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http://doi.org/10.33234/SSR.21.9
Editorial Southern Semiotic Review Issue 21
by Geoffrey Sykes
Perspectives
The benefits of general issues are evident in papers from the current edition. There is much to learn and enjoy in the range of papers – diverse in their content and methods. It is always daunting to undertake a brief editorial on developed and well written arguments.
This editorial will be unusual in that regard. While it references individual papers, it is from the viewpoint of themes, or perspectives, discussed according to their own merit. Hopefully this more creative approach to editorial commentary can continue – always benefitting from useful citation of papers within the issue that had synchronous or corresponding relevance.
- Semiotics and Semiology
At one of the Summer Schools in Semiotics held at Imatra 20 and more years ago (it might have been late the last century or early this – possibly it was 2005), I happened to be in discussion with Goran Sonesson and Jeff Bernard. Neither of these inspiring thinkers are with us now, and I only had limited opportunity to meet them, but I do remember that particular meeting in the foyer of the Scandic Imatran Valtionhotelli where the summer schools were held. The conversation flowed until I used the term semiology, at which stage Jeff interrupted and said that word had fallen out of favour, indeed an IASS advisory committee or some such body had recommended it be disused. Goran immediately spoke forth, in defence of the term and my use of it, that he was sure Geoffrey (myself) knew what he was doing.
It is indeed true, that then and since I have assumed that a contemporary semiotic theory would be built on separate but interdependent pillars of semiology and semiotics. While it is clear that the latter, under American pragmatic and Peircean rubric, and European phenomenology, was focused on individual experience and communicative events, the former had a stress on structuralist methodology to explain cultural and societal phenomenon. Semiotics was compatible with philosophies of existentialism, and Buddhist and Christian theologies, while semiology cut the cloth with political, cultural, artistic and mythological outlooks.
Shapauov, Turovskaya, Negimov and Talaspayeva give a fine exposition for classical semiological explosion of a literary text, imbued with mythology. Their paper reminds us there is a place for diverse methods – that a method regarded by some as out of out is still the best fit for suitable materials. Of course exegesis leaves a lot to be explained – where did the regularities of mythology originate, and how do they vary.
Kaur, in this issue, qualifies and updates any traditional separation of speech (parole) and semiology understood as langue, comprehending relevant authors and concepts from 20th century studies in linguistics, philosophy and semiotic studies, that serves to complexify any understanding of interaction. It was not that de Saussure dismissed the study of speech – he regarded it as beyond his grasp, even a mystery, thus inviting later scholars with suitable resources to take up the task.
It transpires that any dualism of semiology and semiotics is not as clear cut as might be supposed. Semiotics can be regarded as more indicative and functional in its communicative profile, however structures cannot be omitted from individual perception and experience. Nor can structures be constrained by traditional focus on oppositions, or cultural logic, of de Saussure’s thinking. Beginning with Peirce’s tychism, there have been numerous innovations on the notion of structure, highlighted in more recent times by Deleuze’s rhizomes.
One is compelled, as indeed was Deleuze, to use alternative concepts for sign and sign structures: terms such as pattern or icon or image. The object, or event, or work, understood as a sign system in itself, is complex. Patterns can be vague abstruse before and as well as clear in their logic. Phenomenology grasped this possibility in its talk of the manifold behind everyday perception and experience. Individual perception with the world or interaction with another is as relational and complex as any structure devised by de Saussure or Greimas for literary/cultural phenomenon. Indeed, it is most possible that the structures of public life and culture are more simplified than those experienced by an individual creative agent. Foucault argued as much – although discounted individual experience in the process – in his account of control of sign systems or discourse in public life. His own account, perpetuating the post-structural rubric, did a great discursive disservice to semiological studies, in downplaying the prevailing and complex role of structures and patterns in all semiotic analysis. After all, we are studying sign systems and relations.
The difference between semiotics and semiology therefore is not fundamentally in terms of sign types, or structure, especially if the latter is broadened to include patterns. The difference, it can be argued, is one of scale, or in terms of sociolinguistics, levels – semiotics is concerned as suggested with the more intimate or micro events of individual experience and interpersonal events. Semiology then can be positioned in terms of macro sign domains, objects, events and phenomenon. A work of literature – an object in itself – is singular at one glance, in its binding and title. But literary and semiotic analysis disembowels its intricacies and body. Likewise a building, a country, a city – all can be perceptive in singular terms, but close study reveals the relational continuum of the assemblage of parts. Semiology becomes a container for study of public life events and artefacts.
Understood as such the two studies are different in degree, not strictly in methodology. By degree they remain interdependent. Interpersonal events transpire in public events – in celebrities, influencers, leaders – and public influence and context surrounds and impinges everyday meetings. Jeff Bernard might be right, the term semiology is largely redundant. However as a general descriptor it helps to separate two foci – as levels of analysis or societal events. Further, the types of structure present, in large public or published works of events, can indeed have a special complex and type.
One legacy of classical semiology, evidenced by the broad reach in mythologised literature, is its diachronic quality. Structures are evaluated as generalisations that have longevity and convention. Time critical evaluation belongs, by this account, more to everyday interactions – events that de Saussure actually held as a mystery, and too difficult for scholastic study. Such dialogic is more accessible now, as his term parole or speech in an age of digital text, caption and photographic, across divergent delivery patterns and channels, needs wholesale revision (with which Kaur in this issue genuinely helps). With the benefit of a century of technological tools – audio, video, transcription, photographic – the sign systems of current affairs become more accessible, and synchronic.
- Aims of this Journal
A semiology/semiotic distinction allows re-approach to the original aims of this journal. On the one hand the journal responded to a perceived need and opportunity to develop a more comprehensive approach in countries more distant from mainstream traditions and practices in Europe and North America. It also maintains a full international brief, and through general issues a brief across a spectrum of subject matters, methods and domains.
Papers have addressed themes specific to the cultures, locations and geo politics of regions of its publication. It should be remembered that Claude Lévi-Strauss undertook research into indigenous peoples on the three continents of the Southern hemisphere: Australia, South America and Africa. He regarded the Arunta people of outback Australia as “the first sociologists”, by which he meant first semioticians. Complex patterns can be located in the first human cultures and language, and the primacy of human culture on the Australian continent provides a foundation for this journal.
The ‘southerly’ tag in the title maps both semiotic and semiological perspectives, as these have been discussed above. merging networks and expressions of culture and communication generally, as well as governance in our global public life as well as expressions of identity in international and individual contexts. The term “South” has assumed an explicit geopolitical connotation, of countries and regions outside of the developed, colonising main centres of modernity. The terms can readily be generalized to include the changing sphere of international and public life, within and between countries. The South can be a designated aspect of all nations, and equate current affairs as a domain of semiological commentary. This journal has published a large number of papers, over the past 13 years, addressing contemporary current events. It should be said that there is the assumption that, well applied, semiological thought is progressive in viewing a world of difference and change.
On the other hand, the south in a minor sense has a radically different sense of “going south”, where traditions fragment, social hegemony fails, communication is sought. The meaning can be of failure, but going south can also be creative in its response to fragmentation. The post-modern can be regarded as modernity having “gone south.” The focus can be on local events – individual experience can be posited where the control of collective domains ceases. A south domain is available for semiotic analysis.
- Current Affairs and Another Journal
Into the semiological container the myriad events of current public life, in particular those of the news and current affairs, can be approached. In a particular contemporary revision of semiological and semiotic studies, we can seize events in the flow of public life and “cook” them over a conceptual flame (so to speak). In doing so we provide another layer of commentary, and also truth seeking, not unlike journalism or opinion pieces in media, but commentary filtered and benefitting for the conceptual and philosophical tools and tradition of semiology/ semiotics. Is such an additional layering of commentary of public life necessary – we would suggest yes, that the motivation for doing so runs deep, out of concern of the fractures and chaos of traditions in international and national life.
Once again Lévi-Strauss set the lead, with his work with the United Nations at its foundation, setting out policy for the emerging plethora of independent states, thereby seeing the world as a pattern of divergent, independent nations, rather than a hierarchical monolith of colonial powers. My article on this work has previously been published in a very early edition of this journal and will be reprinted due to timeliness in the next issue.
As well as citing papers from this Issue of SSR, we would like to take the unusual step of addressing the editorial, at least, of another journal issue, Acta Semiotica, IV 8 24. Erik Landowski edits this admirable publication, which is sometimes overlooked due to its French origins. However it is readily available with modern translation services, when the meticulous collection of papers of its current issue becomes evident. While tempted to comment on some of its many papers, comment will only be made on its editorial, which will serve to echo even anticipate and motivate the focus of this editorial of SSR.
The topic of Acta Semiotica is news and current affairs, news being a “set of facts that hold the attention of the public at a given moment” (Dictionary of French Academy). There is an emphasis on the divergent practice of “following news”, how interpretation differs due to differing media platforms for news delivery. One direction is along the lines of a soft media technology determinism, more so than analysis of news content.
Content, the editorial says at one stage, is not invariant – the means of delivery is a constant distraction, ‘everything changes’ from one medium to the next. This argument is demonstrated in articles through focus on sign types – that the purvey of signs filters and shapes different perspectives to the same news content. The implication is not so much cynical, that content is manipulated and constructed, and that prejudice has free reign – more there is a soft relativism of content, that allows detachment from news. News becomes digital voyeurism and entertainment. Enjoyment of watching the world of others, as spectacle, is reinforced by platform algorithms that predetermine new following by personal preference, and exemplify the perspectivism at play in watching news and current affairs. This is one direction of the issue and editorial, which serves beneficially to address current affairs and news as subject matter for semiological inquiry.
In this journal we seek to reclaim and articulate via commentary an inquiry, informed/positioned by semiological tools, about the terms of authenticity that continue or layer the work of good journalism. The focus is to restore, through comprehensive discourse, a search for truth behind the surface of news reporting. This search for truth extends, as in the tradition of opinion journalism, to suggest outcomes. Commentary, in the tradition of post Barthian writing, is engaged with current culture and politics, and uses semiological tools to probe, filter and comprehend its subject matter.
Thus, the journal, in part, becomes part of ‘general conversation’ (Landowski), a foundational discourse of civil society as Habermas sought. We respond to what people are talking about, or even what they are not talking about, to deepen and illuminate public conversation. We build on the existing international community of semioticians, that has existed some over five decades and continually seeks to re-establish its purpose and organisation.
In this Issue Dewi and Sorensen do a magnificent job exploring the articulation of UNESCO policies about cultural artefacts. Their argument for wider scope, especially in terms of the modality of what is regarded as an artefact, is inspired in their own word by semiotic/semiological understanding of meaning making that is interdisciplinary, and cross domains and types of material phenomenon. Dewi and Sorensen set a benchmark of what semiotics/semiology can contribute in public life about issues that confront us.
Is this goal, to contribute effectively and meaningfully, to public life/current affairs, idealistic? Probably. But frankly given the state of public and world affairs at time of publication of this issue – affairs that motivate the perspective of this editorial and rekindling of the founding aims of this journal – we should all reach out with the tools, resources and skills we have at hand to contribute to social well being and harmony.
- And then there is Art.
Artistic work, across a spectrum of artforms, provides an invaluable case study for any dimension or method we choose. From the pioneering work of authors such as Greimas, Campbell and Scholes (Towards a Semiotics of Literature), there has been a burgeoning commentaries using semiotic concepts in critical and theoretical appraisals of artworks. The semiological/semiotic contrast is even more apparent when the wealth of localised, dialogic events, narrated in novels, film and poetic speech, still invites virtually unlimited use of pragmatic semiotics, while long forms of cinema and novels continue to require semiological perspectives.
Theatre is one social practice that projects representations of interpersonal domains into public gaze. This is nowhere more the case than the art of clowning, when the fallible clown figure is embraced by the collective audience because, not in spite of, the idiosyncratic persona. Two senses of South, to use the journal’s titular philosophy, are in immediate and paradoxical play – the broken self becomes an anti hero, even hero, for societal admiration and social life.
“Revival of Cabaret Theatre Traditions in the Modern Art of Clowning by Vyacheslav Polunin” by Elena A. Semenova focuses on Russian cabaret in the period 1908-1917. It outlines a fascinating transformative relationship between cabaret theatre, cabaret and clowning. On the one hand there is the parodic play, the meta performance, of actors in theatre that gave birth to cabaret theatre – actors doing what they always do, double down on the playfulness required to perform on stage. Already a theatrical style emerges from the breach of tradition – acting “goes South” and reinvents it in the creative and social play that Semenova wants to stress as significant in cabaret and clowning practice.
On the other hand cabaret is a more explicit alternative performance, achieved on the street but also in taverns and homes. It is explicit in parody of social norms and bourgeois life – it acts as a social laboratory born of perversion of social norms. Cabaret might have been rejected by bourgeois society as epatage and detritus, but it contains the seeds of a deeper social understanding. Out of grassroots experimental practice the clown is born. The author seeks to ground cabaret in “meta semantic” phenomenology or behaviour “communicative terms” that extends to children and animals, in particular humans nearest animal species, the chimpanzee. Semenova seeks to protect cabaret from theatre classifications or social traditions – the puerile clown is within us all, a condition of human nature, part of a carnivalesque social behaviour that is perpetual. Her argument resonates with the social realism of Bahktin. As the Russian Reinhardt says, “cabaret was a door through which one could ‘enter the real big history of theater in the mask of a jester’
The paper reaches out beyond narrow historical research. It provides an historical overview of Parisian, German and Moscow venues, thus cementing her argument for the social significance and universality of performance. Yet finally theatre history is not an end in itself, but a prelude or explanation of the present. The paper begins where it ends with an extended report, and commendation, “Fools on the Volga” 2003 congress on clowning. The diachronic becomes the synchronic – the previously known is constantly under the purloin of the present. The dynamic societal and theatrical role of clowning and cabaret becomes a current affair. Semenova is a scholar of semiotics and in particular Bahktin. This paper is a specialist piece that belongs in a wider inquiry grounded in sign studies. The author could well extend the paper’s semiotic frame, yet in this piece she provides an invaluable demonstration of commentary that grasps social change that is current, and in hybrid relation with a radical understanding of individual experience and communication practice.