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2.
Conventionality,
Indexicality, Iconicity in Signs of Silence 3.
Identity
and Taciturnity in Communication Today 4.
On
the State of Writing in Global Communication 5.
Telling
Tales. For a Critique of Global Communication
IV. Perspectives
Semiosis as translation Victoria Welby describes man's capacity for
signification in terms of "translative thinking," an automatic process
"in which everything suggests or reminds us of something else" (Welby
1983:34). Translated into semiotic terms we could say that translative thinking
is a semiosic process in which something stands for something else, in which
different sign systems are related, in which one sign is more fully developed,
enriched, criticized, put at a distance, placed between inverted commas,
parodied or simply imitated, and, in any case, interpreted in terms of another
sign. Translation is a method of investigation and discovery, says Welby, of
verification and acquisition of knowledge and development of critical
consciousness: As language involves both unity and distinction
(the one actually and the other implicitly), language must itself be recognised
as a means of discovering contrasts together with the links which constitute
these elements of unity, or at least completely exclude the idea of final
disparateness [...] For a thing is significant, both in the lower and in the
higher sense, in proportion as it is expressible through bare sign or pictorial
symbol or representative action. In the higher sense (that of vital or moral or
rational import) it is significant in proportion as it is capable of expressing
itself in, or being translated into, more and more phases of thought or branches
of science. The more varied and rich our employment of signs [...], 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. (1983:150) We could develop such intuitions in the light of more
recent results of studies in language theory and the science of signs generally
and state that semiosis, that is, the situation in which something functions as
a sign, cannot subsist without translation for semiosis is a
translation-interpretation process. The role of translation is fundamental in
the constitution itself of the sign, both verbal and nonverbal, in the
determination itself of meaning. As observed by Ponzio (1981) in a paper
entitled "Polisemia e traduzione," the intimate connection between
signs and translation emerges when we set the category of replaceability as a
necessary condition of signness, when the sign is considered not only as
something that replaces something else, but that may also in its turn be
replaced by something else. Consequently, meaning is defined as a class of
verbal and nonverbal sign materials in which these materials may replace each
other reciprocally, in which, that is, an interpretant sign may act as a
possible alternative to a previous less developed interpreted sign. In other
words, as Charles S. Peirce teaches us, a sign subsists thanks to another sign
acting as its interpretant, so that its meaning is its translation into some
further sign. It subsists only in relations of reciprocal translation and
substitution among signs with respect to which the original sign is never given
autonomously and antecedently. In the citation above Welby explicitly states that
"while language itself is a symbolic system its method is mainly pictorial"
(Welby 1983: 38). Through recourse to Peirce's most basic tripartition of
signness into symbolicity or conventionality, indexicality and iconicity (cf. CP
2.247-2.249; also letter of Oct. 12, 1904 from Peirce to Welby, in Hardwick
1977: 22-25), we could "translate" or "reword" this sentence
as follows: "if verbal language itself is a conventional system its method
is mainly iconic." In other words full recognition is given to the role of
iconicity in the development and multiplication of signifying processes, to the
iconic relation of hypothetical similarity in verbal language Reference here to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the interpretation of Ponzio (cf. 1991a: 185-201) is
instructive. Wittgenstein distinguishes between names and propositions: the
relation between names or "simple signs" used in the proposition,
Welby's "bare signs", and their objects or meanings, is of the
conventional type. In fact, being arbitrary, the rule or code relating the sign
to the object to which it refers cannot be discovered simply by guessing: sign
arbitrariness is a category proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in his book of
1916 to characterize certain types of signs–verbal signs, or words taken
singly, and nonverbal signals. On the other hand, the relation between whole
propositions or "propositional signs," Welby's "pictorial
symbol" and "representative action," and what they signify, their
interpretant, is a relation of similarity, that is, of the iconic type.
Wittgenstein's "proposition," like Welby's "pictorial
symbol" and "representative action," are complete signifying
units with a high potential for semiotic resonance. In his Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein
develops the role of situational context in the completion of the proposition's
representative and therefore signifying function. Thus contextualized, the
"proposition" is transformed into the "utterance" as
understood especially by Mikhail Bakhin who made a thorough analysis of this
particular category with reference to the Russian word vyskazyvanie (cf.
Bakhtin 1986b; Voloshinov 1973; 1987). The utterance, when dominated by an
iconic relation between the interpretant sign and the interpreted sign is, as
Bakhtin demonstrated, a dialogic relation of "answering comprehension"
with a lesser or higher degree of alterity. Accordingly, it is endowed with a
varying capacity for criticism, cognitive innovation, and creativity. In relation to Wittgenstein, Ponzio (1991a: 198-199)
makes the following observation: Even though propositions are also no doubt
conventional-symbolic, they are based fundamentally on the relation of
representation, that is, on the iconic relation and, similarly to Peirce's
"diagrams," this relation is of the proportional or structural type.
Consequently, in Wittgenstein's view, the proposition is a logical picture. To know a proposition, says Wittgenstein, means to know
the situation it represents; furthermore, comprehension of a proposition does
not require that its sense be explained, for "a proposition shows its sense"
(4.022). Consequently, while "the meanings of simple signs (words) must be
explained", "with propositions [...] we make ourselves understood"
(4.026). The importance of Wittgenstein's picture theory for a better
understanding of the processes of language production and, by extension, of
signification generally, is commented by Ponzio (ibid.: 199) with words
we could easily apply to Welby: [...] as a
logical picture, representation tells of the mechanism that produces
propositions and explains how language, through propositional signs, is able to
escape the pure and simple convention of names, which would render [language]
altogether repetitive. The question invests the mechanism of the production and
development of thought given that "a logical picture of the facts is the
thought" and that "a thought is a proposition with a sense"
[Ponzio is here referring to propositions 3 and 4 of the Tractatus]. For both Welby and Wittgenstein of the Tractatus
language analysis must not merely limit itself to the surface description of
signifying phenomena, of language and thought, but must account for the
production processes of such phenomena. From this point of view an ideal
connection can be signaled with Ferruccio Rossi-Landi (1921-1985) and his
notions of "common speech", "linguistic work" and, in a more
mature phase of his theoretical elaborations, "social reproduction" (cf.
Rossi-Landi 1985, 1992b, 1998). The work of Welby, Wittgenstein, Bakhtin and above all
Peirce helps account for the more complex levels of signification, expression
and communication–and not in their reduced form to the mere function of
information and message exchange. Each of these scholars calls our attention to
the importance in communication of iconic representation and alterity, of
establishing relations among signs beyond systemic restrictions. Such an
orientation also helps to highlight the dialectic nature of ongoing
interpretive-translative interactive processes between "unity and
disparateness", as Welby says in the citation above, between centripetal
forces and centrifugal forces operating in language, as Bakhtin would say (1975,
Eng. trans., 1981: 272), between centralization and decentralization,
monolingualism and plurilingualism, monologism and polylogism, identity and
alterity. Thanks to such dialectic, knowledge and truth are never given once and
for all, but rather are open to continual investigation and modification in a
process of constant renewal and adaptation to ever new communicative
requirements, at the level of simple everyday exchange as well. We shall now consider Roman Jakobson's analysis of
translation in the light of Peirce's subdivision of signs into symbols, indexes
and icons. Any one given sign (identifiable as such only by abstracting from
real semiosic processes for the sake of analysis) is the product of dialectic
interaction, among other things, between conventionality, indexicality and
iconicity even if one of these aspects prevails in a given sign situation. By
considering this Peircean tripartition in conjunction with the analysis of
translative-interpretive processes as proposed by Jakobson, we obtain a more
adequate specification of the relation between translation and signs and a more
precise, and yet broader characterization of the interpretive-translative
processes constituting and proliferating in our semiosphere. In his paper "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation",
Jakobson (1971), reflecting on verbal signs, identifies three different
translative (or interpretive) modalities: 1) intralingual translation or
rewording which refers to the interpretation of verbal signs by means of other
signs of the same language; 2) interlingual translation or translation proper
which refers to the interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other
language; 3) intersemiotic translation or transmutation which refers to the
interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems. Each
of these translative-interpretive modalities presents a relative predominance of
conventionality, indexicality or iconicity, a relative predominance of the
symbol, index or icon in the relation between a sign and its interpretant.
Furthermore, these three types of translation are identified by Jakobson as
always being interrelated, more or less co-existent with a relative predominance
of one or the other. For example, in interlingual translation, for a full
understanding of the sense of the object of translation and its adequate
rendition in the "target" language, it will also be necessary to
continually resort to intralingual translation in each of the two languages in
question. When conventionality predominates the relation between
a sign and its object (or referent) is established by a code. This occurs in
verbal language and is the kind of relation alluded to by Welby when she says
that "[verbal] language [..] is a symbolic system". We know that to
decipher the linguistic elements of a text, reference to the code is an
inevitable, especially in the initial phase. At this level distancing in
translative processes between interpretant signs and interpreted signs is
minimal, the mere activity of recognition and identification, of course, being
of first importance. Moreover, relations of a compulsory nature also
intervene between signs and their interpretants. As such this relation takes on
the aspect of indexicality in Peirce's sense. To mechanical necessity a
bilingual dictionary adds the relation of contiguity–proper to the index, says
Peirce, jointly with causality– between the sign and its interpretant, when it
places the vocable and its equivalent(s) in the target language alongside each
other. Therefore, interlingual translative processes present indexicality in
addition to mere conventionality. It is in this perspective that we may read
Wittgenstein's observation on translation from the Tractatus: When translating one language into another, we do
not proceed by translating each proposition of the one into a proposition of the
other, but merely by translating the constituents of propositions. (Wittgenstein
1961, 4.025) Indexicality refers to the compulsory nature of the
relation between a sign and its object, a relation regulated by the dynamics of
cause and effect, of spatio-temporal necessary contiguity, pre-existent to
interpretation. When indexicality predominates translation-interpretation
processes simply evidence correspondences where they already exist. The degree
of creative work involved is minimal. Bakhtin, who envisages communication and social
intercourse in terms of dialectic and dialogic interaction between identity and
alterity, introduces another two important categories in his analysis of verbal
language and extensible to other sign systems as well: "theme" (smysl)
and "meaning" (znacenie), or if we prefer, "actual sense"
and "abstract sense" (Bakhtin-Volosinov 1973: 106). The second term in
these pairs covers all that which is identical, reproducible and immediately
recognizable each time the utterance is repeated–it concerns the meaning of
linguistic elements, e.g. phonemes and monemes, forming the utterance. "Meaning"
thus intended corresponds to signality rather than to signness, to the "interpretant
of identification," rather than to the "interpretant of answering
comprehension," to "plain meaning," rather than to plurivocal
meaning, to translation processes (and phases) where the degree of dialogicality
and distance regulating the connection between interpretant sign and interpreted
sign is minimal. "Theme," instead, refers to all that which is
original and unreproducible in an utterance, to its overall sense, signifying
import and evaluative orientation as such aspects emerge in a given instance of
communicative interaction. This category accounts for communication and
signifying processes in terms of answering comprehension, dialectic-dialogic
response, multiaccentuality–it concerns translation-interpretation processes
capable of qualitative jumps in knowledge and perception, of amplifying the
semantic polyvalency of discourse, of opening new ideological horizons. As says
Bakhtin: Theme is a complex, dynamic system of signs that
attempts to be adequate to a given instance of generative process. There is
reaction by the consciousness in its generative process to the generative
process of existence. Meaning is the technical apparatus for the implementation
of theme. (ibid.: 100) In interlingual translation, iconicity, or the iconic
relation between a sign and its interpretant, is present as well. Indeed, this
relation is fundamental for without it the sense of discourse could not be
rendered, to the point that if translation processes remain at the level of
conventionality and indexicality, the translator ends in failure. When in
relation to translative-interpretive processes Welby states so simply and
clearly that the method of language is pictorial, she is evidencing a component
of verbal signs irreducible to indexicality or to conventionality. The
translator must necessarily deal with this component by moving beyond the
conventions and obligations of the dictionary and entering the live dialogue
among national languages, among languages internal to a given national language,
among verbal signs and nonverbal signs. The presence of iconicity in interaction
between interpretant signs and interpreted signs in translative processes
involves dialogism and alterity to a smaller or greater degree. Iconicity implies that the relation between a sign and
its object is not wholly established by rules and a code, as in the case of
symbols, does not preexist with respect to the code, as in the case of indexes,
but rather is invented freely and creatively by the interpretant. The
interpreter, in our case, the translator, must inevitably keep account of this
given his/her task of rendering the original interpretant with the interpretant
of another language. In the case of icons, the relation between a sign and its
object is neither conventional, nor necessary and contiguous, but hypothetical–it
corresponds to Bakhtin's "theme," or "actual sense." Where the relation between a sign and its object,
between varying different types of signs, is regulated by the iconic relation of
similarity, affinity and attraction, as Peirce would say (cf. 1923), ongoing
interpretive-translative processes forming the signifying and cognitive universe
are founded on dialogism, alterity, polyphony, polylogism and plurilingualism–all
essential properties of language which render such things as critical awareness,
experimentation, innovation, and creativity possible. What has been said à propos interlingual translation
is also valid for intralingual and intersemiotic translation. It has also been
observed that interlingual translation implies the other two types of
translation. Hence the translative process always involves a process of
interaction between the three types of sign-interpretant relation as identified
by Peirce and the three modalities of translation as identified by Jakobson. Meanings subsist and flourish in translation processes
regulated by the relation between identity and alterity in a polylogic and
plurilingualistic context, internal and external to a single language. In this
theoretical framework as it is delineated by interpretation semiotics, and
especially thanks to contributions from Bakhtinian theory, communication is
confirmed as a primary function of human language, but with an important
specification: communication as understood not in terms of its potential for
message transmission, but of the unspoken, the unsaid, its capacity for
vagueness, ambiguity, inscrutability, concealment, reticence, allusion, illusion,
implication, simulation, imitation, pretence, semantic pliancy, polysemy,
polylogism, plurilingualism, alterity–all of which determine the very
possibility of communicative interaction. Concrete live speech is possible thanks to continual
translative processes both on the side of production and of interpretation in
the passage from one code (linked to class, linguistic register, idiolect, genre,
etc.) to another, from one language to another, from one communicative context
to another. And fundamental requisite for the success of
communication-translation processes is "answering comprehension". This
implies speaker ability to adapt and reformulate one's own language to suit the
language of one's interlocutors, to reflect metalinguistically on one's own
language in the effort to develop and specify one's meaning through recourse to
interpretants from the language of others, as well as the ability to reflect
metalinguistically on the language of others in order to specify their meaning
in terms of interpretants from one's own language. "Active or answering
comprehension" concerns the "theme" or "actual sense"
of an utterance. It is achieved thanks to dialogic relations among different
languages and codes which permit operations of rewording, transposition, and
transmutation in the deferral among interpretants as they substitute each other
without ever perfectly coinciding. Far from being a compact, unitary and monolithic
phenomenon, human language may be described as a live signifying process,
constantly renewing itself through the generation of different idioms,
discourses, logics and viewpoints thanks to a predominant tendency toward
decentralization and otherness. Plurilingualism and polylogism, both internal
and external to a single language, ensue from the potential in human language
for distancing, for the expression of viewpoints that are other, for different
and other worldviews: indeed human language develops as a function of this very
potential. Remembering the words of George Steiner (1975),
language thus intended is the main instrument through which man can refuse the
world as it is. Each single language presents its own interpretation of reality,
but man discovers the pleasure of freedom thanks to otherness inherent in
language and therefore to the possibility of translating, of moving across
different languages and cultures. From this viewpoint, thanks to the propensity
inherent in man for "the play of musement", language, as observed by
Thomas A. Sebeok (1981), not only concerns the real world, but accounts for the
possibility of generating an infinite number of possible worlds. Translation and ideology The verbal sign is an ideological sign par excellence,
says Bakhtin. As an ideological phenomenon it refracts historico-social reality.
The verbal sign has an ideological function, an ideological materiality. It
refracts ideologically the social reality in which it is produced and used.
Insofar as it is ideological, the verbal sign may be characterized as a
historico-social event. Though nonverbal signs contribute toward shaping
reality, the modelling influence of verbal signs is far greater. Reality as we
experience it is organized verbally–a conviction at the basis of extreme forms
of linguistic relativity. Supporters of this theory maintain that the structure
of a given language wholly determines a language user's thoughts and worldview
as well as his nonverbal behavior, so that, echoing Wittgenstein (1953), we
could say that our world is the language we speak. For his part, by contrast
with the idealism of linguistic relativity, with opposing neopositivist stances
and the conception of language, thought and reality as separate though variously
interacting entities, Rossi-Landi stresses the dialectic interaction between
thought, language and the economic, social and cultural context in the formation
of ideologies and worldviews: Language is immediately present, but certainly
not in the form of a constant linguistic capital, capable of being isolated from
everything else, and made to determine nothing less than thought. If we want to
study the way in which thought is determined in all its developments up to the
point of including spontaneous and sophisticated worldviews, we shall have to
turn our attention to the sum total of economic, social and cultural conditions.
We shall find that what we describe as linguistic is, if anything, a part of
their phenomenology. (Rossi-Landi 1973: 70) So-called "semantico-ideological pliancy"
characterizes the verbal sign and is expressed in its possibility of
transferring or transmuting into varying ideological fields whereby acquiring
new meanings and functions. The plurivocality, ambivalence, ambiguity and
semantico-ideological pliancy of the verbal sign is given in its translatability
into other verbal interpretant signs belonging to different semantic classes,
that have different meanings. The debate on the translation of Karl Marx's
(1818-1883) Theses on Feuerbach is now worth remembering in the light of
our discussion of the relation between semiotics, ideology and translation
theory. Our reference is to the debate between Adam Schaff and Lucien Sève
published in the French journal L'homme et la Société, in 1971 and
1972, concerning the official French translations of Marx's sixth thesis on
Feuerbach. This debate involved, directly or indirectly, numerous French
intellectuals (apart from Schaff and Sève, Louis Althusser, Auguste Cornu,
Roger Garaudy), as well as the international community at large with a concern
for Marxist theory. Thanks to Augusto Ponzio (1975b) who has collected
contributions in the volume, Marxismo e umanesimo, this debate which also
extends to Polish and Russian, has also been made available in Italian. Even though this issue may seem over specialized and
therefore of restricted interest, in reality its effect on interpretation of
Marxist theory generally has been determining–many scholars believe that the Theses
on Feuerbach are the key to Marx's thought system even if interpreted
differently because of their elliptical and metaphorical nature. For our
specific concerns in the present context, this particular issue is helpful in
highlighting the close relation between translation and ideology: to translate
in one way rather than in another, as in the case of this text by Marx, is full
of ideological implications. The solution to this particular controversy is full
of consequences at a philological, philosophical and political level as well as
being crucial in establishing the validity of Seve's overall interpretation of
Marxism and of his criticism of existentialism, structuralism, Althusser's
theoretical anti- humanism, etc. Sève believes that Schaff's translation of Marx's
sixth thesis is wrong, the result of his misinterpretation of marxism, of
reading Marx in a humanistic-speculative key, with consequences at the political
level as well. The whole debate ultimately concerns the relation between Marxism
and humanism: interpretation of thesis VI reflects one's general attitude to
relations between Marxism and humanism, ideology and science, scientific
socialism and Marxist humanism, Marx's youthful writings and his mature works,
all of which are connected with the meaning and value of Marxism taken as a
whole (cf. Ponzio 1975b:6). And though this debate centres around the
translation and interpretation of just a few expressions in the Theses,
as Schaff observes, it extends beyond "words" and can only be fully
understood by looking "behind the screen," by inquiring into the
history of left-wing political movements, and by relating the consequences of
this debate to the "controversy on the humanistic contents of socialism,
the controversy on the means of overcoming the effects and consequences of
Stalinism in the Communist movement, etc." (Schaff in Ponzio 1975b: 114). The immediate object of discussion concerns the
translation of a number of propositions in Theses on Feuerbach, all of
which contain the German word "Wesen" as in the key expression
in thesis VI "das menschliche Wesen". Schaff contends that
recurrent translation of this expression with "the essence of man,"
generally consolidated by tradition, is wrong. The German word "Wesen"
is ambiguous: it counts up to eleven distinct groups of meanings, each with
numerous semantic nuances. Two of these meanings are relevant in relation to the
debate in question and correspond, respectively, to the Latin "ens"
and "essentia", English "being" and "essence",
French "être" and "essence", Italian "essere"
and "essenza", intended as "living being" on one hand,
and "essence of things", "that which is essential" as
opposed to incidental, on the other. None of these languages have a term–single
and ambiguous–corresponding to the German "Wesen", though
this word does have an equivalent for polysemantism and plurivocality in the
Russian "sochtchestwo", and in the Polish "istota".
Consequently by contrast with Russian and Polish which have an equivalent to the
German "Wesen", when translating into French, English or
Italian, for example, the translator must choose from its varying meanings: for
appropriate rendition in the target language the meaning and sense of the word
"Wesen" must be identified each time it occurs in a different
context. Things get even more complicated if we consider that
there exist two different and even contrasting official French translations of
the Theses: the expression we are describing, "das menschliche
Wesen", is rendered either as "l'essence humaine" (Œuvres
completes de Karl Marx, A. Costes, ed., 1937) or as "l'être humain"
(Œuvres choisies de Marx-Engels, Editions du Progrès, Moscow, 1946).
These different translations bear different philosophical implications given
that Marx is accordingly interpreted as discussing either the "essence of
man" or the concrete "human being," that is, the real human
individual defined in his relations not only with nature but also with society
of which, insofar as he is a social being, he is the product. It should be observed that most official translations
of Theses on Feuerbach in varying languages are from the original Russian
translation. Strangely enough, the Russian translator Plechanov, in 1892, chose
to render the German "Wesen" by the unambiguous Russian word
"suschtschnost" (that is, "essence", "Wesenheit"),
rather than by "suschtschestwo" which, similarly to the Polish
"istota", has multiple meanings and is consequently closer to
the German original. Having made this particular lexical choice, the Russian
translator–an authority, observes Schaff–was in fact to heavily condition
this text's future philosophical and political interpretations. In French, as in Italian and English, the same word
cannot be used indifferently as in the case of "Wesen", "istota",
"suschtschestwo" and influenced by the original Russian
translation, "Wesen" is translated prevalently with the
equivalents of "essentia", a solution refused by Schaff who
favors the equivalents of "ens". He reaches this decision by
combining the results of grammatical analysis with analysis of the philosophical
context, averring that the sense of such an ambiguous term as "Wesen"
can be established by appealing to the rules of German syntax. If the expression "das Wesen" is
followed by a noun in the genitive, it means "essence". Therefore,
"das Wesen des Christentums", which is also the title of a work
by Feuerbach, means "the essence of Christianity", and correspondingly
"das Wesen desReligion" means "the essence of religion",
"das Wesen des Menschen", "the essence of man".
"Wesen" followed by "of something" or "of
somebody" functions in the sense of "essence". On the other hand,
if "Wesen" is preceded by a qualifying adjective, it means
"being". Therefore, "das christliche Wesen" means
"the christian being," "das religiose Wesen" means
"the religious being", "das menschliche Wesen", "the
human being". In all these cases, as syntax tells us, we are dealing with a
"being" that is respectively Christian, religious, human. In the light of the connection not only between "sign"
and "ideology", but between "sense" and "ideology",
it would seem that the problem of ideology must necessarily be taken into
consideration in a semiotic approach to translation. The task of translation can
only be properly accomplished if the translator grasps and expresses the "sense"
of a text: to remain at the mere level of "meaning" is not sufficient.
Given that sense, as intended above, involves problems of evaluation,
orientation, standpoint, and social planning, it is connected with ideology.
Consequently, what we wish to underline in this paper is not so much the
ideological character of translation as the inevitability of taking into account
the problem of sense and therefore of ideology in translation theory (which I
believe must necessarily be a semiotics of translation). It is in this perspective that I have referred to the
work of such thinkers as Sapir and Whorf (cf. Petrilli 1992a): their theory of
linguistic relativity implies a specific theory of translation and a given
ideology which obviously influenced, indeed, is at the basis of their rather
limited vision of the very possibility of translation. It should also be
mentioned that the theory of linguistic relativity is subtended by a hidden
ideology of an ethnic-cultural order, an ideological orientation turned to
justifying the various forms of separation and segregation imposed on peoples,
Amerindians, speaking different languages from our own, referred to by Sapir and
Whorf (cf. Solimini 1974: 98-102, 1991: 30-33). The debate on Marx's Theses
on Feuerbach also stresses how the problem of translation is the problem of
correctly interpreting the ideology expressed in a text as well as the problem
of the ideological stance that the interpreter-translator chooses to take toward
that text. Such issues shed light on the close relation between ideology theory
and translation theory viewed in semiotical terms. Expressed differently, my
focus on the study of the relation between semiotics, ideology and translation
theory is motivated by the fact that for an adequate treatment of the problem of
translation we must necessarily consider the problem of the relation between
"signification" and "significance", or "semantics"
and "pragmatics", or, if we prefer, between "meaning" and
"ideological sense". IV. Perspectives
Hamlet: "He has my dying voice. So tell him, with th'occurrents, more or less, Which have solicited – the rest is Silence". (V.ii.1.360) In this paper we are concerned with silence understood
as the absence of words. All aspects of the absence of words connected with
physiological causes or with various forms of psychopathological muteness are
set aside in the present context as we focus on the ordinary modes of word
suspension, or on cases which, even if exceptional, are sanctioned by a
social norm. Thus intended silence itself is a sign. And given that we all know
just how eloquent silence can be, to justify this statement would be redundant. As the absence of words the sign of silence is
obviously a nonverbal sign. Nonetheless, a distinction must be made between the
absence of words, on one hand, and the absence of verbal signs ensuing from the
use of nonverbal signs, on the other. The absence of words resulting from
silence is one thing, the absence of words, for example in the use of gestural
language, performance of a dance, language of photography, in the signs relating
to proxemics (examined by Edward Hall in a book significantly entitled Silent
language), is another. As belonging to the sphere of nonverbal signs the
absence of words should be considered relatedly to nonverbal signs in general,
indeed as one of them. The absence of words, or nonspeaking is eloquent insofar
as it is nonspeaking and not gesture, dance, etc. The signs of silence depend on the verbal, on language.
Indeed, they are significant in relation to speech. What Roland Barthes (1964b)
says of nonverbal social signs in general may be extended to the signs of
silence: that with respect to verbal language they are parasitical. The signs of
silence are situated in speech like islands where speech is suspended and the
space of nonspeech thus obtained is surrounded by speech and is significant precisely
because of this. In a book of 1961, Significato, comunicazione e
parlare comune (1998) Ferruccio Rossi-Landi develops the notion of
"common speech" which refers to the set of linguistic practices or
operations recurrent in different languages, in spite of the differences, and
thanks to which translation from one language to another is possible: reflexion
on this notion should also include reference to what we could call a sort of
"common nonspeech". In fact, more than involving just this or that
language, the relation between speech and nonspeech concerns human language in
general. We could say that silence is common nonspeech which leaves aside
linguistic differences to concern human language generally rather than languages
in their specific differences. In a text entitled "Per una tipologia del
silenzio", Gian Paolo Caprettini proposes a typology of silence based on
Roman Jakobson's communication model. With reference to the factors of verbal
communication he describes silence relatively to the: 1) sender, 2) receiver, 3)
message, 4) channel, 5) code; and therefore he distinguishes between: 1)
emotional, 2) connotative, 3) referential, 4) phatic, and 5) metalinguistic
silence. On our part we propose a typology based on Charles S. Peirce's triadic
subdivision of signs into symbols, indexes and icons. On adopting this approach our aim is to characterize
the signs of silence and distinguish between them more than view silence in
relation to the communicative process and its various functions. As understood above the signs of silence must be
distinguished from the nonverbal signs of sign language as used by the American
Indians, or by deaf-mutes, the signs of gestural language in general or any
other form of nonverbal behavior. We know that according to Peirce a sign is something
which stands to somebody for something in some respect, which means that it
creates in the mind of the interpreter an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more
developed sign, that is, an interpretant (CP 2.228). That the sign stands
for something in some respect means that it does not refer to the object in its
entirety (dynamic object), but only to a part of it (immediate object).
Furthermore, a sign subsists for Peirce according to the category of thirdness,
that is, it presupposes a triadic relation between itself, the object and the
interpretant thought which is itself a sign. And given that it mediates between
the interpretant sign and the object, the sign always plays the role of third
party. Signs subsist in the dialectic relation between
symbolicity, indexicality and iconicity. The symbol is never pure but contains
varying degrees of indexicality and iconicity; similarly as much as a sign may
be prevalently indexical or iconic it will always maintain the characteristics
of symbolicity, that is, to subsist as a sign it requires the mediation of an
interpretant sign and recourse to a convention. Symbolicity refers to the sign's
conventional character, to the relation of constriction by convention between a
sign and its object as established on the basis of a code, a law. To say it with
Peirce: "I define a Symbol as a sign which is determined by its dynamic
object only in the sense that it will be so interpreted. It thus depends either
on a convention, a habit, or a natural disposition of its interpretant, or of
the field of its interpretant (that of which the interpretant is a determination)"
(Peirce/Welby, October 12, 1904 in Hardwick 1977: 33). Indexicality refers to
the compulsory character of the sign, to the relation of cause and effect, of
necessary contiguity between a sign and its object: "I define an Index as a
sign determined by its dynamic object by virtue of being in a real relation to
it" (ibid.:33). Differently from symbols (where the interpretant decides on
the object), in the case of indexes the relationship between the sign and the
object is preexistent with respect to interpretation, it is an objective
relationship and in fact conditions interpretation. The sign and what it stands
for are given together independently of the interpretant. Nonetheless, this does
not exclude the need to resort to a convention for the relation between sign and
object to be recognized as such, that is, as a sign relation. In the case of
icons the relationship between sign and object is one of similarity. As Peirce
says: "I define an Icon as a sign which is determined by its dynamic object
by virtue of its own internal nature" (ibid.:33). The icon is a sign whose
signifying capacity is determined by its quality. Icons realize a maximum degree
of independence from the object, while the interpretant can occur in a system
that may even be distant, identifiable neither through a relation of necessary
contiguity (index), nor of conventionality (symbol), but of hypothetical
similarity. The iconic relation is characterized by such factors as affinity,
attraction, innovation, creativity, and alterity. We mentioned above that all signs simultaneously share
in the character of symbolicity, indexicality, and iconicity. It follows that
verbal signs, which are fundamentally conventional signs, contain traces of
iconicity also. This has been illustrated, among others, by Jakobson (cf.1968)
and Paolo Valesio (cf. 1967). But the point we wish to make in this paper is
that the different signs of silence also contain traces of conventionality,
indexicality and iconicity together and in different combinations. On this basis
a typology can be proposed distinguishing between signs of silence that are
predominantly symbolic, indexical, or iconic. Those which obey a convention, a rule sanctioned and
accepted by a group or a community are symbols. The different kinds of signs of
silence belonging to this group express silence in different ways while sharing
the fact that they do so according to a norm, a convention. Examples include:
expressions of respect as observed in religious contexts and foreseen by given
rites, for instance, in certain phases of catholic liturgy; monastic silence (monastic
signs comprise both nonverbal signs as distinguished from signs of silence as
well as signs of silence as such. On monastic signs, see Sebeok and
Umiker-Sebeok 1987); furthermore, military silence; the silence of mourning;
commemorative silence; silence as protest, etc. The indexical character of signs of silence emerges
with the relation of cause and effect and of spatiotemporal contiguity. In such
cases, the signs of silence would almost seem to be symptoms–silence as the
effect of a fright, surprise, suffocated anger, resentment, etc. While in symbolic signs silence is achieved on the
basis of a convention, indexical signs of silence are provoked by a cause and
are a somewhat compulsory response. Silence of both the conventional and indexical types
present a necessity or imposition with the difference that in the first case,
this ensues from accepting a convention, in the second it is passively endured
as the consequence of an external effect. Conventional signs of silence are dominated by what
Peirce calls the category of thirdness. In this case the relation between sign
and object is mediated by a convention and, therefore, depends on an
interpretant. Signs of silence of the symbolic type like all other symbolic
signs are not comprehensible without being familiar with the interpretant. On the other hand, indexical signs of silence are
dominated by the category of secondness. The sign relates to the object
independently of the interpretant given that the two terms are connected by a
relation of cause and effect, of contiguity, as in the case of the relation
between fire and smoke, spotty skin and a liver disease, a knock at the door and
someone behind it wanting to enter. Signs of silence of the third type are iconic. In this
case silence in not related to a system of conventional signs or to natural
causes, but rather is the expression of individual intentionality. This means
that the absence of verbal signs is not the absence of language–for instance,
monastic silence; nor is it the absence of phonation–as in the case of silence
caused by fear or surprise. What we have here, on the contrary, is the absence
of the word, of discourse, of the utterance with respect to a presence: the
speaking subject says nothing. And this nothing is pregnant with meaning, is
endowed with the value of an answering interpretant responding to a preceding
word, the word of another. Signs of silence of the iconic type present themselves
on their own account, that is, they have their own meaning, their own signifying
potential–like the face of the other (cf. Lévinas 1961). The sign is eloquent
without the need of resorting to a code, a convention, without the need of an
interpretant, of the conferral of sense by self. Iconic signs of silence are
dominated, therefore, by what Peirce calls the category of firstness: signs of
silence, or if we prefer, of "taciturnity" (cf. below, IV.3) are
endowed with value on their own account. The iconic sign of silence is dialogic, a response,
expresses a viewpoint, a standpoint with respect to the word of another. Here
silence is not the result of a convention, nor is it the mechanical effect of a
cause; on the contrary, it tells of the autonomy, self-signification and
alterity of the other, of the other's signifying irreducibility, resistance,
materiality. Silence dominated by iconicity gives itself as an image,
the image of alterity. It has a strong axiological value. As Mikhail Bakhtin
would say, the sign of silence insofar as it indicates an evaluation, a
standpoint, a relation of consensus, perplexity, conflict, or refusal, etc. is
always "accentuated". In the words of Victoria Welby: [...] for whether positive or negative, excessive or deficient, present or absent even, our words are of moment always. [...] the word unsaid, which has often helped or hindered, and in all human ways signified so much. [...] Yet even in silence there is no escape for us either from danger or duty. Silence is often a most significant declaration, and a most misleading one. (Welby 1985: 40-41) As says Welby, silence allows no escape neither from
danger nor duty. No doubt this is only true of iconic silence where the subject
is exposed in its singularity and freedom, and not of symbolic-conventional or
indexical silence. Consequently, iconic silence is associated with
responsibility. It is also connected with dialogue for it gives itself as a
response to another's verbal or nonverbal standpoint, to a provocation, prayer,
threat, question, etc. Iconicity, responsibility, and dialogue, therefore, are
strongly related in iconic signs of silence. Bakhtin theorizes the relationship between
responsibility, dialogue and alterity in a paper of 1919 entitled "Art and
Answerability". The word "answerability"–which covers the two
Italian terms "responsività" (responsivess) and "responsabilità"
(responsibility)–, conveys the dialogic character of responsibility of the
iconic type. We are alluding to the condition of absolute answerability, that is,
answerability without limitations, without appeal to certainties as established
by contract. In this perspective the subject is freed of subservience to the
values of coherence, unilinearity, integrity, identity, and authority, and
allowed to give full play to its capacity for dialogic pluri-availability,
answerability, and otherness, emerging as a subject with the capacity for
transgressing the limits of a code, of giving up the reassurances and guarantees
offered by a law and, therefore, as a subject endowed with the capacity for
unconditioned listening of the other. IV. Perspectives
European Union is now reality. Economic union is
becoming stronger and cultural union is imposing itself. All this may no doubt
have its positive aspects; however, unification of economic interests, of
intellectual thought, of scientific inquiry, of fashion, taste and desires even,
of the way of speaking, if not of languages, has its negative consequences as is
always the case each time a new form of identity is created (whether it be the
identity of a person and his role, of a class, group, association, political
party, nation, or language). Symptomatic of reinforced unity in the European
Community is the fact that a new word has been coined: "extra-communitarian".
This word refers to what remains outside, is alien, does not belong to the
dominant identity group. As an adjective it is not simply descriptive but
involves a whole series of different forms of behavior: the failure to recognize
given rights, prejudice, denials, negations, and rejection of anyone
classifiable as an "extra-communitarian". This new term involves a new
stereotype, and like all stereotypes, its meanings and consequences are not
definitively fixed, just as the behavior it promotes is not fixed in a written
code. If the term "extracommunitarian" were only used to designate all
those people and political areas which do not belong to the European Community,
its reference would be so obvious and matter of fact that to explain it would be
simply redundant and altogether useless. "Extracommunitarian" refers
to immigrants who work or are looking for work in Europe: Algerians, Philippine
house maids, black street vendors, and most non-European people who move from
one job to another and live precariously, vainly attempting to become an
integral part of European society. The argument against these people is that it
is unfair for an "extracommunitarian" to deprive a member of the
European Union of work, it is unfair for him to benefit from the same rights and
prerogatives. The black man in Europe is subject to a doubly negative
stereotype: the first concerns the color of his skin, and is of a racist type:
the second concerns the fact that he comes from the outside as regards a given
political and cultural community, and is of a nationalist type. Europe is now witnessing the formation of a series of
reductive, narrow areas of action as well as other distinctions with respect to
that between community members and "extra-communitarians": the
distinction between developed and underdeveloped countries, between North and
South, between those who belong to a certain nation or region or even to a
certain city and so-called foreigners, intruders. All this is not the
consequence of ideological stances of a nationalist or parochial order, but the
wish rather to defend private materials and interests (such as a job for
ourselves or for our children) against alien appetites. Another result of the conquest of unity in Europe is
that those same tendencies toward ethnocentrism and logocentrism which
had been put into question, thrown into "crisis", ridiculed and
re-dimensioned in terms of philosophical and ideological criticism, thanks also
to the encounter with different peoples, with different customs and languages,
are now re-emerging. Revival of the Western logos cannot be explained
uniquely in terms of the history of ideas but has a precise economic reality at
its foundations: Capitalism. European union is the union of European Capitalism
and as such involves such phenomena as the reduction, if not complete
elimination, of barriers to exchange, and of the various inconveniences stemming
from the different currencies; furthermore, economic union promotes the
formation of monopolies, the concentration of capital into multi-national
societies, the homologation of needs as induced by publicity. Capitalism is
today the winner in Europe. Revolt and the subversion in European Socialist
countries must be associated in particular with the attraction exerted on these
countries by the victory of European capitalism, and consequent reinforcement of
the European Community. The fall of the Berlin Wall can only be explained along
the same lines. Two things must be kept in mind when analyzing the
crisis of Marxism in socialist countries. First of all, the term "socialism"
was often applied to something–"Real Socialism"–which, in fact,
was no less than an alienated form of socialism (conceding that elimination of
the free market and concentration within the State of the means of production
will suffice to justify evaluation of a social system in terms of Socialism).
This alienated form of socialism unjustifiably made claims to the ideas of Marx
(on this aspect the best critique is formulated by Adam Schaff in his writings
on alienation in socialist countries). In the second place, we must remember the
powerful force of attraction exerted by capitalism. In spite of anti-Stalinist
stances and the current unpopularity of Stalinism in all political line-ups, the
defeat of "Real Socialism" is commonly identified with the defeat of
Communist ideology. This is rather peculiar, for it is a Stalinist idea: in fact,
similarly to Stalin, the basic assumption is that what has not worked and has
now been refused is socialism. The bad reputation of such words as "Marxism"and
"Communism" after the crisis of Socialism in European countries (but
remember also the terrifying action of repression–Tien An Men–in the People's
Republic of China in the name of Communism) has provoked a condition of unease,
disorientation, and rejection of Marxism and Communist ideology even among
parties of the same name. The tendency characterizing present times is the
disintegration of strong ideologies. If, together with Rossi-Landi, we define
ideology as "social planning" and if we believe that confrontation and
clashes even between contrasting or different ideologies is vital to ideology,
three things should be observed: 1) the social plan dominating in Europe today
coincides wih a plan for the development of capital. This plan is rooted in
things themselves, in reality, to the point that more than the ideology of
capital, it is its logic; (2) In Europe the European Commission is the
organism of social planning in the persperctive of such ideology; (3) there is
no sign of opposition to the dominant ideo-logic, at least not in any
conscious, organized form. It would seem (at least at the macroscopic level)
that the struggle, dialogue and dialectic between ideologies has now been
replaced by the monotony of a single dominating viewpoint. As such, the latter
does not need to search for a name since it sees nothing from which it must
differentiate itself. The dominant viewpoint imposes and reproduces itself automatically
and silently through the logic of the development of Capitalist
society. If it must necessarily resort to a name, this is a generic, abused,
ambiguous name, a kind of "umbrella term", a passe-partout:
"Democracy". A more important point to underline is that even
politics is losing ground, a fact we must attribute to the "crisis of
ideology". Political activity today does no more than respond to purely
technical and administrative necessities. Politics represents the set of
mechanisms that support and promote presentday capitalist society; nor is it
exact to speak of bureaucracy with which politics has identified throughout
history. Instead of the bureaucrat we now have technicians, specialists in
social questions: the politician today is a technician. Rather than promoting
political movements with different and contrasting orientations, the choice of a
political leader today generates forms of clientelism: the greatest expert in
politics will gain the most clients. Obviously, a movement that opposes one of
these dominating orientations officially is not a force in opposition, but
simply another force aspiring to the power and primacy of the leading position.
All this must be considered in the light of the prevailing tendency toward
corporativism. Dominant behavior is oriented by interests that confirm
and reinforce one's own sphere of identity, of "indifferent difference".
Beyond the larger spheres of interest there also exist numerous small spheres,
including private interest. Nonetheless, if we agree that the public sphere
should also consider and recognize the interests of otherness, even the broadest
sphere of interest is a private sphere insofar as it is concerned with the
assertion of its own identity. In relation to the problem of Europe's identity,
guarded at the price of the rejection of otherness, we must also remember the
widespread phenomenon of migration toward Europe. This phenomenon is not a
matter of emigration (which is less spectacular and more controllable),
but of migration (a newer, more complex and far more difficult phenomenon
to deal with). Extending our argument to a worldwide level, we must
also add that the end of the Cold War, with the ensuing easing of tension
between the USSR and the USA, is no doubt of prime importance for world peace.
However, this development has its negative side as well: the formation of an
almost monolithic block with minimal internal ideological diversity, which
implies yet again the advantage of identity over otherness. If such leveling of
the differences were at least to guarantee peace, we might have a reason for
tolerating it; but, as we have observed, when the logic of identity has the
upper hand there will always be an external enemy against which a coalition must
be formed. Though maybe not a direct consequence, the fact remains that with the
end of the Cold War, world peace has not been achieved; still worse, with
periodical crises in the Gulf we are witnessing the danger, not yet completely
averted, of a new world war. Today, the ideo-logic of productivity and efficiency
not only exalt the physical-mathematical sciences or scientific research
functionally oriented toward the improvement of production, but also the human
sciences promoting technological progress and scientific development and
ignoring the question of the sense of man. From the viewpoint of identity, whether it be identity
of the individual, of a group, of a nation, of a language, of a cultural system,
of a large community such as Europe, or of the entire Western world, the sense
of man will not be discovered but only mystified, for in the perspective of
identity it is made to coincide with restricted and limited interests as much as
they are current and topical; private interests as much as they are shared. Homologation of the communicative universe reduces
listening to wanting to hear, connected with silence, and diminishes the
spaces of taciturnity where the freedom of listening is as necessary as
the freedom of speech. The words "silence" and "taciturnity"
as we propose them here correspond to the Russian words "tishina" and
"molchanie", as used by Bakhtin (1970-71). Bakhtin distinguishes between the conditions for
perceiving a sound, for recognizing a verbal sign, and for understanding the
sense of an utterance. Silence belongs to the first two, that is, to the conditions
for perceiving a sound, and the conditions for recognizing a sign.
Taciturnity concerns the conditions for understanding sense. The taciturnity of responsive listening is an
interpretant of the verbal sign insofar as it is a sign. Once the taciturnity of
responsive listening is set aside, we are left with silence which is obviously
of no interest to the utterance. Indeed, the utterance escapes silence. Homologation of the communicative universe concretely
invests the verbal sign with the conventional characteristics of the signal
alone, or with the natural characteristics of sound. From the necessity of the
natural to the repetition of the conventional, or, as Charles S. Peirce says,
from indexicality to symbolicity, such is the sphere reserved for
the sign which thus loses its ambivalence, ductility, possibility of
interpretants as characterized by originality, autonomy, absolute otherness–all
qualities he attributed to iconicity. Enclosed within the universe of
silence and the constriction of speech according to laws, conventions and habits,
the sign loses its character as a challenge, as a provocation with respect to
identity and the closed totality; the sign loses its ability to question what
seems stable and definitive as though this were endowed with the characters of
naturality. But all this can be accomplished by the sign through taciturnity, by
its tacit refusal to collaborate with the closed universe of discourse, by
escaping monologism, by exceeding the logic of equal exchange between the
signifier and the signified, between the interpreted sign and the interpretant
sign. "The disturbance of silence by sound is mechanical and physiological
[...]. Taciturnity is possible only in the human world", says Bakhtin
(1970-71). The sign's constriction within the space of silence, its separation
from taciturnity and from the freedom of listening, from listening open to
polysemy, denies the sign its human character and renders it mechanical and
natural causing it to oscillate between conventionality of the signal and
naturality of sound, of what does not claim a sense. Silence belongs to the sphere of language as a system,
to language as reiteration, as reproduction of the order of discourse (Foucault).
Taciturnity, instead, belongs to the sphere of the unrepeatable utterance, it
shares in the "unfinalized totality of the logosphere" (Bakhtin).
Taciturnity enables the utterance to escape the inquiring, coercive silence of
the linguistic system whose fascist character, as Roland Barthes (1978) says,
does not lie in the fact that it impedes speech but, on the contrary, compels it,
imposing the repetition of fixed meanings sanctioned by the order of discourse.
Silence imposes speaking but is not listening. Taciturnity is listening and as
responsive listening it constitutes a pause in the unrepeatable utterance.
Silence in the system of language intended as a "closed discourse universe"
(Marcuse) abolishes listening which belongs to historical unrepeatability and to
the open, unfinalized totality of the logosphere. Listening is one thing, to
want to hear is another: listening allows us to speak and to choose what we want
to say, it allows for manifestation and is turned to signs in their constitutive
multi-voicedness and contradictoriness; to want to hear compels us to speak,
imposes univocality, relevance to questions, coherence, noncontradiction. In all forms of society the realization, management and
reproduction of power is achieved through control over the communication system:
however, this has only clearly emerged recently. In the current phase of the
capitalist system, dominion is obviously not achieved through the possession of
things but through control over communication relations, over mercantile
exchange and production. More simply, we could say that the ruling class is the
class that possesses capital, but the expression "capital" must now be
specified in terms of communication control. If in mercantile exchange in
general the "arcanum" of merchandise can be identified by tracing
communication relations between humans, now, more than ever, in today's
capitalist system, production is communication. With the expansion of
capitalism, the market has realized its tendency to becoming a world market and
communication has also achieved worldwide dissemination. This means that all
communication programs are part of a single global project which coincides with
the plan for the development of capital. This plan is grounded in the reality
itself of capital, so that the ideology of capital is its own logic. The consequence is unitary, compact, monologic
communication oriented toward a single, dominant viewpoint; an orientation which
obliges us to speak according to a given logic and which imposes silence. As
observed elsewhere, it is not so much a question of the end of ideology as of
the fact that dominant ideology imposes and reproduces itself in this phase of
social reproduction, without encountering opposition, automatically, quietly.
Therefore, communication today is characterized by the defence of Identity, by
reproduction of the Same, by the Totality, by Reality, by the Being. In a
universe where everything communicates with itself, where what is communicated
regards Identity and its reproduction, communication is emptied and silence
imposed. In the relation between the interpreted and interpretant there is no
excess, no margin; this relation is realized on the basis of an identification
process in which the sign's escape into the interpretant ends with a return to
self, with the negation of what is other and reassertion of identity. Monologism in communication finds correspondence on the
verbal level in the tendency toward monolingualism: on an external plane,
as |linguistic imperialism, the imposition of one language over others; on an
internal plane as the leveling out of language, the loss of effective diversity
among internal languages, the loss of expressiveness to the advantage of easy,
direct, efficient and speedy communication. But homologation does not concern verbal language
alone. It concerns all behavior insofar as it is sign behavior. To a universal
market there corresponds universal communication expressing the same needs,
desires, and fancies globally. To "closure of the universe of discourse"
there corresponds closure of the communicative universe in general, of
the human semiosic universe. As Italo Calvino writes: At times it seems to me that a pestilential
epidemic has struck humanity in the faculty that characterizes it most, i.e. its
use of the word. A plague of language which manifests itself as the loss of
cognitive force and immediacy, as automatism tending to level out expression
into the most generic and abstract formulations, to dilute meanings, to blunt
expressive heights, to put out all flashes produced by words in new
circumstances. But inconsistency is perhaps present not only in images or
languages, but also in the world. This plague also strikes the life of people,
the history of nations, thus rendering all (hi)stories formless, incidental,
confused [...]. My uneasiness is for the loss of form which I observe in life
[...]. (Calvino 1988:59) Taciturnity is not only muteness. Taciturnity it not
rejection of language. It is also indirect discourse, the distanced word, the
ironic word, parody, laughter. In his Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift
til de philosophiske Smuler (1843), Kierkegaard, the theoretician of the
indirect word, observes that the direct, objective word is not concerned with
otherness, with the other word with respect to itself, it does not constitute
real and proper communication, it communicates silence alone. Taciturnity as indirect speaking may consist of "that
shifting action" exercised on language which Barthes in Leçon
considers as a characteristic of literary writing. "The writer", says
Bakhtin, "is he who knows how to work on language while standing outside it,
is he who possesses the gift of indirect speaking" (Bakhtin 1959-61; Eng.
trans.:110). Moreover, the writer, says Bakhtin, "clothes himself in
taciturnity" (Bakhtin 1970-71; Eng. trans.:149, I prefere "taciturnity",
to "silence"). But this taciturnity, continues Bakhtin, "can
assume various forms of expression, various forms of reduced laughter (irony),
allegory, and so forth" (ibid.). In literary writing it is possible to do what Perseus
the "light hero" praised by Italo Calvino does in the myth when he
defeats Medusa. Perseus defeats the monster which has the power of petrifying
with its gaze, neither by looking at it directly, nor by not looking at it and
turning his eyes away, but by looking at it indirectly, at it's reflexion in his
shield. Likewise, writing can escape the petrification of reality by looking at
things indirectly. This enables Calvino to write the following: I do not care to ask myself here whether the origins of this epidemic of language should be searched for in politics, in ideology, in bureaucratic uniformiyy, in the homogenization of mass media, in the scholastic diffusion of average culture. What I do care for are the possibilities of healing. Literature (and perhaps literature alone) can create antibodies...ready to fight against the spreading of the plague of language [...]. My uneasiness is for the loss of form which I observe in life [...] and which I attempt to resist with the only defense I can think of: an idea of literature. (Calvino 1988:58-59) The indirect word of literature, this form of allusive,
parodic, ironic silence, this form of laughter, is today perhaps what most
affirms the rights of otherness against homologation with identity in the
communication of silence. (On the practice of literatury writing as taciturnity,
cf. Ponzio 1993d). Because of the indirectness of his gaze which enables him to
avoid the petrifying effect of ideology as it identifies with a realistic view
of existence, the writer appears as our new Perseus who subdues Medusa. This is
the idea behind the title of my most recent book on literary writing, La coda
dell'occhio. The potential of the practice of taciturnity in today's
dominant form of communication, silence, is analyzed by Pasolini in a paper of
1974, "Il romanzo delle stragi" (see Pasolini 1990:89-90). Pasolini
begins by crying out against the conspiracy of silence with an "I KNOW",
and continues: I know the names of the persons responsible for
the coups d'etats and slaughters in Italy and for the series of putschs
installed as a system of protection for state power. Such knowledge comes from the fact of being a writer, a
storyteller, a novelist who wants to know about everything that happens, about
everything written about what happens, who wants to imagine everything not known
to everyone or silenced, who puts together the disorganized and fragmentary
pieces of a whole, coherent political scene, who re-establishes logic where
arbitrariness, madness and mystery would seem to rule. All this is part of the
profession of writing and the instinct of the profession. IV. Perspectives
According to widespread prejudice, writing in today's
society is overwhelmed by other kinds of sign sytsems. Part of this prejudice is
based on the convinction that images dominate over writing as though all forms
of human sign production were not in themselves already forms of writing. The fact is that we are victims of a limited view of
writing:writing is commonly identified with transcription, with
the written registration of oral language, considered as a sort of outer
covering, subjected to and subservient to orality. Described in such terms
writing is no more than mnemotechny. This restricted view of writing is not only
connected to primacy of the oral word, the phoné and therefore to the
tendency toward phonocentrism, but also to the tendency toward ethnocentrism. In
the latter perspective, the conviction is that writing–reduced to the status
of transcription–is the privilege of certain societies and not others
representing a fundamental stage in the development of human history. Indeed
writing thus understood is signaled as a discriminating factor between
prehistory and history, between "cold" societies devoid of history and
"warm" societies endowed with history, capable of evolution and
historical memory. In reality, the invention of writing as transcription
presupposes writing in a far more complex sense and in a greater temporal
sphere than the period of man's historico-cultural evolution. It concerns the
process of homination, that is, the formation process of the human species.
Writing is a human species-specific modeling device through which man, resorting
to various means–including his body or external physical devices–, organizes
his experience of the world, his surrounding reality, both spatially and
temporally. Indeed, man is capable of constructing different worldviews, of
inventing an infinite range of new senses with recourse to the same elements.
All animal species are capable of constructing their own world and of conferring
sense upon it; the distinctive feature of the human species is the capacity to
construct a plurality of different possible worlds and, therefore, to confer an
infinity of different senses on the same limited number of elements. Thus intended, writing, "ante litteram"
writing, writing antecedent to the written sign, to transcription, represents a
fundamental stage in the process of homination, it precedes speech which has
wrongly been privileged with respect to other–even earlier–means of
communication. Writing thus understood is not a means of communication like
speaking and its transcription, but rather subtends and precedes all forms of
communication. As transcription writing is connected to
"culture" in the narrow sense according to which writing is opposed to
"non culture" and is attributed to the "man of culture". In
this perspective writing is connected with power and control, with consolidation
of the dominion of man over man. On the contrary, the species-specific capacity
for writing belongs to "culture" in a broad sense, in an
anthropological sense, where writing is opposed to "nature" and
attributed to humanity. The development of speech and relative verbal sign
systems, that is, languages, presupposes writing: if he had not been endowed
with the capacity for writing man would not have been in a position to
articulate sounds and identify a limited number of distinctive features,
phonemes, to reproduce phonetically; without the capacity for writing man would
not have known how to assemble phonemes in different ways so as to form a
multiplicity of different words (monemes), nor could he have assembled words
syntactically in different ways to form different utterances with different
meanings and senses Writing as a modeling device is language as it
subtends human sign systems; and the latter, therefore, may be distinguished in
species-specific terms from other forms of nonhuman animal communication. In
fact, as much as nonhuman animal communication involves the use of signs
typologically homologous to human signs, it is not fixed in the same kind of
structure subtending human sign systems and therefore it cannot take on the
character of human languages. And when, as in the case of deaf-mutes, the development
of language in the phonic form is impossible, writing–if adequately elicited–finds
other possibilies of grafting (gesture, drawings) that–at times–allow for
development of the language capacity unaccompanied by speech. Today we are witnessing a flourishing of languages
thanks to developments in technology, and to encounter and exchange between
different cultures (blocking frontiers and insistence on community identity will
not stop this process which cannot be confined to the limits of market exchange).
Writing today, understood in a broad sense, has more possibilities of
manifesting itself in different ways. And thanks to language as described above,
photography, cinema, television, video-cassettes, computers all offer new
possibilies of writing, consequently increasing our capacity for the "play
of musement". Furthermore, traditional forms of expression–theatre,
music, the figurative arts–are now enhanced by technology and consequently can
now invent new forms of writing both within the same sign system as well as
through reciprocal contamination favoring the formation of new expressive genres.
Design, photography, film, music are forms of writing that should be
reconsidered in this light and appreciated as representing high levels in
creativity through writing intended as the human capacity for language. The crisis of writing indeed! No other historical era
has ever been so rich in writing as the present era. Today's civilization is
the civilization of writing! And this should be said emphatically to anyone
who, confusing writing with the written sign, writing with transcription,
complains–through ignorance or for ideological reasons–about the "loss"
or "debasement" of "writing". We now need to commit ourselves to achieving the
conditions for the diffusion and proliferation of presentday writing systems,
freeing them from any form of subservience to control over communication. The
real problem in today's world of communication is not that of opposing "writing"
and "images", but that of the objective contradiction arising from the
opposition between the continuing increase and expansion of writing systems, of
languages, therefore of the free "play of musement", on one hand, and
the increase of control over communication, on the other, which among other
things implies concentrating control in the hands of a few. Literary writing is another important place, and
perhaps the most ancient, where writing attains independence from transcription,
that is, where the written sign attains independence from its ancillary function
with respect to oral language, where writing is no longer reduced to mnemotechny.
Film, as Ejzenstejn had already clearly understood ("film begins exactly
where all forms of literary art 'end up'"), and other forms of writing in
the present era develop and supplement the work of literary writing. Disengagement of literary writing–that is, its
disengagement with respect to the obligations characterizing other writing
practices intended as transcription–frees writing from the limits of
circumscribed responsibilities, from responsibilities restriced by alibis. And
disengagement from partial and relative responsibilities charges literary
writing with the kind of responsibility that does not know limits, with absolute
responsibility, the kind of responsibility that delivers man from anything that
may obstacle the free expression of what characterizes him in his specificity as
a human being: language, in other words, the capacitiy for play, for the
construction–and deconstruction– of an inifinite number of new possible
worlds. "Play" and not "work", insofar as it is independent
with respect to need, represents an excess as regards function, productivity,
and therefore is alien to the "reign of necessity". As writing and not transcription, literary writing is
refractory to any form of power wishing to obstacle it: the only form of power
that literary writings admits to is the power of imagination, to evoke a slogan
from 1968. Non functional, unproductive, creative imagination, like that
attributed to God: the human lies in man's vocation to divinity, so that man is
human insofar as he is endowed with the divine capacity for language, for
writing. IV. Perspectives
The aim of the joint project collective volumeTelling
Tales. Toward a Critique of Globalized Communication / Le
reseau du récit. Critique de la communication
mondialisée to be edited by Francesco
Loriggio, Joseph Paré, Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio, is to analyze the
practice of telling stories orally and through writing as well as through
various nonverbal sign systems present in all world cultures. Storytelling is a
practice that can be traced throughout the whole world and as such provides a
link among different peoples altogether different from that proposed by recent
forms of global communication. Given its subservience to the global market and general
commodification, global communication leads to homologation and leveling of the
differences except for those differences pertaining to competition, conflict and
mutual exclusion. On the contrary, storytelling is a practice that is
shared by different peoples and that differentiates them at the same time, it
favors encounter and mutual understanding. As emerges from the patrimony of
legends, fables, myths, and stories common to humanity, storytelling acts as a
sort of connective tissue throughout the centuries allowing for the circulation
of common themes, subjects, values and discourse genres. Narration today manifests itself through different
discourse genres, the novel included, and through different media from writing
and orality, for example, cinema. The common aspect of storytelling is its being
an end in itself and its being founded uniquely in the pleasure of involving and
listening to the Other. This also distinguishes storytelling from the kind of
narration that serves power: the power of control and punishment (in stories
narrated before a judge or a police officer), the power of information (newspaper
chronicles), the power of healing (the case history that the physician derives
from the patient, the story narrated by a patient during a psychoanalytic
session), the power of recording and establishing the sense of history (historical
narration), and so on. Story-telling suspends the order of discourse to which
on the contrary globalized communication is functional, offering a space for
reflexion, critical re-thinking, dialogue, encounter, hospitality. So much for now, hoping that our readership enjoyed this
story about (some outstanding authors of) Signs of Research on Signs. |
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