. Philosophy of language explores the external boundaries,
protrusions, and excesses with respect to the "semiotic field", or
science–or "theory" (Morris) or "doctrine" (Sebeok)–of
signs. To recall an expression introduced by Bachtin who described his own
approach to language analysis as "metalinguistic" (having overcome the
limits of linguistics), philosophy of language could be characterized as "metasemiotic".
And indeed in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Bachtin(-Voloshinov)
used the expression "philosophy of language" for his own research as
it unfolded in adjacent fields and along the boundaries of disciplines relating
to language and signs, concentrating on their points of contact and
intersections. And even in more recent times (during the first half of the
1970s), when the term semiotics was generally accepted as indicating the general
science of signs, Bachtin never used this term for his own research, thereby
distinguishing it, for example, from Ju.M. Lotman's. The dialogic character of
the relationship between these two levels of investigation, and, consequently,
the scientific commitment of philosophy of language and the philosophical
foundation of semiotics, clearly emerges from the connotation of philosophy of
language as metasemiotics. As Peirce demonstrates, a sign or representamen
is such because it stands to somebody for something, its object, in some respect,
insofar as it creates in the mind of that person "an equivalent sign, or
perhaps a more developed sign", i.e. an interpretant (CP 2.228). The
sign's meaning then is an (open) class which includes that sign and all its
possible interpretants. The mediating function between the meaning and object of
the sign is in turn obtained through the mediation of other signs. A sign, says
Peirce, exists as "thirdness", that is, it presupposes a triadic
relationship between itself, its object and the interpreting thought, it too a
sign. A sign always plays the role of third party, for it mediates between the
interpretant sign and its object. We mentioned the sign's enrichment as a consequence of
its outings to the exterior in search of itself, and of the disguises usesd to
affirm its identity: but a semiotical debasement and devaluation may also be
verified. And such enrichment or debasement is always connected to relations
with other signs. In any case they are never equal exchange relations typical of
the signal (on this aspect Bakhtin-Voloshinov's analyses are elucidating) where,
by contrast to the sign, there is a one to one correspondence between the
signifier and the signified. More exactly, the meaning of a signal is the class
which contains that signal and its interpretants in relations of mere
substitution (the red of a traffic light has a single meaning, is a signal,
i.e., its meaning is the class of meanings that limit themselves to substituting
the color red: "Stop" in the graphic or phonic form, a policeman with
outstretched arms, etc.). Signs too contain the factor of signality and its
correlate, self-identity, but they are not accounted for as signs in terms of
such factors alone. To comprehend a sign is not to merely recognize the stable
elements constantly repeating themselves. Signs are characterized by their
semantic and ideological flexibility which makes them continually available to
new and different contexts. Signality and self-identity are overcome by the
characteristic features of signs: changeability, ambivalence and
multi-voicedness: In the speaker's native language, i.e., for the
linguistic consciousness of a member of a particular language community, signal
recognition is certainly dialectically effaced. In the process of mastering a
foreign language, signality and recognition still make themselves felt, so to
speak, and still remain to be surmounted, the language not yet fully having
become language. The ideal of mastering a language is absorption of signality
by pure semioticity and of recognition by pure understanding. (Voloshinov
1929; Eng. trans. 69) It is in this sense that the sign is a dialectic unit
of self-identity and otherness. The actual sense of a sign consists in something
more which is added to those elements that permit its identification. It is made
of those semantico-ideological aspects that in a certain sense are unique, are
peculiar to it and indissolubly connected to the situational context of the
semiosis in course. Bakhtin (Voloshinov 1929) insists on the dialectic relation
between these two aspects of the sign indicated with the terms "meaning"
(all that which is reproducible and stable in the sign and is subject to a
process of identification) and "theme" (the new aspects of the sign
requiring active comprehension, a response, a viewpoint and are connected to the
specific situation in which semiosis occurs). With reference to the verbal sign
in particular and considering the dialectic relation between "theme"
and "meaning", observes Bakhtin: [...] it is even impossible to convey the meaning
of a particular word (say, in the course of teaching another person a foreign
language) without having made it an element of theme, i.e., without having
constructed an 'example' utterance. On the other hand, a theme must base itself
on some kind of fixity of meaning; otherwise it loses its connection with what
came before and what comes after - i.e., it altogether loses its significance. (ibid.:
100) The distinction between "meaning" and "theme"
finds correspondence in Peirce's subdivision of the interpretant into immediate
and dynamical interpretant. The immediate interpretant is fixed by use and
tradition, it is given by the correct deciphering of the sign, by its
recognition, "and is ordinarily called the meaning of the sign" (CP
4. 536). The dynamical interpretant "is the actual effect which
the Sign, as a Sign, really determines" (ibid., italics my
own). Considering the relation to both the dynamical interpretant and dynamical
object, that is, to "the Reality which by some means contrives to determine
the Sign in its Representation" (ibid.), the sign is never something
repetitive in Peirce's conception either. Each time it appears it takes its
place in a new semiosical act. The sign is consequently continually renewed, so
that its interpretant is never established once and for all: this is the
Peircean principle of unlimited semiosis, of the unending succession of
interpretants (connected to Peirce's conception of the hypothetical and
approximative nature of knowledge subtending his "cognitive semiotics"). In the light of the Bakhtinian and Peircean conception
of sign, we may now construct a far more complex and powerful semiotic model
which is consequently far more capable of explaining the complexity of signs, or
better of semiosis, than any other model which limits itself to the breakdown of
the sign into two perfectly correlated parts, that is, the signifiant and
the signifié. The reference is obviously to the semiologies of
Saussurean matrix which not only, as we were saying above, conceive the sign in
terms of equal exchange between the signifant and the signifié,
but which, as says Bakhtin, are only aware of two poles in linguistic life
between which all linguistic and (taking linguistics as the model) all
semiological phenomena are expected to be placed: these two poles are the
unitary system (langue) and the individual realization of that system by
the single user (parole). Signs are no longer reduced to a single element, or
broken down into their component parts, it is difficult to say where they begin
and where they end. Signs are not things, but processes, the interlacing of
relations which are social relations, even in the case of natural signs, for it
is only in a social context that signs exist as signs. A comprehensive and
unitary view of signs must keep account of concrete communicative contexts,
social interaction, and of the relation to specific values, ideological
orientations, etc. In short, signs are inseparable from what, together with
Bakhtin, we have called "theme" as distinct from "meaning".
Theme is unitary and as such cannot be broken down into its component parts.
This is possible, if at all, in the case of "meaning", viewed as the
"technical apparatus" for the accomplishment of "theme" . Often in the study of signs the focus is not on the
sign as a whole, but on its constitutive parts as in linguistics which provides
categories for the definition of the elements and internal units of an utterance.
Even the category of "sentence" refers to an element-unit and not to a
whole. As Bakhtin continually reminds us, from 1929 onward, all categories of
linguistics fail to account for single words when they coincide with the whole
utterance, given that they are only able to define words as sign elements, as
potential discourse elements, and not as whole signs. This criticism is not only
relevant to taxonomical linguistics, but is extensible to Chomskyan linguistics:
the latter works on sentences considered independently of their
socio-ideological orientation as well of the heterogeneity of the speaker's
linguistic community. There is a point, however, where Bakhtin's position is
different from Peirce's: Pierce's semiotics is closely connected to the theory
of knowledge, it is a "cognitive semiotics", while Bakhtin's semiotics–or
better, his "philosophy of language" (he prefers the latter expression
for his reflexions on the problem of sign, text and intertextuality using it
both in his 1929 book as well as in his writings of 1959-1960 on the problem of
the text)–is closely connected to literary criticism and could be described as
literary semiotics. This description is appropriate not because Bakhtin's
semiotics is applied to literature, but because it uses literature as its
viewpoint. In fact, according to Bakhtin, the kaleidoscopic nature of
literary lanaguage enables us to perceive in language that which escapes the
linguistics of communication which concentrates on the sphere of the Same.
Through the language of literature we are finally able to perceive the alien
word–not only the word of the other person but also the word of others as it
resounds within the word of the "same" subject. The Centrality of Dialogue in Bachtin's philosophy of
language The original 1929 version of Bakhtin's book on
Dostoevsky (which only earned international fame with the 1963 edition after
years of isolation from official culture) has now (1997) been made available in
Italian translation in a volume entitled Problemi dell'opera di Dostoevskij,
being the first translation of Bakhtin's 1929 monograph ever. The appendix
includes two brief unpublished writings by Bakhtin relative to the reelaboration
of Dostoevsky , of particular interest to studies on the transition to
the 1963 edition. This is Bakhtin's first important study where
literature emerges as a privileged observatory in his philosophical design, a
sort of epicentre from which irradiated all the other directions in which his
research was to develop. Bakhtin sees in Dostoevsky's artistic creation the
literary embodiment of his philosophico-moral ideal: responsibility as a participative-responsive
attitude to the truth of others and also as dialogue with self. To return to
this edition which is centred on the notion of "dialogue", means to
reconstruct Bakhtin's theoretical development even better, which also means, in
the first place, to re-examine the notion of dialogue, which has often been
misunderstood even by Bakhtin's most important interpreters (see Ponzio's
presentation to the volume). The aim of questa presentation (entitled "Dialogue
and Polyphony in Dostoevsky: How Bakhtin Has Been Misunderstood") is to
show that in Bakhtin's view dialogue consists of the fact that one's own word
alludes always, despite itself, whether it knows it or not, to the word of the
other. Dialogue is not an initiative taken by self. As clearly emerges from the
novels of Dostoevsky the human person does not enter dialogue out of respect for
the other, but also and above all out of spite for the other. The word is dialogic because of its passive
involvement with the word of the other. Dialogue is not a synthesis of
multiple viewpoints to which, on the contrary, it is refractory. The self is
enmeshed dialogically in otherness as the "grotesque body" is enmeshed
in the body of the other. Dialogue and body are closely interconnected. There
cannot be dialogicality among disembodied minds. Unlike platonic dialogue and
similarly to Dostoevsky for Bakhtin dialogue is not cognitive or functional to
truth but ethical insofar as it is grounded in responsibility without alibis for
the other. Furthermore, Bakhtinian dialogue excludes all forms of
equality, reciprocity between self and you; the dialogic relationship is
assymetrical, unreversible. If we agree on this, then the main interpreters of
Bakhtin–Todorov, Holquist, Wellek, etc.–have all fundamentally misunderstood
the Bakhtinian concept of dialogue. This also emerges from the fact that they
compare his work to dialogue in Plato, Buber, Mukarovsky. Above all, they
understand dialogue in the abused sense of encounter, agreement, convergence,
compromise, synthesis. It is symptomatic that Todorov should have replaced the
Bakhtinian term "dialogue" with "intertextuality"; and
"metalinguistics" with "translinguistics". Intertextuality
reduces dialogue to a relationship between utterances, while translinguistics
reduces the critical instance of metalinguistics to a sectorial specialization
which, contrary to linguistics, focuses on discourse rather than on language (lingua,
langue). This minimizes–indeed annuls–the revolutionary reach of
Bakhtin's thought: Bakhtin's "Copernican revolution" on a
philosophical level and Dostoevsky's on an artistic level involve the human
person in its wholeness, his/her life, thought, behavior. By contrast with Kant's "critique of pure reason"
and Sartre's "critique of dialectical reason", Bakhtin inaugurates a
"critique of dialogical reason". Contrary to what Holquist maintains
when he compares Bakhtin's conception of dialogue with Mukarovsky's, dialogue is
not a convenient means of evidencing one's own viewpoint. For Bakhtin dialogue is not the result of an initiative
we decide to take, but rather it is imposed, something to which one is subjected.
Dialogue is not the result of opening toward the other, but of the impossibility
of closing as emerges from tragico-comical attempts at closing, at indifference.
Similarly to Dostoevsky, dialogue in Bakhtin is the impossibility of
indifference toward the other, it is one's unindifference–in ostentatious
indifference, hostility, hatred–toward self. Even when unindifference
degenerates into hatred, the other continues to count more than anything else.
This is exactly what, says Bakhtin, the novel, as conceived by Dostoevsky,
intends to demonstrate and make accessible on an artistic level: the dialogic
sphere of thinking human consciousness . In each act of "answering comprehension" not
only do the surrounding environments of he who expresses himself and he who
interprets interact but also their axiological horizons. However, the dialectic
between "self" and "other" does not intervene solely at the
level of interpretation: it is active at the level of formulation, thereby
conditioning expression form and content. The more a sign is complex, endowed with tradition and
values linking it to the past and opening it to future translations (intended
not only in the literal senss but also as interpretation, as dialogic
interaction between signs and interpretant), the more difficult it is to
establish the boundaries of a sign taken in its wholeness. An example is offered
by literary texts whose signifying potential is enhanced by the extra-textual
context. The context does not arbitrarily add new senses from the outside, but
senses already present in the text are made to emerge with each new temporal and
axiological interval thanks to the relation of alterity and extralocality
between extra-literary context and literary text. A great literary text does not
flourish within the confines of its contemporaneity. In addition to being
dialogically enriched in subsequent epochs, it is rooted in the past, in the
history of its own genre, in the values and ideologies that it transmits and
reorganizes artistically, etc . Texts, whether written or oral, verbal or nonverbal do
not have precise boundaries, they are not defined once and for all. A text's
specificity and singularity is not determined by the elements of a system that
can be repeated, but by the sequence of texts (those preceding it insofar as
they belong to the same discourse genre and those which it encounters once it
has been produced). The text is connected to other (unrepeatable) texts by
dialogic and dialectic relations. All this is described by Bakhtin (1959-1961)
in his writings on the text as the problem of the semantic (dialectic) and
dialogic interconnection between texts inside the boundaries of a given sphere,
and as the historical interconnection of texts. The text is not given, it is a
dialogic relation, a relation between texts which in their turn are many
dialogic relations again; its boundaries are evanescent, in each new
intertextual relation it is always more or less "other" as regards a
previously given "identity". The text is identical to itself only in
the case of mechanical reproduction where it is not considered from the
viewpoint of its specific sense or signification (the serial reproduction of a
text, a reprint, etc.). On the other hand, the reproduction of a text as text,
that is, a new reading, a performance, a mere quotation, a new form of fruition
of the text, transforms it into something individual, unique, non repetitive and
unrepeatable. Literary writing surpasses the monologism of language,
its limited dialogism in the direction of polylogism. Literary writing is this
tendency toward polylogism. Literary activity can only properly begin once the
author distances himself from the event he is describing and takes up his place
outside his own utterance, thereby achieving a situation of "extralocality"
where the relation of otherness is maintained between self and other impeding
recomposition of the totality. Complementary to the otherness of writing is the
dispossession of self, its decomposition and escape from return to self. The
condition of being on the outside is constitutive of the creative activity of
literature: irony, indirect communication, extralocality are different aspects
of the same phenomenon: the otherness of writing. Dialogue in literary writing–especially in the
polyphonic novel–has different characteristics compared with dialogue outside
literature. In literature the dialogic potential of language is experimented and
pushed to the extreme limit where exchange, relative and oppositive otherness,
subordination of signifiant to signifié, where the Subject, the
Truth, the economic, instrumental and productive character of language are set
aside by a word that is not functional and that presupposes relations of
extralocality and absolute otherness. The otherness of writing expresses the
otherness of that which is not writing, but which, similarly to writing, aims at
finding expression in an autonomous, self-signifying and non-functional word. A
word that holds good for itself, that is constitutively free, kath'autò.
Bakhtin (1970-1971) speaks of the "peculiarity of polyphony", of the
"unfinalizability of polyphonic dialogue", specifying that it is
developed by unfinished personalities and not by psychological subjects:
personalities characterized by their lack of incarnation (by movement in the
direction of excess). The concept of carnival in Bakhtin's work and in
contemporary thought We have just descibed the importance of dialogue in
Bakhtin's thought, but the concept of carnival is no less important.
Dialogue and carnival are two categories that characterzie Bakhtin's
work. Even if "carnival" and its complementary concept "carnivalization"
were only to be introduced in the 1963 edition of Dostoevsky, they were
already present in Rabelais (which may at least be traced back to the
forties) as well as in Bakhtin's studies on the origin of the novel. On the
concept of carnival let us now make the following considerations remembering
also current interpretations: 1. The text on Rabelais is an organic part of Bakhtin's
work which counts books signed by Voloshinov and Medvedev. The distinction made
in Freudianism (Voloshinov 1927) between official ideology and non
official ideology is developed inRabelais in relation to Humanism
and Renaissance literature considered in its vital link with the low genres of
Medieval comico-popular culture. The focus in Marxism and Philosophy of
Language (Voloshinov 1929) on the sign in general and not only the verbal
sign is developed in Rabelais which analyzes the transformation of–verbal
and nonverbal–carnival signs in high European literature. Furthermore, it is
significant that on returning to his book on Dostoevsky for the 1963 edition,
Bakhtin added a chapter on the genesis of Dostoevsky's polyphonic novel whose
roots are traced back to t he serio-comical genres of popular culture. The
polyphonic novel is considered as the greatest expression of "carnivalized
literature". Relatedly to Rabelais Bakhtin works on the prehistory
of the novelistic word which he identifies in the comicality and parodization of
popular genres. Furthermore, his conception of the sign, particularly verbal
signs, as being plurivocal, the expression of centrifugal forces in linguistic
life, is confirmed and developed in Rabelais where he analyzes the
language of the public place and the double character–at one and the same time
both praising and offensive–of vulgar expression. There is, for example, a
close connection between Bakhtin's reference (cf. Voloshinov 1929) to
Dostoevsky's notes on an animated conversation formed of a single vulgar word
used with different meanings and his analysis in Rabelais of the
ductility and ambiguity of sense in the language of the grotesque body and its
residues, in the complex phenomenon called carnival. Finally, Rabelais is
of central importance in the whole of Bakhtin's theorizations. By contrast with
oversimplifying and suffocating interpretations of Marxism, Bakhtin develops
Marx when he maintains that the human can only be fully realized where the reign
of necessity comes to an end. Consequently, an effectively alternative social
system to capitalism is one which measures social richness in terms of "free
time" for one's otherness and for the otherness of others and not of
"work time": the "time of festivity" as discussed by Bakhtin
which is closely connected to the "great time" of literature. 2. What carnival is for Bakhtin he tells us himself in Rabelais.
He uses this term to refer to that complex phenomenon, present in all cultures,
formed by the system of attitudes, conceptions and verbal and nonverbal signs
oriented in the sense of comicality and joyous living. Carnival does not only
concern Western culture, nor the Russian spirit, but any world culture insofar
as it is human. Today we are witnessing the spread through world communication
of the ideology of production and efficiency which contrasts completely with the
carnevalesque vision. This difference also concerns the exasperated
individualism of production connected with competetive logic.This is contrasted
by the conception of the grotesque body founded on intercorporeity, on the
involvement of one's own body with the world and with the body of others. But
even though it is dominant, the logic of production, individualism and
efficiency has not eliminating man's constitutive inclination for
nonfunctionality. The human is the nonfunctional and thanks to such a vocation
the carnivalesque endures. That this is the case is testified by literary
writing. The literary work like all literary works expresses the man's unwritten
right to nonfunctionality. In Orwell's 1984, ultimate resistance to a
productive and efficient social system is represented by literature. In this
sense we may say that literature is and always will be carnivalized. 3) The human sciences may be described as such for a
reason that goes beyond the fact that they deal with man. And hopefully "human"
may still be considered as an evaluative and not descriptive adjective. The
"human" sciences are the sciences that recognize man's right to
nonfunctionality which should be at the basis of humanity's understanding of the
signs, texts and works it produces. Human products without traces of
nonfunctionality, useless details, do not exist. In this assertion of the
nonfunctional man manifests his being an end in itself and not a means. A work's
creativity expresses the condition of being an end in itself. In today's culture
this can only be an individual expression, the expression of the single artist.
On the contrary, in past cultural systems the lack of functionality, excess, the
assertion of man and his products as an end in themselves found collective
expression in carnival. Continuators of the Bakhtinian perspective should not be
searched for among the authors of essays and scientific works, but among writers,
especially novelists. Nor among the writers of this or this other country, but
of world literature. Narrative, for example, is best developed in the direction
of polyphony not only in Western authors (Pessoa, Bulgakov, Calvino, Kundera,
ecc.), but especially in the Latin-American novel. To paraphrase Bakhin, he did
not invite scientists, critics or semioticians to celebrate his resurrection,
but writers. 4. For all these reasons, Bakhtin's work on Rabelais is
of central importance in contemporary culture. Even Bakhtin was aware of the
development achieved by his thought system with his work on Rabelais. In fact,
the second 1963 edition of Dostoevsky includes modifications and
additions regarding the relationship between dialogue, novel and carnivalization.
This book by Bakhtin has influenced and continues to influence developments in
the human sciences, especially culturological studies, theory of literature and
literary criticism. But works in literary writing have also been directly
and indirectly inspired by Bakhtin's Rabelais It is difficult to say
where a writer gets his inspiration from, unless the author-man makes explicit
statements which nevertheless need verification by confronting such statements
with the work author-writer's work. But to stay within Italian borders, Il
nome della rosa Umberto Eco, Mistero Buffo by Dario Fo and perhaps
some of Italo Calvino's work's have at least breathed the atmosphere created by
Bakhtin's exceptional work. I. Authors referred to
The quarterly journal Ideologie was founded in
the spring of 1967 by Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, the director, and Mario Sabbatini,
Giuseppe Di Siena, Augusto Illuminati, Romano Luperini, and Antonio Melis were
some of the collaborators. The original editorial ofifices were located in Rome
and Padua, first, and then in Florence. Responsibility for administration and
distribution lay with the publisher, La Nuova Italia. Later on, in the Rome
office, the journal gave life to a small editorial activity, that took the form
of a book series linked to tho journal by a common theoretical and ideological
perspective. The general policy was "non academic and antispecialist".
The journal and the collateral activities ended in 1972. In the spring of 1979, the first number of another
quarterly journal Scienze umane appeared. Also founded and directed by
Rossi-Landi, it was published in Bari by Dedalo Editrice. The
scientific committee consisted of Gaetano Kanisza, Enzo Morpurgo, Emanuele
Riverso, Mario Sabbatini, Tullio Tentori and Paolo Valesio. The editorial offices
were located in Bari under the direction of Augusto Ponzio. The sixth issue,
distributed in December 1980, was its last, even though the journal had aroused
considerable interest, had met with the approval of critics and had attracted
new collaborators (such as Sergio Moravia, who would have been part of the
scientific committee had an attempt to continue publishing the magazine with an
editor in Florence, Le Monnier, also not failed). The first number of Ideologie did not include a presentation or an editorial. Editorials and introductions to monographic issues or to sections of issues began to appear with the third issue, in 1968. They were later assembled together in the volume Edizioni di Ideologie under the title Scritti Proqrammatici di Ideo!ogie (1972). This volume also contained some of the "Forewords" to the "Dizionario teorico-ideologico" published in Ideologie starting with the twelth issue (1970). The goal was to examine, demystify and redefine some of the concepts that are at the basis of the humanities or that are used in political circles and in related theoretical debates. Such topics as "Calcolatori e cervelli", "Corpo", "Progresso tecnologico", "Rivoluzione culturale", "Semiotica", "Razzismo" were among the entries debated. The first
editorial, "Per un rinnovamento della elaborazione ideologica", had
already been printed in the journal "ll sedicesimo", 13, in the spring
of 1968. On one hand, this editorial reiterated the list
of subjects that the journal aimed to cover, and which was published in the
first issue of Ideologie. On the other hand, it echoed the concept of
"ideology" as it was analyzed and defined in the paper by Rossi-Landi
entitled "Ideologia come progettazione sociale" with which the first
issue had opened. This is the third notebook of Ideologie
and it is the first of 1968. As we have begun to show, the journal intends to
study contemporary ideologies. This will be done both by analyzing systematic
and recurring aspects of ideology in general, starting with its nature and
structure, and focusing the attention on several topics which require updating:
communist polycentrism and the revisionist trends of Marxism in socialist and
capitalist countries; populist and/or trade unionist or corporativistic
ideologies (fascism, nationalism, some tendencies of political catholicism); the
ideologies of capitalism and economic development; the foundations of Marxian
doctrine with respect to the new sciences of man and the ideological character
of these sciences, discernible in the manifestation of their "objectivity"
and "neutrality" (and it remains to be seen if this sobtains only with
neo capitalist manifestations or if it is inevitable even at a deeper level).
"Ideologie" puts forth a concept of ideology as false thought and
false praxis necessarily embodied by some social programming or project. With
the latter I mean a design, proposed or only just experienced (knowingly or not),
of a histori-cal!y grounded construction of society ("Editoriale",
Ideologie 3, 1968, p. 1). In his paper "Ideologia come progettazione
sociale" Rossi-Landi brought to completion an important operation: he had
managed to go beyond the pseudo-definition of ideology as false conscience
that, in effect, is a negative evaluation of ideology (the definition is due to
an extrapolation from the particular sense Marx and Engels had given to the
concept, going still further back it is due to the pejorative connotation
attached to the term coined by the "Ideologues"). Rossi Landi's overcoming rested on the interpretation
of ideology as social programming. Such an interpretation permitted the
preservation and even the theoretical justification of the meaning of ideology
as false consciousness. It placed it, however, in a wider horizon that, albeit
referring to ideology in general, did not give a merely descriptive or
relativistic interpretation. Thus, ideology was characterized (negatively) as
"false thought and false praxis" while it was examined as "social
programming". This, in turn, made it possible to address the issues in a
manner that acknowledged the inevitable historical conditioning of all
ideological discourses. At the same time Rossi-Landi's approach was undertaking
a project leading to the critique and the dialectic overcoming of false
consciousness and false praxis, and, hence, toward the recuperation of a
positive evaluation of ideobgy as revolutionary thought. Ideology was placed by Rossi-Landi within the framework
of the totality most relevant to it, i.e the alienated human condition. It was a
move entirely in synchrony with the logical-historical method adopted by Ideologie,
in opposition to specialistic separatism and the tendency to abstract the object
of study from the totality to which it bebngs. And it is the method used in the
collection of essays Rossi-Landi published in 1968 under the title of Il
linguaggio come lavoro e come mercato (now 1992) in his earlier (1967)
volume on ideology, and in a subsequent volume of 1972, Semiotica e ideologia
(now 1994), that expanded his study of ideology by considering it in necessary
relation with sign systems. Indeed a doctrine of ideologies can only become
reality through the mediation of semiotics, since ideologies transmit themselves
by signs that are then scrutinized and demystified through the study of sign
systems. By the same token, Rossi-Landi in the foreword (1971) to Semiotica e
ideologia stated that a semiotics unsupported by a doctrine of
ideologies remains a specialized science, detached from praxis, despite the fact
that it presents itself as a general science of signs. [...] According to Rossi-Landi, the discourse that has
ideology as its object fits within a general semiotics understood as a
Hegelo-Marxian science, based on the logical-historical method, on the use of
abstractions which isolate historically real totalities but also join them to
larger totalities, thereby determining the specific structures. Against
specialism, the separatism of the various disciplines studying sign systems,
semiotics must fulfill itself, Rossi-Landi believed, as a global science that
situates the objects of research resulting from necessary, solitary and
abstracting operations, in the totality of which they partake. Semiotics takes a
stand against the social system of which ideologies and the object of study are
a part, thus rendering explicit the social programming that presides over the
system. Said differently, semiotics does not only foreground the programs that
sustain, even unconsciously, human behavior, but precisely because of its
totalizing perspective, because it brings to awareness the place of the programs
in the social system–thus making evident their historical and social
specification, their political function–affirms itself as a critique of sign
systems, as the formulation of new and more human projects. In this sense, the semiotic study of ideologies
transcends the limit usually found in research on social communication (Rossi-Landi
in those years had in mind positions such as those of the psychiatrist Scheflen
and the semiotician Hall). It is a prime requirement of the semiotic study of
the programs of social communication–a study which assumes each sign system as
a totality whose functioning does not only depend on "the play of its parts,
but on the play of the totality as a part", so that each program would
result controlled by a higher social level–it is important, for such a study,
to pose the problem of the interests governing the integration of sign systems
in a given social organization, the problem of the conditions of power. That is,
the problem of ideologies that, in so far as they are ideologies of the dominant
class, signify and organize behavior in a certain manner. In the light of this
premise, Rossi-Landi defined the dominant class ("Programmi della
comunicazione", an entry in the "Dizionario teorico-ideologico", Ideologie
16-17, p. 34, now in Rossi-Landi 1994: 203-204) as the class that owns the
control of the emission and circulation of verbal and nonverbal messages
constituting a given community. Semiotics–as it was conceived by Rossi-Landi starting
with the 1965 essay "Il linguaggio come lavoro e mercato", which
appeared in Nuova Corrente and was later republished as a book with the
same title in 1968–recognizes the existence of non-ideological spaces of
social reality. By unmasking the ideology that underlies–both in the realm of
common behavior and in the scientific or literary realm–what is presented as
"natural", "spontaneous", as "a given", as "realistic",
semiotics shows the inescapable placement of every behavior either in the
program of the maintenance and reproduction of the class society, or in the
program of its critique and of its undoing. And thus it becomes dealienating,
revolutionary praxis. An illegitimate use of abstraction and the relation
between "abstract object" and "totality" consists in
believing that an abstract object carries and exhausts the characteristics of a
totality otherwise ignored or left in the dark. As Rossi-Landi shows in
"Note di semiotica", originally published in 1967 in Nuova Corrente
and later in the 1972 book Semiotica e Ideologia, a fallacy of this type
occurs when one does not distinguish between semiology and semiotics. The choice
of "semiotics" to indicate the general science of signs in the place
of "semiology" does not depend purely on terminological preferences.
Semiology as a study of sign systems–post and translinguistic–cannot be
confused with semiotics as a general science of all types of signs. By avoiding
the identification of semiotics with semiology so defined, the study of signs
frees itself from semiological glottocentrism. For its own part, linguistics
remains a separate glottological science up to and until its connection with the
general science of signs reveals itself to be in fact extrinsic as to the
specification of its object and the determination of its method of analysis. To
semiotics Rossi-Landi also devoted an entry in the "Dizionario
teorico-ideologico" (n. 12, pp. 38-44.) Within a perspective according to which semiotics is
the theoretical site where the specialization of the separate sciences is
overcome, Rossi-Landi proposed to take in consideration the relations between
production and verbal exchange and material and production exchange: My attempt aimed at bringing together two
totalities, that of linguistic production and that of material production in a
greater totality, so as to disclose some of the structures of this - greater
totality. (Rossi-Landi 1994: 288). Thus, it is in this direction that Rossi-Landi's
research proceeds from ll linguaggio come lavoro e come mercato,
l968–the title already shows the intent to consider together the two
characteristics of human being as loquens and laborans–to Linguistics
and Economics of 1975 and the essays of his last book, Metodica
filosofica e scienza dei segni , published in 1985. His plan was, in one
sense, to develop the Marxian approach to commodities as a communicative fact
and not as a relation between things. But to the extent that this approach
enabled him to consider political economy as a part of semiotics, Rossi-Landi
was also able to study linguistic phenomena in accordance with the categories of
the science of economics in its Ricardian-Marxian phase. Unlike marginalistic
economy, this allowed him to take reflexion on the exchange and linguistic use
(the level of linguistic market) one step further and to focus on the social
relations of linguistic production (the social relations of linguistic work). Continuing in this vein, Rossi-Landi devoted an
important and lengthy essay which appeared in Ideologie 16-17 in 1972
(pp. 43-103) to the study of the relation between material work and linguistic
work. The essay was later republished in Linguistics and Economics, and
is now also available in Metodica filosofica e scienza dei seqni. More
specifically, Rossi-Landi's goal was to study the relation between material
artifacts and linguistic artefacts by way of a method of analysis that he
referred to as "homologic method". This method consists not in identifying immediate and
superficial relations of resemblance, as is done in analogy, but in identifying
homologies, that is, resemblances of a structural and genetic order between
objects considered as separate and associated with different fields of knowledge.
Material and linguistic artefacts, despite their apparent separation and
different disciplinary provenance, can be considered as parts of the same
totality because they are the result of human work. Thus, the homologic method
contributed to the critique of the hypostatization of different parts existing
separately from the totality to which they constitutively belong. In so doing it
also aided and abetted the discussion about the surpassing of separatism in the
sciences. The homological element breaks with
specialization: it obliges one to keep in mind different things at the same
time, it disturbs the independent play of separate sub-totalities, and calls for
a vaster totality, whose laws are not those of its parts. In other words, the
homological method is an antiseparatist and reconstructive method, and, as such,
unwelcomed by the specialists (Ideologie 16-17, 1971: 62; now Rossi-Landi
1985: 53). The homology between material productions and
linguistic production which Rossi-Landi discovered and attentively analized can
today be confirmed by the more recent developments in cybernetics. As
Rossi-Landi himself observed in a seminar which took place in Bari in April
1985: One can ascend along what I called the
homological scheme of production up to a certain point, where an incredible
thing happens, which is that the two productions merge one into the other. This
is a thing of the last few decades, because in the production of the computer, a
hardware, in the technical language, that is a material body whose elaborated
matter is constitutive of the computer, combines with a software, that is, a
program, an ensemble of logically expressable linguistic relations merge.
Therefore the non-linguistic, the objectual and the linguistic of a high
definition of elaboration have merged one into the other almost under our very
eyes." (Rossi-Landi 1985b: 171) In the 1967 essay that opened the first issue of Ideologie,
Rossi-Landi placed ideology within its appropriate totality–the alienated
human situation–and examined it with respect to two other components of the
same totality: false conscience and false praxis. Ideology, Rossi-Landi
maintained, thought of in reference to the two latter objects could be described
as social programming. Starting with the specification that the reality of
alienation is socio-historical, Rossi-Landi considered ideology on the basis of
the following hypothesis: In the complex exchange there is between nature
and man and between man and man, during which man has slowly become something
other than nature and is conscious of such differentiation, some real
fundamental operations must have become lost or confused and some fictitious
fundamental operations must have been introduced: as a result of which the
course of civilization, including the theories that man himself started to form
in the so-called historical period, in the strict sense of the word, has not
been what it could have been without those losses, those confusions and those
intrusions. That is, as they say, the course of civilization has falsified
itself. [...] Alienation is a falsification, a general malfunction in the
formation and the unfolding of history (Ideologie 1: 3) As I have mentioned, Rossi-Landi's merit on the
question of the specification of the concept of "ideology" consists in
having shown that, although one may say that ideology is false consciousness, it
does not exhaust itself in the latter. The two concepts do not coincide.
Rossi-Landi identifies two types of differences between them: a difference of
degree and a qualitative difference. The first consists of the fact that false consciousness
is a less developed and determined ideology, ideology is the more developed and
determined consciousness. From this viewpoint, the relationship between false
conscience and ideology corresponds to the relationship between consciousness
and thought: there is false conscience at a low level of conceptual elaboration
while ideology occurs at a higher level. More exactly, ideology is a discursive
rationalization, that is, a theoretic reordering of an attitude or state of
false consciousness. The second difference, the qualitative one, concerns
the relationship between ideology and signs, and, in particular, the use of
verbal language: ideology is false consciousness that uses sign elaboration and
verbal forms in a specific language. Both differences may be summarized by
stating that ideology differs from false consciousness in so far as it is false
thought. Rossi-Landi observes: this corresponds to the fundamental intuition of
Hegel, that puts the entire elaboration of the "theoretical" spirit
somewhere between consciousness and thought, that is, between intuition and
representation. It is in the second phase of representation, the imagination,
that the sign surfaces and it is in its third phase, memory, that language is
formed. And in parenthesis he adds: (In Hegelian terms, it is possible, therefore, to
have a phenomenology of false consciousness; of ideology, a psychology–and
perhaps today one could say, a semiotics; phenomenology may only concern itself
with that which precedes language). But ideology, according to Rossi-Landi is not only
explained in terms of false consciousness and false thought. It is also false
praxis. In the case of both false consciousness and false thought one is dealing
with a separation of the praxis and vice-versa. Therefore, ideology is false
thought and false praxis. The dialectic between false consciousness, false
thought or ideology, on one hand, and false praxis, on the other, is connected
to the fact that ideology manifests itself as social programming. In order to
understand ideology, once again it becomes necessary to consider it in the
totality to which it belongs. According to Rossi-Landi, One is always truly dealing with a separation of
the parts–and in this case originally two parts–of a totality. The totality
is grasped in two different phases of its complications, at the consciousness
level and then at the level of thought. Reflecting on its immediate past of
false consciousness (and false praxis of that consciousness) and finding itself
placed against a false praxis or even under the urgency of these factors,
thought tries to save itself by rationalizing procedures that at least give it
the illusion that it is a member, an active member, of a less lacerated family.
The definition I am elaborating, therefore, is not in any way that of a thought
which would be false because separated from praxis, and that is all. It is also,
ipso jure, the definition of false praxis, because it is separated from thought.
[...] There is no thought that would take pleasure on being on its own,
independently of its relationships with praxis, in the property of not being
false: so that on itself, and only on itself alone, it would be possible to
measure and denounce false thought. (Ideologie 1: 7) Every ideology is social programming and the
consideration of the dialectic between conscience and praxis allows Rossi-Landi
to specify the difference between an innovative or revolutionary planning and a
conservative or reactionary planning. Thought, action and the social programs
that tend to draw together consciousness and praxis are revolutionary; the
social programming that tends to create obstacles to this is conservative. The editorial in the third issue, "Per un
rinnovamento dell' elaborazione ideologica" , rehearses once again the
concept of ideology as false thought and false praxis necessarily realizing
themselves in some social programming, or in short, in a design proposed or
suffered, consciously or not, having as its goal the historical construction of
society. The doctrine of ideologies is presented as a general science of the
socio-historical domain. And this is expressed by the very subtitle of the
journal - "Quaderni di storia contemporanea"–tnat appeared in the
inaugurating issues. In the editorial, Rossi-Landi confirmed the ideological
character of the journal, which he saw as working toward an innovative,
revolutionary, disalienating programming. In his text he, then, revisits Marxian
critique, inserting it within the dialectic of its particular totality, i.e.
capitalist society in the phase of high industrial development, and enlarges on
it, developing it as critique of the superstructure and complementing the
critique of the economic structure. In his analysis, Marxian thought is,
therefore, an exhaustive critique of the techniques of the economic, social,
psychological and linguistic integration elaborated by the system. In this
fashion, ideological demystification becomes closely linked not only with the
realistic description of the totality of the neocapitalist system, but also with
the conscious work of ideological elaboration. To summarize all of this, the
editorial of the third issue of Ideologie suggested one phrase: critique
of the humanities. In hindsight the choice underscores the continuity, despite
the many dffferences, between Ideologie and the other journal Rossi-Landi
would later also found, which was called Scienze umane . The editorial of issue 9-10, entitled "Rivoluzione
e studio", describes in 1970 several tendencies of Western Europe's
neo-capitalist society, locating them in the total setting of the world
political situation. Those tendencies today seem fairly evident given their
stage of development. They are: the increase in capitalistic stability, the
progressive extension of social democracy, the eclipse of communism, the
internal subdivisions of the working class with respect to new types of work, a
greater separation betweon producer and product. On the latter score, particularly insightful are the
observations on the progressive softening of the direct finalization of
individual activity toward production, leading to the phase in which activity
appears to be detached from production. This is imputed to organizational and
technological developments of the supra-individual production in neo-capitalist
society that not only frees individuals from the daily necessity of production,
but increases, amplifies and makes oven more mystifyng the obligation to be
productive. So much so that it creates the illusion that it might be possible to
live without having to work, without being imediately productive, without being
forced to work by an identifiable owner on whom one directly depends. In relation to such aspects–made blatant today by the
growth of the service sector and, especially, by developments in communication
and automatization–it is worth recalling that in those years Rossi-Landi was
giving prominence in his essays to the labor dimension implicit in language and
to the study of the relationships between signs and social reproduction. Human
beings also work linguistically, and the work does not always unfold in a known
and intentional manner. In various entries of the "Dizionario
teorico-ideologico" ("Lavoro e attivita", "Ominazione",
"Scambio non-mercantile", "Strutture del lavoro"), reprinted
in Metodica filosofica e scienza dei segni (1985), Rossi-Landi had
analyzed the concept of work, examined the very important role of work in the
process of hominization, and dwelt on the difference between work and activity.
He had pointed out that if the distinction between work and activity has to do
with the fact that the former, unlike the latter, is planned, intentional and
inscribed into a program, one must however not believe that there cannot be work
without awareness, without an understanding of the goals and the programs. Work
is the execution of programs, and this is what makes it different from activity:
but these programs may be conscious or unconscious. This has obvious
implications for the notion of "alienating work" and for that of
"linguistic alienation" ("alienated linguistic work"), and
it sends back to the Marxian analysis of work in capitalist society. But it also
concerns the possibility of speaking, as Freud did, of "dream work".
Admitting the possibility of a labor whose program is unknown allows one,
according to Rossi-Landi, to envisage "a zone of special contact for the
Marxian use of Freud or the Freudian use of Marx" (Rossi-landi,
"Lavoro e attività" Ideologie 15 (1971): 22). During the time he worked for Ideologie,
Rossi-Landi wrote his most important texts, which he rewrote and enlarged in
subsequent works. A long essay on the conception of language according to Sapir
and Whorf, with direct reference to the study of native Amerindian languages (Navajo,
Hopi, Wintu), "Teorie della relativita linguistica" (Ideologie
4: 3-69), was later republished in his 1972 volume, Semiotica e ideologia,
and in English, as a book entitled Ideologies of Linguistic Relativitvy in
1973. His interest in the theory of ideology resulted in the
book Ideologia, published in 1978 and expanded in 1982. Of particular
value in this book is the section on "Sign Systems, Ideologies and the
Production of Consensus", because of the connection it establishes between
Rossi-Landi's concept of ideology and Gramsci's thought. According to
Rossi-Landi, Gramsci, although in pre-semiotic terms, had already identified the
role that sign systems play in social reproduction and in the relationship
between "structure" and "superstructure". It may be said
that Rossi-Landi's meditation on ideology represents the develoment of Gramscian
intuitions (on the relation Rossi-Landi/Gramsci, cf. Ponzio 1991: 205-291).
Placing the Gramscian concept of The New Prince in semiotic terms Rossi-Landi
wrote in Ideologia: The fundamental structure of the New Prince is that of the co-present verbal and nonverbal sign systems, reorganized among themselves by the force of social programming. Thus, and in the manner indicated, a social practice maintained by political power may promote and carry out a new ideology. (1982: 76-77) The phase subsequent to Ideologie in the career
of Rossi-Landi is marked, as indicated, by his involvement with Scienze umane
(which lasted two years). The text entitled "Ai lettori" which opened
the first number of Scienze umane (April 1979), after having pointed out
that in Italy there still was no journal that focused on the human sciences
interdisciplinarily, emphasized the ideal continuities between this magazine and
the work undertaken betwteen 1967 and 1972 by Ideologie. Rossi-Landi
promised to succeed in carrying out, even in this new magazine, the type of
interdisciplinary probing that had formed, under the aspect of a critique of the
social sciences, the most significant and lasting aspect of Ideologie.
The end of the publication of Ideologie was thus related to the end of
the historical moment in which it was created and to the cessation (and in some
cases the perversion) of near and distant ideological models which, during the
years of Ideologie, had seemed reasonable to let oneself be inspired by
or, at least, be able to refer to. Today Ideologie would have to be re-examined in
the light of the historical climate the beginning of the 1990s represent. By
comparing these two journals, both no longer existing, it could perhaps be the
case that, more than the "scientific and concentrated formulation" of Scienze
umane, one will end up missing the theoretical-ideological commitment that
animated Ideologie. I. Authors referred to
To free ourselves from what Adam Schaff calls "sign
fetishism" (referring to the Marxist notion of the "fetishism of
commodidties"), we must view signs in connection with the question of the
human individual and of social relations. To give up a reified conception of the
relations between signs as well as between signifier and signified, it is
necessary to consider the sign-relation as a relation among men who use and
produce signs in specific social conditions. All analyses should start from the
"social condition of the individual" and from the notion of the
individual as a social product. This would prevent us from considering
communication as a set of relations among originally separate and abstract
subjects, while removing idealistic and materialistic-mechanistic explanations
of the communication process. The subjective-idealistic and materialistic-dialectic
models differ from each other in their interpretation of the active role, which
both (in contrast to mechanistic materialism) assign to the subject and
consequently to language in the cognitive process. Schaff belives that, in
comparison to naive materialism, materialistic-dialectic theory recognizes the
superiority of language theories that stress the active function of language in
the cognitive process (even if from an idealistic viewpoint) and the connection
between language and Weltanschauung, between language and the "image
of reality" (think of Humboldt, Sapir, and Whorf). However, in a Marxist
perspective, the human being should be considered as the result of social
relations and language as the product of social praxis. This interpretation
recognizes the active function of the cognitive subject and at the same time
maintains that, far from being the starting point of the cognitive process, the
subjective element is the result–and a complex one at that–of specific
social influences. In a certain sense, the subject may be considered as the
resultant construction of cognitive processes. The connection between language theory and knowledge
theory is evident if we acknowledge interaction between language and thought, as
well as the indivisibility of meaning and concept. Schaff recalls Lenin's
"On dialectic" (in which the latter outlines the program for Marxist
gnoseology with reference to the history of language) as sufficient evidence of
this, maintaining that when in accordance with the materialistic
analysis of the cognitive process we consider thought and human consciousness as
linguistic thought, as thought made of language (Marx maintained that language
is "my consciousness and that of others"), it is evident that any
analysis of the cognitive process must also be the analysis of the linguistic
process, without which thought is simply impossible. (1969: 20-21) "Pure" thought which subsequently finds
expression in a given language does not exist; on the contrary, there exists a
language-thought process. Any form of human speech implies the use of a
particular language; thinking always takes place in a certain language. By
contarst with the school of Wurzburg, Vygotsky demonstrated the unity of thought
and language, and of meaning and concept, through experimental research in the
formulation and development of conceptual thought. Semantics and theory of knowledge are both implied
whenever we ask the following questions: "What is meaning?", "What
is the relation between meaning and the sign-vehicle?", "What is the
relation between meaning and object?", "What kind of existence do we
refer to when we say that meaning exists?", and so forth. On the other hand,
all the problems dealt with by knowledge theory imply semantics insofar as they
are problems concerning language. This does not imply that theory of knowledge
should be exclusively a semantic analysis, or that language should be the sole
object of philosophical research, as maintained by semantic philosophy. The
Marxist theory of reflection clearly evidences all the implications existing
between semantics and theory of knowledge, rejecting schematic attitudes typical
of conventional and idealistic relativistic standpoints. Certain philosophical
trends–Cassirer's neo-Kantism, neopositivism, Russell's logical atomism, the
linguistic philosophy of the school of Oxford connected to Wittgenstein's later
production, the semantic analysis of the school of Warsaw, etc.– deserve
recognition for having maintained and demonstrated that language is not
merely the instrument, but also the object of philosophical research. The theory of knowledge is not the only theory in need
of support from studies on language. The philosophy of the human individual–to
the extent that it deals with the function of the individual in social relations
and with problems of traditional ethics, though rejecting any form of moralism–must
inevitably consider that individual behavior is conditioned by society mainly
through the influence of language. This leads us to a new vision of issues
related to language: the problem of the connection between language and ideology,
concept and stereotype, language and social praxis. On considering the concepts
of "choice", "responsibility", and "individual freedom",
we need to take into account the "tyranny of words", the problem of
"linguistic alienation". We should reject the idealistic and
conservative viewpoint which refers contradictions and individual alienation to
a semantic origin, thus maintaining (like the young Hegelians) that man can be
"set free" by simply clarifying the meaning of words and replacing
false ideas with true ones. The relation between Marxist dialectic and formal logic
clearly evidences the connection between theory of knowledge and language
analysis. Schaff shows how the word "contradiction" has two different
meanings, depending on whether it is considered from a Marxist dialectical or
formal logical viewpoint; this implies that Marxist dialectic does not exclude
the logical principle of non-contradiction. From the viewpoint of formal logic,
the term "contradiction" signifies a relation between two sentences or
utterances, one of which maintains that something is in a given relation with an
object at a given moment, while the other denies the relation. On the contrary,
from the viewpoint of Marxist dialectic "contradiction" means "unity
of antithesis"–that is, unity of contrasting tendencies, aspects and
forces; in this way, dialectic is the constitutive element of every phenomenon. When Marx maintains that at a certain level of
development the productive material forces of society contradict existing
relations of production, the word "contradiction" does not express the
relation between a positive and negative judgment (as in formal logic); rather,
it implies the juxtaposition of opposed and yet complementary tendencies which
simultaneously form the unity of a certain system and function as the mainspring
of its transformation. In this case, the word "contradiction"–notwithstanding
the misunderstandings to which it can give rise–when intended as an objective
rejection of the logical principle of non-contradiction, has a specific meaning
which justifies its use. In this particular case, the word "contradiction"
underlies a contrast characterized by inadequacy and discordance such as to
interfere with the functioning of the social mechanism to the point of causing
its collapse. A central point in Schaff's analysis of the relation
between dialectic and the principle of non-contradiction is his thesis that to
consider movement as a confutation of the logical principle of non-contradiction
is unfounded. Engels too falls into this trap. Schaff observes that the
following dilemma is a false dilemma: either we acknowledge the existence of the
fundamental laws of formal logic and deny movement or we acknowledge movement
and deny these laws. This dilemma ensues from interpreting movement as an
objective confutation of the logical principle of non-contradiction, as
something which is and is not at the same time in the same place. Schaff
establishes a connection between the fact that Marx and Engels accepted the
Hegelian interpretation of movement (as something which is and is not at the
same time in the same place) and the level of development of mathematics,
particularly differential calculus. Newton's and Leibniz's conception of the
infinitesimal entity, considered to be a quantity equal to and different from
zero, strengthened the influence on Marx and Engels of the Eleatic-Hegelian
principles concerning movement. Today we know that the relation between Marx and
mathematics in his day was not that described by Schaff in 1955. Thanks to the
publication of Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts (It. trans. by Ponzio
1975), we are now familiar with Marx's critical analyzes of Newton's and
Leibniz's "mystical" differential calculus, of D'Alembert's and Euler's
rationalistic method, and of Lagrange's purely algebraic method. On criticizing
Newton's and Leibniz's differential calculus, Marx highlights the presence of
metaphysical notions in their theory and the use of procedures which oppose the
laws of mathematics. Though making use of Lagrange's work, Marx through such
criticism reaches positions on his own account attained by such
nineteenth-century mathematicians as Cauchy and Weierstrass, who accomplished
the transition from a simple to a more profound and scientific stage of calculus.
According to Schaff, concept and meaning are two faces
of the same phenomenon: thought and language. There is no meaning outside
natural language or independently of linguistic signs. However, the verbal sign
is closely connected not only to concept, but also to what Schaff calls the stereotype.
It is related to beliefs, established opinion, emotional tendencies, group and
class interests, and so forth. The stereotype is a specific reflection of
reality related to specific linguistic signs; but since it involves emotional,
volitive, and valuational elements, it plays a particular role not only in
relation to cognitive processes, but also to praxis. The stereotype is not
simply a category of logical thought; it is also a pragmatic category. From
language we receive concepts from a given society in the course of history; in
the same way we receive stereotypes which convey specific tendencies, behavioral
patterns, and reactions. This means that speech is always more or less
ideological, since it is connected to social praxis. Schaff maintains that reflexion on the stereotype is
characterized by a high degree of "intrusion of the subjective factor"
in the form of emotional, volitive, and evaluative elements. This "subjective
factor", however, is social and not individual in nature; it is linked to
interests of social groups (social classes, ethnic groups which speak the same
language, and so forth). Seen in these terms, the "subjective factor"
is present in any form of reflexion on reality as well as in scientific
knowledge. Schaff writes: Science and ideology are closely connected to
each other, in spite of those pedants who would like to separate them. In any
case, since social praxis, which produces and promotes the development of
language, is the common basis for both the relatively objective knowledge of the
world and for attitudes of evaluation, a genetic link exists. (1969: 127) Schaff singles out the following relation between
stereotypes and ideology: it is not possible to identify stereotypes with
ideology directly, but the latter could not subsist without stereotypes. We may also deal with problems concerning ideology and
the "subjective factor" of human knowledge–where the subject, as we
have seen, is viewed as a social rather than an individual product–from the
viewpoint of the sociology of knowl edge. The latter, in fact, acknowledges the
subject as a socially produced and conditioned individual. As Schaff frequently
states, the sociology of knowledge derives from Marxism, and particularly from
structure and superstructure theory. It is also directly related to gnoseology
and theory of knowledge. Schaff divides definition of the concept of ideology
into three groups to avoid ambiguity and equivocation: (a) the genetic
definition which examines the conditions of development of ideology; (b) the
structural definition which attempts to define the specific character of
ideology (and therefore to establish the differences, from the logical viewpoint,
between the structure of ideological discourse and the structure of scientific
discourse); and (c) the functional definition which underlines the functions
fulfilled by ideology in relation to social, group, and class interests, etc. Furthermore, Schaff believes in the necessity of
distinguishing between the problem of the definition of ideology, on one hand,
and of the value of ideology in relation to objective truth, on the other.
Though related, these problems are different and should not be confused:
definition of ideology is one thing, while its value in relation to the question
of objective knowledge is another. Therefore, though apparently a definition,
the statement "ideology is false consciousness" is not, in fact, a
definition; rather, it is an answer to the question of thc value of ideology.
The main error made by Mannheim in his theory of ideology and his criticism of
Marxism lies in his having mistaken the statement "ideology is false
consciousness" for a definition of ideology. We must also distinguish between the meaning Marx and
Engels gave to the word "ideology" and the meaning it subsequently
acquired in the Marxist tradition (especially from Lenin onward). Such
expressions as "bourgeois ideology" and "ideological science"
are very much in use; they characterize ideology on the basis of its function.
In Schaff's opinion, therefore, we may give the following functional definition
of ideology: by ideology we mean a system of opinions related to social
development founded on a system of values; these opinions subtend specific
attitudes and behavioral patterns in different objective situations. Marx and Engels employed the word "ideology"
in a narrow sense–that is, for bourgeoisie "ideology". Ruling class
ideology aims at the preservation of society divided into classes. Consequently,
it aims at concealing those contradictions that reveal the need of
transformation in the current structures of productive relations. Bourgeois
ideology is thus characterized by Marx and Engels as false consciousness with
respect to objective consciousness. Marx and Engels consider ideology as false
consciousness because they use the word in a narrow sense–that is, for
bourgeois ideology–rather than in the broad sense where reference is to "ideology
of the proletariat","scientific ideology", etc. When Mannheim
maintains that if ideology is false consciousness, then Marxist ideology is also
false, he makes the mistake of identifying ideology in the narrow sense with
ideology in the broad sense (cf. Schaff 1970). We may summarize the above in the following points: (1)
the statement "ideology is false consciousness" is not a definition;
(2) when we speak of ideology as false consciousness, we are referring to
bourgeois ideology which aims at the reproduction of class society and of social
inequalities; and (3) use of such expressions as "ideology of the
proletariat" and "bourgeois ideology" is now widespread. In
Schaff's opinion, to consider these points means to be aware of the need to
define the word ideology in such a way as to explain its different meanings, on
one hand, and to suit the Marxist perspective, on the other. In this sense,
ideology may be defined as either all those opinions formed under the influence
of the interests of a specific class (genetic definition, or as those opinions
useful to the defense of the interests of a specific class (functional
definition). It is by considering ideology in relation to its
genesis and function that we can face the problem of the value of ideology
better as related to the objective and scientific knowledge of reality. We must say immediately that according to Schaff this
problem cannot be dealt with on the basis of a linguistic-structural definition.
Ideological discourse does not have a specific structure that distinguishes it
from scientific discourse; it is an error to maintain that the difference
between science and ideology lies in the structure of their propositions.
According to this opinion, ideological discourse would mainly consist in
evaluative and normative propositions, while scientific discourse would consist
in descriptive propositions. Schaff severely criticizes the neopositivist
dichotomy between judgments of fact and judgments of value, which appears in
Marxism in the form of the division between science and ideology. The difference between science and ideology is not that
the "subjective factor" (which, as seen, is social and not individual)
is present in science and absent in ideology; rather it concerns the different
role played by the "subjective factor", which is present in both
science and ideology. Scientific analysis and sociology of knowledge have
significantly contributed to destroying the myth of the pure objectivity of
scientific propositions. Given that both science and ideology are conditioned by
society both are in a certain sense subjective (at least because language
without which human thought is impossible introduces subjective elements in all
forms of human knowledge). Therefore, in Schaff's words, another thesis is presented here contrasting that which sets science against ideology. It maintains that not only are the propositions of science and ideology linked, in some cases they are even identical. (1967: 51) This is true even to the point that we may speak of
"ideological science" and of "scientific ideologies". Schaff stresses that to recognize that any discourse is
more or less ideological because of social and historical conditioning does not
imply that all ideologies are distorted and must therefore be considered in the
same terms. A distinction must be made between true ideologies and ideologies as
distortions of reality; between scientific ideologies and forms of false
consciousness. This distinction is determined by the different genesis and the
different function of ideologies. I. Authors referred to
Accodint to Lévinas the relation of otherness was
neither reducible to being-with, Heidegger's Mitsein, nor to
Sartre's being-for. Otherness is located inside the subject, the self,
itself a dialogue, a relation between self and other. The other, is inseparable
from the ego, the Self (Même as intended by Lévinas), and as
Etranger it cannot be included within the totality of the ego. The other is
necessary to the constitution of the ego and its world, at the same time it is
refractory to all those categories that wish to eliminate its otherness, thereby
subjecting it to identity of self. The relation with the other gives rise to a
constitutive impediment to integrity and closing of self, it is intended as a
relation of excess, a surplus, the surpassing of objectivating thought, release
from the relation between subject and object and from the relation of equal
exchange. Active in the very constitution of self, at the
linguistic level otherness produces internal dialogization of the word, the
impossibility of being an integral word; at the linguistic-esthetic level,
the double of concept and reality; at the moral level,
restlessness, obsession with the other, answerability. An ethical foundation, therefore, is proposed by Lévinas
for the self/other relation. But what does "ethical" mean in this
context? Lévinas (1949:167-169) gives the following explanation: Nous appellons éthique une relation entre des
termes où l'un et l'autre ne sont unis par une synthèse de l'entendement ni
par la relation de sujet à l'objet et ou cependant l'un pèse ou importe ou est
signifiant à l'autre, où il sont liés par une intrigue que le savoir ne
saurait ni épuiser ni démêler. The self/other relation irreducibly supercedes the
realm of knowledge, of the concept, of abstract thought, even if the latter are
possible thanks to this relation. The appearance of the relation of otherness with the
development of self-awareness (a condition of self-identity), is described by Lévinas
as follows: Quel est le rapport entre le "soi-même"
et le pour-soi de la representation? Le "soi-même" est-il une
recurrence du même type que la conscience, le savoir et la representation et
qui se sublimerait seulement dans la conscience conçue comme Esprit? Le "soi-même"
est-il conscience a son tour ou tout autre evenement qui justifierait l'emploi
de termes distincts: Soi, Je, Moi, ame? Les philosophes ont le plus souvent
decrit l'identité du soi-même par le retour à soi de la conscience. Pour
Sartre, comme pour Hegel le soi-même est posé comme un pour soi. L'identité
du Je, se reduirait ainsi au retournement de l'essence sur elle même, à son
retour à elle meme et à l'identification du Même dont elle semblait a un
moment être le sujet ou la condition (Lévinas 1968, now reformulated in
1974:131). Contrary to Sartre and Hegel, for Lévinas the self of
"being conscious of oneself" neither coincides with nor presupposes
consciousness; rather it pre-exists with respect to consciousness to which it is
connected by a relation of otherness and autonomy. Lévinas turns his attention to socio-cultural
phenomena as they originate from the category of other and not of self. In a
chapter entitled "Le sens et l'œuvre" in his 1972 book L'humanisme
de l'autre homme (now in Id. 1990), Lévinas uses the term Œuvre, to
designate a movement toward the other where the possibility of return to self is
excluded: L'œuvre est une orientation qui va librement du Même
a l'autre[...]. L'Œuvre pensée radicalement est un mouvement du Même qui ne
retourne jamais au Même (Lévinas 1990: 6). This movement is especially evident in artistic
creation. Nonetheless it is not limited to the field of art but is present each
time a human product conveys something more than its function–a chronotopic
excess, a surplus value with respect to the restricted horizon of the needs,
interests, ideologies, values, life and time of the subject and its
contemporaries. The specifically human present in any human enterprise, whatever
it may be. As says Lévinas, beyond perfect adaptation to its own goal, the
human enterprise [...] porte le temoignage de son accord avec un je
ne sais quel destin extrinseque au cours des choses, et qui la place en dehors
du monde, comme le passe a jamais revolu des ruines, comme l'insaisissable étrangété
de l'exotique. (Lévinas
1948: 106) To accept the concept of œuvre as designating
the specifically human, as the movement in which the human is realized, means,
says Lévinas, to support a kind of humanism in which the usual itinerary of
philosophy is inverted and which reste celui d'Ulysse dont l'aventure dans le monde
n'a été qu'un retour à soi; le natale–une complaisance dans le Même, une méconnaissance
de l'Autre. (Lévinas
1972a:5) Humanism of otherness, of the other man (as already
signalled, Humanisme de l'autre homme is the title of a book by Lévinas),
finds expression in artistic production, in the immediate orientation of the
latter toward the realization of an artwork. Such a perspective favors a better understanding of the
relation between art and answerability. Insofar as it is oriented in the sense
of the concept of œuvre, art may be considered as being dégagé
thanks to its otherness and autonomy as regards the author, and to its ability
to surmount the historico-biographical and historico-social boundaries of its
production: thanks to its excess as an œuvre. Much as the author would
like to be engagé, the œuvre's disengagement is inevitable. The œuvre
is essentially dégagé. Disengagement of the œuvre has nothing to do
with the esthetics of art for art's sake. Distancing from the subject, its
release from the sphere of the same–the sphere of the single subject author as
well as of the global social context in which the opus is produced–, its
irreversible movement toward the other are elements which establish a link
between art and answerability. The latter is neither intended in the juridical
type, nor in the conventional-moral sense where the subject answers for himself
and the disposition to answer for is entirely relative to the sphere of
the subject's jurisdiction; a given code, specific duties, a contract, a
particular role. By contrast, in the discousre of art answerability is no longer
a question of answering for oneself but for the other: answerability for the
other surpasses the limits of individual answerability (of an ethico-normative,
juridical and political order), the laws of equal exchange, the functions fixed
by roles and social position, the distinctions sanctioned by law between
individual identities each with its private sphere of freedom and imputability. In the relation of otherness understood as absolute
otherness and not as otherness relative to self, the other is not given, it is
not the object, it is not conceptually representable or definable. Lévinas
mentions this relation in "La realité et son ombre", although it is
explicitly mentioned in terms of the relation with other people only toward the
end. It should now be clear why in this article Lévinas maintains that the most
elementary procedure in art consists in substituting the object for its image,
and why the image is contrasted with the concept.. The concept is the
object insofar as it has been grasped, captured; and from this viewpoint there
is no difference between knowledge and action: both capture the object. The
image, instead, neutralizes such a relation with the real. The so-called disinterestedness of art consists in
neutralization, but such disinterestedness is not an expression of the subject's
freedom and initiative, it does not ensue from a situation of power. On the
contrary, the image implies dominion over the subject, recovery of the the
subject's original sense as "being subject to something". The image
involves a situation of passivity. Neither the notion of "conscious"
nor of "unconscious" can be applied here; although initiative and
intentionality are lacking, this whole process develops in praesentia,
before one's very own eyes, as in a "daydream". This particular
situation is characterized by automatism, which Lévinas compares to dance,
where "nothing is unconscious, but where the conscious paralyzed in its
freedom performs (joue) wholly absorbed in this performance (jeu)". The image is the otherness of what is, the étrangété
of what is with respect to itself, its double. The thing is itself and the image
of itself; consequently, the image, the double, is as real as the fact that
something is what it is. Identity and étrangété, otherness: these are
the two faces of the real which realism does not capture. Art looks at the
real's double. Art does not represent reality but we could say that it pictures
its double. In "La realite et son ombre", Lévinas too
observes that in art the real world seems to be placed in parentheses or
inverted commas, a procedure realized differently according to the various
modalites of writing. The double–otherness as it escapes the identity of what
is, or the image pictured in art–is always to a degree parodic, caricatural.
Unlike objective discourse, objectified discourse is not taken seriously; rather,
it is discourse in disguise. Objectified discourse reveals what the subject does
not succeed in grasping, thus rendering awkward and ridiculous its attempts at
containing such discourse within the sphere of its own identity. The parodic
aspect of the double is analyzed by Lévinas. He observes that a person is not
only his identity, that which is, but that together with the being he coincides
with, he wears his very caricature on his face, his picturesque side. The
picturesque, says Lévinas, is always a little caricatural. Likewise, a thing
does not coincide with what it is as the object of knowledge or of practical
activity; relatively to what the subject wants it to be in relation to cognitive
and practical functions it remains behind, like a dead weight. For this reason
we might say that things are always in a sense "still-life". Being is not only itself, it escapes itself. Here
is a person who is what he is; but he does not make us forget, does not absorb,
cover over entirely the objects he holds and the way he holds them, his gestures,
limbs, gaze, thought, skin, which escape from under the identity of his
substance, which like a torn sack is unable to contain them. Thus a person bears
on his face, alongside of its being with which he coincides, its own caricature,
its picturesqueness. The picturesqueness is always to some extent a caricature.
Here is a familiar everyday thing, perfectly adapted to the hand which is
accustomed to it, but its qualities, color, form, and position at the same time
remain as it were behind its being, like the "old garments" of a soul
which had withdrawn from that thing, like a "still life" (Lévinas
1948; Eng. trans.:135). Because of its relation with death, the caricatural
nature of the double, the fact that the image tells of linear, productive,
cumulative time, the artwork is always more or less comico-tragic,
simultaneously. As Lévinas says, every image is already a caricature, but such
caricature is turned toward the tragic. If we now consider the relation between orality and
writing with respect to the possibility of dialogism and otherness, we realize
that the sign of otherness which finds expression in written and oral language,
exists autonomously and antecedently as reagards orality and writing. The sign
in which otherness manifests itself does not require vocalization to subsist, it
is independent from the phoné, and has a life of its own antecedent to orality;
just as it is independent from the written sign as such, for not all of what is
written is portrayal of otherness, of the image. The question of the specific sign of otherness and
dialogue cuts across the opposition between orality and writing and, moreover,
refers beyond the limits of the verbal, calling for consideration of the
relation between verbal signs and nonverbal signs. If writing favors the
development of Socratic dialogue, at the same time it produces dialogic texts
which of original Socratic dialogue maintain only the form: their content is
monologic, and dialogue is no more than a method used pedagogically to expound a
thesis, a doctrine. As we know, this is what occurs in Plato himself. Such
transformation is not caused by use of the written form, but by subjection of
the dialogue form to the direct word, the objective word. Where, instead, the
indirect, distanced word prevails, where writing resorts to syntactic and
literary distancing expedients from one's own word, in both reporting and
reported speech, to devices that transform the objective word into the
objectified word–regarding Plato, this occurs above all in the Symposium–,
the dialogic form rediscovers the effective dialogism of content. According to this acceptation,writing is a
practice which does not identify with the production of written signs: thus
intended, the term "writing" can also be used to indicate a practice
independent from the phoné, and traceable outside verbal signs in general every
time we have a one-way movement, without returns, also in the sense of "without
profit", a movement toward otherness which Lévinas calls œuvre.
This movement is present in the artwork as such, but does not belong to the
artwork alone: on the contrary, the esthetic event shares in the character of œuvre.
Therefore the œuvre can also be traced outside the esthetic sphere, even
though it emerges in the latter as a fundamental condition, as a method. "Writing",
therefore, is a practice oriented according to the movement of the œuvre.. Together with Lévinas, we may use the terrn "trace"
for the sign of this "writing" practice as it is characterized by the
movement of the œuvre. The "trace" is the sign of otherness
and dialogic openness. It is what in Totalite' et Infini and Autrement
qu'être Lévinas characterizes as the significance of signification in
communication: that is, the fact that signification signifies in saying and is
not exhausted in the said. Characteristics of the significance of saying
comprise: autonomy with respect to the "said"; the fact that it is a
surplus nonfunctional to the exchange of messages; disymmetry, excess (that is,
the significance of saying escapes being and the categories which describe it),
"uselessness" by comparison with the economy of "narration",
of the "fabula"; self referentiality, arnbiguity, equivocity,
contradiction; the fact that what is revealed in the significance of saying does
not unveil itself, remains invisible, irreducible to the status of object, does
not lose its interiority, its secret; lastly, openness to absolute otherness.
Thanks to all these characteristics, the significance of saying as proximity,
contact, intercorporeity, involvement, is characterized as writing (intransitive
writing as distinguished from transcription by Barthes). To recognize the Lévinasian relation of otherness as
writing, the relation of otherness as obtained in the significance of saying,
means to become aware of the equivocation implied in wanting to see in the Lévinasian
"face-to-face" relation a preference for oral discourse and consequent
depreciation of writing (a sort of return to Plato). For Lévinas, as he explicitly states in his preface to
L'au-de-là du verset (1982b) the human word in itself is writing given
its ability to constantly signify more than what it says, given the excess of
the signifier with respect to the signified, of saying over the said. As the
expression of otherness, as the trace, the presence of an absence, the word
presents itself as writing independently of the fact of being written in the
literal sense. Writing, says Lévinas, exists in language and communication
before the stylet and the pen impress letters on tablets, parchment, or paper,
"literature before the letter!": communication and language do not
merely have the status of instruments, they are not exhausted by the literal
sense of what they prescribe, thematize, or disclose. I. Authors referred to
Thomas A. Sebeok may be counted among the figures who
have contributed most to the establishment of semiotics, and in particular to
its configuration as an interdisciplinary perspective. His work is largely
inspired by Charles S. Peirce, but as he declares in an interview released to me
in 1987 (now in Sebeok 1991b:95-105), his maîtres a penser also include
such figures as Charles Morris and Roman Jakobson, of whose work he may be
considered a student and continuator. His numerous and diversified research
interests cover a broad range of territories, from the natural sciences to the
human sciences. He is concerned with theoretical issues and their applications
viewed from as many angles as the disciplines that come into play in his
research: linguistics, cultural anthropology, psychology, artificial
intelligence, zoology, ethology, biology, medicine, robotics, mathematics,
philosophy, literature, and narratology, etc. Even though the initial impression
might be that Sebeok proceeds rather erratically in his coverage of such a great
multiplicity of different fields, which would seem distant from each other as he
experiments varying perspectives and embarks on differing research ventures, in
reality the broad scope of his research comes together in the focus on his
"doctrine of signs", and finds an explanation in a fundamental
conviction subtending his general research method: the entire universe is
perfused with signs, indeed, as Peirce hazards, is perhaps composed exclusively
of signs. In what may be defined as a "global" or "holistic"
approach to sign studies, Sebeok stretches his gaze over the whole universe
insofar as it teams with information, messages, signifying processes; a universe
which is characterized, as he never tires of repeating, as a fact of
signification long before becoming a fact of communication (for one of his most
recent statements in this sense, cf. Sebeok 1994). And as he playfully puts it
in a text of 1990 "Semiotic and communication" (Sebeok 1990b: 391):
"The world is composed entirely of signs, and therefore, I think of the
whole world as my oyster; whereas for some people only the human world, and then
only a small portion of that, is their oyster". Sebeok's research into the "life of signs"
may be immediately associated with his concern for the "signs of
life". Indeed, a fundamental convinction supporting his research runs as
follows: given that semiosis or sign behavior involves the whole living universe,
a full understanding of the dynamics of semiosis may in the last analysis lead
to a definition of life itself. In Sebeok's view semiosis and life coincide.
Semiosis originates with the first stirrings of life on the planet, which leads
to the formulation of an axiom he believes cardinal to semiotics: "semiosis
is the criterial attribute of life" (Sebeok 1991b: 124), that is, "the
criterial mark of all life is semiosis", which is accompanied by his second
axiom, that is, "semiosis presupposes life" (Sebeok 1994). No wonder
all the life sciences find a place in Sebeok's intellectual horizon, estimated
in their importance for a full understanding of signs and their workings in the
terrestrial "biosphere" (cf. Vernadsky 1926). In Sebeok's view then, the universe is perfused with
signs all interconnected and interdependent in a huge semiosic
"network" or "web"–as expressed with an image lauched in
1975– while the sign science or semiotics represents the point of confluence
and observation for studies on the life of signs and on the signs of life. His
abductive approach to the analysis of the signifying material of the biosphere
leads him to contemplate the whole universe à la Peirce as a sign in its
global complexity. Indeed he recalls that for Peirce, the whole universe was
itself a comprehensive global sign, "a vast representamen, a great
symbol... an argument... necessarily a great work of art, a great poem... a
symphony... a painting" (CP 5.119). Sebeok's studies are turned
toward signs commonly covered by specialists from a great variety of different
fields, viewed at one and the same time both in their specificity and
interrelation: signs appertaining to "nature" and to
"culture" ranging from human signs to animal signs, from verbal signs
to nonverbal signs, from natural languages to artificial languages, from signs
at a high level of plurivocality and dialogicality to univocal and monological
signs, or better signals, signs in their varying degrees of indexicality,
symbolicity and iconicity, signs of conscious life and of the unconscious. As a
student of signifying processes, Sebeok's attention is turned toward the whole
universe which does not imply a claim to intellectual omnipotence, as some have
intimated, but simply his profound awareness that signs are interdependent and
relational, so that an understanding of any one particular type of sign–such
as the verbal–is only possible in the light of its relation with other signs
forming semiosic processes in the great sign network, in which the signs of
nature and culture in Sebeok's ecumenical perspective are not considered as
divided and separate but as interpretants of each other. As regards this last
point, Sebeok explicitly states, polemicizing with major exponents of
contemporary currents in semiotics today, that "to me, however, the
imperium of Nature, or Weltbuch, over Culture, or Bucherwelt, has
always been unmistakable. Only a patent theoretical basis was veiled to resolve
what Blumenberg (1981:17) has called an 'alte Feindschaft' between these two
semiotic systems, the latter obviously immersed in the former. This is why my 'rediscovery'
of the Umweltlehre came as such a personal revelation" (Sebeok
1994). Sebeok's global approach to sign life presupposes his
critique of anthropocentric semiotic theory and practice which, instead, he
opens to zoosemiotics or even more broadly to biosemiotics, on one hand, and to
endosemiotics, on the other, as he explores the boundaries and margins of this
science or, "doctrine" of signs, as he prefers to call it. The latter
is at one and the same time recent for what concerns the determination of its
status and awareness of its possibilities of extension, but ancient if we trace
its roots, as does Sebeok, back to the theory and practice of Hippocrates and
Galen (cf. Sebeok 1979a). The "semiotic doctrine", as conceived by
Sebeok, is characterized with respect to other sign theories by a maximum
broadening of competencies (it is interesting that with respect to his 1976
book, however, after almost twenty years he no longer considers the debate on
whether semiotics is a "science", a "theory" or a "doctrine"
of much consequence, as he states in his paper of 1994, cit.). The sign
science, as Sebeok conceives it, includes not only the "science qui étude
la vie des signes au sein de la vie sociale" (Saussure), that is, the study
of communication in culture, but also the study of communicative behavior of a
biosemiotic order, considered as the wider context, given that "biological
foundations lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and
signification in the human animal" (Sebeok 1976: x), and certainly not as a
sphere separate from semiotics reductively identified with anthroposemiotics or
semiotics of culture. The orientation of Sebeok's overall semiotic discourse is
subtended by his promotion of the critique of anthropocentrism and therefore of
glottocentrism, extensible to those trends in semiotics which look to
linguistics for their sign model. Indeed, Sebeok's interest in cultural
processes at the intersection between nature and culture induces him to take
into consideration the research of such scholars as Konrad Lorenz and Jacob von
Uexküll. To free oneself from the anthrocentric perspective as
it has characterized semiotics generally, implies taking into account other sign
systems beyond those specific to mankind. Such systems are not alien to the
human world even though they are not specific to it, and concern the encounter
between human communication and the communicative behavior of nonhuman
communities within the species and with the environment, in addition to the
dominion of endosemiotics, that is, the study of cybernetic systems inside the
body both on a ontogenetic and philogenetic level. Sebeok's position succeeds in
avoiding both the biologism involved in reducing human culture to communication
systems traceable in other species as well as, viceversa, the anthropomorphic
reduction of nonhuman animal communication to characteristic features and models
specific to mankind. Consequently, Sebeok's doctrine of signs insists
particularly on the autonomy of nonverbal sign systems with respect to the
verbal, and such autonomy is demonstrated through the study of human sign
systems which depend on the verbal only in part, in spite of the predominance of
verbal language in the sphere of anthroposemiosis. Sebeok's opening remarks to his book of 1979, The
Sign & Its Masters, which he defines as "transitional" may be
extended to the whole of his research, if we consider it in the light of the
present situation in philosophico-linguistic and semiotic debate characterized
by the transition from "code semiotics", that is, semiotics centered
on linguistics, to "interpretation semiotics", which differently from
the former, accounts for the autonomy and arbitrariness of nonverbal signs
whether "cultural" or "natural". Through his panorama of
problems and masters of signs, Sebeok evidences aspects that differentiate these
two different modalities of practising semiotics, which may be expressed, to
simplify, with two names–Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles S. Peirce: the
study of signs is in "transit" from the first to the second of these
two positions as represented by these two emblematic figures, and indeed may now
be said to have largely shifted toward Peirce. Sebeok's previous book of 1976, Contributions to the
Doctrine of Signs, is strongly theoretical in character and clearly
expresses his preference for the semiotics of interpretation, while The Play
of Musement, a collection of papers published in 1981, explores the efficacy
of semiotics as a methodological tool and extensibility in more discursive and
applicative terms. In both cases, Sebeok sets his interpreters before a position
that is consolidated and rooted in his theoretical formation, while The Sign
& Its Masters proposes all the diverse possibilities ensuing from one or
the other of these two semiotic alternatives. In fact, in addition to being a
compact theoretical book, The Sign & Its Masters also has the merit
of offering a survey of the various altematives, positions and phases
historically incarnated in important scholars directly or indirectly dealing
with the problem of signs. Sebeok's research transforms us into the direct
witnesses and interpretants of the (abductive) passages of a discourse that
considers, expounds, tests and evaluates different possibilities not only in the
choice of an appropriate method for semiotic research but also in identifying
one's own object of analysis and specific disciplinary field. In this sense,
this particular book, but in reality the overall orientation of Sebeok's
research, is transitional given that it significantly contributes to the shift
toward interpretation semiotics definitively freed from its subordination to (Saussurean)
linguistics. (In Italy, for a sign theory wholly oriented in the direction of
"interpretation semiotics" and completely free from false dichotomies,
such as communication semiotics vs signification semiotics, referential
semantics vs nonreferential semantics, cf. Bonfantini 1981; Ponzio 1985a). I Think I Am a Verb
of 1986 is the fourth book of a tetralogy, the other three being those just
mentioned: Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs, The Sign & Its
Masters, and The Play of Musement.. Ever since, other important
volumes have followed in rapid succession and include: Essays in Zoosemiotics,
1990, A Sign is Just a Sign, 1991, American Signatures, 1991, Semiotics
in the United States, 1991, and Come comunicano gli animali che non
parlano, 1998 (without forgetting important earlier volumes such as Perspectives
in Zoosemiotics, of 1972, and many others under his editorship including Animal
Communication, 1968, Sight, Sound, and Sense, 1978, and How
Animals Communicate, 1979). Without continuing this list of publications, it
will suffice to remember that Sebeok has been publishing since 1942 so that his
writings may be viewed as the expression of his ongoing research and reflexion
constantly enriched with new information and documentation, conducted over more
than half a century, as the interpreter of a semiosic universe whose variegated
and multifaceted consistency he has substantially contributed to manifesting.
Furthermore, a part from the fact that almost all Sebeok's books are now
available in Italian translation, beyond English and Italian Sebeok may also be
read in a surprising range of other languages including German, French, Spanish,
Portuguese, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Norwegian, Hebrew as
well as the Asian languages such as Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese. Given its variety and breadth of interest, I Think I
Am a Verb acts as a point of confluence and launching pad for the
irradiation of new research itineraries in the vast region of semiotics. The
title of this particular volume reevokes the dying words of the 18th President
of the United States, Ulysses Grant, made to ring with Peircean overtones. In
fact, in Peirce's view man is a sign, and Sebeok's choice of a verb instead of a
noun to characterize this sign (which is not only each one of us, but the whole
universe in its globality) serves to underline the dynamic, processual character
of semiosis. A fundamental point in Sebeok's doctrine of signs is that living is
sign activity so that to maintain and reproduce life and not only to interpret
it at a scientific level necessarily involves the use of signs. Sebeok theorizes
an immediate connection between the biological and the semiosic and, therefore,
between biology and semiotics. All his research would seem to develop Peirce's
conviction that man is a sign: and it would seem that Sebeok is adding that this
sign is a verb: to interpret. And in Sebeok's particular conception of reality,
the activity of interpreting coincides with the activity of life, and referring
to himself, with his own life. If I am a sign, as Sebeok would seem to be saying
through his life as a researcher, then nothing that is a sign is alien to me–nihil
signi mihi alienum puto; and if the sign, situated as it is in the interminable
chain of signs, cannot avoid being an interpretant, then "to interpret"
is the verb that can best help me know who I am. Sebeok is very distant from the narrow spaces to which
Saussure wished to confine the sign science by limiting his attention to the
signs of human culture, and still more reductively, to signs produced
intentionally for communication. He obviously does not wish to leave aside any
aspect of sign life, just as he is never content with limits of any sort placed
on semiotics, whether contingent or deriving from epistemological conviction. At
the same time, contrary to what could be a first impression, Sebeok's attitude
discourages any eventual claim on the part of semiotics to the status of
scientific or philosophical omniscience, of exhaustive knowledge with a capacity
for solving all problems. My personal conviction is that Sebeok's very awareness
of the vastness of the territories to be explored and of the variety and
complexity of the questions to be analyzed, confers a sense of prudence, of
extreme problematicity and also of humility on all interpetations advanced not
only in the treacherous territory of signs, but above all in the still more
deceptive sphere of the signs of signs in which semiotic work is immersed. In Italy long before Umberto Eco defined semiotics as
the discipline that studies lying, Giovanni Vailati realized that signs may be
used for deviating and deceiving and in fact entitled his review of Prezzolini's
L'arte di persuadere "Un manuale per bugiardi" (A handbook for
liers). This aspect of Vailati's studies is analyzed by Augusto Ponzio in a
paragraph entitled "Plurivocità, omologia, menzogna" (Plurivocality,
homology, lying), in a chapter of his monograph on Ferruccio Rossi-Landi (cf.
Ponzio 1988), centered on the relation between Vailati and Rossi-Landi (cf. also
Vailati 1987). Sebeok also evokes Vailati in relation to Peirce in his paper
"Peirce in Italia" of 1982). He describes the nonisomorphic character
of signs with respect to reality, representing another lietmotif in his research:
the use of signs for fraud, illusion and deception, their capacity for masking
and pretence. Deception, lying, and illusion are forms of behavior
which a semiotician like Sebeok interested in signs wherever they appear cannot
resist. He is fascinated by the signs of the magician, for example, and he
constantly returns to forms of behavior and situations of the Clever Hans type,
the horse which presumably knew how to read and write, but which in reality was
an able interpreter of signals communicated to it by its trainer either
inadvertently or as an attempt at fraud. It seems to me that there are two main reasons for
Sebeok's focus on the capacity for lying in the animal world. The first concerns
his intention of unmasking pretence in certain cases, or of undermining
illusions in others, relatively to the possibility of making animals
"talk" in the literal sense, that is, in the sense of extending to
animals a characteristic that is species-specific to mankind. Sebeok has often
contributed to semiotic debate with discussions, documentation and even parody (cf.
"Averse Stance," in Sebeok 1986) to demonstrate the impossibility of
homologizing human verbal language and animal language. The second reason arises
from the fact that if signs do not belong exclusively to the human world, but to
nonhuman animals too as evidenced by studies in zoosemiotics, and given that to
use signs also means knowing how to lie, then the fascinating problem of whether
animal lie as well must necessarily be considered. The world of signs, however, is not only the world of
deception, but also of other practices–no doubt connected with the former–such
as playing, using symbols and making gifts. The fact that nonhuman animals use
signs implies that all such practices, mostly considered as the prerogative of
"culture", may also be traced in the nonhuman animal world. In their
studies on signs, researchers often insist too strongly or too exclusively on
the functions carried out by signs, Sebeok, on the contrary, highlights the
importance of sign activity as an end in itself, as a sort of idle turning of
semiotic mechanisms. This aspect of Sebeok's research is not limited to ritual
behavior which in both human and nonhuman animals may be considered as excess
behaviour as regards specific functions and aims. Verbal language too which is
most often than not interpreted in the light of its communicative function, is
in fact better understood in terms of play and of the human propensity for
fantasizing and daydreaming (examined by Morris, for example, in "Mysticism
and Its Language", 1957, being a rather unusual paper for those who
identify Morris' work with his books of 1938 and 1946, and which I have included
in Italian translation in Segni e valori, 1988, a collection of writings
by Morris) and, therefore, of such operations as predicting the future or "traveling"
through the past, thereby constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing
reality, inventing new worlds and interpretive models. Let us remember that the
happy expression, The Play of Musement., is the title of one of Sebeok's
books. In an article of 1988 entitled "Semiosis and semiotics: What lies in
their future?" (originally written on invitation from Norma Tasca,
representing the Associacao Portuguesa de Semiotica, for the Portuguese journal Cultura
e Arte, now available in A Sign is Just a Sign (1991), and published
in Italian as a supplement to the 1990 Italian edition of I Think I Am a Verb),
Sebeok avers that Semiotics [ ...] simply points to the universal
propensity of the human mind for reverie focused specularly inward on its own
long-term cognitive strategy and daily maneuverings. Locke designated this quest
as a search for 'Humane understanding'; Peirce, as 'the play of musement'.
(199lb: 97) And indeed, as Peirce had already demonstrated, the
inferential mechanism allowing for the qualitative development of knowledge,
what Peirce called "abduction", is fundamental to play and fantasy, to
the practices of simulation. In the words of Sebeok: the central preoccupation of semiotics is an
illimitable array of concordant illusions; its main mission to mediate between
reality and illusion–to reveal the substratal illusion underlying reality and
to search for the reality that may, after all, lurk behind that illusion. This
abductive assignment becomes, henceforth, the privilege of future generations to
pursue, insofar as young people can be induced to heed the advice of their
elected medecine men (Sebeok 1986:77-78). And to show how the unconscious aspect of sign behavior
exceeds the intentional symbolic order precisely oriented according to functions
and ends, Sebeok also refers to the problem of dreaming, to what Freud called
"oniric work". The lack of functionality, forms of unproductive
consumption, of dissipation are identified by Sebeok as entropic phases
necessary to the development of life on earth: it is as though life is in
continual need of–indeed is founded on–death in order to reproduce and
maintain itself. The implications of such a statement in the different
approaches to the philosophy of history are numerous; for what concerns sign
theory, the consequence is that the semiotic chain is subject to loss, to gaps,
to the annulment of sense which implies that a sort of anti-material must also
be necessarily postulated in relation to sign material. In Semiotics in the United States Sebeok
analyzes U.S. semiotics at three different levels which though closely
interrelated are easily singled out. At the first level he surveys the
various theoretical trends, perspectives, problems, fields, specializations and
institutions characterizing U.S. semiotics, both in a synchronic and a
diachronic perspective. As regards the latter, Sebeok takes on the difficult
task of reconstructing the origins of American semiotics, which he seeks in
discourse fields that were not yet connoted as semiotics at the time and which
in certain cases are still considered as either only marginally associated with
semiotics or completely distant from it. The second level is
theoretico-critical. Sebeok takes a stand with respect to various problems in
semiotics: problems of a general order concerning, for instance, the
delimitation of the field of semiotics or the construction of a general sign
model; and problems of a more specific order concerning the various sectors and
subsectors of the science, or "doctrine of signs" (as he also likes to
call it). The impression, which Sebeok would seem to confirm here and there, is
that this more problematic level sets the perspective for the whole volume
completing the first level and stopping it from limiting itself to pure
historical description. The third level is connected to the second in the
sense that while developing and illustrating his theoretical views, Sebeok
colors them with more personal overtones, often delightful biographical
anecdotes. There are very few pages in Semiotics in the United States in
which Sebeok does not figure as one of the characters populating the (hi)story,
episodes, and enterprises of his narration. This is largely because of his
surprising and perhaps unprecedented involvement in the organization and
promotion of the semiotic science at a world level, a cause to which he has been
committed since the gradual emergence of semiotics as a discipline in its own
right. Sebeok has been in direct contact with many of the authors mentioned in
his volume and has many "memories" of his personal experiences with
them, which have found their way into his description of the problems and
orientations characterizing the semiotic globe. With reference to these three shaping factors, the
other one of Sebeok's books which would seem to come closest to Semiotics in
the United States is The Sign & Its Masters . Here the historical,
theoretico-critical and anecdoctal threads of Sebeok's discourse come together
and interweave even more than in his other books, even though the
autobiographical aspect is never lacking. All the same, Semiotics in the
United States may also be related to I Think l Am a Verb where
autobiographical motivations are not lacking for his choice of some of the
topics, authors and personalities cited, including the eighteenth U. S.
President, Ulysses S. Grant, whose words inspired the volume's title. Something that is immediately noticeable in the work of
this great master of signs is his approach, which I would not hesitate to
characterize as dialogic and polyphonic in the Bakhtinian sense. Sebeok acts as
a promoter of dialogue among signs, among the different orders of signs, that is
among the different interpretive practices and discourse fields, and among the
"masters" of signs, including those who have never been in any form of
direct contact with each other, or who did not even know they were dealing with
signs (his "cryptosemioticians"). Even Peirce–who had been forced to
work in isolation having been excluded from academic life–, had had occasion
to write (in a letter to Victoria Lady Welby of December 2, and very much in
accord with her own views) that "after all philosophy can only be passed
from mouth to mouth, where there is opportunity to object & cross-question"
(cf. Hardwick 1977: 44). And, as his long teaching career and constant
involvement in the promotion of the "community of inquirers" would
seem to demonstrate, Sebeok too attaches much importance to the continuity of
dialogic exchange. Indeed, as says Iris Smith (cfr. Sebeok 1991b: 6) in her
introduction to Sebeok's book of 1991, American Signatures: Semiotic Inquiry
and Method, his own peculiar way of living his condition as an intellectual
testifies to the fact that "individual reflection must be measured against
the reflections of others". The "play of musement" activating Sebeok's
research is so free from common place prejudice that, as mentioned, on
reproposing the question whether life and semiosis coincide, he risks the
hypothesis that the end of life does not necessarily imply the end of semiosis:
with some probability sign processes building unlimited interpretants might
continue in machines independently of humans. This Orwellian conclusion–clearly
formulated by Sebeok in his aforementioned paper "Semiosis and Semiotics:
What Lies in their Future?"–, which plays with the hypothesis of the
machine as the unique place for the workings of the "life of signs",
however we wish to play on the word "life" and on the word "signs",
no doubt proposes a sort of negative utopia which from one viewpoint, however
partial and limited considering the limits of the human condition, is surely a
form of nonlife and, therefore, of absence of signs. To conclude playfully, we
could propose an autobiographical reading of this message and interpret it as
the expression of the desire of the "semiotician" as distinct from the
man, that semiotics should continue after Sebeok!. |
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