1.Semiotics in Italy from 1970s
2.Contributions
to Bakhtinian readings in Italy
3. Linguistic
Production and Global Communication: Directions in Philosophy of Language
III. Surveys
1. Semiotics in Italy from the mid 1970s onward
Semiotics from Decodification to Interpretation
Italian semiotics has largely been influenced by what
we may generally call the Saussurean sign conception, inclusive of such trends
as that established, for example, by the Prague Circle or by the work of Louis
Hjelmslev. But parallel to this influence, or interfering with it, another very
strong influence is represented by American semiotics. We could cite Ferruccio
Rossi-Landi's monograph of 1953 on Morris, and going back still further, the
1949 Italian translation by Silvio Ceccato of Morrls 1946 Signs, Language and
Behavior, which appeared just three years after the publication of the
original English edition. But even before this, between the end of the
nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Peirce's pragmatism had
already exerted a strong influence on philosophy of language in Italy through
Giovanni Vailati (for a flashback on the origins of Italian semiotics, see
Rossi-Landi 1988).
Two books by Umberto Eco–A Theory of Semiotics of
1975 and Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language of 1984–may be viewed
as expressions of this transition. However, Italian semiotics is rich with many
other problems and perspectives beyond the Saussurean influence or even the
Peircean, which renders the semiotic scene during the years under discussion
rather complex and varied. We are alluding to such factors as the work of
Mikhail Bakhtin, the rediscovery of Victoria Welby, and the pioneering work
inaugurated in the early 1950s by Ferruccio Rossi-Landi.
There are two main reasons for beginning our
description with the second half of the 1970s. First, 1975 saw the publication
of Eco's Trattato di semiotica generale, which may be taken as the point
of arrival of the initial phase in Italian semiotics and the point of departure
of current orientations which are strongly Peircean as compared with the
previous phase. (It is no coincidence that the second edition of Rossi-Landi's
1953 monograph on Charles Morris also appeared in 1975.) Second, the development
of Italian semiotics up to 1975 has already been thoroughly examined by Augusto
Ponzio in La semiotica in Italia (1976), this paper being the beginning
of a possible continuation.
The recent ferment in critical thought and theory in
Italy should be seen in the context of intellectual developments at the European
and world levels, and in relation to various fields. Such interconnections have
led to the flourishing of such a great multiplicity of semiotic methodologies,
theories, and practices that to speak of the "adventures" of the sign
is doubtlessly appropriate (cf. Ponzio 1990a: part 1). Furthermore, semiotic
studies have developed interdependently on the vertical axis of
historiographical reconstruction, with numerous contributions tracing the life
of signs through ancient and medieval thought (cf. Corvino et al. 1982; Eco
1984; Manetti 1987; Ponzio ed. of Peter of Spain 1986 [1230?]; Ponzio 1985c; Versus
15, 1976; Versus 50/51, 1988), and on the horizontal axis populated by
the dissemination of the various specific semiotics. For this reason, one of the
best ways to form an idea of the nature and extension of semiotics in Italy
today is to consider the great variety of orientations, methods, viewpoints, and
objects of analysis.
Two useful volumes which work in this direction
include: Dove va la semiotica? (1986), edited by Gianfranco Marrone, and La
semiotica letteraria italiana (1982), edited by Marin Mincu. Both are
collections of interviews with various scholars, but they differ in that the
first looks toward international semiotics, thereby offering an important point
of confrontation for developments in Italian semiotics, while the second focuses
on a specific area in semiotics as it is practiced in Italy–i.e., literary
semiotics–thereby verifying on a national scale the various critical and
theoretical currents present at an international level. In addition to these as
well as Ponzio's book of 1976, other noteworthy publications from the mid 1970s
onward include: Calabrese and Mucci 1975; Garroni 1977; Eco 1979, 1984;
Bettetini e Casetti 1986; Ponzio 1988b; and Marrone and Ruta 1989; Calabrese,
Ponzio, Petrilli 1993.
In the framework of the present overview, to narrate
the Italian "semiotic adventure" of the past fifteen years means to
"narrate" it in the first person and on the basis of the experience of
a single individual. This inevitably implies recourse to precise methodological
choices (given the characteristics of the discourse genre we are using), and a
channeling of the great plurality of semiotic experiences into a single
viewpoint. Nonetheless, while recognizing the limitations of a first person
narration, the presence of a single voice on a formal level does not necessarily
imply univocality and monologism on a substantial level. Should this be the
overall effect of the present paper, the result can only be imputed to my own
limitations, since the "object" of semiotics is unquestionably plural
and polyphonic. The semiotic science is composed of many voices, logic,
perspectives, and objects of analysis which all frequently interconnect on the
basis of relations that are substantially dialogic. This also emerges from the
widely supported proposal of describing semiotics as a "multidisciplinary"
or "interdisciplinary" field, or even in terms of "interdisciplinary
dissemination", rather than more reductively as a discipline in its own
right (cf. Petrilli 1991a). Already in the title of his 1984 book, Semiotics
and the Philosophy of Language, Eco significantly associates general
semiotics with philosophy. Indeed, for a fuller understanding of the specificity
of semiotic discourse, it is important to look at semiotics through the eyes of
philosophy, and particularly of the philosophy of language (which is not only
verbal "language").
Bearing in mind the sign's orientation (by contrast
with the signal) toward plurivocality, polylogism, and multivoicedness, and
therefore its ability to adapt to new and different situational contexts, we
soon realize how important it is to use the right models and methodologies in
explaining just these values–i.e., plurivocality, polylogism, multivoicedness,
semantic flexibility, etc.–in the science of signs, rather than to expect to
force the great variety of sign phenomena into monolithic and unitary thought
systems. This occurs, however, when we privilege such categories as
"code" and "message", "langue" and "parole",
"collective unitary system" and "differential individual use",
typical of decodification semiotics or "code and message" semiotics (cf.
Bonfantini 1984) as developed from a distorted approach to Saussurean
linguistics and information theory. We are alluding here to the tendency–whose
limits today are obvious–to describe the communication process reductively in
terms of an object in transit from one place to another. A critique of this
orientation had in fact already been formulated by Rossi-Landi in his 1961 book,
Significato, comunicazione e parlare comune, where he describes the
decodification approach with ironical overtones as the "postal package
theory"; in other words, Rossi-Landi underlines the fact that
decodification semiotics reduces messages to the status of packages sent from
one post office and received by another. His position is developed by Ponzio in
a 1984 paper, "Semiotics between Peirce and Bakhtin" (now in Ponzio
1990a: 251-273). As alluded to in the title, Ponzio establishes a connection
between Peirce's interpretation semiotics (which places the sign in the global
context of semiosis and of the relation with the interpretant) and Bakhtin's
philosophy of language (according to which a sign can only subsist as a sign in
the context of dialogism). The "new" model of sign which emerges from
this description is at last free from the underlying assumptions of so-called
"code and message", or "decodification", or "equal
exchange" semiotics.
The "official" date of birth of semiotics in
Italy is commonly (though erroneously) considered to be 1966 (cf. for example
Bettetini and Casetti 1986)–that is, the year of publication in Italian of
Roland Barthes' Elements de semiologie (1964), largely accepted as the
"manifesto" of the semiotic movement. This date entails neglecting a
series of earlier studies as far back as the end of the nineteenth century and
the beginning of the twentieth with Vailati whose approach to language analysis
was influenced by Peirce's semiotics and pragmaticism (cf. Rossi-Landi 1988).
Nonetheless, there is something significant in this error: the year 1966 is
important in Italian semiotics because of Barthes' proposal to invert the
relation between linguistics and semiology as established by Saussure in Cours
de linguistique generale. Apart from one's position regarding this issue (including
incorrect interpretations of Barthes' inversion)–i.e., whether semiotics
encompasses linguistics (Saussure) or vice versa (Barthes)–the success and
dissemination of semiotics in Italy was wholly conditioned by its close
association with linguistics, and in particular structuralist linguistics. At
the same time, however, the wealth of theories and empirical researches of
structuralist orientation characterizing the transition from the 1960s to the
mid 1970s was also accompanied by a critique of structuralism, thereby creating
a need for new solutions.
From the mid 1970s onward, Peirce's intellectual
inheritance began to be more substantially remembered and considered as a
fundamental point of reference not only in Italy (cf. Bonfantini, Eco, Proni,
Sini, etc.), but throughout the world. As regards Italy, an international
conference on Peirce was held for the first time in November 1990 in Naples,
representing a climax in the recovery of Peircean semiotics in this country.
Considering that, in Italy, studies in semiotics began with an interest in
Peirce and subsequently in Morris (whose epochal 1938 volume, Foundations of
the Theory of Signs, was translated into Italian in 1954), we might see this
"new phase" of the mid 1970s as a return to the research of the 1950s
after a decidedly "Saussurean phase", and therefore a return to the
minor Italian tradition such research recalls.
Semiotics today may be described as transcending the
phase designated as decodification (or, if we prefer, code, or equal exchange)
semiotics (cf. Bonfantini 1984: 28ff), with its subdivision into communication
semiotics (Saussure, Buyssens, Prieto) and signification semiotics (Barthes
1964), and as working in the direction of so-called interpretation semiotics (Peirce,
Bakhtin, Barthes, etc.). The categories developed by decodification semiotics
have often proven to be reductive, especially when applied in such areas as
discourse analysis, writing, and ideology; on the contrary, interpretation
semiotics accounts better for signifying processes in all their complexity
thanks to its theories of sense, significance, and interpretability (interpretanza,
as Eco says–cf. 1984: 43), and therefore to its broad, flexible, and critical
conception of the sign.
To describe sign processes as the ongoing deferral of
interpretants in an unending chain-like formation leads to the necessity of
considering the terms and sense of this deferral–that is, the problem of
"the limits of interpretation", as expressed in the title of Eco's
1990 book. Eco proposes two concepts of interpretation: on one hand, to
interpret means to consider the objective nature of a text, its essence, its
independence relatively to the effort of interpretation; on the other hand, we
have a concept of the text as something open to infinite interpretation in a
process tagged as "hermetic semiosis". Eco is critical of the latter
and maintains that, despite appearances, it proposes something altogether
different from the Peircean theory of "unlimited semiosis". The main
object of his criticism is Jacques Derrida's notion of "infinite deferral"
as it is developed by "deconstructionism". And to show how the concept
of "infinite drift" in Derrida, and above all in the
deconstructionists, is different from Peirce's "infinite semiosis",
Eco refers to the Peircean notion of "habit", which, being fixed by
community convention, underlines the intersubjective character of interpretation
(see Eco 1990: 350).
Eco's specifications concerning the Peircean notion of
"unlimited semiosis" may be associated with the dialogic character of
interpretation as theorized by the philosopher of dialogism, Mikhail Bakhtin.
Thanks to Bakhtin, we are today in a position to recognize that the relationship
among interpretants is essentially dialogic (i.e., the logic binding
interpretants is a dia-logic; cf. Bonfantini and Ponzio 1986). This implies that
an interpretant sign cannot impose itself arbitrarily on the interpreted sign;
that is, it does not relate to the interpreted sign authoritatively or
unconditionally. To understand the Peircean chain of interpretants in terms of
dialogism means to escape the risk of considering the interpretation process as
being equivalent to a free reading in which the will of the interpretants (and
with them of the interpreters) beats the interpreteds "into a shape which
will serve their own purposes" (cf. Eco 1990: 42). This makes the
association between Peirce's position and Bakhtin's even more interesting (cf.
Ponzio 1990a).
Studies in the field of semiotics of literature are
particularly effective in illustrating the inadequacy of reducing sign value to
exchange value. The expression "of literature" is here intended as a
subject genitive (cf. Ponzio 1986); in other words, literature stands to
semiotics in the sense that the sign is considered from the viewpoint of
literature–of the unfunctionality, unproductivity, and excess of literature as
regards the logic of equal exchange–and not in the sense that prefixed models
and categories are applied to literature. In this connection, the research of
such authors as Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, and Mikhail
Bakhtin has exerted considerable influence on Italian studies. The following
oppositional pairs of concepts help underline the difference in semiotic theory
and practice of the 1960s by comparison with the 1970s and 1980s: "static
nature of sign" and "dynamic nature of semiosis", "univocality"
and "plurivocality", "monologism" and "polylogism",
"monolingualism" and "plurilingualism", "identity"
and "otherness", "equivalence" and "exccss",
"decodification" and "interpretation".
The association of Peirce's semiotics with Bakhtin's
philosophy of language has not only helped to place the sign in the dynamic
context of inference, interpretation, and dialogism, but also contributes to
emphasizing still other aspects in the relation among signs in signifying
practices. For example, Ponzio (1985a) proposes that we consider the meaning of
signs, verbal and nonverbal, in terms of an interpretive route. This concept in
fact proposes interesting solutions for a series of problems at the heart of
current semiotic-philosophical debate. These include: the question of the
plurivocality and ambiguity of signs; the relation of meaning and referent; the
intersemiotic relation between signs which opposes the conception that signs and
sign systems are reciprocally independent to the point of seeming autonomous;
the relation of the signifier (sign vehicle, signans) and the signified (designatum,
significatum, signification, signatum), with special focus on signifier excess
with respect to the signified as determined in the interpretation process.
Ponzio describes meaning as a possible interpretive
route in the sign network; a route that interweaves with other routes, with
other meanings irradiating from the same sign. On moving away from a sign
intersection, the sign may shift among the various alternative signifying routes,
which accounts for the indeterminacy, openness, and semantic availability of
signs, for their semiotic materiality (cf. Petrilli 1990b; Ponzio 1990a).
Therefore signs find their place in the context of dialogic relations, which is
determined by: (1) the relation of signs and interpretants, which ln
argumentation is (2) the relation between premises and conclusions (the latter
is characterized by varying degrees of dialogism depending on whether we are
dealing with deduction, induction, or abduction [Peirce]); (3) the relation
between the multiple interpretants, verbal and nonverbal, constituting the open
trajectory of an interpretive route; and (4) the relation among interpretants of
different interpretive routes (cf. Ponzio 1985a, 1990a).
Signs,Values, and Ideology
Another aspect which has strongly emerged during the
1980s is the relation between semiotics and axiology, thanks also to the
association with studies on ideology (Rossi-Landi offers a detailed analysis of
the relation between sign value and economic value in his so-called Bompiani
trilogy: cf. Rossi-Landi 1985, 1992, 1994; Ponzio 1988a). Greater efforts are
now being made to recover and develop that particular bent in semiotics oriented
toward questions of an axiological order. This involves a more global
reconnaissance of man and his signs, which means that a significant feature of
presentday trends in semiotics is this very extension of its boundaries to
include the problem of the relation of signs and values. Until recent times
official semiotics has mainly operated as a cognitive science with claims to
being neutral consequently emerging as a descriptive science. Nonetheless, as
mentioned earlier, sign theory had already been introduced to the problem of
value with Saussure who adapted his theory of exchange value from marginalistic
economics. Morris (1964) too underlined the need for examining the relation
between signs and values. Going back still further toward the end of the last
century, let us remember that Victoria Welby had already coined the term "significs"
(cf. Welby 1983, 1985) in her effort to highlight the difference between her own
approach to the study of signs and meaning and the predominantly cognitive
orientation of contemporary trends in semantics and semiotics. A selection of
her writings is now available in Italian translation in a booklet entitled Significato,
metafora, interpreta zione (1986). As far as the problem of value is
concerned, we must also note the strong influence exerted in Italy by the school
of Algirdas J. Greimas. Greimasian thought and its followers in Italy thematize
the relation of signs and values with particular reference to developments in
semiotics of passions (cf. Pezzini 1991).
An original chapter in Italian semiotics is offered by
studies on semiotics and ideology, which go back at least as far as the 1960s.
To analyze ideology semiotically is not simply a question of applying semiotical
instruments to the study of ideology; even though signs can exist without
ideology, ideology cannot exist outside a sign medium. Therefore we must study
the ideological nature of signs where applicable, and the semioticaal nature of
ideology (which is constitutive of ideology), and in this perspective review our
model of sign. Such an approach should also involve reflexion on the ideological
nature of the science that studies ideology–in this case semiotics (cf. Ponzio
l991a, 1992b).
Rossi-Landi uses the concept of "social
reproduction" articulated into three levels (structure, sign systems, and
superstructure) to explain the dialectic relation of ideology and social
structure. According to Rossi-Landi this relation is mediated by sign systems;
the entire process of social reproduction is pervaded with ideology through sign
systems. After a phase in which the problem of ideology seemed to have been
ousted from semiotics (not only in Italy), it is now finally being reconsidered.
The problem of the relation of semiotics and ideology is also linked to the
relation of semiotics and Marxism. And in both I Think I Am a Verb (1986)
and Semiotics in the United States (1991), Sebeok refers to studies
carried out in Italy (with particular reference to Rossi-Landi and Ponzio) as
possible examples of a critical and nondogmatic approach to the relation of
semiotics and ideology, and semiotics and Marxism. Unfortunately, however,
dogmatic approaches have often prevailed in this field, provoking a general
neglect of important categories originally developed from Marx and present in
various forms in the study of signs.
The Special Semiotics
Another issue which should at least be mentioned here
concerns the relation between the specific semiotics, general semiotics, and
philosophy. In Eco's opinion (1984), as grammars of particular sign systems, the
specific semiotics need not concern themselves with philosophical reflection on
the categories in which they are grounded, which does not mean denying their
philosophical foundations. This statement is also made as a reply to Emilio
Garroni (cf. Garroni 1977, and his polemic response to Eco in Mincu 1982), who
takes the opposite stand. Garroni maintains that even though the specific
semiotics may privilege empirical research, they must be fully conscious of the
categories through which they operate. Cesare Segre (in Marrone 1986: 153-163)
also believes that the so-called "specific semiotics" must deal
directly with problems of a philosophical order, for they work within a specific
theoretical framework and therefore at some stage must inevitably deal with the
general problems of semiosis as well.
The practitioners of semiotics in Italy work in a great
variety of different fields including esthetics, psychology, information theory,
literary theory, literary criticism, philology, mathematics, biology, etc., in
addition to philosophy and linguistics. Semiotic theory has benefitted from the
contribution of theories and methods imported from different territories, which
in turn have been enriched through their use of semiotic instruments. In
response to the request that he identify the major Italian representatives of
semiotics and underline their originality with respect to other European schools,
Eco (in Mincu 1982: 68) mentions the field of architecture, reflexion on iconic
signs and on literature, the importance of philosophical speculation ("it
was precisely in Italy that the transition was achieved from a structuralist
semiotics of Saussurean derivation to a philosophical semiotics of Peircean
derivation"), and the stronger characterization of Italian semiotics as
social semiotics (with interesting grafting from Marxism) as compared for
instance with French semiotics, which is decidedly oriented toward studies in
psychology, with graftings from psychoanalysis.
Literary theory has shifted its attention from textual
structure to the text considered in its historico-cultural context and in its
dialectic-dialogic relations with the intertextual tradition. The rediscovery of
Bakhtin, the theorizer of language and literature (cf. Ponzio 1992a), has been
fundamental for developments in this direction, but we must also remember the
research of Yuri Lotman and Boris Uspensky on the typology of culture, and more
generally the notion of culture as developed by the Russian tradition in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries (cf. Avalle 1982; Prevignano 1979). As
regards the relationship between Russian and Italian literary semiologists,
Segre (in Marrone 1986: 161) recalls their common background as philologists or
historians of literature.
Italian literary semiotics is deeply rooted in the
great tradition of linguistics and philology . Segre explicitly attributes his
own inclination toward literary criticism to his background studies in philology
and linguistics, and states that good work in this area requires "a sense
of the text, knowledge of the ways in which it is developed and diffused,
recognition of the necessity of keeping account of all the facts and of
historico-cultural precedents" (in Mincu 1982: 44). As underlined in the
title of his 1979 book, Semiotica filologica, Segre believes that
critical analysis and philology are always closely correlated and together
produce the sign models he privileges.
In Italy, Giorgio Prodi's research (cf. 1977, 1982,
1983b) has taken a direction similar to Sebeok's. Prodi identifies the most
significant connection between the natural sciences and the human sciences in
the "contact" between biology and semiotics, which he believes may
become a solid connection under the banner of "general semiotics". It
is not a question of interdisciplinarity, altogether vain in most cases where it
was attempted, nor of good relations among neighbourig corporations: but of a
new language, a new unitary perspective that does not coincide with any of the
perspectives from which the question arose. In short, it was a new way of
outlining the problems of knowledge. On the basis of the assumption that human
knowledge is grounded in the proposition of "being significant in relation
to ...", and that the entire apparatus of knowledge focuses on the
interpretation of meaning Prodi too, in line with Sebeok and using organismic
metaphors that recall Welby's analyses of signifying processes (cf. Welby 1983),
identifies the association of biology with semiotics in research on meaning:
We have observed that the deciphering of meaning is at the very root of all biological machines. All reactions and structures composing any organism whatever are decipherings of meaning and exist insofar as they produce selective actions in which each term is a sign for the reader who reads it. Biology is pure natural semiotics. Biological processes are "sign translations". The organism's capacity to survive over the environment is connected with the discrimination of significance in the environment: but this would not be possible if the organism itself were not defined, internally, as a confederation of meanings. (Prodi, in Marrone 1986: 122)
Even though the numerous trends, standpoints, and
topics in Italian semiotics have only been briefly outlined in this paper, we
hope to have at least given the reader some idea of the liveliness and ferment
of Italian semiotic research with reference not only to Italy, but also to its
reception internationally. No doubt Italian semiotics has felt the influence of
what we have generically called the Saussurean conception of the sign (comprising
the work of the Prague Circle and of Hjelmslev); but parallel to this
orientation, or complementing it, influences from other semiotic traditions
including in particular the American and the Russian have also played a
determining role on the Italian scene. Consequently, an important characteristic
of Italian semiotics is its intimate association with the theories and practices
of other countries.
III. Surveys
2. Contributions to Bakhtinian Readings in Italy
During the 1970s the following books by Mikhail M.
Bakhtin appeared in Italian translation: his 1975 Russian collection translated
with the title, Estetica e romanzo; his Rabelais of 1965
translated as Rabelais e la cultura popolare nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento;
and thanks to Augusto Ponzio, the trilogy–recently reprinted in Russia under
the general title Bakhtin's Masks–Freudianism (1927), Il
metodo formale nella scienza della letteratura (1928), and Marxismo e
filosofia del linguaggio (1929) (the main text is translated from the
English while the introduction is translated directly from the 1930 Russian
edition which had been excluded from the English). All three are signed by two
of Bakhtin's collaborators as the result of work done collectively by the
Bakhtin Circle during the 1920s: Valentin N. Voloshinov for Freudismo and
Marxismo e filosofia del linguaggio, Pavel N. Medvedev for Il metodo
formale nella scienza della letteratura. Two important anthologies
collecting writings by different authors also appeared during the same period: Problemi
di teoria del romanzo (see Strada 1976 ed.), which included Bakhtin's
"Epos and romanzo" (1938-41) (published again both in Teoria e
realtà del romanzo and in Estetica e romanzo), and Michail
Bachtin. Semiotica, teoria della letteratura e marxismo, (see Ponzio 1977
ed.: collecting essays by V.V. Ivanov, J. Kristeva, L. Matejka, I.R Titunik, and
A. Ponzio with the addition of Bakhtin's "Problema teksta",
1959-1961), appearing for the first time in Italian.
During the 1980s Bakhtin's work was at the centre of
attention in Italy. In 1984 his biography found its Diogenes Laertius in Michael
Holquist (with the collaboration of Katerina Clark) with the monograph, Mikhail
Bakhtin. In any case, Augusto Ponzio authored the first monograph ever on
Bakhtin at a world-wide level under the title, Michail Bachtin. Alle origini
della semiotica sovietica, published in 1980.
Ponzio examines Bakhtin's research in all its
complexity and in the historico-cultural context of its development evidencing
the specific orientation of Bakhtin's research as against other philosophical,
literary, psychological, and culturological currents of the time. Ponzio's
monograph is theoretical by comparison with the biographical orientation of the
Holquist-Clark monograph, and far broader than Tzvetan Todorov's, Mikhaïl
Bakhtine. Le principe dialogique, 1981. The latter together with the
Holquist-Clark 1984 monograph and Holquist's subsequent monograph of 1990, Dialogism:
Bakhtin and his World, do not do justice to Bakhtin's work because of their
misunderstanding of the Bakhtinian concept of dialogue.
Ponzio in his monograph reconstructs the
historico-cultural context in which Voloshinov, Medvedev and Bakhtin published
their writings on literature, with a particular focus on "La parola nella
vita e nella poesia", signed by Voloshinov. Differently from the Russian
formalists, Voloshinov insists on the homological relation between ordinary
discourse and literary writing rather than on the contrast, and in this light
concentrates on the specificity of the literary text. To contextualize Bakhtin's
contribution to the critique of "Freudian philosophy" as formulated in
Freudismo, Ponzio describes the debate on psychology in the USSR during
the 1920s. He analyzes the relationship between Bakhtin and Vygotsky, as well as
the latter's interest in the psychology of art. In his desciption of the
relationship between the Bakhtin Circle and Russian Formalism Ponzio
reconstructs the itinerary leading from Medvedev and Voloshinov and their
analysis of the ideological character of verbal material, from the concept of
"extralocality" presented in Bakhtin's early writings, from "representation"
in Medvedev's book of 1928, to the difference between the objective word and the
objectified word developed by Bakhtin in his book on Dostoevsky, where he works
on the concepts of the "dialogically internal word" and "polyphony"
characterizing the Dostoevskyian novel.
Ponzio also analyzes Bakhtin's monograph on Rabelais in
which the distinction (introduced in Freudanism) between "official
ideology" and "non official ideology" is developed in relation to
popular culture, carnival and the relationship between "high genres"
and "low genres". He also works on the analogies and differences
between Bakhtin and Vladimir Propp with reference to their interests and
methodologies employed in their study of culture.
Furthermore, in his 1980 monograph Ponzio also
reconstructs the dispute of 1950 between Stalin and Marr concerning language
theory and the false problem as to whether language is or is not a
superstructure. According to Ponzio, Bakhtin's approach to signs and ideologies
reveals that linguistic and sign phenomena are not generally characterized by
the concept of "superstructure", but that, on the contrary, the
concept of "superstructure" is explained non-mechanistically through
the study of verbal and nonverbal signs which inexorably mediate between
so-called "base" and so-called "superstructure". From this
viewpoint, of great interesting are both the original introduction to Marxismo
e filosofia del linguaggio (eliminated from the English edition), and the
first chapter of Il metodo formale e la scienza della letteratura.
In 1980 Umberto Eco also contributed to discussion on
Bakhtin's Rabelais with an article entitled "Il Rabelais di
Bachtin". Nonethless, in his work on literature theory, the author-reader
relation, the problem of the "limits of interpretation" Eco does not
take Bakhtin into consideration. In 1980 other articles on Rabelais are
published by the French studies specialist Giovanni Macchia, the anthropologist
Clara Gallini, and by Ponzio in collaboration with the anthropologist Maria
Solimini (1981). In 1980 Ponzio publishes in Italian translation a collection of
writings by Voloshinov originally published in Russian journals between 1926 and
1930, Il linguaggio come pratica sociale (Bakhtin and Voloshinov 1980)
In 1981 an essay by V. Strada, "Dialogo con
Bachtin," and the Italian translation by C. Strada Janovic of Bakhtin's
1970-71 "Appunti" were published in the first issue of the journal Intersezioni.
The same text was subsequently included in the 1988 Italian translation of the
1979 Russian collection of Bakhtin's writings, published as L'autore e l'eroe.
In Ponzio's opinion the first Italian translation of this text is better than
the second, having the merit of rendering Bakhtin's interesting distinction
between tisina and molcanie with the terms "silenzio"
and "tacere" (silence and taciturnity) (cf. below, 1V.3) and
unfortunately replaced by "silenzio" and "mutismo" in the
1988 version.
In "Dialogo con Bachtin", V. Strada refers to
the Italian translations (promoted by Ponzio) of the books by Medvedev and
Voloshinov, and is more rigid concerning the distinction between what belongs to
the author Bakhtin and what does not. On the contrary, in his 1976 introduction
Strada (1976 ed.) accepts the interpretation according to which texts by
Medvedev and Voloshinov contain ideas that "are substantially
Bakhtin's". However, he does not yet take an extreme position in
"Dialogo con Bachtin" on the question of private property relatively
to the works of the Bakhtin Circle. Strada claims that books by Voloshinov and
Medvedev, "having appeared in the USSR when Bakhtin was forbidden all
possibility of publishing, doubtlessly develop Bakhtin's ideas, but in a
'Marxist' context which is not Bakhtin's" (ibid.: 116). Indeed, as a
reading of their works reveal, the Marxist context of the books by Medvedev and
Voloshinov was by no means "Marxism intended as the only 'scientific' and
above all 'state' philosophy", but rather critical Marxism which, as
declared in the texts in question, was still to be constructed in relation to
studies on individual consciousness and cognitive processes, verbal and
nonverbal signs, and the problem of the specificity of the literary text. Strada
identifies two "key concepts" for literary works in Bakhtin's
"dialogic model": "great time" and "extralocality"
(ibid.: 123), though he does not succeed in grasping the specificity of
this "dialogic model" being concerned as he is with tracing analogies
between Bakhtin and neokantianism, Heideggerian philosophy, Hans Gadamer's
philosophy and–considering his aim to describe Bakhtin as a "personalist
philosopher"–the work of Martin Buber and "perhaps" Max Scheler
(ibid.: 118). As observed by P. Jachia (Introduzione a Bachhn
1995: 132), Strada overlooks the fact that Bakhtin criticizes the
philosophy of both Max Scheler and Martin Buber for their total lack of
scientific rigor.
In the same year, 1981, another book appears by Ponzio,
Segni e contraddizioni. Tra Marx e Bachtin, in which he analyzes
Bakhtin's theories of language and literature with the aim of constructing a
theoretical perspective in which the problems of language and translation are
dealt with in terms of the relation of alterity and contradiction. Another
important element in this book is the confrontation of Bakhtinian ideas with
Marx as freed from prejudice and stereotyped interpretations.
In 1982,Tempo e
segno by Patrizia Calefato inaugurates the book series "Segni di
Segni," directed by Ponzio and Maria Solimini. In
the paragraph entitled "Festa e tempo gioioso in Bachtin," Calefato
confronts the Bakhtin's perspective on time with the dominant Western view
grounded in a cumulative concept of history, according to which the subject's
experiences take place linearly as established by a fixed idea of progress,
speed, and anticipation.
In the same year the second edition of Ideologia
by Ferruccio Rossi-Landi is published with a section on "Linguaggio
e ideologia in Bachtin e Voloshinov" (1982: 192-203). Rossi-Landi observes
that Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov have the merit of signalling the
"need for a new and creative Marxist approach to problems of language,
ideology and their relations" (ibid.: 203), and of denouncing the fact that
mechanistic categories were established in all fields only just touched on or
completely left aside by Marx and Engels.
Ponzio's "trilogy" of three books (Spostamenti.,
Tra linguaggio.e letteratura, Lo spreco dei. significanti)
published as a sequence in the above-mentioned book series, "Segni di
segni", are rich in references to Bakhtinian theory not simply as the
direct object of study but as the theoretical perspective according to which
problems of philosophy of language, text theory, and theory of literature are
reconsidered. Ponzio relates Bakhtin's contribution to R. Barthes, J. Kristeva,
J. Derrida, M. Blanchot, and E. Lévinas. Another interesting publication is the
collective volume Polifonie edited by Ponzio, in relation to which I
shall simply signal the latter's essay, "La polionimia di
Kierkegaard," in which Bakhtin's approach is ascertained in the
"author's extralocality," achieved by Kierkegaard through the
expedient of pluri-pseudonomy.
The Second International Conference on Bakhtin,
"Bachtin teorico del dialogo" was organized in Cagliari in 1985. The
conference proceedings were published in 1986. Ponzio's paper which unites his
studies on Bakhtin and Emmanuel Lévinas (cf. Ponzio 1995a), was subsequently
included in his book Filosofia del linguaggio 1, together with
"Abduzione e alterità", in which Bakhtin's dia-logic is confronted
with what we might call Peirce's semio-logic.
This double reference is also present throughout
another volume by Ponzio (written with the collaboration of Massimo A.
Bonfantini), Dialogo sui dialoghi.. Ponzio's 1986 volume Interpretazione
e scrittura, is also dedicated to the relation between Peirce's semiotics
and Bakhtin's philosophy of language with a focus on language and dialogue from
the viewpoint of "literary space". References also return to the
expert of otherness, Lévinas.
Another International Conference on Bakhtin was
organized in 1989, in Urbino (Italy), by the Centro internazionale di semiotica
e linguistica, on "Bachtin e l'epistemologia del discorso". Foreign
participants included M. Holquist, C. Thomson, and I. Zavala; among the Italians
Ponzio held a paper with Angela Biancofiore entitled, "Dialogue, Sense and
Ideology" (in Ponzio 1993d), Susan Petrilli (1990d) confronted Bakhtinian
theory with Welby's "significs" in "Dialogue and Chronotopic
Otherness in Bakhtin and Welby", and Paolo Jachia presented "Bachtin e
il marxismo".
In 1990 another volume by Ponzio appears entitled Man
as a Sign, which though reproposing earlier papers originally published in
Italian, does not have an Italian equivalent organized in the form of a unitary
volume. Bakhtinian categories are present in Ponzio's sign theory: otherness,
dialogism, answering comprehension (or responsive understanding), and therefore
the difference between sign and signal. Bakhtin is also present as the direct
object of analysis, with Ponzio's return to confrontation with Lévinas and
Peirce in addition to Rossi-Landi, Schaff, and Welby. Using Bakhtin in
conjunction with Peirce and Rossi-Landi, Ponzio signals the direction in which
code semiotics may be overcome. This volume also includes an appendix by S.
Petrilli ("The Problem of Signifying").
In 1991 Ponzio published another two books in which
Bakhtinian thought plays a primary role both as the general perspective and as
the object of analysis. The first, Dialogo e narrazione, comprises the chapters:
"L'acrobata e la sua ombra", "Dialogo e narrazione",
"Alterità e origine dell'opera", "Il dialogo fra Rousseau e Jean
Jacques". The second, Filosofia del linguaggio 2,
includes a third section specifically on Bakhtin, "Senso e valore fra
identità e alterità", though the latter is present throughout the whole
volume, beginning with the section "Segno e ideologia" and ending with
"Architetture e metodo".
Two monographs appear on Bakhtin in 1992: Introduzione
a Bachtin by Paolo Jachia and Tra semiotica e letteratura. Introduzione e
M. Bachtin, by Ponzio. A noteworthy aspect of Jachia's book is the
comparison–important not only for Bakhtin criticism but also for today's
ideological consciousness– between Bakhtin and Marxism in which the former's
originality, autonomy and innovative capacity is underlined. It is not a
question of "Marxisizing Bakhtin", as says V. Strada (cf.
"Introduzione" to the Italian edition of Bakhtin's Tolstoj,
Bakhtin 1986: 45), but if anything of "Bakhtinizing" Marxism in the
perspective of a new form of humanism (such as that proposed by Adam Schaff in Umanesimo
ecumenico or of Lévinas' "humanism of otherness"). In Tra
semiohca e letteratura Ponzio returns to his monograph of 1980 whiche he
amplifies with the addition of works written in the meantime. His
1992 monograph is divided into two sections: 1) "La specificita della
parola letteraria"; 2) "Soggetto, segno, ideologia". The value and specific character of Bakhtinian research is underlined in
all its complexity, unlike numerous other studies which fail to do justice to
Bakhtin. These in fact tend to be inadequate–despite treating important
problems–simply because Bakhtin's work is often rather restrictively related
to the interests of a particular discipline, therefore, to sectorial issues. On
the other hand, Ponzio's viewpoint is fundamentally theoretical, turned as it is
to problems around which Bakhtin's research is organically articulated.
Bakhtin's work is evaluated by Ponzio both in the light of current debate on
literary theory and semiotics, an area Bakhtin related to directly, as well as
the other human sciences which are always present in the background. For this
reason, in addition to situating Bakhtinian thought in the
ideologico-theoretical context of its real (direct or indirect) referents,
Ponzio also confronts it with trends which had not been taken into
consideration, at least directly, by Bakhtin such as those connected with such
authors as Propp, Peirce, Lévinas, Blanchot and Chomsky. Such confrontations
are fundamental in fathoming the implications of Bakhtinian thought in its
various aspects and in fully evaluating its topicality, capacity for innovation
and relevance to semiotic theory and literary today. Ponzio also dedicates to
Bakhtin part VI of his book, Production linguistique et ideologie sociale
, 1992b.
In 1993 a fragment from the first chapter,
"L'autore e l'eroe nell'attività estetica" from Bakhtin's book L'autore
e l'eroe, is published for the first time in the volume, Bachtin e...
edited by Ponzio and Jachia This fragment had neither been included in the 1979
Russian edition of Bakhtin's writings, nor consequently in the corresponding
Italian edition of 1988. Bachtin e... is divided into two parts:
"Bachtin e..." and "Simbolo, valore, alterita". In addition
to the "Frammento" by Bakhtin (159-185), this second part also
includes "Dalle Annotazioni", notes by Bakhtin (187-196), translated
for the frst time from the 1986 Russian edition of these texts published in
"Literaturna-kritisheskie stat'i". The second part of Bachtin e...
also includes a strongly Bakhtinian article by S.S. Averincev (who with S.
Bocharov has edited many of Bakhtin's writings for publication) and "Il
simbolo" quoted by Bakhtin in his most recent work of 1974, "Toward a
Methodology for the Human Sciences" (in Bachtin 1979) Each one of these
translations is preceded by a brief presentation by Ponzio.
In the first part of Bachtin e..., the Russian
scholar is confronted with other significant figures populating the cultural
scene of our times (as signalled in the title), with essays by A. Biancofiore,
P. Calefato, P. Jachia, R. Luperini, S. Petrilli, A. Ponzio and M. Valenti. One
of the contributions by Ponzio, "Scrittura, opera, alterità", focuses
on the relation between Bakhtin and Lévinas, also examined by him in another
paper ("Bachtin e l'umanesimo dell'alterità"), written in English for
the International Conference on Bakhtin in Manchester, 1991, and read in Spanish
by Iris Zavala in the author's absence. This relationship is also the topic of
another book by Ponzio (Scrittura, dialogo, alterità, 1994). Theory of
knowledge, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and literary criticism can
all be transversally correlated to the notion of otherness, a central theme in
the thought of both Bakhtin and Lévinas. Ponzio's volume discusses this
hypothesis through his theoretical analyses and critical readings.
Fondamenti di filosofia del linguaggio by A. Ponzio, P. Calefato and S. Petrilli (1994) is rich in implicit and explicit references to Bakhtin, including the conception itself of "philosophy of language": see in particular the sections "Competenza linguistica, comunicazione e coscienza linguistica"; "Linguaggio e identità"; "Dialogo"; "Linguaggio e produzione letteraria"; "Linguaggio e corpo"; "Filosofia del linguaggio e linguaggio della filosofia".
Another recent editorial initiative is the publication
by Eutopìas, in an issue entitled Tres miradas sobre Bajtin, of three
Bakhtinian papers by Mercedes Arriaga, Petrilli and Ponzio, originally presented
at a Seminar dedicated to Bakhtin held in July 1994 at the University of Madrid.
A large volume edited by Ponzio and Jachia, Bachtin
e le sue maschere, is also published in 1994. This collects various texts in
Italian translation by Bakhtin and his Circle from 1919-29, some of which are
translated directly from Russian for the first time, such as the 1925 text,
"Il vitalismo contemporaneo", signed by the biologist, I. I. Kanaev
but in reality written by Bakhtin as explicitly declared by the latter.
For the most recent editorial initiatives concerning
Bakhtin readings in Italy, we shall simply remember the following:
–by A. Ponzio, La
rivoluzione bachtiniana. Il pensiero di Bachtin
e l'ideologia contemporanea
(1996), which proposes through Bakhtinian categories and in a Bakhtinian
perspective, a critique of today's globalized communication connected with the
plan for the development of neocapitalism;
–the first Italian translation of the 1929 edition of
Bakhtin's Dostoevsky, confronted with the 1963 version, by M. De Michiel
and with an introduction by A. Ponzio (referred to in the paper on Bakhtin by
Ponzio in the present issue, see above, I.2).
–the Italian translation of an essay by Bakhtin of
1920-24, K filosofii postupka, published for the first time in Russian in
1986, and proposed in Italian translation under the title Per una filofsoia
dell'azione responsabile (that is For a Philosophy of Responsible Action),
as an independent volume, in 1998, with the addition of two essays by Ponzio
and Zavala (the same volume with the addition of other texts by Bakhtin was
published in Spanish in the same year). This volume in Italian inaugurates the
new book series "Di-segno-in-segno", directed by A. Ponzio, S.
Petrilli and C. Caputo.
–a critical edition of Marxismo e filosofia del
linguaggio, edited by De Michiel with an introduction by Ponzio scheduled to
appear in the same book series, "Di-segno-in-segno", in January 1999.
Connecting Bakhtin to Lévinas favors our understanding
of Bakhtin's theoretical horizon while avoiding the misunderstandings that
Augusto Ponzio has contributed to evidencing. In fact, Lévinas' critique–or
at least the distance he takes–as regards such authors as Buber, Heidegger,
Sartre as well as the representatives of neo-Kantism, helps toward understanding
Bakhtin's critique which is very similar even if he is not necessarily direct or
explicit.
The fact is that after a specifically philosophical
beginning expressed specially in his early writing, K filosofii postupka,
Bakhtin was subsequently to dedicate himself completely to the study of
literature where he discovered that the relationship of otherness was developed
in the terms he was mainly interested in studying. In the literary text the
triadicity of the otherness relation clearly emerges, being a relation between
author, hero and receiver. On the other hand, Lévinas–who is also
particularly attentive toward the problem of refounding the question of
otherness and saving it from reduction to the ideology of identity as well as
from the categories of the subject–persevered in his philosophical study of
this question to the point that–or if as though– Bakhtin's implicit
philosophy finds in Lévinas its full explicitation.
This is why we believe confrontation between Bakhtin
and Lévinas–both of whom may be counted among the major and most original
thinkers of our times–is fundamental, especially if we wish to avoid
misunderstaning the Bakhtinian conception of dialogue and otherness. It is not
an exaggeration to state, as does Ponzio in La rivoluzione bachtiniana,
1997, for Bakhtin, on one hand, and in Sujet et alterité, 1996, for Lévinas,
on the other, that the work of these two authors constitutes an important space
for the critical interrogation of the whole of Western ideology grounded in the
category of identity. Dialectic from Hegel to Sartre did not succeed in
conducting an adequate critique of identity or of Western reason to any
satisfactory answers. Together Lévinas and Bakhtin represent an alternative
which should be taken into serious consideration for a critique of reason
inspired by alterity: a critique, that is, founded in otherness, answerability,
dia-logic reason.
III. Surveys
3. From Linguistic Production to Global
Communication: Directions in philosophy of language.
Practising philosophy of language
The expression "philosophy of language"
conveys the scope and orientation of Augusto Ponzio's research for two main
reasons. Firstly, as a research method it promotes philosophical investigation
into the sciences of verbal and nonverbal languages in terms of heteroglossia,
polylogism, reciprocal otherness and dialogism, by contrast with the tendency
toward prevarication, unquestioning authority, and monologism. "Philosophy
of (verbal ) language" because, as a meta-science, the interpretant of
philosophical investigation is ultimately verbal: investigation takes place
within verbal reality, its materials and instruments are verbal, its specific
object is necessarily mediated by verbal signs, and it is pronounced verbally in
a specific field of discourse. The pervasiveness of sign reality for man is
evidenced by Ponzio with his theory of meaning as a network, a system of
"interpretive routes", outside of which meanings cannot subsist: signs
correspond to the nodes and intersections in this network and like the nodes in
a network, once the pieces or the interpretive routes joining these signs
disappear, signs themselves also disappear (cf. Ponzio 1985a, 1990b, 1995b).
The second reason why the expression "philosophy
of language" is a good qualification of Ponzio's work is that philosophy as
a science presupposes philosophy immanent in language. In other words,
philosophy of language presupposes the orientation inherent in language toward
"dialogic plurilingualism", "multi-voicedness",
"heteroglossia" and otherness interrelating different languages,
cultures and ideologies: the expression "philosophy of language"
implies philosophizing by language and not just about language (cf. Ponzio
1985c). Even when research conducted in the sciences of language, linguistics,
and institutionalized philosophy of language (commonly understood as
philosophical studies on language) is oriented monologically and regulated by
the centripetal and unifying forces of linguistic life, the original
philosophizing immanent in language, its constitutional dialogic heteroglossia,
is often betrayed. Were this not so, the very objectification of language and
consequent flourishing of numerous philosophical and linguistic disciplines
would have never been possible.
Therefore, from the viewpoint of philosophy, dialogic
heteroglossia has a methodological function in the study of language as well as
in delimiting philosophy of language as a discipline. Philosophy in general (and
not just that immediately concerned with language) works within the framework of
the dialogic heteroglossia inherent in language, which acts as a sort of a
priori and transcendental condition in philosophical reflexion as in all forms
of critical consciousness.
Ideology and linguistic production
In his 1973 book Produzione linguistica e ideologia
sociale (amplified in a French edition of 1992), Ponzio promptly takes a
clear stance against Noam Chomsky's approach to language analysis. Some aspects
of this study are subsequently developed in a volume of 1991, Filosofia del
linguaggio 2. In 1973 Ponzio's attitude meant criticizing dominant trends in
the linguistic sciences given Chomsky's widespread influence over the
intellectual globe. Ponzio's main contention is that Chomsky mistakes linguistic
use in a specific language–English (his sentence examples are often
untranslatable)–for the essential or universal in language-in general.
Furthermore, according to Ponzio, Chomsky confuses levels of analysis, mistaking
the description of the objects of analysis for the construction of the models of
analysis. Ponzio's critique is in line with Sebastian K. Shaumjan, who proposes
a bigradual theory of generative grammar articulated at two levels (the
genotypical and the phenotypical ), as against what he describes as Chomsky's
unigradual linguistic theory.
In Ponzio's opinion, what Chomsky calls
"linguistic creativity" refers, in reality, to a situation
characterized by the use of rules, codes, and programs which the speaker does
not control. Moreover, this is true not only at the phonologic, syntactic and
semantic levels of language, as believes Chomsky, but also at the ideological
level. Chomsky dedicates a great part of his attention to questions of ideology
both on a theoretical level , as well as on a pragmatic level without hesitating
to commit himself publicly (think of his critique of the Bush administration in
relation to the Gulf war, or of official U.S.A. politics concerning Cuba).
Nonetheless, his theoretical work on linguistics is kept completely separate
from his critique of ideology and political commitment. In Ponzio's view, what
Chomsky describes in his linguistic theory is not a speaker exercising
"linguistic creativity", but an alienated subject, that is, a subject
who passively accepts rules, codes, and programs as given and natural while, in
fact, they are determined socially and historically, though described by the
linguist as "extra-historical" and universal. The Chomskyian speaking
subject is an uncritical, passive, alienated subject unable to intervene
actively on the codes it is subjected to, and transform them.
A central category used by Ponzio in his critique of
Chomsky is "linguistic work" which he adapts from Rossi-Landi's
important book entitled Linguaggio come lavoro e come mercato (1992
[1968]; English trans. 1983). The latter ideates the concept of "linguistic
work" by relating different human sciences (political economy and
linguistics), in other words, by identifying a homological relationship between
sign production and the production of artifacts. As against the Chomskyian
categories of competence and performance which repropose traditional problems,
terminologies and mechanistic oppositions (e.g., consciousness vs. experience,
behaviorism vs. mentalism, physical vs. psychic, internal vs. external,
empiricism vs. rationalism), Ponzio, following Rossi-Landi and the lesson of
dialectic materialism, calls attention to the dialectic relation between the
subject and the social and natural environment, to language conceived as work
and to the different languages viewed as the product of work, as the result of
linguistic production processes, to the principle of the "methodics of
common speech" or of "common semiosis" (cf. Rossi-Landi 1980 [
1961]).
Chomsky explains linguistic competence, intended as the
speaker's ability to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences on
the basis of a finite number of elements, in terms of innate, universal
generative grammar whose structures are biologically inscribed in the human mind
and activated by experience understood as a totally passive condition.
However, as remembered by Ponzio, experience in modern
conceptions after Kant is described as a series of interpretive operations,
including inferential processes of the abductive type (Charles S. Peirce)
through which the subject completes, organizes, and associates data which is
always more or less fragmentary, partial, and discrete. Experience is these
operations and as such is innovative and qualitatively superior by comparison
with the limited nature of eventual input. In Ponzio's view, experience
coincides with competence which conceived in such terms does not need to be
integrated with an innate supplement, a piece of natural equipment supposedly
inherent in the human infant.
In a more recent essay on Chomsky, now included in Filosofia
del linguaggio 2 , Ponzio returns to the question of the development of
linguistic competence and knowledge generally, to what Chomsky in 1985 baptized
"Plato's problem", that is, how a finite number of entities generates
knowledge extending beyond such entities both qualitatively and quantitatively.
According to Ponzio, that we recognize, know how to use, and understand a
previously unexperienced linguistic expression (constructed, however, according
to the rules of the language the speaker is familiar with) is no more surprising
than the fact that we recognize and consequently use something as a hammer,
though never having seen this object before (but which is constructed according
to the rules and functions that model a hammer).
In the same essay, the connection between language
acquisition and performance of inferential-abductive operations is also analyzed
by Ponzio in the following terms:
The relation between abduction and language
learning (which is never finished and complete) is a relation of reciprocal
support: language learning makes use of abductive processes, while abductive
processes in their turn benefit from language learning because they are
necessarily grounded in linguistic interpretive work as accomplished by the
generations that have preceded us historically leaving us the linguistic
materials and instruments which go to form the language we experience. (Ponzio
1991a: 97)
For a linguistic theory that goes beyond the dualism of
competence and experience and of deep structures and surface structures, Ponzio
draws on suggestions from Peirce and his particular sign theory. In this
framework, and taking his distances from the Chomskyian concept of deep
structures, Ponzio proposes what he calls an "interpretive linguistic
theory" in the light of which the theory of different levels, of
antecedents and derivations, no longer holds. The "interpretive linguistic
theory" (ideated for application to both verbal and nonverbal signs)
explains one's ability to comprehend the utterance or verbal sign in general in
terms of its relation to another utterance that interprets it, an utterance
acting as interpretant. All utterances are produced, characterized, identified,
and developed by their interpretants. According to this approach, the
interpretant of a sentence (or, rather, utterance) is not a deep structure
grounded in underlying elementary sequences, but another verbal sign. In
Ponzio's words, "an interpretant identifying an utterance or any verbal
sign whatever is simply 'unexpressed', until the conditions are realized for its
expression, explicitation" (199la: 102).
In Ponzio's terminology, an interpretant is either an
"identifying interpretant" with the function of recognizing the sign
at the level of its phonemic or graphic configuration, semantic content,
morphological syntactic structure, or an "answering comprehension
interpretant" focusing on the pragmatic dimension of signs. Viewed in such
terms, and this is a particularly significant aspect of Ponzio's approach, the
relationship between "interpretant signs" and "interpreted
signs" is marked by dialogism, active participation, and otherness (Ponzio
1985a: 65-76). This level of sign interpretation is closely related to the
ideological level of discourse, and while it is ignored by Chomsky, Ponzio
argues that it should in fact be the starting point for any approach whatoever
to the problem of ideology (cf. Ponzio 1977, 1990c, 1993).
For a linguistic theory to be functional, it must be
explicative and critical, it must go beyond the limits of a simply descriptive
and taxonomic approach to language analysis, and to achieve this it must reckon
with the social processes of linguistic production in relation to a critical
theory of ideology. As stated above, a weak point in Chomsky's research is
represented by his failure to theorize the relation between language and
ideology, which leads him to ignore the problem of the ideological structures
that determine linguistic production processes. In Ponzio's words: "This
separation stops his theory from becoming a critique of language and his
critique of ideology from being grounded, on a theoretical level, in the study
of language" (Ponzio 1991a: 7). Using categories adapted from Bakhtin,
Voloshinov, Marx, Schaff, Rossi-Landi and Prieto–such categories as language
as work, language as historico-socio-ideological reality–Ponzio criticizes the
reduction of linguistic use to mere behavior or activity, and works on the
human's potential for truly creative (abductive) and critical intervention on
language and on one's surroundings at large (cf. Ponzio 1991a: 92).
Ponzio's evaluation of Chomsky's approach to language
analysis, which is still representative today of main trends in linguistics,
underlines the influence of the Marxian critique of political economy on his
particular approach to philosophy of language. Ponzio never abandons his
readings of Marx which, in fact, induce him to work on the problem of the
critical grounding of scientific knowledge. His focus is on the production
processes of knowledge, which, following Marx, coincide with the problem of the
reproduction process of the social system that produces knowledge (cf., for
example, Ponzio 1974a, 1974b, 1975, 1977).
Meaning as interpretive route
Working in such a theoretical perspective, Ponzio was
only too glad to welcome the transition from decodification to interpretation
semiotics as it began taking place in Italy in the early 1970s (cf. Ponzio
1988a).
The Peircean-Morrisian sign model at the basis of
interpretation semiotics is a dynamic sign model, rooted in the concept of
infinite semiosis in an open chain of deferrals from one interpretant sign to
another. The supporting logic is not the logic of equal exchange, but rather of
non correspondence, excess and otherness in the relation among interpretants
forming the sign network. The interpretant sign says something more with respect
to the interpreted sign, which in turn has its own semiotic consistency by
virtue of which the latter resists any single interpretation, or
"interpretive route", to use Ponzio's terminology (cf. 1985a and
1995b). In the framework of interpretation semiotics the sign is always part of
a sign situation in which all the components of semiosis–the sign vehicle (signifiant),
meaning (signifié), referent, interpreter, interpretant and codes
regulating sign systems–are considered as different aspects of complex and
articulate semiosic processes, and not separately from one another (cf. Ponzio
1988a: 24).
The sign model proposed by interpretation semiotics is
the heterogeneous product of dialogically related results achieved in different
contexts. These include: theory of knowledge (Peirce), of literature (Bakhtin),
of signifiance (Barthes) and of axiology (Morris). Furthermore, research
on the relation between semiotics and ideology (Rossi-Landi, Schaff) also led to
greater attention during the 1980s on the relation between signs and
(socio-ethical) values. In this connection, an important contribution is
represented by Charles Morris who explicitly theorized the necesssary relation
between signs and values in his book of 1964, Signification and Significance.
By contrast with a view of semiotics as a solely cognitive, descriptive and
ideologically neutral science, a major trend in semiotics today is intent on
recovering the orientation toward problems of an axiological order and on
achieving, therefore, a global reconnaissance of man and his signs. Ponzio
proposes we call such an approach to the study of signifying practices
"ethosemiotics", given its focus on the interrelation between signs
and values beyond that between meaning, sense and significance (cf. Ponzio
1985c). An important contribution in this sense comes to us today from the
English scholar Victoria Welby and her original approach to language analysis
and meaning theory tagged "significs" (cf. Welby 1983, 1985; Petrilli
1988, 1998).
Through this critical groundwork of the 1970s covered
in such books as Produzione linguistica e ideologia sociale ( 1973), Filosofia
del linguaggio e prassi sociale (1974), Dialettica e verità. Scienza e
materialismo storico dialettico (1975), and Marxismo, scienza e problema
dell'uomo (1977), Ponzio demonstrates the inadequacy of trends which reduce
the (verbal and nonverbal) sign and the human subject to exchange value, viewed
separately from the historico-social relations of production processes. With
reference to the various human sciences–philosophy, semiotics, linguistics,
philosophy of language, political economy, anthropology, esthetic creation, and
especially literature –, Ponzio conducts a series of studies which might be
defined as explorations and exercises along the boundaries of such sciences
where they interact and contaminate each other and, therefore, along the
boundaries of discourse.
Displacements
Another complex of interests in Ponzio's research finds
expression in such books as Michail Bachtin (1980), Segni e
contraddizioni Fra Marx e Bachtin, 1981, Spostamenti. Percorsi
e discorsi sul segno, 1982,
Lo spreco dei significanti L'eros, la morte, la scrittura, 1983,Tra
linguaggio e letteratura, 1983, Per parlare dei segni, 1985, Filosofia
del linguaggio, 1985, Interpretazione e scrittura, 1986, Dialogo
sui dialoghi (in collab. with Massimo A. Bonfantini), 1986, Il filosofo e
la tartaruga, 1990, Man as a Sign, 1990, Filosofia del linguaggio
2 , 199l, and Tra semiotica e letteratura, 1992. At the philosophical level Ponzio's interlocutors include: Lévinas,
Blanchot, Bakhtin, Kierkegaard, Peirce, Marx, Schaff, Rossi-Landi, Vailati,
Peter of Spain, and Plato; at the literary level, Leopardi, Manzoni, Foscolo,
Sterne, Orwell, Poe, and Proust. Ponzio's discourses on the sign and shifts in
viewpoint as he confronts various approaches and research itineraries, suggest
the image of the researcher working in the laboratory intent on sounding out the
potential of the word and of human signifying practices generally.
In 1990 Ponzio founded the journal Athanor–this
Arabic word evokes the alchemist in the laboratory mixing and transforming the
elements. To the elements, in the double sense of the natural elements and the
elements of the alphabet (two meanings which had already been connected by the
ancient Greek philosophers), is also dedicated a collective volume of 1988
edited by Ponzio entitled La scrittura degli elementi. This includes
essays by Omar Calabrese and Claude Gandelman with paintings by Angela
Biancofiore.
Ponzio's books of the 1980s, especially the sections
dedicated to literary writing, are written essentially from the viewpoint of
literature. Here the expression "of literature" is not only intended
in the restricted sense of applying given models and categories to the study of
literary texts, but more broadly in the sense that literature, the
"excess" and "otherness" of literary writing, the dialogic,
digressive, and indirect word of literature provide the perspective according to
which the sign is described. As averred by Lévinas and Bakhtin, literary
writing is the place par excellence for the full realization of
"extralocality", whose guiding value is not "egocentric
identity", but "absolute otherness", where time and space do not
belong to the order of productive accumulation, but of dispersion, digression,
expenditure, and dialogic heteroglossia.
A book of 1990, ll filosofo e la tartaruga
(collecting essays written between 1983 and 1988) assembles the general results
of the "experiments" conducted by Ponzio during the 1980s. The main
values theorized are represented by such terms as "ephemeral",
"otherness", "discontinuity", "discretion",
"passion", "expenditure", "waste",
"transience", "drift", "shift":
As the expression of the logic of expenditure,
dispersion and waste, the word "passion" serves to indicate that which
escapes the logic of equal exchange and constitutes a critique of bourgeois
economy, of the logic of accumulation, functionality, efficiency and
productivity. The subject affected by passion is a "passive subject";
as such, it is considered negatively in relation to those conceptions of man
that exalt such values as the Subject's authority, initiative, activity and
consciousness. But the properly human subject, "subiectum", is
constitutively passive, subject to..., dependent on..., interested in...,
oriented toward.... Such a subject is characterized by its being open to the
other, by the capacity of listening to the other, of tuning in with the other.
In this perspective, alongside the "passive subject" understood as the
subject which fails in its intention of being a controling subject, in a
position to answer for itself and reach its own personal aims, another modality
of being "subject to..." is delineated. The latter is measured in
terms of volition and capacity for planning, but, on the contrary, concerns the
subject's availability with respect to dialogism, otherness, listening. Thus
intended, passivity is not alienation, the condition of the unquestioning
subject passively experiencing external constriction. On the contrary, in
Ponzio's description passivity denotes the possibility of surpassing the limits
of identity, private individual interest, and is connected with a concept of the
subject as a totality open to unlimited interrogation and criticism.
The frenetic production-exchange-consumption cycle is
dominant today in our consumer society. Paradoxically, a condition for
continuity of such production cycles is production of the ephemeral, that is,
the discontinuous, the superfluous, the private–the "addomesticated"
ephemeral, says Ponzio (1990e: 21). On his part, Ponzio proposes a different
kind of "ephemeral" from that programmed by the logic of accumulation
and equal exchange, intending it as a value that disrupts the latter, is
refractory to it, and is therefore the place of the nonalienated self, the
properly human, creativity, difference, freedom. Thus conceived, the ephemeral
denotes the body's resistance–with its pulsional economy, exigencies,
experiences, maladies, and even death–to programming, productivity, efficiency
and functionality as established by a plan regulated by a specific aim. Viewed
in relation to the human person, the ephemeral represents otherness, the right
to be other with respect to identity as it is fixed by roles, contracts and
commitments connected with officialdom. With respect to the bourgeois system of
values in current capitalistic society, the ephemeral represents excess and
loss; with respect to the time of (Hi)story, accumulation, edification, it is
the place of irreducible discontinuity, disgregation, digression, discretion
(cf. ibidem:)
In this perspective, Ponzio also re-evaluates the
concept of automatism in relation to man, commonly considered in the negative
sense of mechanicalness. The metaphor of automatism embraces what would seem to
be contradictory concepts such as necessity, on one hand, and spontaneity,
chance, and automony with respect to external constriction, on the other. On
developing such contradictions in dialectical terms, Ponzio proposes what would
seem to be another paradox: automatism as the process by which human action is
rendered autonomous.
The automaton as a combination of the programmed
and the spontaneous, of necessity and chance, of the natural and the artifact
tells about man more than about the machine. [...] As autonomous determinism
automatism implies and claims freedom from external agents or conditions.
Automatism opens to the unconscious: automatism of thoughtlessness,
forgetfulness, lapsus, automatism of dreams, desires, passions. (199Oe: 124)
What would seem separate and independent programs and
automatisms are, in fact, related dialectically. This emerges even more clearly
when we break down or "detotalize" the larger categories commonly used
in analyzing man and his behavior: individual subject, society, culture, class, parole,
and langue. On closer examination, we soon realize that each of these
categories is built on a series of automatons in a system of ever-changing
relations, so that what may seem programmed from a given viewpoint will result
self-propelled and spontaneous, from another (cf. Barthes 1978; Rossi-Landi
1994). The problem to be dealt with is that of sounding out the possibility of
constructing open automatons capable of responding to the other, to outside
solicitation, and capable of modification as a result of such response, an
automaton that is heterogenous and multiple with respect to the pseudo
totality-automaton. Such a positive conception of human automatism is connected
by Ponzio to another positive conception of automatism theorized by Antonio
Gramsci:
Do freedom and what is commonly known as
"automatism" clash with each other? Automatism clashes with the
arbitrary, not with freedom. Automatism is freedom of the group, which contrasts
with individualistic arbitrary will [...] For if the arbitrary is generalized,
it is no longer the arbitrary but a shift in the basis of
"automatism", new rationality. Automatism is no less than rationality,
but the word automatism is an attempt at proposing a concept stripped of any
kind of speculative aura. (Gramsci 1975 [1932-1935]: Quaderno 10)
For a critique of globalized communication
In his book of 1991 Filosofia del linguaggio 2,
Ponzio continues his research on various problems mentioned in the present paper
with a special focus on the interrelation between signs, values and ideologies.
The mediating role carried out by signs in the current system of social
reproduction is undeniable, as amply demonstrated by the extensive influence of
mass media. Consequently, in an era in which the "crisis" or "end
of ideology" has been proclaimed–in truth, a strongly ideological
position and product of a combination of false consciousness, false thought and
false praxis which as such is difficult to demystify–, Ponzio belongs to a
community of researchers who insist on the interconnection between critique of
ideology, critique of economy and science of signs. A critical dialectic
approach to the human person and its signs leads to awareness of the continual
"sacrifice" of otherness on the "altar of identity" (cf.
Ponzio 1995d), and aims therefore to recover sense in the direction of otherness
and extralocality. In a dialectical framework Ponzio proposes a
"detotalizing method", freedom from the limits of identity,
fragmentation of false but concrete totalities (Ontology, Politics, Equal
Exchange, Individual, Society, State, Nation, Language, Truth, Knowledge,
Equality, Justice, Freedom, limited Responsibility, Need), and awareness of the
reality of extended totalities, of the general network of signs to which the
smaller totalities belong as dialogically interacting and interconnecting parts:
[...] the present social reproduction system
based on the logic of identity, which asserts itself by segregating or
eliminating otherness, makes possible concrete abstractions on which such a
system is constructed. Such concrete abstractions include the Individual forced
to sacrifice its otherness to itself. A critique of such a system presupposes the
viewpoint of another, which in turn presupposes recognition of the other, or
better still: recognition of the inevitabile imposition and compulsoriness of
recognition of the other. (Ponzio 1991a: 17)
In the present phase of his research, Ponzio is mainly
concerned with developing a critique of the logic of identity and of
communication-reproduction through categories connected with the logic of
otherness. Leaving a presentation of his ongoing publications to a future
article, I shall now simply limit myself to naming the following: the volumes Dialogo
e narrazione, 199l, Signs, Dialogue and Ideology, 1993, Responsabilita
e alterità in Emmanuel Lévinas, 1995, I segni dell'altro, 1995, and
(in collaboration with other authors) Fondamenti di filosofia del linguaggio,
1994. A critique of productivity ideology and global communication is the main
concern of a work in various volumes, I segni del capitale, of which the
first and second volumes have so far appeared entitled respectively, La
differenza non indifferente. Comunicazione, migrazione, guerra,
1995, and Elogio dell’infunzionale. Critica dell’ideologia della
produttività, 1997. In this same perspective another book by Ponzio is his Metodologia
della formazione linguistica, 1997, which through the sciences of language
proposes a critique of social programs aiming at subjecting science, education
and socio-cultural experience generally to market logic and consequently to the
logic of profit.