As a researcher in Indian literarures, languages and cultures, my interest in Semiotics of Culture as a theoretical framework developed by the scholars of the Tartu- Moscow School of semiotics especially Juri Lotman ( 1922-1993) stems from the fact that it:
I) Sees meaning as being essentially
‘translational’ and ‘culture’ as essentially multilingual by underscoring
the fact that no meaning-making system can exist in isolation or can be
autonomous ( in contrast to Saussure) ……this core assumption
makes it pertinent to Indian society which is mindbogglingly diverse and
multilingual
II) sees
literature (printed or oral or performative) as belonging to a expansive category
of artistic texts thus going beyond the restrictive and colonial
print-centric view of literature ..it can allow us to understand the
dialogic and translational exchanges between the printed or oral literary
texts and texts from cinema, paintings,
dance or music
III) is of significant theoretical relevance
to Comparative Indian Literatures. The notion
of vertical isomorphism of the semiospheres existing in dialogic interactions
with each other at multiple levels allows us to conceptualize a
heterogeneous and stochastic ‘Indian semiosphere’ ( and consequently Indian
literatures as being generated by the Indian semiosphere)made up of multiple semiospheres
like ‘Marathi’ or “Gujarati’ semiospheres and these semiospheres can be
conceptualized as being heterogeneous and stochastic in their own right,
interacting dialogically with one another, different spaces within and interacting
dialogically with cultural traditions and cultural histories that are
neither specific to Marathi nor Gujarati (Sanskrit, Prakrit, Perso-Arabic, European, Chinese, and so on).
The notion of semiosphere can also equip us to describe the cultural mechanisms underlying what Dionyz Durisin terms ' interliterary processes'.
The notion of semiosphere can also equip us to describe the cultural mechanisms underlying what Dionyz Durisin terms ' interliterary processes'.
Similarly
one can conceptualize ‘South Asian Semiosphere’ or ‘Asian Semiosphere’ or a
Planetary Semiosphere that generates ‘ world literature’.
One can also understand gender, class and caste as semiospheres.
One can also understand gender, class and caste as semiospheres.
IV) is a
radical model of cultural historiography
a) It sees
cultural historiography itself as a narrative and translational
activity involving retrospective narrative reconstruction (translation) of
cultural history (which is primarily unpredictable and irreversible) into the explanatory
languages of the present ( e.g Habermasian sociology , Butler’s gender
studies, Foucauldian analysis of discourse, governmentality or biopolitics )
b) it is a
model of cultural change that highlights differential and non-linear modes of
development of the diverse co-existing meaning-making systems…for
instance fashion, food and caste change at differential rates and poetry using
the poetics of the 1940s ( the Ravi-Kiran Mandal lyricism ) can co-exist with
the poetry using the avant-garde poetics of 60s in Marathi
c) It is a
model of cultural change that views mechanisms of cultural change as being
primarily ‘translational’….. it views the underlying mechanism in the generation of ‘the
new’ as being translational
V) It
provides tools and ideas for practical criticism of texts and their contexts
The notions of semantic tropes, ‘the
text-within-text, plot , the idea of symbol as plot-gene, continuous- discrete ( visual to verbal) dialogics and
so on.
VI)
The
mainstream academic cultural studies in India due to its excessive reliance on
French, American and British theories (which are monolingual, deterministic in
orientation) has failed to come to terms with multilingual and chaotic social
and cultural realities of India .
Its lack of critical self awareness can be seen in the
fact that as it criticizes modernity ( with the ideas of nation or science) as
being universalist, Euro-centric and elite on the one hand it has no issues uncritically accepting ‘ Critical Theory’ whose roots go back to
Frankfurt or Birmingham or Paris as if they are non-universalist,
non-Eurocentric and non-elite.
The
mainstream academic cultural studies have become reductive as it sees ‘political
interpretation’ as the absolute horizon for all interpretation’ (as Jameson
puts it)…. and extremely predictable almost conventional. However the conceptualization of culture in
semiotics of culture subsumes the
political as it sees cultural as fundamentally i) heterogeneous ii) asymmetrical
iii) chaotically dynamic and iv) constructivist in terms of epistemology and
cognition (seeing semiotic systems as ‘modelling’ systems)…in a sense subsumes
political to the cultural rather than reduce the cultural to the political.
My Articles using Semiotics of Culture for Indian literatures :
i) Indian Writing in English
ii) Indian Poetry in English
iii) Namdeo Dhasal and Dalit Literature
iv) Modern and Modernism in Gujarati
v) Avant-garde Gujarati literature
vi) Poetics and Politics of Self-translation
My Articles using Semiotics of Culture for Indian literatures :
i) Indian Writing in English
ii) Indian Poetry in English
iii) Namdeo Dhasal and Dalit Literature
iv) Modern and Modernism in Gujarati
v) Avant-garde Gujarati literature
vi) Poetics and Politics of Self-translation
--- “On the semiosphere.” Translated by Wilma Clark.
Sign Systems Studies 33.1, 2005
---‘ The
Text within the Text’ . (1981) Trans. Jerry Leo, Amy Mandelker , PMLA, Vol.
109, No. 3 (May, 1994), pp. 377-384
---“
Technological Progress as a Problem in the Study of Culture”, trans. Ilana Gomel Poetics Today, Duke University
Press Vol. 12, No. 4, National Literatures/Social Spaces (winter, 1991), pp.
781-800.
---Universe of the Mind. A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington/ Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press. 1990.
---‘Culture
as Collective Intellect And Problems Of Artificial Intelligence’, trans. Ann
Shukman, Russian Poetics in Translati0n,
No. 6, 1979, pp 84-96
---‘ The
Poetics of Everyday Behaviour in the Eighteenth Century Russian Culture’,
Translated by Andrea Beesing from “Poetika bytovogo povedeniia v russkoi
kul’ture XVIII veka,” Trudy po znakovym sistemam, no.8 (Tartu, 1977), pp.65-89.
1 comment:
hello sir my name is shweta verma sr i wen tthrough your blogs they are really very informative and up to date sir i am a phd scholar who is doing research on body metaphor and modernity and for this i have taken into consideration helene cixous's theory of ecriture feminine which i am applying on the novels of 18th century writers like elizabeth gaskell and george eliot sir can u provide me some matter or links about helen cixous and how can this theory be applied on 18th century novels .
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