In the multidisciplinary field of memory studies, remembering and forgetting have mainly been analyzed following two ideal-typical models: memory-as-containment (exemplified by the notions of framework and site of memory) and memory-as-flow (epitomized by the notions of afterlife and mnemohistory). These two models are often presented as mutually exclusive and counterposed. Yet, in linking past with present, and when connecting different spaces and generations, memory is always the result of circulation (flow) as well as of local (...) semiotic conditions of production and use (containment). By investigating memory-making and oblivion-making in processes of interpretation, the semiotic perspective elaborated by Umberto Eco allows us to envision memory-as-containment and memory-as-flow in a combined analysis, where the twofold conception of memory – either as movement or as form – merges. The aim of this article is, then, to provide an interpretative theory of memory, and to identify and describe the methodological tools capable of implementing such an approach. The memory of the former Italian concentration camp of Fossoli will serve as an exemplary and illustrative case study. (shrink)

The notion of culture implies the relative stability of sets of algorithms that become entrenched in human brains as children become socialized, and, to a lesser extent, when immigrants become assimilated into a new society. The semiotics of culture has used the notion of signs and systems of signs to conceptualize this process, which takes for granted memory as a natural affordance of the brain without raising the question of how and why cultural signs impact behaviour in a (...) durable manner. Indeed, under the influence of structuralism, the semiotics of culture has mostly achieved synchronic descriptions. Dynamic models have been proposed to account for the action of signs (e.g., semiosis, dialogism, dialectic) and their resulting cultural changes and cultural diversity. However, these models have remained remarkably abstract, and somewhat disconnected from the actual brain processes, which must be assumed to be involved in the emergence, maintenance, and transformations of cultures. Semiotic terminology has contributed to a systematic representation of cultural objects and processes but thephilosophical origin of its basic concepts has made it difficult to construct a productive interface with the cognitive neurosciences as they have developed and achieved notable advances in the understanding of memory over the last few decades. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that further advances in semiotics will require a shift from philosophical and linguistic notions toward biological and evolutionary models. (shrink)

The main objectives of this paper are to analyze the relation between memory and oblivion and their exterior forms to the level of physical and cultural space. The notion of memory places (defined as accumulations of signs of identity and their materializations) is presented in its two manifestations: as memory landmarks (connection points to the collective past) and as memory signs. The distinction is based on the power of memory to remind us who we are, (...) but also what we forgot about ourselves. We divided the paper in several parts. (shrink)

Darwinian evolution, as it was first conceived, has two dimensions: adaptation, that is, selection based upon “apt function”, defined as the “good fit” between an organism’s metabolic and biological demands and the environment in which it is embedded; and heredity, the transmissible memory of past apt function. Modern Darwinism has come to focus almost exclusively on hereditary memory, eclipsing the—arguably still-problematic—phenomenon of adaptation. As a result, modern Darwinism retains, at its core, certain incoherencies that, as long as they (...) remain unresolved, preclude the emergence of a fully-coherent theory of evolution. Resolving the incoherencies will involve clarifying the relationship between embodied memory and apt function. In short, adaptation is a problem of semiotics: the organism must interpret the environment to fit well into it. This is well-illustrated by the constructed environments built by colonies of social insects, such as hives or nests, and the ancillary structures that contain them, forming an organism-like system known as a superorganism. The superorganism is marked by a kind of extended physiology, in that these constructed environments often serve as adaptive interfaces between the nest and ambient environment, and are constructed to manage the matter and energy flows between environments that constitute the process of adaptation. These constructed environments are also semiotic phenomena: interpretive structures, governed by information flow between the member insects and the structures they build. I review our findings on one such example: the mounds built by the fungus-cultivating termites of the genus Macrotermes. These structures are dynamic forms that are sustained by flows of soil from deep horizons up into the mound. The form, and hence the function, of the mound is determined by several environmental cues, most notably water and wind, as well as how termites interpret these cues, and signals that flow between termites, both directly and vicariously through the structures they build. (shrink)

The paper aims to make a contribution to semiotic research on the future by bringing together various approaches that deal with the relationship humans have with the future. More specifically, the paper concentrates on anticipation viewed as an activity that is based on modelling the (un)desired future as suggested by Nikolai Bernstein. The model-based approach to anticipation allows drawing connections between the psychophysiological and semiotically mediated forms of anticipation on the one hand, and between individual and collective forms of anticipation (...) on the other hand. With these aims in mind, the paper offers a sketch of a semiotic approach to the future that is based on the framework of semiotic modelling systems, i.e. views the future in terms of models of it and the semiotic resources and processes involved in the model-building. As the semiotically mediated models of the future circulating in a culture can become collectively shared means of cognizing and anticipating some futures, it is possible to talk about a collective anticipation, analogous to Juri Lotman’s cultural semiotic notion of collective memory. Accordingly, premediation, a future-oriented media practice outlined by Richard Grusin, is viewed as an example of collective anticipation. In addition to tracing the mechanisms of anticipation from its individual organismic to semiotically mediated collective forms, the paper foregrounds also the two fundamental problems that run across the diverse theoretical perspectives brought together within the approach: the individual and collective agency in future-making and the affective dimension of anticipation. (shrink)

This article seeks to investigate the role that a symbol—connected to a legal event and a collective trauma—has in the construction of a past imaginary. It begins with a theoretical reflection on the role of the symbol as proposed by Juri Lotman and the function of repetition in the consolidation of collective memory. It subsequently focuses on the semiotic resonance of one specific object: the bulletproof cabin of the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, used during his trial in Jerusalem, in (...) 1961. I consider the ‘afterlives’ of this object, examining the different ‘remakes’ of Eichmann’s cabin in several mediatic and artistic contexts, focusing on the modalities that have anchored it to the post-1961 imaginary of the perpetrator and the legal consequences of his actions. To do so, the article proposes a typology of uses of the cabin, identifying the different nuances of its representation and how they encapsulate the thorny issues surrounding that infamous legal event. (shrink)

Cultural studies constitutes one of the most multi-perspectival research fields. Amidst a polyvocal theoretical landscape that spans different disciplines semiotics is of foundational value. In an attempt to effectively address the conceptual richness of the semiotic discipline, a wide roster of perspectives is evoked in this book against the background of a diverse set of cultural phenomena, including structuralist and post-structuralist semiotics, semiotically informed psychoanalysis, cultural semiotics, film semiotics, sociosemiotics, but also, to a lesser extent, music (...) semiotics and more niche, but certainly promising perspectives, such as postmodern semiotics, ethnosemiotics, phenomenological semiotics and rhetorical semiotics. The recruitment of semiotic frameworks and concepts is enacted against the background of advances in cultural studies (thus reinstating the dialogue with a discipline that took form by drawing on semiotics in the first place) and the various research streams that have become consolidated within the wider cultural studies territory, such as memory studies, celebrity studies, death studies, cultural geography, visual studies. At the same time, the offered readings engage dialogically with Consumer Culture Theory. As regards the diversity of cultural phenomena that constitute the empirical substratum of the offered analyses, music, cinema, new media, live-shows, branding, advertising and literature constitute the focal areas of concern. Under the aegis of a permeating textuality paradigm, the ubiquitously applicable tools of multimodal analysis, and time-hallowed qualitative research methods facilitated by advances in videography and archival research, the featured semiotic readings aim at scrutinizing the wider social implications and communicative functions of popular cultural artefacts, spectacles, processes and places, such as Lady Gaga’s monstrosity, Dio’s memorial, experiential consumption events, the ice-bucket challenge video meme. (shrink)

All civilian, government-sponsored spacecraft, despite ostensibly having the primary purpose of scientific data-collection, are, within the advanced cultures that produce them, primarily symbolic objects, created by the people as a means of indicating, both to themselves and to all the world, what is in their hearts: what they value. These craft are a statement that we value learning, exploration, adventure, difficult endeavors, teamwork, precision, self-discipline, and intelligence. All such spacecraft are, fundamentally, semiotic objects. The fact that they collect data, although (...) proffered as their primary function, is in fact secondary. In this paper I propose a thought-experiment, involving consideration of a spacecraft expressly intended for a symbolic, semiotic, psychological purpose: a kind of interstellar library, a Noah's Ark of Documents, the "Milky Way Messenger." By taking an idea that was originally merely a concept to be featured in a science-fiction story and exploring whether it might be feasible to accomplish it in the real world, the paper is intended to trigger thought and discussion concerning the conscious creation of such objects. The paper concludes with suggestions concerning the semiotic psychological function of certain government programs. (shrink)

The book addresses the representation of three groups of "others" in Israeli schoolbooks: Holocaust victims, presented as the stateless persecuted Jews "we" might become again if "we" lose control over the second group of "others" - Palestinian Arabs - who are racialized, demonized and Nazified, and presented as "our" potential exterminators. The third group comprises non-European (Mizrahi and Ethiopian) Jews, portrayed as backward people who lack history or culture, requiring constant acculturation by "Western" Israel. Thus, a rhetoric of victimhood and (...) power evolves, and a nationalistic interpretation of the "never again" imperative is inculcated, justifying the Occupation and oppression of Palestinians and the discrimination of non-European Jews. Advocating a multidirectional memory, the book proposes an alternative Hebrew-Arabic, multi-voiced and poly-centered curriculum that would relate the untold accounts of the people whom the pedagogic version of history seeks exclude. Instead of traumatizing and urging vengeance, it will encourage discussion and celebrate diversity and hybridity. (shrink)

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the significance and meanings of faces within monuments and memorials. The presence of faces in monuments and memorials transcends cultures and spans throughout history. Faces serve as vital components of public statues, conveying the emotions of depicted characters and establishing communicative connections with observers. Moreover, they are employed within memorials to commemorate the deceased. Memorial museums frequently feature corridors adorned with portraits of those who perished in wars, terrorist attacks or natural disasters. The (...) aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, to develop a theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of faces in monuments and memorials, drawing upon the cultural semiotics of Juri Lotman as well as theories proposed by Algirdas J. Greimas and Umberto Eco. Secondly, to construct a typology that elucidates the various ways faces are utilized within monuments, memorials, and commemorative practices. A historical roadmap of the facial presence in monuments and memorials is then presented. By achieving these aims, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the meanings of faces within monuments and memorials in particular and memory politics in general. (shrink)

This paper affords a Lotmanian cultural semiotic analysis of the inner workings of ritual embodying the mechanism of cultural memory. In this intersectional study, we propose treating ritual as an integral semiotic system in which the community follows a prescribed collective process to create religious or social meanings and to regulate the mechanism of cultural memory through concrete symbols in the forms of behavior, speech, gestures, objects, spatial structures, and so on. Three semiotic properties of ritual in relation (...) to cultural memory are identified, namely, continuity, concreteness, and integrity, which are jointly responsible for the efficacy of ritual in cultural memory making, or to be specific, in the preservation, retrieval, and even reproduction of cultural memory. With these properties, ritual helps construct and maintain socio-cultural order and group identity in the community, by repeating itself and thus creating a sense of continuity through the preservation and retrieval of cultural memory. The key components in ritual are its diverse and polysemous symbols, which are seldom confined to a specific context, although they are indeed subject to the dominant symbol and the dominant meaning in a ritual when necessary. With an extraordinary degree of autonomy and not bound to any fixed context, ritual symbols can enter a ritual situation as its components but retain the freedom of leaving the ritual context at any time, like an unchained “spectator,” and permeating multiple contexts as self-contained units. It is precisely through these transferrable ritual symbols that the fragments of cultural memory are randomly dispersed in the semiosphere and carried to unexpected socio-cultural contexts, bridging the past, the present, and the future and creating new cultural memory. (shrink)

Interfaces have partially replaced editors. They now administer and have industrialized the processes of content circulation. Web platforms mediatize cultural memory and one example of this is that of online audiovisual archives which are a paradigmatic case involving interfaces mediating our image of the past. Therefore, their role as an enunciative framework is clearly worthy of thought and study. We will thus use a semiotic approach based on the starting hypothesis that digital interfaces shape our belief systems through a (...) discursive framing of content to which they give access. By analyzing two case studies, we will argue that the transparency of interfaces appears to recall the notion of “mechanical objectivity” and thus refashion the reliability of the archives. However, a final counter-analysis of a document read in the framework of an on-site consultation invites us to reshape our considerations and enlarge the perspective from semiotic visual analysis to include the social processes linked to the publication of digital heritage. (shrink)

This article aims to analyse one specific type of memorial site that furnishes an indexical link to past traumatic events which took place in precisely these places. Such memorials will be defined here as trauma sites. It will be shown how the semiotic trait of indexicality produces unique meaning effects, forcing a reframing of the issue of representation, with all its aesthetic and ethical dimensions. In contrast to other forms of memorial site, trauma sites exist factually as material testimonies of (...) the violence and horror that took place there. The fact they still exist, more or less as they were, implies a precise choice on the part of post-conflict societies regarding which traces of the past ought to be preserved and in which ways. In other words, a decision is made about what politics of memory to adopt in each case. Trauma sites thus become unique, privileged observatories that allow us to understand better the emergence of post-conflict societies. The various forms of conservation, transformation, memorialization of places where slaughter, torture and horror have been carried out are key clues to better understandings of the relationship between memory and history in each post-conflict society studied. This article presents a close reading of three very different trauma sites: the Tuol Sleng Museum of the Crimes of Genocide in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Villa Grimaldi in Santiago, Chile; and a third, more recent, museum: The Ustica Memorial Museum (Museo per la Memoria di Ustica) in Bologna, Italy. These memorials represent instances of three very different traumatic memory politics: in Tuol Sleng, visitors are relocated in the trauma space, in a sort of ‘frozen past’; in Villa Grimaldi, a process of attenuation is at work, the traces of the past are less evident, and their emotional effects weaker. The Ustica Museum represents yet another option, a movement towards an artistic and creative reinterpretation of the traumatic event itself. (shrink)

Compared with history, which is a compendium of statements of what happened in human past, rumors are a fleeting phenomenon that escapes scholarship from historiography. However, rumors, as the manifestation of local beliefs and the power relationships at the time, can expand the horizons of history by providing decentralized perspectives towards various events. The semiotic relationship between rumor and collective memory delves into respective cultures of social groups on both synchronic and diachronic planes. On the one hand, collective (...) class='Hi'>memory provides an integrated framework of rumor studies, which can be stratified by different layers, reaching different depths of the collective concern. On the other hand, it can contextualize rumors in the rich archive of cultural texts preceding rumor texts. In this regard, collective memory functions both as the corpus for rumor discourses to generate and as the context for such discourses to mesmerize the public by pre-selecting the audience as model readers, especially under a particular social concern. Moreover, these discourses can be sedimented for future recurrence of rumors of the same schema under certain social circumstances, which demonstrates the dynamics of culture as new rumor texts are generated out of the cultural context. Rumors, therefore, are framed in cultural history, which leads to further discussions on explosion as a cultural phenomenon. (shrink)

Westworld portrays a world where humans and human‐like machines coexist. When systems of observation are referred, Nolan's predilection is considered for adding computational science subjects to his storylines. According to the theorist Katherine Hayles, they present a geometrical pattern of the relationship between the observer and the observed worlds. Westworld is a posthuman narrative that develops essential characteristic from Nolan's productions, which is the bidirectional line between science and fiction. The storytelling mythologies result in the design of the backstories of (...) some characters being integrated within the collective imaginary of Westworld and its visitors. The characters from Westworld are placed in the blurred borderline between memory and imagination. The blurred borderline between memory and imagination is seen in the creation of an internal otherness in the form of a collective bicameral mind, considered as a split personality or doppelganger, and as a new manifestation of the semiosis of virtuality. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to analyse a particularly influential case of memory continuity in Portugal, that of _Padrão dos Descobrimentos_. Spaces of collective memory (such as public monuments) raise questions about what we celebrate, remember or rescue from oblivion, providing an opportunity to rethink the trauma. As such, care for public spaces is associated with ethical and cultural values. One of the difficulties with certain monuments has to do with the fact that they recall actions that (...) today we see as traumatic acts. Thus, it is important to reflect on a critical use of memory. On August 8, 2021, _Padrão dos Descobrimentos_ was the subject of a graffiti. One of the sides of the monument could read: “Blindly sailing for money, humanity is drowning in a scarlet sea”. A great controversy immediately arose around the meaning of this gesture, as well as the role played by a monument that, after being temporarily built in 1940 for the Portuguese World Exhibition, was, in its current version, inaugurated in 1960, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of the death of Infante D. Henrique. This episode reignited a deeper cleavage around the uses of history and memory, the Portuguese colonial past, and the role of the _Padrão dos Descobrimentos_ as an instrument for the reproduction of nationalism. In this sense, and with the authors proposing a new theoretical frame of reference based on the thought of Arendt and Ricoeur, its critical reading becomes relevant. (shrink)

Among the meritorious attempts to unravel the enigma of artistic creation are the views of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer. In the following, we want to emphasise an aspect that is less discussed in the specialised literature, namely the relation between memory and creation. We are talking about the authentic creation that Kant and Schopenhauer consider to be the one that carries in itself the Aesthetic Ideas. With minor differences, the concept, as well as the associated linguistic expression, come (...) together in the work of both German philosophers. An authentic work of art is the work of genius and it has the role of transmitting Ideas. Thus, we will be able to observe “the secret” of a work of art – the Aesthetic Idea. (shrink)

The present paper is divided into two parts. Part one is an attempt to reconstruct the semiotic models of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, in which conceptsfrom De Saussure, C. S. Peirce, Jakobson, Lotman, Eco are drawn for mutual illumination and synthesis. Psychoanalytic semiotics is considered a particular areaand discipline in semiotics, aiming at the unconscious dimension of the subject. Lacan could be considered a post-structuralist revision and extension of Freud. Part two is an application of psychoanalytic semiotics to the (...) interpretation of dream painting, focusing on the Dali example. Essential issues in psychoanalytic semiotics of dream painting are explored in the Dali example, such as dream indexes, dream mechanisms, self-portraits as imago and icon, and psychoanalytic Nirvana as a recovery and memory of a non-alienated subject. My reading of Dali demonstrates the possibility of a convergence of semiotics, psychoanalysis, and art criticism. (shrink)

The study reveals the political and ideological journey of Beom-do Hong, a Korean independence fighter and general as reflected in the historical novel of Soviet Korean writer Kim Se-il. Due to to the lack of historical records on Beom-do Hong, stories on his deeds before and after the Japan's annexation of Korea remained at the level of legends. In Korean society, his figure is seen within opposing positions and discourses; to some he is a national hero; to others a communist (...) collaborator. This investigation of the historical novel as a medium for the transmission of shared memories based on the protagonist's battle diary and the recollections of his comrades will fill the gap in the historical memory and contribute to alleviating social political conflicts. Memorial heritage is closely linked to the intangible aspects of heritage, which is an essential driver of development. (shrink)

This paper is diagnostic type rather than a solution one. There are claims among certain quarters that The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 is a Western mould human rights. However, I will argue that human rights are benchmark for modernization and progress in democracy, and it is traceable within Islam. Using Syed Hussein Alatas‘s Ideal of Excellence as thereotical framework, my attempt is to highlight the memory of Tanzimat during Ottoman empire as one triumph heritage and successful story (...) of human rights modernization within Islam, and not the moment or starting point of failure for the Ottoman. Unfortunately, this modernization does not reflected in the Malay world as it is perceived as the weakening process of Ottoman. Today, similar challenges faced by Ottoman are being faced by the Malay world. Legalistic Islam and Wahhabism are among others that slowing down the modernization of human righs within Malay world. (shrink)

This article will engage with the current disasters in Japan from the perspective of semiotic anthropology. Disaster seems to produce two moments of the sign: signa naturalia and signa data. The translation of the sign mirrors the architectonic of the signified of disaster, which is mediated by a token-level instantiation of signifiers that initially appears either absent or in excess. The conceptualization of disaster as a zero sign, that is, unlimited possibility, allows an investigation of “a struggle of interpretants” in (...) stipulating the interpretative grounds of the signified amid regenerative processes of social regularity. It is this very exact moment of translation that the sustained continuity reveals its culture-specific “deep social grammar.” Disaster or “shaking grounds” has the presenting effect of cultural palimpsests. These unearthed palimpsests enable a heightened metasemiotic awareness of institutional and ideological regimentations, on the one hand, and token-level recontexualizations, assimilations, and hybridizations of the depository of signs in society in the post-disaster contexts, on the other. The article concludes with an attempt to synthesize Peircean semeiotics and Saussurean semiology by assessing the two distinct modes of semiosis, culture and trauma, upon a sudden threat of the experience of discontinuity. (shrink)

The crucial role of international publicity translation (IPT) in bolstering a nation's soft power is undeniable, yet its effectiveness often faces hindrances due to a lack of nuanced social interpretations. China, like many other nations, grapples with this challenge. This paper explores the intricate relationship between IPT in China and Lotman's Cultural Semiotics, aiming to examine the evolution of cultural connotations in China's IPT through Cultural Semiotics. Through a comprehensive set of case studies, it illustrates the applicability and (...) value of Cultural Semiotics, particularly its text theory, in addressing social and cultural disparities, revitalizing cultural memory, and bridging cultural divides in diverse societies. Rooted in Semiotics, this interdisciplinary research paradigm offers profound insights into the ideological foundations of cultural formation and the political system. It emphasizes the imperative of interpreting texts accurately in the field of translation studies, highlighting the disparity between the text manipulated through ideological processes in China's IPT and its authentic intent. (shrink)

Historical Justice and Memory highlights the global movement for historical justice—acknowledging and redressing historic wrongs—as one of the most significant moral and social developments of our times. Such historic wrongs include acts of genocide, slavery, systems of apartheid, the systematic persecution of presumed enemies of the state, colonialism, and the oppression of or discrimination against ethnic or religious minorities. The historical justice movement has inspired the spread of truth and reconciliation processes around the world and has pushed governments to (...) make reparations and apologies for past wrongs. It has changed the public understanding of justice and the role of memory. In this book, leading scholars in philosophy, history, political science, and semiotics offer new essays that discuss and assess these momentous global developments. They evaluate the strength and weaknesses of the movement, its accomplishments and failings, its philosophical assumptions and social preconditions, and its prospects for the future. (shrink)

Issues about heritage, knowledge, and memory are central to climate change narratives. In an age when reality television stars become world leaders, the urgency of climate change narratives requires us to understand the crucial roles of memory and heritage to the future of our planet. The sanctity of knowledge simply cannot be abandoned. Knowledge slips away through the cracks, both in mainstream media efforts to sell its news and in the nonchalance of the admittedly more mindful scholars and (...) popularizers of climate change narratives. We face complex issues here, and there is an urgent need to reassess the value systems and ethics that brought us to where we are in terms of climate change. This is no easy task. To face this complex and controversial issue will require tremendous care with facts, honesty about heritage, and commitment to remembering. It will also need recognition of the painful fact that heritage can no longer be an excuse for continued derogation of the natural environment. (shrink)

Tarot cards are one means to unlocking an image. In this article, the image is that of the Albanian writer and political dissident Musine Kokalari at her 1946 trial. Her photograph features in Albanian discourses about its communist past. I argue that the image provides clues as to the manner in which the country has faced up to its own history. For what is certain is that the Albanian account of the Enver Hoxha dictatorship remains incomplete. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s (...) notion of ‘here-and-now in a flash’, and Roland Barthes’ and Italo Calvino’s reflections on photography and the power of the visual, we can identify at least two distinct memory regimes in the relevant historical, legal and political narratives. (shrink)

Among the national scientific groups, it was the Prague Linguistic Circle that had the most decisive affinity to the work of the Moscow-Tartu school. This paper examines the work of one of the most tireless contemporary Czech interpreters of the Lutman school, Vladimir Macura (1945-1999), whose work on Czech literary and historical texts are outstanding examples of the reverberation of Lotmanian semiotics of culture in the Czech Republic. This is particularly the case in Macura's reevaluations of the texts of (...) the Czech National Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in two books, Znamení zrodu (Signs of Birth) (1995) and Český sen (The Czech Dream) (1998). In these works Macura looked at this critical period in Czech national history as a multi-layered semiotic text in both the verbal and visual spheres. The present paper is an attempt at an exploration of Macura's treatment in this manner of the following: the Czech language, the city of Prague, the question of Czech national self-identification in general and as part of a larger category, the world of the Slavs. An important aspect of this project is an examination of Macura's exploration of the value functions of symbolic animals and plants in Czech Revival culture, and its relation to the axiology of Czech (Slavic) cultural identity. The paper is dedicated to Macura's memory. (shrink)

Cognitive processing in psychology and semiotics are compared in relation to language processing and memory.Active reconstruction in memory is postulated, as well as the representation of whole messages as signs. The paradigm, then, is based on the study of active reconstruction of verbal messages from their semiotic representations in memory. Differences between original and reconstructed messages are used as dimension of empirical study in the paradigm. Research findings are cited in support of this approach.

Why do we remember? And, for that matter, what is remembering? Placed between body and mind, the phenomenon of memory simultaneously involves biological, psychological, semiotic, and metaphysical elements. Memory’s place at the heart of our understanding of ourselves is why many of the greatest philosophers of all the time have dealt with the problem – or, better, have had to deal with it. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Russell, and Wittgenstein, are just a few among (...) many who have proffered explanations. While all such proposals have been deficient in their own ways, each has advanced our understanding of the myriad phenomena associated with memory. With recent developments in phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and the empirical sciences interest in memory has intensified. In the 20th century, philosophers were particularly interested in identifying its causes, the ontology of mnemonic traces, the mechanisms of recall, and its epistemic characteristics. Moreover, as philosophy has directed its sight towards social objects and structures, questions involving memory have developed political and social dimensions as well – extending the debate to collective memory. What are the mechanisms of intersubjective memorization and recall of information, ideas, and representations? What are the ethical dimensions and consequences of public memory? (shrink)

This paper investigates the contexts on the grand narrative and the memory manipulation of the media in the case of Soviet Korean migrants. The study focuses on the forced migration of Soviet Koreans and how their memories were covered up by dominant Soviet narratives. Specifically, the paper explores LeninKichi, a Korean newspaper that became the mouth of institutional power. The research brings to light part of the history of Soviet Koreans migrants, whose memories were buried by a socio-cultural system (...) that encouraged narratives of victory and progress through an oppositional symbolism of glorious patriots versus enemies and traitors. (shrink)

The present article is divided into two parts. Its theoretical introductory part takes under scrutiny how proper name has been previously dealt with in linguistics, philosophy and semiotics. The purpose of this short overview is to synthesise different approaches that could be productive in the semiotic analysis of naming practices. Author proposes that proper names should not be seen as a linguistic element or a type of (indexical) signs, but rather as a function that can be carried by different (...) linguistic units. This approach allows us to develop a transdisciplinary basis for a wider understanding of naming as a sociocultural practice. The empirical part of the article uses one certain village in Estonia in Laane-Virumaa district as an example to demonstrate how toponyms structure the social space, how they carry the memory and how naming practice highlights such changes in the semiotic behaviour of the social life that otherwise could have remained hidden. (shrink)

In the present paper, we substantiate the theory according to which the ailments of imagination presented by Immanuel Kant, especially in his work Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, are sources of artistic creation. It is obvious that not anyone suffering from melancholia, nostalgia, hypochondria or any other ailment of the soul, which Immanuel Kant refers to, becomes a creator of culture. Genius is required for this, but instead of diminishing the creative power of the genius, it seems to (...) be enhanced by the ailments of imagination or generally, by the ailments of the soul. The hypertrophic imagination in the case of a genius plays a major role in the process of fixation in the individual and collective memory of what Immanuel Kant names. (shrink)

God is dead, but, contrary to Nietzsche’s diagnosis, ‘we’ didn’t kill him; he died of cancer. This perhaps crudely cold and off-putting opening does not refer to a naively metaphorically constituted transcendental abstraction, but to a spatio-temporally situated rock legend, Ronnie James Dio. This study aims at contributing to the burgeoning research field of memory and collective identity by providing a sociosemiotic account of the formation of collective narrative identity. By drawing on the three major categories whereby collective (...) class='Hi'>memory is formed, that is artifacts, processes, places, as well as on the three key sociosemiotic metafunctions which are responsible for shaping a cultural event as sign system, the pursued interpretive route seeks to effectively contextualize how collective memory is fleshed out situationally in the context of Dio’s memorial. At the same time, by expanding the interpretive canvass to incorporate phenomenological perspectives on the mode of formation of collective memory, the offered analytic is intent on tracing invisible structures that point to operative mechanisms beyond the formal constraints of a sociosemiotic reading. Both phenomenological and sociosemiotic approaches are reinscribed within an overarching narrativity paradigm, wherein their relative merits in addressing the scrutinized phenomenon are discussed in an attempt to formulate a hybrid sociosemiotic phenomenological perspective of memorial events. (shrink)

According to Greimas, the semiotic square is far more than a heuristic for semantic and literary analysis. It represents the generative “deep structure” of human culture and cognition which “define the fundamental mode of existence of an individual or of a society, and subsequently the conditions of existence of semiotic objects” (Greimas & Rastier 1968: 48). The potential truth of this hypothesis, much less the conditions and implications of taking it seriously (as a truth claim), have received little attention in (...) the literature. In response, this paper traces the history and development of the logical square of opposition from Aristotle to Greimas and beyond, to propose that the relations modelled in these diagrams are embodied relations rooted in gestalt memories of kinesthesia and proprioception from which we derive basic structural awareness of opposition and contrast such as verticality, bilaterality, transversality, markedness and analogy. To make this argument, the paper draws on findings in the phenomenology of movement (Sheets-Johnstone 2011a, 2011b, 2012, Pelkey 2014), recent developments in the analysis of logical opposition (Beziau & Payette 2008), recent scholarship in (post)Greimasian semiotics (Corso 2014, Broden 2000) and prescient insights from Greimas himself (esp. 1968, 1984). The argument of the paper is further supported through a visual and textual content analysis of a popular music video, both to highlight relationships between the semiotic square and mundane cultural ideologies and to show how these relationships might be traced to the marked symmetries of bodily movement. In addition to illustrating the enduring relevance of Greimasean thought, the paper further illustrates the neglected relevance that embodied chiasmus holds for developments in anthropology, linguistics and the other cognitive sciences. (shrink)

From the perspective of semiotics, or a science of signs, communication exceeds the usual verbal mode of expression and covers extra linguistic modes. This paper addresses a specific communicative system represented by Tarot pictures. The semiotic approach not only presents Tarot as exceeding its function as a game but also de-mystifies, in part, its occult side by virtue of the analysis of semiosis, or the action of signs in nature. Using references from the Hermetic philosophy, to Dummett, to Peirce, (...) to Smolin, the paper asserts that, should we understand the language of signs, the memories of past and future events would be accessible to human reason. (shrink)

These few pages will attempt to analyze the relationships created in the chronically delirious person between himself and his own biography, such as he knows and has experienced it, to which he attaches himself and which dominates him without his knowing it. A few remarks to clarify our vocabulary before getting into the development of this question. We prefer the expression “chronic deliria“, in the plural, to the word “psychosis”, used in the singular. The former term is clinical, and therefore (...) empirical, whereas the second derives from theories; and, especially, the former does not immediately imply a unity of process as opposed to the effective diversity of semiotic appearances. Moreover, the nominal adjective “psychotic“ runs the risk of both clandestinely bringing in hidden presuppositions and of re-establishing the old presumed unity with mental alienation, which had, indeed, been exorcised by J. P. Falret by the middle of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Drawing on Vilm Flusser's view of the relationship between humans and the computer (machines), I explore a new ontological framework for our beingin-the-world. I begin by raising critical questions regarding our endeavours and efforts to create endlessly expanding semiotic knowledge spaces based on technological innovation (e.g. Wikipedia or the Universal Electronic Library) in order to reflect on this development from a Flusserian perspective, i.e. as an anthropological challenge to designing interhuman relations. By searching for new ontological conditions for humans, technology (...) and knowledge, I want to probe into responses and new perspectives/models of knowledge sharing. How would we have to rethink the relation between semiotic telematic knowledge spaces and their structure/architecture, and the concrete given (our relationships, intersubjectivity, etc.)? What are the consequences of these findings for the macrosocial structures of encounter where knowledge exchange is a key element? Which are the epistemic models most suited to articulating a productive interdisciplinary knowledge exchange? My approach intends to weave knowledge and space, memory, technology and lived experience into an ontological fabric, and, in so doing, place humans and their communicative needs at the centre of my considerations. (shrink)

We two semioticians, separated by a generation or two, by geography of a continent or two, and by discipline, launch a fresh metalogue to probe the semiosic behavior of storying.