Thursday, December 8, 2022

Autumn Semiosalong 2022: Semiotics of Space

 


Does semiosis imply the existence of subjective space? What about physical space? Many have used the notion of space in a somewhat metaphorical manner, from Umberto Eco’s “C-space” to Juri Lotman’s “semiosphere”. Yet, if we are to talk about truly lived and everyday experience, space must be examined in a deeper way than just as a useful metaphor. Semiotics of space is concerned with communication practices on the ground and overlaps with urban studies, mostly through anthropology and sociology; but ‘inner space’ may also be interrogated at a more abstract level. Luis Prieto suggests that the identity of the personal subject depends on recognition of the non-subject – there is something which the subject cannot be, but brings it into being by negating the space of the subject’s own body. This non-subject body space becomes a terrain open to interpretation. The social semiotics of space emphasizes pragmatics, whereas Prieto’s linguistic semiotics of space is more concerned with syntactics and semantics. There are many ways to divide the inquiry, and there are numerous specialists in the semiotics of this topic, most notably for us the late Pierre Pellegrino – to whom this Semiosalong series is dedicated – but also a couple others who will speak to us during this series, about their current research. We invite all participants to reflect upon the abstract nature of subjectivity as well to engage with street-level social semiotics by joining us in the online space for the latest Semiosalong series, starting from October 27th, 2022.

October 27th: Grand opening of the International Semiotics Institute in Olomouc, and Josep Muntañola

November 10th: Heidi Campana Piva, Viktorija Rimaitė-Beržiūnienė, and Federico Bellentani

November 24th: Daria Arkhipova, Tiit Remm, and Olga Lavrenova

December 8th: Oleksii Popovich and João Queiroz


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