Peet Lepik
Universals in the Context of Juri Lotman's Semiotics

2008

Series: Tartu Semiotics Library 7
Format: Paperback 270 pp
Publisher: Tartu University Press
ISBN: 9789949118311

Available in Krisostomus.

Abstract
Contents

The peculiarities of the storing and mediating of information can be characterized using the parameters of reflection capacity, its specifics and development (human and social psychology, and education theory), via the transmission and feedback mechanisms of information (informatics), using the terms for guiding, influencing and manipulating society (management theory, political science, advertising), in an historic-cultural manner, etc. In this monograph, the author examines the storing and mediating mechanisms of information as intellect-based, sign-creating algorithms - i.e. formal entities, which can be interpreted as universals.

In implementing the criteria of Porphyrios's eternally durable classification, it could be claimed that the author, together with Juri Lotman, treat universals in the spirit of conceptualism. In other words it means that a Person in this conception is an object to whom a collection of formal characteristics is attributed that is common to all single individuals, which expresses the understanding of any person whatsoever. A Person is identical to this collection.

And so this book concentrates on describing the universal characteristics of the intellect, as the apriority mechanism that stores, organizes and transmits information. Of these characteristics, five universal algorithms (communicative functions) of the intellect, which are textually realized as mythological, magical, religious, antithetic and metaphorical code-signals, are examined more closely.

The constructive components of the concept of code signal are (1) the phenomenological concept of the intellect; (2) the category of code-text; (3) the category of ritual, and (4) treating text as a signal. Observing intellect and text on the same level proceeds from Lotman's postulate according to which intellect, text and culture are "vertically isomorphic" on the basis of four characteristics, which are the linguistic heterogeneity of all three, the existence of memory, the capacity for the self-reproduction of meanings, and the functioning of a selection block that regulates communication.

Mythological, magical, and other relevant code signals are speech phenomena, and therefore it is not magic, religion, etc that are analyzed in this book but magicality, religiosity, metaphoricality, etc as the base structures of semiosis and communication. They are base structures due to their prominent role in the reproductive processes of the intellect.

All five intellectual algorithms, as code signals, are a sign-creating system, where ritual and rituality are the ancient textual equivalents. All code signals, as becomes apparent, are explicitly exhibited in ritual, and form a system of communicative functions. It is most important here to note that it was delving into the structure of ritual in particular that permitted the author to answer the question: what guarantees the durability of code signals as the constructive elements of culture and (in a narrower sense), of representation and communication.

The author's conception was initially inspired by Juri Lotman's three lectures, which have been published for the first time as an appendix to this book.

Keywords: cultural semiotics, Lotman, intellect, algorithms of intellect, semiotic universals, reproductive communication, code signal, magicality, mythologicality, religiousness, antitheticity, metaphoricality, rituality.



Foreword ......................................................................................................................................... 11
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 14

1. Universals in connection with the interpretation of magic in Juri Lotman's semiotics ............................. 18
    1.1. Points of departure for the interpretation of universals ............................................................... 18
    1.2. Two opposing interpretations ................................................................................................... 26

2. Specifics of mythological and magical semiosis ................................................................................ 35
    2.1. Basic terms ........................................................................................................................... 35
    2.2. Mythological semiosis ............................................................................................................. 45
    2.3. Magical semiosis .................................................................................................................... 48
        2.3.1. The epistemological status of magic .................................................................................. 48
        2.3.2. Magical procedure ........................................................................................................... 49
        2.3.3. Agens as a mythological structure ..................................................................................... 51
        2.3.4. Agens as a magical structure ............................................................................................ 53
            2.3.4.1. Phenomenon of the magician ..................................................................................... 54
            2.3.4.2. Problem of magical effect .......................................................................................... 54

3. Antithesis in culture and sign-creation .............................................................................................. 57
     3.1. Determining of the viewpoint ................................................................................................... 57
     3.2. Semiosis forms the culture type ............................................................................................... 61
        3.2.1. The antithetic dominant of semiosis .................................................................................... 63
            3.2.1.1. Complementarity of the antithetic cultural space ............................................................ 67
            3.2.1.2. Principle of symmetry ................................................................................................. 70
            3.2.1.3. Symmetrical reduction ................................................................................................ 74
            3.2.1.4. Mirror projection ........................................................................................................ 77
            3.2.1.5. Enantiomorphic symmetry ........................................................................................... 79
         3.2.2. Autocommunication of culture: antithetic self-reflection ........................................................ 83
            3.2.2.1. Antithesis as a secondary code of autocommunication .................................................... 84

4. The uniqueness and universality of magic in culture ........................................................................... 87
     4.1. Viewpoint and tasks ................................................................................................................ 87
     4.2. Paradox of magic in culture ..................................................................................................... 87
     4.3. Magic outside "folklore" (Selection of critical glances) ................................................................. 93
         4.3.1. Characteristics of "magical" behaviour in a child's ontogeny ................................................. 94
         4.3.2. Magic as everyday spontaneous behavioural practice .......................................................... 95
         4.3.3. Connecting magic with the characteristics of natural language .............................................. 97
            4.3.3.1. Defining magical function using terms from the act of linguistic communication) ............... 97
            4.3.3.2. Magicality of verbal representation ............................................................................. 101
            4.3.3.3. Magicality of the substance of language ...................................................................... 104
         4.3.4. Cultural-semiotic interpretation of magic: Juri Lotman's points of departure ......................... 108
            4.3.4.1. Structure-typological point of view .............................................................................. 110
            4.3.4.2. Phenomenological viewpoint ...................................................................................... 117
                4.3.4.2.1. Phenomenological correlates of Edmund Husserl ................................................... 117
                4.3.4.2.2. Universality and uniqueness of the reproductive communication of the intellect (using magicality as an example) ................................................................................................................ 129
    4.4. In conclusion on the analysis of magic in the "Lectures" ............................................................ 136

5. Universal forms of the reproductivity of intellect ............................................................................... 140
    5.1. Terminological classification of reproductivity ............................................................................ 140
     5.2. Constitutive reproductivity ...................................................................................................... 142
         5.2.1. Phenomenon of vertical isomorphism ............................................................................... 143
         5.2.2. The phenomenological criticism of Aleksandr Pyatigorski's viewpoint ................................... 146
            5.2.2.1. "Ontologization" of the research method ..................................................................... 148
            5.2.2.2. "Naturalizing" the object of analysis ............................................................................ 154
            5.2.2.3. Semiotics changing into "almost philosophy" ................................................................ 159
     5.3. The analytical and generative forms of the reproductivity of the intellect ..................................... 161
         5.3.1. The analyticality of reproductive behaviour ....................................................................... 161
            5.3.1.1. Ritual and ritualizing reproductivity ............................................................................. 163
            5.3.1.2. Reproductivity of ritual communication ........................................................................ 170
         5.3.2. The universal, generative functions of ritual ...................................................................... 176
            5.3.2.1. Ritual and code text .................................................................................................. 191
            5.3.2.2. The concept and structure of code signal ..................................................................... 197
            5.3.2.3. Code text and code signal .......................................................................................... 208

Summary ......................................................................................................................................... 213
Appendix: Juri Lotman. Semiotics of personality and society ................................................................. 219
References ...................................................................................................................................... 239
Index .............................................................................................................................................. 260