floyd merrell
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN 47907
SEMIOLOGY MEETS SEMIOTICS:
A CASE OF LINGERING LINGUICENTRISM?
French semiology and North American
semiotics: a tale of two species. Species?
How so? Species: a kind of appearances, a class of
individuals having common attributes and designated by a common name. Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics involves
iconic images and signs of feeling and indexically oriented signs of the senses
and corporeal flows and twists and jerks in addition to conventional and
chiefly abstract symbols or language.
Semiology, derived from linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, remains chiefly
language oriented. I wish to give you a
feel for this difference, while revealing my own admitted bias toward Peircean
semiotics. If I could dance or jazz or
act it all out, I would be quite happy to perform the lines of divergence
between semiology and semiotics. But
blessed with few such talents, I can do none of the above. So, cramped by the restrictions of the
verbal mode, I’ll do my best to tell my tale.
But first, a few …
PRELIMINARIES
The question that most
obviously crops up is: Why can’t we
just say what we want to say and be done with it? Objectivism tells we can, if we use the right method. Relativism tells us we can’t, because every
saying is from some particular perspective or other. In Western thought over the past half-century, there has often
been a retreat from objectivism accompanied by a reluctance to embrace a
whole-hog form of relativism.[1] W. V. O. Quine's "ontological
relativism" (1969), for example, tells us we can't find any certainty of
reference between signs and things nor in our translation from one language to
another. Yet languages and the ideas
they embody regarding the nature of the world are not simply relative to one
another. They are relative to
"conceptual schemes" consisting of "networks" of terms and
predicates and their respective "frames of reference" and
"coordinate systems."
Moreover, Quine tells us that the possibility exists for establishing a
"translation manual" for comparing and contrasting one conceptual
scheme and its corresponding web of relations with another one, irrespective of
reference. All this is language and
virtually nothing but language: too
much talk and too little Peircean semiotics spreading an umbrella over all
types of signs.
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975), a
prime candidate from Continental philosophy, also discards objectivism, but
from a radically different view.
According to Gadamer, what we know is known relative to our particular
tradition, our "horizon of meaning" we are caught up in, which
contains all our particular prejudices and preconceptions. The only way we can hope to understand the
traditions of other communities is by bringing about some form of
"fusion" between "horizons" such that the meaning of terms
within one horizon may give rise to the meanings of terms within another
horizon. Following Gadamer’s hermeneutical
approach, we are still firmly lodged in texts, language, verbal signs. There is hardly any way to the winks and
blinks and nudges and hugs and smells and tastes and rhythms and harmonies
embodied in nonlinguistic aspects of semiosis. It’s still so much linguicentrism.
There is another more recent
current of nonobjectivist thought. I
allude to those contemporary philosophers who call themselves
“neo-pragmatists,” most noteworthy from among whom is without doubt Richard
Rorty (see especially 1979, 1982, 1989, 1991, 1998). These "post-analytic" philosophers maintain that any
middle way between the two alternatives, objectivism and relativism, is to be
found in "textualism"—which brings them quite in line with much of
the poststructuralist strain of Continental thought. One of the chief problems with most textualists is that we are
construed as nothing other than language.
We, our selves, are tantamount to our sentences, for in sentences we
have the only reality available to us.
Words, words, words, and nary a sign of nonlinguicentric nature
to think with. There seems to be no
answer here either. All too briefly
put, this is what standard textualism is about.[2]
However, some textualists,
for example Richard Bernstein (1983), take pains to point out that although
there are no standards upon which to base ultimate truth and the one and only
valid interpretation of texts or of the world, this is no call for anguish and
gnashing of teeth. Rather, the lack of
iron-clad standards should be a cause for rejoicing: it leaves the door open for unlimited readings, unending
interpretations of the world, never-ending inquiries of the universe. Frames of reference and horizons remain
open, in spite of any and all attempts to bring them to closure; they are more
points of departure than heuristic tools capable of producing fixed results,
more ongoing interpretive processes than limiting conditions. If objectivity there cannot be, there is at
least some objectivism incorporated in changing conditions regulating
historically and culturally situated human practices that include nonlinguistic
as well as linguistic signs. And there
is a modicum of relativism insofar as all things are relative to all other
things with none of them enjoying absolute priority over anything else.
Somewhat
in the order of poststructuralism, this broader sort of textualism rejects
absolutism, to be sure. Nothing is
given absolute priority. There is no
reality or principle or practice that is acknowledged to be absolutely superior
to all other realities, principles, and practices. Moreover, if everything is relative to everything else, then
neither is there any identity. That is
to say, if everything is radically interrelated and mutually dependent, then
everything depends upon everything else for its correlative, within time and
space, somewhere within the context of everything else. The upshot is that there is nothing at all
except the "zero degree" between one event and another event both of
which are intermittently emerging into the realm of the actuals (compare to
Barthes's [1967] "zero degree writing"). In other words, everything is empty of essence, substance, being,
existence. Everything is nothing more
than whatever is in the process of becoming; it is the becoming of being as
well as the being of becoming. If
everything is in the process of becoming or happening, and if everything is
mutually dependent, then we are within the horizon we are within, without the
capacity objectively to survey it, see it, or say it. And whatever web of language and of all signs and whatever
conceptual scheme we are also within, is for us interminable, beyond our grasp.
This
is to imply that the idea of a line of demarcation between a horizon or
conceptual scheme and everything else, as well as between every different and
distinct and even incommensurable horizon or conceptual scheme that could have
been in place of that which is, is a line of nothingness, of emptiness,
of the zero degree. It is the
emptiness which contains everythingness that could have been in the process of
becoming something else at some alternative time and place but is not. This does not imply that any two given
horizons or conceptual schemes are either open or closed with respect to one
another. It does mean that any and all
horizons or conceptual schemes depend upon all others such that there is no
absolute or legitimate way to tell where one begins and the other ends. It means that what is here, now, is in the
here and the now and nowhere and nowhen else, at least for us within our particular
semiotic context.
A
rejoinder might be forthcoming: one's
self is one's self and that's that, in spite of whatever contextualized moment
or place might exist. But, then, the
question must be asked: Is that self
really any different from its entire context, and does it possess any form of
continuity from one moment to another?
And then another question arises:
If the self is something apart from the context, then how is it that
that selfsame self could have arisen from that very context of which it is now
not a part?
If the self cannot happen to
be becoming within a particular context, then there can hardly be, for
that self, any fusion of horizons or a struggle with some conceptual scheme, in
order that a "transhorizon" or "transconceptual scheme" may
be in the process of becoming. There is
only interrelationality of everything.
According to this interrelationality, there is no cause and effect in
the linear sense, but rather, everything is both the cause and the effect of
everything else such that what is in the process of becoming is becoming as a
consequence and as a result of the impending conditions and from within the
context that happens to be emerging in a given here and now for some particular
semiotic agent in some respect or capacity.
This could be regarded as "textualism"--or
"contextualism," as it were—by the textualists of the day, Rorty and
so on. Such textualism is to be
construed as an interrelated, inderdependent, coterminously emerging
"intertextuality." It can be
construed as a pragmatic concept, if you will.
The
key word is interrelationalism.
In fact, I would go even further:
interdependency, interrelationalism, and interaction: that, it seems, is the name of the
game. It is quite explicit throughout
Charles S. Peirce's philosophy, and, if we wish to remain obsessively focused
on language, it is at least implicit in semiological practices.
TACKLING THE PROBLEM HEAD-ON
The
problem with this essay is that I need to define semiosis before I can
get down to the task of writing about Peirce’s semiotics. That is a difficult task. Difficult, because semiosis is itself
the process of signs becoming
other signs. How can I say what semiosis is if I cannot step out of semiosis in order to say it as an
object of my contemplation? This is
like the physicist, a collection of subatomic particles, describing subatomic
particles: subatomic particles must say
what subatomic particles are. In this
manner to know signs, that is to know semiosis,
is tantamount to signs knowing themselves, for the sign knower is made up of signs,
s/he is, her/himself, a sign. This is
not, mind you, the "prison house of language." No. Semiosis is by no means simply a
matter of language and language alone. Semiosis does not dwell within
language, but rather, language is but a minuscule part of semiosis.
If semiosis is the process of signs becoming other
signs, and if we as sign makers and takers are within this process, then we must try to
understand how it is that we interact
with signs and how they interact with
us. The how of signifying activity bears on signs of the past (what they
actually did and what was done to them), of the present (the possibility of semiosic activity in the here-now,
which is always moving on to a there-then), and of the future (the potential
for semiosic becoming). Past, present,
and future: there can be no semiosis without time, for time is
the very river within which semiosis
flows, yet semiosis encompasses
time as it flows along, slowly unfolding itself in the process. Since we are in
time in the manner in which we are in semiosis,
we cannot know semiosis by
means of objective study and thought.
We must feel and sense it. Once
again we are caught up in the same problem.
To feel and sense semiosis
is like telling a fish it must feel and sense the water surrounding it. Our waterworld philosopher-friend
responds: "Feel and sense it with
respect to what? What do I have other
than my water medium against which to gauge that medium?" We, like our baffled denizen of the deep,
have nothing against which to measure our understanding of semiosis. We are inextricably included within semiosis. Nevertheless,
to say something about semiosis
from within it is at least a beginning.
Upon saying a few words about semiosis,
however, we are semioticians. We are
saying something about signs. We
are using signs to categorize and label the process of semiosis. Our saying, consequently, is false to
itself. It is false to itself, since semiosis, as process, knows of no categories: it is just onstreaming, flowing, perpetually moving, process. To say what it is is to mutilate it, fracture it, cut it up, and
as such it is no longer process. No. Semiosis is definitely not a
"prison house of language."
So,
let us consider semiotics as a perspective. If, from within what at least appears as a “prison house of
language” we can't say what semiosis--the sign process--is, then perhaps we can at least say what semiotics--the study of signs--is.
It is the result of our stepping back from the that of our communicative acts and asking about the whys, the whats, and the hows of
those acts. Semiotics stems from a
natural curiosity regarding our world, our culture, our modes of
communication. It is the study of the
very acts of communication we bring about on the stage of life. It is the study of the life of all our
signs. These signs include our written
and spoken language, mathematics, logic, literature, painting, music,
architecture, theater, film, television, dress, gesture, and cuisine, as well
as interaction with computers, and all forms of communication in the plant and
animal world as well as all natural processes insofar as they are interpreted
in some form or fashion by some living organism.[3] We are incessantly immersed in a rich and often bewildering
plethora of signs of all sorts, and semiotics entails an attempt to know what
it is they have in common, how they are used, and why they are used in the way
they are used. The study of signs is
quite obviously challenging. It may
even appear ominous. But although it
has its severe limitations, it is not an impossible task, I would suggest. For after everything is said and done,
making and taking the signs surrounding us in our world is what we do best, and
more often that not what we do naturally.
THE TRADITIONS DISTINGUISHED
In brief, “semiology," based primarily
on the linguistics of Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure, that during the
1950s and 1960s found popularity chiefly in the continental European tradition
and in language and literature departments in the United States, while
"semiotics," more recently emerging from the work of North American
philosopher, scientist, logician, and mathematician, Charles Sanders Peirce.
Unfortunately, a distinction
between the two terms has often been blurred.
Students of the late A. J. Greimas prefer to call themselves
"semioticians," though they fall within the continental
tradition. Numerous other investigators
working within the "semiological" framework do the same. Occasionally, the continental concept of the
sign occasionally involves a somewhat forced wedding between Saussure and
Peirce--Umberto Eco (1976) is a case in point--with the best man appearing in
the guise of French linguist Emile Benveniste, Russian linguist Roman Jakobson,
or Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev. Be
that as it may, not an insignificant number of scholars continue to use
"semiotics" interchangeably with "semiology,"
"structuralism," and sometimes even "poststructuralism,"
which brings on more confusion than illumination.
For example,
Terence Hawkes (1977:24) proclaims in Structuralism
and Semiotics: "The terms
semiology and semiotics are both used to refer to [the 'science of signs'], the
only difference between them being that semiology is preferred by Europeans,
out of deference to Saussure's coinage of the term, and semiotics tends to be
preferred by English speakers, out of deference to the American
Peirce." Shortly thereafter,
Hawkes contends that the boundaries of the "field of semiotics," if
indeed there be any, "are coterminous with those of structuralism: the interests of the two spheres are not
fundamentally separate and, in the long run, both ought properly to be included
within the province of a third, embracing discipline called, simply,
communication. In such a context,
structuralism itself would probably emerge as a method of analysis linking the
fields of linguistics, anthropology and semiotics" (Hawkes 1977:24). Regarding Hawkes's sweeping assertions,
Thomas Sebeok (1986:80) judiciously warns:
"Nothing could be a more deluded misconstrual of the facts of the
matter, but the speciousness of this and associated historical deformations are
due to our own inertia in having hitherto neglected the serious exploration of
our true lineage."
I
harbor no pretentions of being able to lay this "semiology/semiotics"
conundrum to rest for all time.
Rather, I intend to elucidate the problem, and let the chips fall where
they may. In so doing, I focus on the
boundary between "semiology" and "semiotics." Given limited time and space, I must present
Peirce as economically as possible.
This requires my ignoring some of Peirce's terms that would otherwise
become overloaded with undesirable conceptual baggage, paring down parts of his
sign theory in order to streamline it—but hopefully without doing it
irreparable damage—and bringing "semiotics" to bear on our
contemporary multicultural scene. In
other words, I will attempt very briefly to present Peirce's concept of the
sign, while highlighting those aspects of it that remain relevant to our
contemporary world.
My
translating Peirce into our own culture-world is a necessary step, I believe,
for our culture-world is what we made it by means of the signs we have
fashioned. Each morning we awaken to
William James's "blooming, buzzing confusion," and, as Marcel Proust
so aptly describes it throughout his Remembrance
of Things Past, we gradually become aware of the signs of our culture-world
as our consciousness unfolds, opening ourselves to its environment. And we reinitiate our navigation along the
stream of semiosis, following the
current as it meanders along, twisting slightly when entering its gentle
eddies, bucking with the whitewater during its less benign periods, steering
between bounders and fallen trees, and all the while producing and processing
an untold profusion of signs. But it is
not simply a matter of us and our signs.
No sign is a full-blown sign without all signs, for they are all
interdependent, and they incessantly engage in interrelated interaction with one
another. Moreover, what we take to be
"our" signs is virtually nothing outside the entire community of
signs producers and processors to which we belong. All signs and all sign makers and takers compose a virtually
seamless fabric: it is not a matter of
signs and things but of thought-signs
in the mind and sign-events "out
there." It is a matter of signs
perpetually becoming something other than what they are.
First
and foremost, the idea Saussure discarded but some investigators continue to
hold dear is that of signs stand for
something else, as surrogates of some sort of secondary status replacing
genuine articles. Admittedly, Peirce
used the term stand for--as well as represent and refer to--with regards to the relation between signs and their respective
objects. Quite simply, they were the
terms of his day. But he used them as
he saw fit, a use that diverged, at times quite sharply, from their customary
nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century usage.
I
choose entirely to eschew the use of stand
for (and correspond and represent and refer to) in this essay for two reasons. First, the stand for
idea breeds a tendency to conceive a sign as a sort of static proxy standing in
for an equally static thing, the sign.
The sign as proxy cannot properly carry out its role of incessantly
becoming other signs, along the flow of semiosis. With each new instantiation a sign has
invariably become a difference; it
has become a new sign, not merely the same sign standing for the same object or event. At the same time, with each new instantiation, although the sign
is now something other than what it was, it nevertheless contains itself (as a trace) within itself. So the sign is, but from another vantage it is
not, what it was. Second, the stand for idea tends to generate an implication of the sign
function as immediate, rather than mediate. During his lifetime Peirce worked at developing the idea of the
sign's mediary role, for he believed there is no immediacy of the sign process of which we can be conscious here and
now--in this respect Peirce was in line with Jacques Derrida's (1973) argument
against the "myth of presence."
The concept of mediation denies our making and taking signs and their
respective objects as they are in the here and now. We do not perceive and conceive our culture-world exactly as it
is, but as it was in a moment now past in the river of time, and by way of
mediating signs.
For
example, the word "bachelor" does not stand for, refer to, or represent the collection of all unmarried
men, past, present and future. The
French flag does not stand for, refer to, or represent a political entity that happens to go by the name of
France. And smoke does not stand for, refer to, or represent
fire. Rather, "bachelor," the
French flag, and a cloud of smoke are signs that, upon their being interpreted
by semiotic agents--human in this particular case, but any living organism will
do--interact and interrelate with other signs "out there" (as sign-events) and in the minds (as thought-signs) of those agents. In fact, those agents, upon interacting and interrelating with signs and other agents, become, themselves,
nothing more than signs among signs.
Consequently,
in contrast to signs standing for, referring to, or representing things, more properly speaking they interdependently interrelate and interact with them. Signs interdependently
interrelate and interact with
other signs in the same way they interdependently
interrelate and interact with
their meanings and with their makers and takers. There are no intransigent priorities here, no hierarchy of
values, but rather, a rather democratic process of signs becoming other signs,
of signs taking their place among signs, of signs--ourselves included--lifting
themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Although
I admittedly depart from the "letter" of Peirce's terminology, I do
not abandon the "spirit" of his sign theory. Granted, Peirce endowed the sign with its
most general definition as something that stands
for, refers to, and represents something to someone (a human or other semiotic
agent) in some respect or
capacity. However, in order to avoid
conjuring up images and thoughts reminiscent of bygone glories and vanished
dreams of language as a "picture" of the world, the mind as a
"mirror of nature," and of a faithful one-to-one
"correspondence" between signs and things, I do away with stand for, refer, and represent
entirely. The watchwords are interdependency, interrelatedness, and interaction
between signs.
Enough
lingering on this problem. It’s time to
get on with the Peirce/Saussure problem.
BINARISM VERSUS TRIADISM
Ferdinand
de Saussure has been hailed as "the father of modern linguistics,"
the man who reorganized the systematic study of language "in such a way as
to make possible the achievements of twentieth-century linguistics." He has promoted "semiology, the general
science of signs," and "structuralism, which has been an important
trend in contemporary anthropology and literary criticism as well as in
linguistics." He gives us "a
clear expression of what we might call the formal strategies of Modernist
thought: the ways in which scientists,
philosophers, artists, and writers working in the early part of this century
tried to come to terms with a complex and chaotic universe." His theory of language "focuses on
problems which are central to new ways of thinking about man, and especially
about the intimate relation between language and the human mind. This is an impressive track record indeed!
Charles
Sanders Peirce, whose life spans that of Saussure, is a latecomer to the
humanities and human sciences in this century.
Peirce was truly a polymath.
Trained in chemistry, he also studied, logic, mathematics, and
philosophy, and to a lesser degree he became versed in the entire range of
disciplines that existed during his day.
He is the father of "pragmatic philosophy," considered by many
to be the only legitimate American philosophical movement.[4] As a scientist and mathematician who acquired an international
reputation during his day, he also produced many of the advances in logic
(which he equated with semiotics) and scientific methodology, that have made
possible a number of further developments ranging from computer science to the
history and philosophy of science. Over
sixty years ago philosopher Hans Reichenbach (1939) wrote that Peirce
anticipated his own groundbreaking work on inductive logic. More recently, Hilary Putnam (1982a:295) was
surprised to discover how much that is now quite familiar in modern logic
"actually became known to the logical world through the efforts of
Peirce." And W. V. O. Quine
(1985:767) places the beginning of modern logic in the work of Gottlob Frege
and Peirce. Now these are heady
credentials also!
Unfortunately,
most introductions to "semiology" or "semiotics" pay homage
to their respective founder. Then they
reverently follow in the footsteps of the master, be he Saussure, Peirce, or
whomever. Quite frequently, the authors
of such introductions offer a recapitulation of some sign theory or other--many
times reductionistic and equivocal--the exposition and rhetoric of which is
often alien to current practices in anthropology, linguistics, literary theory,
philosophy, and sociology. Yet the ideas
are usually presented in rather programmatic fashion, as if handed down from
the gods.
In an
attempt to improve on this formula of exposition, I must point out that one of
the chief distinction between Peirce and Saussure lies in the scope of their
theories. Peirce's semiotics
encompasses the range of all possible signs and their human and nonhuman makers
and takers alike, regarding both inorganic and organic, and living and
nonliving domains--in addition to what is construed by dualists to be the realm
of mind. This all-inclusive semiotic
sphere exists in stark contrast to Saussure's call for a "science of
signs," which according to the proper conception was destined to become
basically a "linguistic science," thus limited to distinctively human
communication. But actually, Saussure
was not quite as limited as many of his disciples have made him out to be. His idea had it that since linguistics
"would be only part of the general science of semiology," the laws
discovered by semiology, circumscribing "a well-defined area within the
mass of anthropological facts," would be "specifically applicable to
language" (Saussure 1966:16).
Semiology according to this broader definition would incorporate all
modes of communication found in human societies, including both linguistic
expressions and nonverbal devices such as gestures and signals along
nonlinguistic channels.
Visionary
pronouncements and the train of future events, however, are often incompatible
bedfellows. Not only did Saussure's
dream in the wider sense go largely unfulfilled, but, despite his initial
subordination of linguistics to the more general "science" of
semiology, throughout the Course he
repeatedly contradicted his initial premise.
It gradually became apparent that for Saussure, language--that is, what
he set up as a language-speech (langue-parole)
dichotomy--to the exclusion of writing, occupies a suffocatingly privileged and
unique position among all semiological systems. This dubious move, which was to be effectively deconstructed by
Derrida (1974:1-93), prompted certain semiologists of the 1960s to thrust
language to ever greater prominence.
The giant step was taken when Roland Barthes (1968:11) declared that
"linguistics is not part of the general science of signs, even a privileged
part, it is semiology which is a part of linguistics."
Actually,
in its most basic form, Saussure's Course
consists of hardly more than tentative notes on a method for studying
phonetics, and at most morphology, with very little in the way of syntax or
semantics, to say nothing of pragmatics.
Yet Saussure's suggestions were propagated by his follows as a veritable
doctrine intended to encompass the entire universe of signification. As a consequence, the Course has become lost in a plethora of glosses, commentaries,
explanations, offshoots, and outgrowths such that one can hardly separate the
wheat from the chaff or see what is touted to be a forest for all the scrubs
trying to pass themselves off as legitimate trees. This is quite baffling.
Saussure's original strategy was relatively unambiguous: to project a monolithic, undifferentiated,
field, language, gradually divide it into sharp distinctions, and then
virtually eliminate one of each set of those distinctions. The result was a set of boundaries and a
successive narrowing of the corpus to be analyzed. Obviously, Saussure's less disciplined followers did not heed the
suggestions of their leader: they took
the narrowest of parameters and expended them inordinately.
Language,
in Saussure's view, floats in an ethereal zone above the physical world. It is arbitrarily contrived and chiefly
autonomous. It creates its own
"world," despite the individual language user's whims or wishes to
the contrary. Individual words are not,
as they were for philosopher John Locke and many philosophers and linguists
since his time, mere markers, linguistic window dressing conveying notions
about a "world" whose structure is available to the mind through
perception of that "world."
The Saussurean "world" is what language says it is, which
implies that insofar as language is structured in a particular manner, so also
its "world." Thus language
consists of a repertoire of signs and the possibility for their use by the
speakers of a given community, while thought is a structureless haze lying in
wait for language's cutting it up and organizing it into some sort of
order. And both thought and language
collaborate and contrive to create a "world," the "world"
common to the members of the speech community.
But this is merely the first, and quite vague, step toward a grasp of
what Saussure is all about. His
interest rested almost exclusively on language.
Let
us take a quick look, then, at Peirce’s more encompassing concept of the sign.
ONE, TWO, THREE, AND THEN WHAT?
What one can find of Peirce's work is breathtaking in scope and depth. It sparkles with insight, amazes one with occasional pyrotechnical displays of genius, and piques one into thinking what one had never before thought. But there is no readily available master plan. All too often, as a consequence, scholars attempting to mine patches of promising terrain within Peirce's work become lost in the whole topography, and they resort to digging up a few uncut stones and trying to pass them off as polished gems. I can hardly hope to remedy this problem in a few brief pages. Yet I’ll try to offer a sense of what Peircean semiosis is all about.
Since Peirce’s concept of
the sign implies sign mediation, it
is deeper and more comprehensive than the ordinary expressions "derivation
of meaning" or "interpretation." Engendering and processing signs and making them meaningful is
more than merely getting information out of them or making sense of them. It is a matter of an intricate interplay
between what Peirce called Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. These categories make up Peirce's
fundamental triad of relations as follows:
(1) Firstness: the signification of what there is such as
it is, without reference or relation to anything else (i.e. a quality,
sensation, sentiment, or in other words, the mere possibility of some
consciousness of something).
(2) Secondness: signification of what there is such as it
is, in relation to something else, but without relation to any third entity
(i.e. it can include the consciousness of the self-conscious self of
something other than itself).
(3) Thirdness: signification of what there is such as it
is, insofar as it is capable of bringing a second entity into relation with a
first one (i.e. by way of mediation of the categories of Firstness and
Secondness).[5]
"One, Two, Three ...." At the outset it might seem as simple as
that. But from simplicity, complexity
quickly emerges. If we include
"Zero" and "Infinity" at the front end and back end of
"One, Two, Three ...," then we can see why. Nevertheless, in schematic form, to all
appearances the categories are quite straightforward. Firstness is quality,
Secondness is effect, and Thirdness
is product in the process of its becoming. Firstness is possibility
(a might be), Secondness is actuality
(what happens to be at the moment),
and Thirdness is potentiality, probability or necessity (what would be,
could be, or should be, given a certain set of conditions).[6]
In
art, Firstness might involve a two-dimensional rectangular patch of color on a
Picasso canvas. Secondness in such case
would include that patch's interactive interrelations to other rectangular,
triangular and irregular patches in the painting. Thirdness would be a matter of the viewer's putting them all
together into an imaginary three-dimensional image as if seen from the front,
from the back, from the right side, from the left side, from above, and from
below, all in simultaneity. In
literature, Firstness is embodied in a few lines of avant garde poetry as marks on paper in terms of their
"possibility" for some reading somewhere and somewhen by some poetry
lover. Secondness is involved in their
actual reading and their interrelation with the reader's present mindset and
memories of the past and readings of many other lines of poetry. Thirdness is the reader's interaction with
the lines of poetry in such a manner that meaning emerges for her at that
particular moment. In everyday life,
Firstness found in a double arch of bright yellowness in the distance. Secondness is the interrelation established
by some hungry observer between the parabolically curved, elongated yellowness
and a colorful building underneath it.
Thirdness is recognition of that familiar establishment as
"McDonald's"--since language enters into the picture. Then, according to one's culinary habits,
one decides to enter the temple of cholesterol and stuff oneself or to continue
searching for more aesthetically prepared nutrients.
However,
like all schematic formulations, this one is somewhat deceptive. In reality, Firstness, in and of itself, is
not an actual concrete quality (like,
for example, a mere sensation of the color and form of an apple that we might
be looking at at this moment). It is nothing
more than a category of possibility,
a pure abstraction--abstracted, separated from everything else--as something
enjoying its own self-presence and nothing more: it cannot (yet) be present
to some conscious sign taker as
such-and-such. It is an entity without
defined or definable parts, without antecedents or subsequents. It simply is what it is as pure possibility.
This "pure possibility," it bears mentioning, is almost
entirely absent in the body/mind distinction, since Western science's obsession
rests exclusively with what there purportedly is, and what there is is
what is actualized and can be properly measured, mathematized, and
cognized. "Pure
possibilities" elude such manipulation, and are therefore categorically
ignored.
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What is perceived belongs to the
category of Secondness. It is a matter
of something actualized in the manner of this
happening here, now, for some
contemplator of the sign (and now, we enter into the domain of Cartesian mind
eternally divorced from body). As such
it is a particularity, a singularity.
It is what we had before us as Firstness, such as for example, a vague
"red" patch without there (yet) being any consciousness of it or its being identified as such-and-such. Now, a manifestation of Secondness, it has
been set apart from the
self-conscious contemplator, willing and ready to be seen as, say, an apple. However, at this point it is not (yet) an
"apple," that is, not a word-sign identifying the thing in question
and bringing with it a ponderous mass of cultural baggage regarding
"apples" (the particular class of apples
of which the one before us is an example, what in general apples are for, their role in the development of North American
culture, in folklore, in fairy tales, health lore, and so on). At the first stage of Secondness, the apple is hardly more than the
possibility of a physical entity, a "brute fact," as Peirce was wont
to put it. It is one more thing of the
furniture of the self's physical world.
It is otherness in the most
primitive sense. If Firstness is what is as it is in the purest sense of
possibility, Secondness is pure negation insofar as it is other, something other
than that Firstness.
Thirdness
can be tentatively qualified as that which brings about mediation between two other happenings in such a manner that they
interrelate with each other in the same way they interrelate with the third
happening as a result of its mediary
role. This mediation creates a set of interrelations the combination of which
is like Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness twisted into a variation of the
"Borromean knot" (Figure 1)
The knot clasps the categories together by means of a central
"node" (or better, “vortex”) in such a way that they become
"democratically" interlinked. Each of the categories can intermittently play the role of any of
the other categories; yet at a given space-time juncture, one of the three will
be a First, one a Second, and one a Third.
Peirce's conception of Thirdness, I might add, now diverges radically
from the traditional mind/body dichotomy, which is indelibly binary in nature,
with no mediating function bringing them together in a liquid interdependent, interrelated, interactive
embrace.
To
summarize, Firstness is possibility
(a might be), Secondness is actuality (what is), and Thirdness is potentiality,
probability, or necessity (what could be,
would be, or should be, given a certain set of conditions). Firstness, in and of itself, is not an
identified concrete quality of something (like, for example, the raw feeling of
some body of water we might happen to
glance at). It is nothing more than a
possibility, a pure abstraction—abstracted, separated from everything else—as
something enjoying its own self-presence and nothing more: it cannot (yet) be present to some conscious semiotic observer as such-and-such. It is an
entity without defined or definable parts, without antecedents or
subsequents. As such it is the bare
beginning of something from "emptiness," of something from the
possibility of everything; it is at
once everything and nothing, it simply is, as possibility.
The
whatness or the happens-to-be of that which is perceived belongs to the category of
Secondness. It is a matter of something
actualized in the manner of this
entity here, presented for some interpreter. As such it is hardly more than a
particularity, a singularity. If
Firstness is pure affirmation of what might
be, Secondness is negation insofar as it is other. Thirdness can be
further qualified as that which brings about interrelations between two of Peirce's three sign components,
representamen, semiotic object and interpretant, in such a manner that they are
interrelated with each other in the
same way they are interrelated with
the third sign component as a result of its mediary
act. The mediary act is like Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, or
representamen, semiotic object and interpretant, twisted into the intertwined
Borromean knot that clasps them together by way of a central
"vortex." Each of the three
sign components can trade places with any of the other two, as depicted by the
bulbs in Figure 1; yet at any time and any place one of them will be a
representamen, one a semiotic object, and one an interpretant. In order for this "democratic"
process to continue, there must be correlations between the three peripheral
bulbs by way of the central "vortex" or, so to speak, the
"fourth point."
ON WHAT THERE IS NOT
If
you will, please consider this "vortex" comparable to the original
Indian concept of "Zero," which was appropriated for use in Western
mathematics. The "vortex" is
"Zero," the three bulbs are the three integers, 1, 2, and 3, that can
trade places with one another like musical chairs, and indefinite repetition of
the sign flows toward "Infinity."
And there you have it.
"Have
what?," someone says. It. "It?" Yes, It. The process, the
semiosic process of signs becoming
signs by virtue of the universal engenderer, the "vortex," or
"Zero." "Too
vague," comes the response. Well,
you might visualize the "vortex" or "Zero" as the center of
an "axle" that holds the spokes of a wheel together. The wheel is in constant motion, but the
central point of the "axle" just sits there: it is the point about which the continuity
of movement regarding the whole emerges.
The "vortex" is, then, of the nature of
"nothingness," "emptiness." At the same time, it is "Infinity" implied. It is the Alpha and Omega of semiosis. It is as if we began with either "Zero" or
"Infinity" and then went on to "One, Two, Three," and then
ended with "Infinity" or "Zero" again. So actually, both the center and periphery
are "emptiness" or "nothing," and at the same time they are
"everything."
Now
it might seem that I am becoming so vague as to border on chaos. And that’s correct. Chaos,
and order from chaos, which can become communication,
within the semiosic
stream. You can't have communication without chaos.
Yet we abjure, once again. We
wish for something more specific, more tangible, something we can distinctly
put to the analytical test. We need
clarity, distinction, and precision.
Otherwise we are in a sea of chaos without any ephemeral islands of
order upon which we can get some kind of foothold.
Precision? Clarity and distinction? This entails know-it-all ideological
postures and methodological procedures?
I'm afraid I can offer few promises in that respect. Yet in order to get on with this essay I
must strike out in some direction or other--from chaos, no doubt--that will be
able to afford a satisfactory degree of communication. So I'll try to try again, with an extension
of one of my examples.
HOW THE CONCEPT OF THE SIGN COMES INTO THE PICTURE
Since
the bulbs of Figure 1 can be occupied by any of the three categories, whatever
at a given space-time slice happens to be a First is a vague feeling. What is a Second entails bare consciousness of the First on the part of some
semiotic agent. What is Third brings
the two together and potentially gives them some meaning.
In
terms of our above conversation on holes and space and time and motion and
change, space and time outside any and all considerations of anything else, are
Firstness, or better, they are not really anything at all, for they are not
something of which we can be
consciously aware outside motion and change and the becoming of
consciousness. Motion from here to
there of something as a consequence of its interdependent, interrelated,
interaction with something else—that something else possibly acted out by ourselves—is
Secondness. Change of the
interdependent interrelationship between the motion of something with respect
to something else is a matter of Thirdness—that Thirdness implying our becoming
of awareness and our own interdependent,
interrelated interaction with the process unfolding itself. Space and time by themselves, spacetime by
itself, knows of no objects, acts, or events.
Objects are nothing more that warps in space, and acts and events unfold
in time as perceived by some consciousness or some other, but there is no
consciousness and no other, so acts and events are absent. Motion, in the order of velocity, requires
something and something else emerging into the attention of some consciousness
or some other, hence thingness enters the semiotic scene. Change of motion, like acceleration, marks
entry of an interpreters entering into the process. Space and time are just that, and no more. They are stasis from whatever
perspective. Motion, in contrast, is
relative. What is motion from one frame
of reference could well be considered stasis from another frame of reference,
and ultrarapid motion from yet another frame of reference. Change of motion might be radical change
from one view, moderate change from another view, and sluggish change of the
consistency of cold honey from yet another view. Thus we have the makings of a non-Euclidean, non-Newtonian
concept of relative time and space and of the universe.
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Faithful
to this notion of signs becoming other signs, the bulbs of Figure 1 whirl about
their axis not on the two-dimensional plane but in a nonlinear, wobbly,
virtually "strange attractor" manner, such that at any moment the
three legs can change partners, and the dance, now something other than what it was, goes on.[7] In order for this "democratic" process to be played
out, correlations between the three peripheral "bulbs" exist only by
virtue of the "vortex." This
"vortex" can be properly qualified only at a later stage of this
disquisition. For the moment you might
visualize it as a "zero point," the "axle" (or
"hole" if you will) that holds the spokes of a wheel together. As described above, the wheels are in
constant motion, but the "axle" remains fixed: it contains the grease providing for the
continuity of movement regarding the whole.
Thus it is that the interaction of representamen, semiotic object, and
interpretant, is not a "standing for" act but an act of relating to and at the same time an interacting with. I repeat, signs are not mere surrogates for
something else. No sign component of
the representamen, semiotic object, interpretant triad is an island unto
itself. Each component is dependent
upon and collaborates and corroborates with all other sign components.
Upon
embarking on a discussion of Peirce's concept of the sign, I should make
mention of the notion with which we are now familiar: there can be neither first sign—unblemished, and of paradisiacal
perfection—nor final sign—pregnant with meaning, the Sign to end all signs. We
are in the flow of things, in the manner in which we found ourselves in Figure
1. This is because thought itself is
inextricably bound up with, indeed its very nature is that of, signs. As Peirce himself puts it, the "woof
and warp of all thought" is of the nature of signs, and most particularly,
of language (CP:5.421). As we can note in Figure 2, Peirce's
conception of the sign consists of a representamen (itself often called a
sign), that relates to an object. But in order to be a genuine sign it must
also relate to a third term, its interpretant
(very roughly, that which gives the sign its meaning).
The
most fundamental of Peirce's sign types consists of the trichotomy of icons, indices, and symbols. Icons resemble the objects to which they relate
(a circle and the sun), indices relate to their objects by some natural
connection (smoke and fire), and the relation between symbols and their objects
is by habitual sign use and according to cultural convention (a national flag,
evincing hardly any similarity with and no natural connection to its
object). Symbols of the best and most
common sort are found in language. An
iron-clad rule, according to Peirce, is that the meaning of signs, and
especially linguistic signs, is found in other signs. An interpretant gives purpose, direction, meaning to a sign. But this interpretant, upon becoming an
interpretant, also becomes in the process another sign, which comes into
relation with the first sign in its relation to its object. It can then take on its own object--which
can be the same object, now slightly modified--and it engenders its own
interpretant. The interpretant then
becomes yet another sign, and so on.
This ongoing sign process has been dubbed by Umberto Eco (1976:69)
"unlimited semiosis."[8]
The
succession of signs along the semiosic
stream thus becomes a network of glosses, or commentaries, of signs on the
signs preceding them. Or perhaps better
put, signs are alterations or translations
of their immediately antecedent signs.[9] This process of signs translated
into other signs is endless.
Everything is incessantly becoming something other than what it is.
Consequently, for Peirce there is no ultimate meaning (interpretant),
for the meaning of a given sign is itself a sign of that sign, which must be
endowed with its own meaning, which is in turn another sign. Neither is there any final translation, for a given translation of a sign calls up another
sign upon its being endowed with meaning, that meaning being different from
that of the sign being translated,
and that second meaning becoming yet another sign to be translated and given meaning.
(Peirce does in fact write of a final interpretant, but it is
inaccessible for us, it is realizable
solely in the theoretical long run, which is at the infinite stretch of the semiosic process.)
But
I’m afraid this is all too much too quickly.
One needs a little time to digest it.
There is, however, a method to my apparent madness for abstractions. In the first place, I bring Peirce's triadic
concept of the sign up rather abruptly not for the purpose of engendering
confusion but hopefully to set the proper mood for what is to follow. Just as we are indelibly inside semiosis, so also we are both, at
this "moment," suspended "inside" this essay, and must try
to get some sort of meaning out of it.
On so doing, we must cope with a nonlinear, back and forth, spiraling,
self-enclosing, text in the making, which gives us pieces from a jig-saw puzzle
rather than an A-B-C sequential
development. Since this essay about semiosis, and both you and me
besides, are inside semiosis,
why should I, how could I, expect to render it of a nature any different from semiosis? The very idea would be presumptuous. Furthermore, since according to Peirce the universe is perfused
through and through with signs, if it does not consist exclusively of signs (CP:5.448, n.1), how could this essay hope to give a linear account of a
nonlinear domain, whether it be either semiosis
or the universe?
Like
this modest essay, the universe or the universe of semiosis is not that deterministic linear, cause-and-effect
parade of events envisioned by classical science. It is complex, not simple.
It is more chaotic than orderly.
It by and large favors asymmetry over symmetry. Interpreting the universe or the universe of
semiosis is not simply like
reading a linearly unfolding Agatha Christie thriller. It is, in addition to the element of
linearity we may be able to find in it, a recursive, undulating, back and forth
reading of the fantasmagoric world of One
Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. We cannot simply have either linearity or
nonlinearity and ignore the other. We
need both our well-reasoned linearity and our "chaos" principle in
order effectively to survive. By the
same token, if we construed semiosis
as a map we could study with the presumed detachment of a classical scientist
studying bacteria under the microscope, we would be destined to deluded hopes
and unfulfilled dreams. For, unlike the
traditional concept of knowledge as a map or mirror of nature, we are squarely within the map, and we must find our way
about by groping in the dark, by intuition, premonition, inclination, educated
guesses, and even sheer chance, as well as by using our faculties of reason.
Consequently, there is little use
trying by linear methods to "get the picture"—the map—of what I am
trying to write. For there is no
"picture," no "picture" that we can "see" from
some imperious outside vantage point at least.
To make Peirce's long story short, we are, ourselves, signs among
signs. Like physicist Niels Bohr once
remarked with respect to the world of quantum theory, we are both spectators
and actors in the great drama of existence.
The traditional Western idea of a neutral spectator surveying her world
and cramming it into her cognitive map, which mirrors the world in all its
brilliance, is rapidly becoming defunct:
may it rest in peace. So if the
Peircean terms, representamen, object, and interpretant remain foreign, at
least they have etched some trace or other on your mind. Let them grow on you, and you on them, as
both of us attempt to proceed through the remainder of this journey.
In
the second place, I would suggest that an initial and tentative understanding
of Peirce, like our trying to understand a radically distinct language,
culture, religion, philosophy, artistic mode, or scientific theory, requires a
certain "shock." I believe a
"shock" of sorts of necessary.
Of recent, in academic circles and out, we have been deluged with a
mind-numbing array of presumed oppositions:
relativism versus absolute truth, idealism versus realism, subjectivity versus objectivity, chance
versus necessity, indeterminacy versus predictability, and so on. We are usually enticed, coerced, or
indoctrinated into thinking it is a matter of embracing either one term or the
other. For if not, we will certainly be
left with conceptual mush (anarchy, nihilism, an "everything goes"
malaise). In other words, the push is
more often than not to engage in binary thinking. For the reasons given in the previous pair of chapters, Saussure
can quite conveniently be interpreted along the lines of such either-or imperatives. This can also engender a smug, condescending
view of other peoples and other cultures when the analyst sees the
other in terms of her/his own
culture, social class, or lifestyle, and analyzes it accordingly.
As a
consequence, there are some scholars who pass themselves off as structuralists
or semiologists or poststructuralists—and even semioticists—and proceed, at
times pompously, to analyze and reveal what was supposedly hitherto concealed
from the average (i.e. unaware, uneducated) folks. They pass judgment on political institutions, theological or ideological
dogmas, the advertising media, and so on, as if with some special divinatory
power they could see what is invisible to the general populace. On the other side of the ledger, some
well-intentioned but rather lax disciples of Derrida gleefully and
irresponsibly romp in the sporadic field of floating Saussurean signifiers,
quite confident that they belong to that privileged club of intellectuals
capable of interpreting all texts as misinterpretations upon demonstrating that
there are no legitimate interpretations.
Admittedly,
many scholars have usually been responsible citizens: Derrida himself, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Claude
Lévi-Strauss, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jean-François Lyotard, and
others. My sweeping judgment regarding today's
academic milieu was to make a point, which is this. On the one hand, between the Scylla of one pole of the above set
of oppositions and the Charybdis of the other, there is more often than not
little communication and few concessions.
On the other hand, Peirce's triadology, and most particular, his notion
of the interpretant, seem to suggest that it is possible to steer a mediary course, in the process opening
new doors of perception and conception.
This is not to say that opposites can be united into a harmonious,
conjugal embrace. It is to say that
although the tension, the struggles, the imbalance and asymmetry of the
oppositions remain, they potentially afford a glimpse into the forces that
motivate both sides of the equation.
The fact of the matter is that when bouncing signs back and forth during
our daily affairs, more often than not we understand much of what we hear, we
sort of slither and slide through the rest, and we usually get along
swimmingly, as if we knew what we were doing all along. It is as if we were tacitly capable of
overcoming the double-bind character of the oppositions while hardly giving
them any mind.
In
this light, perhaps you have now been at least mildly shaken from your slumber
regarding what signs are all about and what you expected to encounter in this
essay. If you have, then I accomplished
my initial goal of setting the "proper mood."
So
much for the preliminary salad on Peirce on the sign. Now for a plate of meat and potatoes.
NOT A MATTER OF THREE, BUT THREES
Since,
as Peirce tells us, virtually anything can be a sign, though there must be
something about it that is other than a sign, his definition of a sign must
indeed be of the most general sort. It
is not simply a matter of the questions "What is a sign?" but rather, "What is it like to become a sign?"
Peirce
in this manner lifted the study of signs to a new level. Anything may function as a sign. However, signs are not special kinds of
things, but rather, anything is a sign insofar as it manifests sign functions,
which I have defined in terms of interdependency,
interrelatedness, and interaction. I have already expressed my displeasure with the notion of standing for (as well as referring and corresponding to and representing). More properly, a sign is interrelated with something (its
object), but it is also interrelated with
the someone processing it, and to whatever it is processed into (its
interpretant), which in turn becomes another sign by way of its triadic
relations with the sign, the object, and the interpreter. In 1902 Peirce defined a sign as
"anything that determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an
object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant
becoming in turn a sign, and so on ad
infinitum" (CP:2.303;
brackets mine).
Let
me offer an example. A sign, or
representamen as it were, say, the word "cross," relates to
(signifies) a general interpretant (toughly concept, meaning) of the sign
within a particular religious community regarding conventional ceremonies and
everyday life.[10] The function of the sign and interpretant remains incomplete
unless there is interrelatedness with an object. Suppose the object is a particular cross in some chapel with which you are familiar. Upon the sign and interpretant being
interrelated with their object, the interpretant (which mediates between the
sign and its object) becomes in its own turn another sign (representamen)
within this particular context in this chapel. The sign then engenders its own interpretant regarding this activity within this context. And as the formal religious ceremony proceeds, at each and every
juncture the sign (representamen), its interpretant, and its object take in a
successive string of different (translated)
countenances as they become something other
than what they were during the moment of their
antecedent signness. In other words,
with each verbal evocation, "cross," with each furtive glance at the cross "out there," and with
each feeling or thought of the cross as a sign of religious activity and
religious signification, whether engendered from the object (cross), from a previous instantiation of
the word "cross," or from the interpretant (feeling or
thought--meaning), becomes another sign.
In
this sense, and given the thrust of this essay, I would slightly rephrase
Peirce's definition of the sign as:
ANYTHING THAT IS INTERDEPENDENT
UPON, AND INTERRELATED AND INTERACTIVE WITH, ITS INTERPRETANT IN
SUCH A MANNER THAT THAT INTERPRETANT IS INTERDEPENDENT
UPON AND INTERRELATED AND INTERACTIVE WITH THE OBJECT OF THE SIGN
IN THE SAME WAY THE SIGN IS INTERDEPENDENT
UPON AND INTERRELATED AND INTERACTIVE WITH IT, SUCH INTERDEPENDENCY, INTERRELATION, AND INTERACTION
SERVING TO ENGENDER ANOTHER SIGN FROM THE INTERPRETANT, AND THE PROCESS
CONTINUES, WITHOUT END.
In
this re-definition, I have still taken my cue once again from Peirce, who
writes: "The essential function of
a sign is to render inefficient relations efficient.... Knowledge in some way renders them
efficient; and a sign is something by knowing which we know something
more" (CP:8.332). Ideas and thoughts themselves are signs,
thus as sign-events in the world and feeling-signs and thought-signs in the mind multiply and grow, so also
knowledge. The concept of semiosis, process rather than product,
interrelations rather than things, is wider and more encompassing than representation. And, since semiosis implies mediation,
it is deeper and more comprehensive than the derivation of meaning or interpretation. At the risk of repeating myself
inordinately, I might add that engendering and processing signs and making them
meaningful is much more than merely getting information out of them or making
sense of them. It is a matter of an
interplay between what Peirce's categories, as summarily defined above.
Now
for a crucial question.
WHAT IS THERE OTHER THAN WHAT IS PERCEIVED AND
CONCEIVED AS A SIGN?
If,
as Peirce speculated, everything that is consists of signs, then what is there
from within which signs become signs, what constitutes the ground upon which
the semiosic process does its
thing? A sticky question. Yet an intriguing question. Allow me the liberty of alluding to Peirce's
three sign types, icons, indices, and symbols, in formulating a possible
response.
Assume
we have apple image in mind, which appears in the guise of an image or
icon. If we put the image in the form
of an utterance we have "This is an apple." We have the "This" as an index that draws our attention
to the icon. And we have
"apple" as a solitary symbol in search of a sentence and a text in
order that its function as symbol may be brought to fruition. This symbol, "apple," interacts
with the index and the icon through the "This is a" to compose a
sentence, a composite symbol.
With
this in mind, we might say that (1) the icon is in the image of, a schematic diagram that depicts, or is similar to, something (a positivity, or
a sign), (2) the index relates to something in terms of what the icon is not (negativity, or a semiotic
object), and (3) the potential interpretant of the sign brings the is and the is not together and mediates
between them in such a way that there is both
the is and the is not and at the same
time there is neither the is nor the is not. We see the apple image as an apple while deep down we know full well
that the image itself is not an apple
but the interdependent, interrelated, interaction (in the traditional term, "representation")
of our apple image with an apple. We can talk interminably about this apple
image and any number of absent apple images and actual apples and the word "apple" and other words having to do
with "apples" and so on. Or
an actual "Jonathan apple"
can become a sign of something else entirely.
It can become a symbol for pedagogical purposes in elementary school
classroom, it can be a candidate for a cook book, it can relate to folklore,
and as such it is doubly not merely an apple or an "apple" but enters
into an entirely different field of discourse.
We can do all this and more, and then more, virtually without end. And we may become increasingly confused in
the process. We no longer know we know
but know many ways in which we perhaps know not
but we are not really sure because the not
is now many steps removed from that most fundamental initial not.
So, finally, let us return to that fundamental not--as if we could, but we can't, yet let's suppose we can.
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If
the icon is like something or other,
a positivity, and the index is not
what the icon is, a negativity, then
let us provisionally call the is and
the is not "+" and
"-" for the purpose of illustration.
If the sign emerges out of "emptiness," out of
"nothingness," or "no-thingness,"
then it enters into the range of anticipations and expectations and hopes and
desires and fears. It is initially
experienced as "some-thing"
that is like "some-thing"
else that might bring on pleasantness or unpleasantness, depending upon the experiencer
and the context. But now we are a far
cry from mere "emptiness." It
is like going from zero, 0, to the empty set, . Zero is
just zero. It is emptied of everything,
including even the mere memory of numbers.
The empty set, in contrast, is just that: something that happens to be empty. It is the "noticed absence" of something that was or
could have been or might possibly be there partially or wholly to fill the
unoccupied container. So we have
"pure emptiness" and the "noticed absence" of somethingness
and the plus (a icon sign) and the minus (the sign's object). What has been left out of the picture is the
sign's interpretant. The icon (or sign
or representamen) as Firstness and the index (or semiotic object) as Secondness
needs a symbol (or interpretant) to perform the role of Thirdness, of mediation.
Consider,
in this light, and with respect to Figure 3, -1, which is given the label, i, by mathematicians.
The sign, "-1," embodies what is and what is not,
without any possibility of deciding which should be foregrounded and which
backgrounded. There can be only
oscillation between two contradictory values.
The sign, i, on the other
hand, just is what it is, neither positive nor
negative and also in the same breath both
positive and negative. By the same token the role of the
interpretant, as mediator and moderator and media minimizing agent,
is, in and of its own accord, neither
positive nor negative and at the same
time both positive and negative.
"Now
how can there be such illogic if interpretants, meaning, interpretation, always
entail slapping some sort of prioritized, privileged, hierarchized,
prejudicial, discriminatory value on any and all signs by way of logical
justification and rational legitimation?"
I
would suggest that in spite of our wish for logical cogency and rational
aplomb, we invariably fall into inconsistencies at one step or another in the
long walk of our everyday affairs. That
is what makes us human, perhaps all too human.
And occasionally quite unfortunately so. But let's try to leave our humanity behind for a moment and let
ourselves simply be; ... no, that's not right, let ourselves become in the
process of becoming, let ourselves go, just let go. Upon our so doing,
nothing has any real, existent, necessary, biased self-seeking, self-indulgent,
ego-centered value. There is nothing,
no-thing at all, for everything,
every-thing is mere possibility; that
is, every-thing just is or is possibly in the process of becoming, without any-thing having actually become. It is all like i. Better still, let us
conjure up an alternate sign for i,
say, this: "". Now
let us take another look at Figure 3.
What is in the positive sense
is related to what is not in the
negative sense, though under other circumstances the is not could have been the is
and the is the is not. The positivity and
the negativity are given an undecidable oscillatory "+/-/+/-/+/-... n" value at the core of the sign
map where "" lies, which just is. It is neither positive nor negative and at the same time it is both positive and
negative. The "" is comparable, if I might suggest, to T. S.
Eliot's "still point" about which the dance unfolds:
Neither from nor towards; at
the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor
movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are
gathered....
... Except for the point, the still point.
There would be no dance, and
there is only the dance. (Eliot 1943:143)
In the timeless "still point," "," about which gyrate "+,"
"-," and "," we have, then, the counterparts to
"Emptiness" (0), the "Empty set" (), and Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness,
Peirce's three categories.
"Quaint, but
inordinately abstract," I overhear someone quip.
Yes. I'm afraid it might look that way. But please bear with me, for I believe this
apparently vacuous map of the sign is actually quite germane to the topic at
hand.
In
the first place, the map is necessary, for the sign cannot emerge from mere
"emptiness." The semiotic
agent must already have some notion or other of what has been in the past and
what might be in the present and what the future possibly or probably holds in
store. This involves anticipations and
expectations and hopes and desires and fears regarding the "noticed
absence," the "empty set" to be filled with one or more of the
virtually unlimited range of superposed possibilities. In other words, in our above example, the
apple is an apple, because "An apple (icon or image) is an 'apple' (a symbol) is
an apple (as indexed) is an apple
(the actual article)." But at the
same time it is not an apple, since
"An 'apple' (symbol) is not an
apple (icon or image) is not an apple
(as indexed)." So we have the plus
side and the minus side. But there is
no solution to the quandary regarding what is
and what is not, at least within this
most primitive of domains, unless we consult , which, like i,
is neither the one nor the other and both the one and the
other. In any event, we see that the not cannot be absent in the sign
processing. Given the not, we must concede that nothing is
fixed and everything is impermanent.
All is flux, including identity and self-identity, even including the
"I" or self.[11]
Actually
the Buddhist sage tells us so much, if I might say so. He tells us that the notion of impermanence
implies that there is no fixed self or self-identity, no persistent subject
that knows or object that is known. The
hopeful idea of a fixed, rugged, hell-bent-for-leather individual self is a
pipe dream, illusion, another way of saying maya--in
Buddhism the intellection of reality that is far removed from the
"real" and has no "reality." Obsession with the idea of a separate self, captain of its own
ship, clawing and punching and scratching for "what's in it for me"
with little regard for anyone else or the world, is a dead-end alley. What's in the present meditation on signs
for all of us is the suggestion that the self is in an incessant process of
emerging as is the world plus the self, the world minus the self, the world and
the self as . The self,
the ego, the "I", has no real independent existence. Rather, it
is perpetually in the process of emerging
codependently with the emergence
of everything else. In essence there is
no essence, matter is of no matter, and never mind mind, for there are no
grounds for any of all that, there is only 0 and and + and -, all of which makes up -1, which we have incorporated into . Our groping
for permanent grounds or for anything else of durable countenance can only end
in frustration.
Hence,
"'Is not an apple' is not an apple." A distinction is made between a sign and
what it is not. It is
not an apple. O.K. The distinction comes to the fore. Since it is
not an apple, the meaning isn't in
the apple. Since the "This" is not an apple, meaning isn't in the index. Since "pipe" is
not an apple, meaning isn't in
the sign. We can even extrapolate from
the self-reflecting predicate to surmise that since the apple image is not an apple, meaning isn't in the
image or icon. If there is quite
obviously no apple in the head or in the world except that the head of
some semiotic agent and some event in the world codependently arise as a
apple-event, then meaning isn't in
the head either. Meaning is neither seen nor read nor is it in the head. It just is, it is . It is in
the mediated interrelations, the pattern, the patterning.[12]
WRAPPING IT UP
I
would hope that the "presemiotic" 0, , and , along with the idea of interdependent, interrelated,
interactive mediated patterning at
the heart of all semiotic practices, gives a sense of the all-encompassing
Peircean sign in contrast to semiology, given its "linguicentrically"
laden Saussurean sign. This presents
possibilities for the study of literature and the arts, that, first and
foremost, place a spotlight on the iconic and indexical facets, the Firstness
and Secondness, of the semiosic process. The Peircean sign emphasizes extralinguistic
meaning that is felt before it is explicitly acknowledged, sensed before it is
articulated, tacitly experienced before it is conceptualized. It is Firstness and Secondness before it is
Thirdness. Without feeling and sensing
and experiencing the sign before acknowledging it and articulating it as a sign
set off and against other signs, as a sign of something or other, and as a sign
endowed with such-and-such a set of characteristics, that sign cannot but
remain impoverished, hardly more than just one more word among words, a naked
signifier without a signified, a mere simulacrum among simulacra.
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