Laura Gherlone
Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, Centro de Estudios de Literatura Comparada "María Teresa Maiorana", Collaborator-researcher
Laura Gherlone
lauragherlone@uca.edu.ar
https://uca.edu.ar/es/facultad-de-filosofia-y-letras/investigacion/institutos-y-centros/centro-de-estudios-de-literatura-comparada/investigadores
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0117-1077
ResearcherID: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/O-9786-2018
Key words of my research area: cultural studies; cultural semiotics; Juri Lotman; literary theory and comparative literature; Postcolonial/Decolonial; Soviet/Post-soviet; spatial turn; cultural affect theory; (digital) decoloniality; ecocriticism.
I am a researcher in semiotics of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) of Argentina, and I am an adjunct professor of Russian Literature at the Center for Comparative Literature of the Catholic University of Argentina, Buenos Aires.
Before Argentina, I was a researcher in Italy.
I am interested in four lines of research:
1. the relationship between space, emotions and decoloniality and their connection with the ecocritical perspective (Anthropocene).
2. the rereading of the late Lotman in light of the affective, spatial, and decolonial turn;
3. the relationship between post- and decolonial thought and the Soviet and post-Soviet experience;
4. the elaboration of a theoretical-ethical framework related to digital decoloniality.
lauragherlone@uca.edu.ar
https://uca.edu.ar/es/facultad-de-filosofia-y-letras/investigacion/institutos-y-centros/centro-de-estudios-de-literatura-comparada/investigadores
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0117-1077
ResearcherID: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/O-9786-2018
Key words of my research area: cultural studies; cultural semiotics; Juri Lotman; literary theory and comparative literature; Postcolonial/Decolonial; Soviet/Post-soviet; spatial turn; cultural affect theory; (digital) decoloniality; ecocriticism.
I am a researcher in semiotics of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) of Argentina, and I am an adjunct professor of Russian Literature at the Center for Comparative Literature of the Catholic University of Argentina, Buenos Aires.
Before Argentina, I was a researcher in Italy.
I am interested in four lines of research:
1. the relationship between space, emotions and decoloniality and their connection with the ecocritical perspective (Anthropocene).
2. the rereading of the late Lotman in light of the affective, spatial, and decolonial turn;
3. the relationship between post- and decolonial thought and the Soviet and post-Soviet experience;
4. the elaboration of a theoretical-ethical framework related to digital decoloniality.
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (10)
Uploads
Papers in English by Laura Gherlone
While addressing the decolonial critique of Eurocentric modernity and the call for alternative cosmo-visions, this article retraces Juri Lotman's culturological exploration towards the concept of ternarity [тернарность]: the scrutiny of the so-called binarism is what connects-without overlapping-the two perspectives. This long-distance dialogue will be built starting with the key notion of binary opposition, which will be analysed as a decolonial problem (Part I) and as a culturological problem (Part II). The analysis will focus on two central issues that stem from the either-or logic: the "othering mindset", and the culture-nature dualism.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2022.2157172
The topic of borders is an active research area in Lotmanian studies. Starting from this scholarship, the article aims to open up fresh possibilities for interpretation of Lotman's spatial-driven theory, making it dialogue with the cultural affect studies and the current communication-focused research on the digital sphere. This theoretical framework underpins the case study covered in the essay, that is, the linguistic analysis of online narratives on migration during the COVID-19 pandemica prolonged situation of high-intensity relational affect in which emotions played a pivotal (agentive) role in the perception of a widespread and multidimensional crisis. Argentina is the cultural milieu of sociosemiotic scrutiny, in which distant reading and close reading cross-pollinate each other.
See the entire issue here: https://www.aracneeditrice.eu/it/pubblicazioni/lexia-rivista-di-semiotica-re-thinking-massimo-leone-laura-gherlone-remo-gramigna-9791221804263.html
In this paper I intend to retrace Yuri Lotman’s intellectual journey to develop the idea of propaedeutics. I will highlight how his fascination with the hard sciences led the Russian semiotician to adopt at first a highly formal approach to human language studies (and, in particular, to verbal artwork), and then to progressively abandon this perspective in order to embrace the idea of interrelatedness. It was this switch that allowed him to develop a genuinely interdisciplinary thought, seeing semiotics as a propaedeutic approach to the world, i.e., as a predisposition of thought able to grasp the intimate bond that unites things in their wholeness—a sort of “semiospheric” pre-understanding of the world (open and never finished in itself), producing and at the same time feeding back knowledge which is necessary for integrally understanding and diagnosticating reality. It is no coincidence that Lotman, in the last years of his life, glimpsed the future of semiotics in another concept, always drawn from the Greek tradition, in which the idea of a “preparatory attitude” to knowledge with pedagogical-formative implications is likewise embedded: the Socratic maieutics, through which, he pointed out (Lotman 2005 [1988]: 442), « [w]e will rediscover the culture of the conversation, the dialogical form of the pursuit of truth », thus breathing new life into communication between people—one of the great challenges of our time.
This is an expanded version of GHERLONE Laura, “Siguiendo los pasos de la Escuela Semiótica de Moscú-Tartu/Tartu-Moscú. Evaluaciones y perspectivas”, ESLAVIA, № 1 (mayo), Buenos Aires: Editorial Sociedad Argentina Dostoievski, 2018, ISSN 2618-2440.
This paper would like to retrace the Russian semiotician’s footsteps, from the receipt of the structural-linguistic heritage to the theorization of a science of signs, just trying to cast light on that crossroads that led him to explorer scientific unpredictable paths. We can already now state that the acknowledgment of this alterity – the various ways through which human though creates the language of science: myth, art, mathematics and logic, etc. – guarded Lotman against the risk of a self-retreating of semiotics, thus enabling him to theorize models of culture more and more suited to express the complexity of the real, prismatic like the different languages of the world of sciences.
As also pointed out by Yuri M. Lotman and Boris A. Uspensky, mythical thought was the first to postulate the possibility of establishing a relationship of likeness among very different realities, as in the archetypical cosmological model of world: a possibility that, as they explain, has survived in post-archaic man, constituting a fundamental component of cognitive activity and scientific modelling.
The article is dedicated to the use of analogy in Lotmanian semiotic theorization and to its heuristic and epistemological value.
In his last work, Unpredictable Mechanisms of Culture, Lotman underlines that natural sciences and humanities have to search for the unity of the incompatible through a profound meta-linguistic dialogue. This can happen only considering the reality in its antinomies, or as informed by a plurality of languages reciprocally aimed to express the real movement of objects – a heterogeneous and contradictory movement: hence, Lotman’s suggestion (which is also his ethical legacy) that the Aristotelian polyhedral unity of science can be recovered.
The aim of this paper is to retrace Lotman’s relationship with the ideas of science, scientificity and interdisciplinary method, stressing his last reflections concerning the urgency of returning to the Aristotelian unified structure of knowledge, or a form of knowledge in which different and never completely mutually translatable scientific languages coexist autonomously, while being in a dialogue. "
Papers in Portuguese by Laura Gherlone
Since the 1940s, female voices in contemporary Italian literature have taken a wider space, marking literary productions with their own styles. However, even when regarding renowned authors (such as Natalia Levi Ginzburg or Elsa Morante), their presence is often still marginal in terms of dissemination. Most of the anthologies that deal with Italian literature from the twentieth century and the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century are limited to mentioning the artistic productions of the most well-known female writers without accounting for the broader phenomenon of women’s writing, a phenomenon with which the present contribution is concerned, in particular the Jewish narrative koine, on the anniversary of the fascist racial laws (1938).
anterior. De fato, embora houvesse uma linha temática clara de continuidade, no início dos anos 90 (devido também a seu precário estado de saúde) seu modo de exprimir e especular – cada vez mais fez uso da intuição, analogias, sugestões e memórias: explosões
reflexivas. Ele estava particularmente interessado na “linguagem” dos períodos de crise (ou de processos explosivos) de modo a entender como a humanidade podia
reconhecer e fazer sentido das transições históricas. Embora as conceptualizações de Lótman sobre o tema tenham ficado inacabadas, ele deu uma visão profética do que definiu como “fisiologia da explosão”.
While addressing the decolonial critique of Eurocentric modernity and the call for alternative cosmo-visions, this article retraces Juri Lotman's culturological exploration towards the concept of ternarity [тернарность]: the scrutiny of the so-called binarism is what connects-without overlapping-the two perspectives. This long-distance dialogue will be built starting with the key notion of binary opposition, which will be analysed as a decolonial problem (Part I) and as a culturological problem (Part II). The analysis will focus on two central issues that stem from the either-or logic: the "othering mindset", and the culture-nature dualism.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2022.2157172
The topic of borders is an active research area in Lotmanian studies. Starting from this scholarship, the article aims to open up fresh possibilities for interpretation of Lotman's spatial-driven theory, making it dialogue with the cultural affect studies and the current communication-focused research on the digital sphere. This theoretical framework underpins the case study covered in the essay, that is, the linguistic analysis of online narratives on migration during the COVID-19 pandemica prolonged situation of high-intensity relational affect in which emotions played a pivotal (agentive) role in the perception of a widespread and multidimensional crisis. Argentina is the cultural milieu of sociosemiotic scrutiny, in which distant reading and close reading cross-pollinate each other.
See the entire issue here: https://www.aracneeditrice.eu/it/pubblicazioni/lexia-rivista-di-semiotica-re-thinking-massimo-leone-laura-gherlone-remo-gramigna-9791221804263.html
In this paper I intend to retrace Yuri Lotman’s intellectual journey to develop the idea of propaedeutics. I will highlight how his fascination with the hard sciences led the Russian semiotician to adopt at first a highly formal approach to human language studies (and, in particular, to verbal artwork), and then to progressively abandon this perspective in order to embrace the idea of interrelatedness. It was this switch that allowed him to develop a genuinely interdisciplinary thought, seeing semiotics as a propaedeutic approach to the world, i.e., as a predisposition of thought able to grasp the intimate bond that unites things in their wholeness—a sort of “semiospheric” pre-understanding of the world (open and never finished in itself), producing and at the same time feeding back knowledge which is necessary for integrally understanding and diagnosticating reality. It is no coincidence that Lotman, in the last years of his life, glimpsed the future of semiotics in another concept, always drawn from the Greek tradition, in which the idea of a “preparatory attitude” to knowledge with pedagogical-formative implications is likewise embedded: the Socratic maieutics, through which, he pointed out (Lotman 2005 [1988]: 442), « [w]e will rediscover the culture of the conversation, the dialogical form of the pursuit of truth », thus breathing new life into communication between people—one of the great challenges of our time.
This is an expanded version of GHERLONE Laura, “Siguiendo los pasos de la Escuela Semiótica de Moscú-Tartu/Tartu-Moscú. Evaluaciones y perspectivas”, ESLAVIA, № 1 (mayo), Buenos Aires: Editorial Sociedad Argentina Dostoievski, 2018, ISSN 2618-2440.
This paper would like to retrace the Russian semiotician’s footsteps, from the receipt of the structural-linguistic heritage to the theorization of a science of signs, just trying to cast light on that crossroads that led him to explorer scientific unpredictable paths. We can already now state that the acknowledgment of this alterity – the various ways through which human though creates the language of science: myth, art, mathematics and logic, etc. – guarded Lotman against the risk of a self-retreating of semiotics, thus enabling him to theorize models of culture more and more suited to express the complexity of the real, prismatic like the different languages of the world of sciences.
As also pointed out by Yuri M. Lotman and Boris A. Uspensky, mythical thought was the first to postulate the possibility of establishing a relationship of likeness among very different realities, as in the archetypical cosmological model of world: a possibility that, as they explain, has survived in post-archaic man, constituting a fundamental component of cognitive activity and scientific modelling.
The article is dedicated to the use of analogy in Lotmanian semiotic theorization and to its heuristic and epistemological value.
In his last work, Unpredictable Mechanisms of Culture, Lotman underlines that natural sciences and humanities have to search for the unity of the incompatible through a profound meta-linguistic dialogue. This can happen only considering the reality in its antinomies, or as informed by a plurality of languages reciprocally aimed to express the real movement of objects – a heterogeneous and contradictory movement: hence, Lotman’s suggestion (which is also his ethical legacy) that the Aristotelian polyhedral unity of science can be recovered.
The aim of this paper is to retrace Lotman’s relationship with the ideas of science, scientificity and interdisciplinary method, stressing his last reflections concerning the urgency of returning to the Aristotelian unified structure of knowledge, or a form of knowledge in which different and never completely mutually translatable scientific languages coexist autonomously, while being in a dialogue. "
Since the 1940s, female voices in contemporary Italian literature have taken a wider space, marking literary productions with their own styles. However, even when regarding renowned authors (such as Natalia Levi Ginzburg or Elsa Morante), their presence is often still marginal in terms of dissemination. Most of the anthologies that deal with Italian literature from the twentieth century and the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century are limited to mentioning the artistic productions of the most well-known female writers without accounting for the broader phenomenon of women’s writing, a phenomenon with which the present contribution is concerned, in particular the Jewish narrative koine, on the anniversary of the fascist racial laws (1938).
anterior. De fato, embora houvesse uma linha temática clara de continuidade, no início dos anos 90 (devido também a seu precário estado de saúde) seu modo de exprimir e especular – cada vez mais fez uso da intuição, analogias, sugestões e memórias: explosões
reflexivas. Ele estava particularmente interessado na “linguagem” dos períodos de crise (ou de processos explosivos) de modo a entender como a humanidade podia
reconhecer e fazer sentido das transições históricas. Embora as conceptualizações de Lótman sobre o tema tenham ficado inacabadas, ele deu uma visão profética do que definiu como “fisiologia da explosão”.
Más específicamente, considerando aquellas investigaciones abocadas al estudio de la visualidad en el contexto de la cultura digital, nuestro abordaje propone un análisis de los mecanismos que despliegan los videojuegos de la trilogía bélica Modern Warfare, parte de la exitosa franquicia comercial Call of Duty. Nuestra argumentación sostiene que ese modo de construcción semiótica se fundamenta y debe ser comprendido con relación a formas de comprender y modelizar la guerra en el contexto de guerra al terrorismo declarada por EEUU tras los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001.
This framework will prove to be beneficial for understanding digital migration stories from the perspective of migrants and host society, considering spatial “imaginary” a key concept.
Finally, the main results of a digital ethnographic research on the topic —having Argentina as the cultural context of exploration— will be presented.
Esta trama entreteje lo que podría haber sido la línea de investigación llevada adelante por Lotman, si el tiempo se lo hubiera permitido: tras su reflexión sobre el “tiempo sígnico”, su aspiración científica era aunar la historia y la antropología con la comunicación, para comprender mejor los fenómenos de masas y, en particular, las pasiones colectivas: una perspectiva holística que incorporaría así el enfoque más cultural-antropológico con el cognitivo (la psicología de los fenómenos de masas), que Lotman había encaminado a finales de los años setenta con el estudio de la actividad cerebral humana.
Aquí me centraré en particular en la idea lotmaniana de que la historia, con sus esquemas narrativos, es parte integrante de la autoconciencia cultural, que es a la vez una forma de memoria colectiva y una forma de conocimiento del mundo (episteme). Dicha idea, puesta en relación con el concepto de “reconstrucción de lo perdido” (Lotman, 1991) se hará dialogar entonces con la teoría decolonial.
Un número especial dedicado a Iuri Lotman, con artículos inéditos en castellano sobre literatura y cultura rusas.
https://eslavia.com.ar/introduccion-2/
La atmósfera se presenta entonces como un objeto de investigación clave para entender la relación que existe entre espacio, afectos culturales y cuerpo(s) y se convierte en un terreno fecundo para profundizar la mirada descolonial en el campo de los estudios culturales.
Un número especial dedicado a Iuri Lotman, con artículos inéditos en castellano sobre literatura y cultura rusas.
https://eslavia.com.ar/
El presente artículo pretende indagar cómo, durante la explosión de la pandemia del COVID-19, la esfera digital ha proporcionado un espacio afectivo para la manifestación del dolor colectivo frente a la muerte de multitudes de personas. Se hará particular referencia a una serie de imágenes viralizadas por las redes sociales durante los meses de febrero-abril de 2020 e interpretadas a la luz de la teoría de las Pathosformeln de Aby Warburg −imágenes que, usando el rostro patético como interfaz, han hecho visible y real el drama en curso, procurando un modelo de expresión universal de la compasión−. El artículo se divide en tres partes. En primer lugar, se introducirá la idea de "cultura imago-céntrica" para plantear un rasgo saliente de las sociedades contemporáneas. En segundo lugar, se destacará la actualidad del concepto de Pathosformel (nacido originariamente en la historia del arte) para explicar la asociación imagen-emoción que caracteriza el tiempo presente. En tercer lugar, se proporcionará una interpretación de las imágenes de pathos en tiempo de COVID-19 recurriendo a la fórmula expresiva patética de la imago pietatis: un modelo visuo-afectivo "reavivado" en la contemporaneidad y capaz de universalizar y con-mover la interioridad del observador, haciendo hincapié en el dolor empático.
This article aims to investigate how, during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital sphere afforded an affective space for the manifestation of collective pain in the face of the death of multitudes of people. A special attention will be given to a series of images viralized by SNSs during February-April 2020 and interpreted in the light of Aby Warburg's theory of Pathosformeln −images which, through the mediation of the pathetic face, made visible and real the ongoing drama, providing a model of universal expression of compassion−. The article is divided into three parts. First, the idea of "image-centric culture" will be introduced to raise a salient feature of contemporary societies. Second, the topicality of the concept of Pathosformel-originally conceived within the history of art-will be highlighted in order to explain the association between image and emotion that characterizes the present age. Third, the article will provide an interpretation of the images of pathos in the time of COVID-19 through the pathetic expressive formula of the imago pietatis: a visuo-affective model "revived" in contemporaneity and able to universalize and move the interiority of the observer, placing emphasis on empathic pain.
PDF disponible en: https://scielo.conicyt.cl/pdf/universum/v35n2/0718-2376-universum-35-02-80.pdf
In contemporary culture, cyberspace is presented as a complex territory that enables unprecedented representational practices regarding the identity/otherness relationship through the digital mediation of the cognitive, corporeal, emotional and linguistic-communicative dimensions –dimensions semiotically potentiated to capture the constitutive tension between the I and the alterity. Based on the studies on digital face (Leone 2018) and on negotiation of emotions through emoji (Danesi 2016), as well as the specific connection between player, avatar and the virtual world proposed by video games, this article intends to suggest keys of interpretation in the face of the new semiotic possibilities of cyberspace, observing the issue of identity/otherness.
El objetivo de esta contribución es, entonces, el de ofrecer una reflexión sobre la interpretación que distintos representantes de la cultura rusa han dado al concepto de “espacio” y sus aplicaciones eurísticas.
La experiencia judía latinoamericana de múltiples exilios, diásporas y migraciones podría contenerse en la palabra errancia. A través de las figuras de Isaac Goldemberg, José Emilio Pacheco, Margo Glantz y Marcos Aguinis, la autora de este volumen muestra de forma inédita cómo en el acto escritural de estos autores se inscribe en esta figura. Si bien cada una de las novelas analizadas plantea una errancia particular, hay un punto en común en estos textos, y es que la escritura se vuelve una búsqueda por los recovecos de la memoria, y es allí donde el autor judío latinoamericano intenta la fundación de un espacio propio que lo contenga, cobije y otorgue pertenencia.
La presente contribución pretende ofrecer una evaluación transversal de aquel fenómeno que, dependiendo de la perspectiva histórica, geográfica-espacial y epistemológica adoptada por el observador, toma el nombre de Escuela semiótica de Moscú-Tartu o Tartu-Moscú. Una nomenclatura, en otras palabras, que está íntimamente ligada a la posición adoptada por el iniciador-testigo, el discípulo, el adherente o simplemente por el investigador interesado en estudiar el fenómeno de la "semiótica" soviética.Esta doble, y al mismo tiempo alternativa, mirada es abordada aquí como una oportunidad para hacer un balance de la multiplicidad de puntos de vista y reflexiones acerca de esta historia científica y humana de la época soviética: porque, como señala Ekaterina Velmezova, si mucho se ha escrito, aún no todo se ha dicho sobre la Escuela.
This contribution is inspired by two recently published texts: on the one hand, the speech «University, Science, Culture», written by Lotman in 1982 on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the foundation of the Tartu University (published in Lotman & Uspensky: Correspondence 1964-1993), and, on the other hand, the writing «About the Semiotics of Life and Evolution» which contains the interview conducted by Kalevi Kull to Lotman in June 1992. These two texts will introduce us to the scientific vision that underlies Lotman’s semiotic and culturological theory, with particular attention to his late scientific production.
El “primer” Lotman, más ligado a la experiencia formalista y estructuralista, es ciertamente lo que ha arraigado más en dichos ambientes, aunque dicho éxito haga referencia a un período limitado y no exhaustivo de su parábola teórico-intelectual: parábola que, desde los años ochenta, y, en particular, durante el trienio 1990-1993, presenta notables cambios, poco conocidos por vía de la escasez de traducciones.
La presente contribución tiene como segundo objetivo el de ofrecer también una visión panorámica del “último” Lotman y del rico corpus de inéditos, portadores de remarcables novedades teóricas y de reflexiones sobre la cultura rusa a través de la voz de Gógol, Pushkin, Baratynski, Blok y otros.
A vent'anni dalla sua morte, possiamo dunque accingerci a rileggere e in certo modo riscoprire quello che l’insigne maestro ancora ci vuol dire, cercando di attualizzare il suo pensiero esplosivo e disarticolante all’oggi: si presenta qui il lascito di Lotman, con le sue potenzialità in nuce, ovvero la cosiddetta semiotica della cultura alla luce del pensiero complesso.
Jurij M. Lotman (1922-1993): fondatore della Scuola semiotica di Mosca-Tartu e indiscusso protagonista delle scienze del linguaggio del Novecento. Russo di nascita, ebreo di origini, Lotman visse la maggior parte della sua vita a Tartu, in Estonia, a seguito delle purghe pietroburghesi del 1949-’51. I suoi quarant’anni di ricerche interdisciplinari sui sistemi segnici hanno sancito la nascita della semiotica della cultura.
Can a book become incarnate? Become “vegetal memory”? A living fragment of the collective cultural intellect? “Everyone turned around to look at Franti, and that infamous boy was smiling”. This is how (together with Joyce’s quotation on music-hall) Eco’s first collection of pastiches and parodies, Diario Minimo (Misreadings), is introduced, recalling the little scoundrel Franti in Edmondo De Amicis’s novel, Cuore (The Heart of a Boy): a book that formed at least half a century of Italians and that Eco calls to mind in one of his last (partly autobiographical) novels, The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana, to underline how a mere paper object had managed to educate whole generations on sacrifice, patriotism and war. Both in his narrative works and those of theoretical reflection, Eco exposes and deconstructs the devices of the “narrative machine”, and does so ―as it is very well known―with an all-embracing, semiotic look. Novels, comics, television programs, and songs become his fields for linguistic-textual experimentation to penetrate and throw light on contemporary culture. With regard to this comprehensive look, this work pays particular attention to Eco’s interest in music, an interest that―from Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) to Pippo non lo sa―has been an object of analysis in the literary parable of the Italian writer and a “pretext” for developing those themes so dear to him: memory, irony and laughter, the aesthetics of everyday life in pop culture.
Since the 1940s, female voices in contemporary Italian literature have taken a wider space, marking literary productions with their own styles. However, even when regarding renowned authors (such as Natalia Levi Ginzburg or Elsa Morante), their presence is often still marginal in terms of dissemination. Most of the anthologies that deal with Italian literature from the twentieth century and the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century are limited to mentioning the artistic productions of the most well-known female writers without accounting for the broader phenomenon of women’s writing, a phenomenon with which the present contribution is concerned, in particular the Jewish narrative koine, on the anniversary of the fascist racial laws (1938).
Lotman passò dunque dalla ricerca delle tipologie culturali – ove il testo era concepito come deposito storico di codici in relazione tra loro sotto forma di reciproca dipendenza, secondo una logica distintiva/oppositiva – alla semiotica della cultura, ove un ruolo fondamentale venne assunto dall’“intraducibilità”. Questo concetto assunse un ruolo particolarmente rilevante negli scritti degli anni Ottanta-Novanta. Secondo Lotman, infatti, la semiosi culturale, in quanto processo dinamico, prende vita non certo da una comunicazione perfettamente simmetrica quanto piuttosto da quegli scarti semantici fra linguaggi che, al primo acchito, possono apparire delle imperfezioni nella traduzione inter- e intralinguistica, ma che si rivelano poi l’humus stesso della crescita informativa della cultura.
Lotman finì col raffigurasi la realtà conoscibile – la realtà fenomenica o culturale, in una parola: la semiosfera – come l’insieme spaziotemporale di mondi semiotici risultanti dalla complessa intersezione di strati testuali, a loro volta frutto di un rapporto rizomatico fra testi che tendono a tradursi con diversi gradi di successo.
*
https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/bakhtiniana/announcement
*
We invite researchers to submit articles that explore encounters, possible dialogues and cross-fertilization between (post-/de-)colonial studies and the intellectual and cultural history of the Soviet and post-Soviet world.
We particularly encourage reflection on key ideas such as Orientalism, imperialism, universalism, identity, minority, race and gender, addressing them from various disciplinary perspectives.
PANEL S9 Semiótica de las fronteras digitales: el nuevo sentido de la exclusión
Coordinación: Massimo Leone, Laura Gherlone
Límite de participantes: 8 (ocho)
El Simposio Temático se propone como un ejercicio semiótico de focalización, transformación y expansión. La focalización hace hincapié en el concepto de frontera, que es clave en los estudios semióticos y especialmente en el enfoque lotmaniano.
Se trata de un concepto que interpela la dimensión espacial, temporal, lingüística, corporal y afectiva y que, relacionándose estrechamente con la “modelización” de la identidad (propia y ajena), resulta ser clave para analizar las sociedades contemporáneas y sus dinámicas de polarización y exclusión.
La transformación se refiere a la transición de lo material a lo digital: cada vez más, las fronteras materiales tienen un gemelo digital que las representa, las protege, las consolida o las hace más o menos permeables. Al mismo tiempo, las nuevas formas de textualidad digital desafían estas representaciones, protecciones y estos ajustes.
Finalmente, la expansión: el reto del panel es desarrollar no una semiótica de las culturas digitales, que ya se practica en abundancia, sino una semiótica digital de las culturas, que tenga en cuenta las nuevas formas en que la semiosfera produce, hace circular, propaga, destruye o perpetua el significado sobre la base de una infraestructura digital, y cómo se crean en ella nuevos tipos de fronteras, con nuevas dinámicas o, por el contrario, cómo se reproducen antiguas fronteras de la memoria colectiva.
Por último, cabe destacar que hoy en día cruzar una frontera implica atravesar no solo el espacio, sino también una barrera construida con códigos binarios, con todo lo que eso conlleva para la relación entre lo normativo y lo creativo, lo colectivo y lo individual, etc. Esto significa que cobra absoluta importancia la exploración de las narrativas, las prácticas y las experiencias que nacen en el corazón de la frontera –física, así como digital– y cuyo análisis puede arrojar luz sobre temas de actualidad como, por ejemplo, las políticas migratorias de integración y exclusión, las intolerancias religiosas, las reivindicaciones medioambientales y territoriales, las iniciativas de los movimientos indígenas.
El panel está abierto a todos los/las colaboradores/as que deseen reflexionar sobre la tríada frontera/tecnología/sentido. Los resúmenes se recibirán hasta febrero de 2023 y se envían por:
https://congresoargentinodesemiotica2023.com.ar/envio-de-propuestas
In the domain of semiotics, but also in the neighboring disciplines such as literature, cultural studies, history, cultural anthropology, as well as the arts, the name of Juri Lotman evokes a plethora of concepts. Textuality of culture, semiotic modelling, semiosphere, everyday behavior as a complex form of communication, typology of cultures, translation of untranslatable languages and cultural polyglotism, text memory, predictability and unpredictability in cultural processes, explosion, to mention but a few, have become Lotman’s unmistakable signature but also the “passing of the torch” to the new generations. Thus, Lotman’s anniversary is a unique opportunity to re-think the legacy of Lotman’s theoretical development in the twenty-first century and to contextualize his thought. It is also an opportunity to deepen, discuss and unpack the constellation of his ideas and track the numerous paths of investigation that his work has opened up, hinted or inspired throughout his life. In light of this, we invite contributions around the theme: “Re-thinking Juri Lotman in the Twenty-First Century”.
Re-thinking Lotman’s ideas in the precise historical moment we now dwell, takes on a very special meaning. Because humankind, indeed, lives and experiences an epoch of tremendous uncertainty and unpredictability, of explosive developments, fast and dramatic socio-environmental changes, not least the tragic experience of a global pandemic — a situation in which Lotman would undoubtedly see a collective crisis (or a widespread state of bewilderment affecting also, and perhaps first and foremost, the communicative sphere). In this perspective, a particularly productive path of investigation seems to be Lotman’s invitation to think about the world relationally.
Lotman’s kaleidoscopic mind, as it were, equipped him with a proclivity to cross disciplinary boundaries and to dialogue with the hard sciences. A case in point is the terminological and conceptual invention of “semiosphere”: a “toolbox” which was the result of a fruitful cross-pollinations of ideas and assumptions from biology to the humanities, which today, as yesterday, is still epistemologically very productive. It suffices to think of the cyberspace: the pervasive use of digital media, the increase of visual modes of communication, the rise of internet culture and the increasing connection between human, machine and environment don’t do anything but highlight the relational mesh that wholly binds living and non-living beings — that is, an idea that underlies the concept of semiosphere and that gives us a picture of Lotman’s far-sighted outlook. Most importantly, in his late reflections, by considering culture as a particular ecology of human society (marked by the symbiotic relationship between humankind and its surroundings), Lotman shows a profound awareness of the semiotically dense culture-nature relationship, against the background of growing concerns: how can one really account for “evolution”? What is the place of humans within the universe (or semiosphere)? Have we truly made the intellectual resources with which we are endowed flourish? When there was still no talk of Anthropocene, the Russian scholar had sensed that there was need for a new and ancient way of thinking and living (intelligentnost'), based on non-aggressive, non-hierarchical and polyvocal relationality . Especially in Lotman’s late works, culture becomes a term to express the mutual and circular communicative relationship of the human being with the universe that hosts and in-forms him/her, and that involves concepts such as dialogue, creativity, development of consciousness, tolerance, but also vulnerability and destruction (it is not surprising that Lotman speaks on several occasions of the weak, fragile, marginalized, defenseless, humiliated, despised subject).
Perhaps, we have not yet fully understood, analyzed nor integrally capitalized on such a perspective and foreseen its implications. Hence, the need to revisit Lotman’s thought, to recontextualize it in the contemporary world — a struggling world in search for new meanings and equilibria — and expand upon it. On the centenary of his birth, this issue of "Lexia. Rivista Internazionale di Semiotica" intends to embrace the Lotmanian legacy by exploring the anticipatory insights of this great thinker of the twentieth century with respect to a crisis that is above all the crisis of hierarchical, classificatory, consumption- and domination-oriented knowledge, where there is no room for contradiction, uncertainty, unpredictability and heterogeneity. Whilst it will be still essential to systematize Lotman’s ideas looking in retrospect, it will be equally important to branch out, extrapolate, and apply his ideas in new directions, the more so if we conceive of Lotman’s scholarship as an intellectual endeavor in progress, always on the verge of novelty.
The main topics of interest for this special issue, while not being exclusive, are the following:
1. Semiosphere, human agency, agency of the environment (living and non-living beings), materiality, interrelatedness and interconnectedness, mesh, collective (or communal) intelligence, digital sphere;
2. Interdisciplinarity and nature-culture binomial in Lotman’s thought also through a comparative exploration with other theorists;
3. Narrativization of the Anthropocene and the human-nonhuman relationship or human-machine-environment relationship (narratives and counter-narratives or parallel histories);
4. Historical discourse on evolution and civilization, entangled history and memory, semiotic forms (visual, architectural, etc.) of reproduction of vulnerability, affective sphere, explosion.
Introduction to special issue on "Institutionalization of Service-Learning in Higher Education" - RIDAS. Ibero-American Journal of Service-Learning
https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/RIDAS/issue/view/2691