What the humanities are for – a semiotic perspective
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Paul Cobley
Abstract
In the wake of both 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008, the humanities have been offered as constituents of higher education which, if more prominent and more strenuously promoted, might have prevented both events. At the same time, the humanities have undergone an assault from governments in the West, with massively reduced or wholly cut funding as part of an attempt to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in universities. The response from parts of the humanities to these government initiatives has been strident, insisting that a thriving humanities or liberal arts curriculum is crucial to democracy, ethics and citizenship, and that the humanities should be an essential ingredient of science and business education. Contemporary semiotics’ deployment of the concept of Umwelt demonstrates that the contribution the humanities might make to theory, practice and social life remains indispensable. Yet this contribution is of a rather different character to that portrayed in the traditional defence of ’humanistic’ study. Indeed, the example of semiotics reveals that the humanities themselves are regularly misconceived.
Abstract
In the wake of both 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008, the humanities have been offered as constituents of higher education which, if more prominent and more strenuously promoted, might have prevented both events. At the same time, the humanities have undergone an assault from governments in the West, with massively reduced or wholly cut funding as part of an attempt to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in universities. The response from parts of the humanities to these government initiatives has been strident, insisting that a thriving humanities or liberal arts curriculum is crucial to democracy, ethics and citizenship, and that the humanities should be an essential ingredient of science and business education. Contemporary semiotics’ deployment of the concept of Umwelt demonstrates that the contribution the humanities might make to theory, practice and social life remains indispensable. Yet this contribution is of a rather different character to that portrayed in the traditional defence of ’humanistic’ study. Indeed, the example of semiotics reveals that the humanities themselves are regularly misconceived.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter i
- Table of contents v
- Preface ix
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Section 1: Semiotics in the world and academia
- What the humanities are for – a semiotic perspective 3
- Semioethics as a vocation of semiotics. In the wake of Welby, Morris, Sebeok, Rossi- Landi 25
- “General semiotics” as the all-round interdisciplinary organizer – general semiotics (GS) vs. philosophical fundamentalism 45
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Section 2: Semiotics, experimental science and maths
- Semiotics as a metalanguage for the sciences 61
- Mastering phenomenological semiotics with Husserl and Peirce 83
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Section 3: Society, text and social semiotics
- Farewell to representation: text and society 105
- Social semiotics: Towards a sociologically grounded semiotics 121
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Section 4: Semiotics and media
- What relationship to time do the media promise us? 149
- Semiotics and interstitial mediatizations 169
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Section 5: Semiotics for moral questions
- Spaces of memory and trauma: a cultural semiotic perspective 185
- Media coverage of the voices of Colombia’s victims of dispossession 205
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Section 6: Questioning the logic of semiotics
- Sense beyond communication 225
- Semiotic paradoxes: Antinomies and ironies in a transmodern world 239
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Section 7: Manifestoes for semiotics
- Semiosis and human understanding 257
- Culture and transcendence – the concept of transcendence through the ages 293
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Section 8: Masters on past masters
- From Peirce’s pragmatic maxim to Wittgenstein’s language-games 327
- Semiotics as a critical discourse: Roland Barthes’ Mythologies 353
- Ricoeur, a disciple of Greimas? A case of paradoxical maïeutic 363
- Index 377
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter i
- Table of contents v
- Preface ix
-
Section 1: Semiotics in the world and academia
- What the humanities are for – a semiotic perspective 3
- Semioethics as a vocation of semiotics. In the wake of Welby, Morris, Sebeok, Rossi- Landi 25
- “General semiotics” as the all-round interdisciplinary organizer – general semiotics (GS) vs. philosophical fundamentalism 45
-
Section 2: Semiotics, experimental science and maths
- Semiotics as a metalanguage for the sciences 61
- Mastering phenomenological semiotics with Husserl and Peirce 83
-
Section 3: Society, text and social semiotics
- Farewell to representation: text and society 105
- Social semiotics: Towards a sociologically grounded semiotics 121
-
Section 4: Semiotics and media
- What relationship to time do the media promise us? 149
- Semiotics and interstitial mediatizations 169
-
Section 5: Semiotics for moral questions
- Spaces of memory and trauma: a cultural semiotic perspective 185
- Media coverage of the voices of Colombia’s victims of dispossession 205
-
Section 6: Questioning the logic of semiotics
- Sense beyond communication 225
- Semiotic paradoxes: Antinomies and ironies in a transmodern world 239
-
Section 7: Manifestoes for semiotics
- Semiosis and human understanding 257
- Culture and transcendence – the concept of transcendence through the ages 293
-
Section 8: Masters on past masters
- From Peirce’s pragmatic maxim to Wittgenstein’s language-games 327
- Semiotics as a critical discourse: Roland Barthes’ Mythologies 353
- Ricoeur, a disciple of Greimas? A case of paradoxical maïeutic 363
- Index 377
