How to detonate a semiotic bomb: the dynamics of Lotmanian explosion in the semiosphere

2.1 Morris and internal cultural change

The basis for our view here will be centered on Lotmanian semiotics, particularly on the concepts of semiosphere, explosion and unpredictability; however, these are not the sole concepts needed for a working theory of resignification via controlled explosion, and so part of our view will depend on a reconceptualization of Peirce through (the sometimes maligned) Morris.^[1] We will particularly focus on the following view:

The recognition that culture is largely a sign configuration suggests at once that the transmission of culture is mainly effected by the transmission of signs from the existing members of the society to the young or to those who enter the society from other societies. (Morris 1946: 207)

Morris sees in propaganda an example of control within society, and in fact, he takes social control to be of the upmost relevance to societies in general, but control is limited by biological needs and is never complete (208–209). Semiotic principles, at least at the level of behavior, do not grant full control of the individual in any case, Morris is quick to point out. Morris paints the following picture: “Society exists only in the interactions of persons, and the differences in and the variability of persons is an inevitable source of change in society” (209). What Morris is trying to describe here is an internal mechanism of culture that produces its own change, if we reconstruct the argument in those concepts. So far, Morris gives us a more psychological aspect of what signification can do within culture, but we do not have a proper theory of change in culture except for some internal feedback. This is a crucial point and why we need Lotman in our working theory.

2.2 Lotman and cultural resignification processes

While Morris defers to Mead for understanding social control (207),^[2] what we want to look at is how processes of resignification can be shaped precisely to engineer behavioral outcomes. Morris’s interest in semiosis as having a shaping effect on culture goes in line with our concerns here, but his conception of semiotics seems insufficient to describe what Lotman correctly identifies as the unpredictable paths that culture takes (Lotman 2010: 14). To make sense of this, however, we need to revisit the main theoretical elements proposed by Lotman to make sense of resignification processes in general (within culture).

As one of our core assumptions is the relevance of semiosis for cultural processes, we need to make sure that its operation is functional within the theory. Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere gives us a model of cultural interaction where signification processes are at the forefront of its activity. The semiosphere is briefly defined as.

the semiotic space necessary for the existence and functioning of languages, not the sum total of different languages; in a sense the semiosphere has a prior existence and is in constant interaction with languages (Lotman 2001: 123).

Here we do need to assume that language is capable of configuring signification in social spaces. At the same time, we need to keep in mind that the concept of language in Lotman’s work is not directly tied to verbal language, but rather to the more general concept of sign system, a set of signifying elements under certain combinatorial rules (Tamm 2019: 7). The implication here lies in that the plurality of languages is a necessity for cultural communication altogether, and that there is more to signification than lexical meaning.

If the individual and the social are both circumscribed to a semiotic background, the interface generating internal change–as theorized by Morris–can be thought of as the interaction between individuals utilizing signs, but this mechanism is insufficient to account for cultural development in general. The plurality of sign systems can be better specified as the interaction between differentiated sign systems with a certain degree of compatibility coming from internal and external sources. Now, a semiosphere is not fully isolated in Lotman’s view, as it possesses a permeable boundary through which external elements become present within a certain culture (assuming, of course, that culture and semiosphere conceptually overlap to some degree).

The mechanism through which the external becomes represented within a given semiosphere requires positing that what lies outside becomes translated into something discernible from within. Here, the border of the semiosphere is theorized to do the work of containing cultural activity and allowing the flow of information inside the semiosphere:

(1) the border as an instrument of separation, internalization and closure; (2) the border as an instrument of connection; (3) the border as an instrument of internal differentiation and external indetermination (Monticelli 2019: 393).

As a toposymbolic concept (Nöth 2015), the semiosphere cannot be formulated as a precise, individuated system, but it can be applied to specific cultures^[3] in order to congeal and systematize a more or less fuzzy but recognizable boundary of social interaction, memory and cultural production. What lies beyond the border of a particular culture qua semiosphere can still exert some influence, as exchange is functionally integrated in the concept of semiosphere itself. What is not stated though is the rate at which such an exchange occurs. Lotman is keenly aware of the fact that significant semiotic events in a semiosphere are not a given, and that this unpredictability is a property of the semiosphere, which becomes related to the concept of explosion in Lotman’s work. We will explore both of these in what follows.

2.3 Unpredictability and explosion in Lotman’s semiotics

Lotman theorizes that cultural change can be seen in two different modalities, a mode characterized by continuous, gradual and minor set of changes, and an explosive, unpredictable one (Lotman 2010: 7). We are particularly interested in the second case and in spelling out the connection between unpredictability and explosion in culture.^[4] First we need to characterize these concepts more specifically. As semiotic systems are dynamic and in constant interplay–we ought to remember that it is axiomatic for Lotman that semiotic systems do not exist individually (Kull 2005; Nöth 2006)–, explosion is one of the main forms in which change within culture becomes actualized. Explosion itself is “the moment of unpredictability” (Lotman 2010: 123), but unpredictability, Lotman continues, “should not […] be understood as constituting a series of unlimited or undefined possibilities for movement from one state to another,” that is, while changes are factually unpredictable, there are constraints to the types of change that may be actualized in culture itself, these changes being all equally probable.

Cultural change is, more precisely, limited by possibilities that can be inferred from general cultural behavior, but the moment of explosion is a type of particular, rapid change that cannot be inferred as more likely to happen than other possible changes. Lotman considers this a mechanism of change in culture, just as necessary as gradual and slow change. What counts as fast and slow may not have a precise definition, but when it comes to cultural change, we may consider rapidity as a determinate amount of time where change is noticeable, that is, events within the culture itself can be observed to change. We can take technological development as an example in trends, with Lotman stating that “on the whole, it is the nature of technology that practical necessities act as powerful stimuli in progress. Therefore realisation of technological novelty is predictable, whereas the occurrence of novelty in science and art is unpredictable” (Lotman 2010: 7). While we may dispute the accuracy of this statement, the point to take home here is that changes can happen as a response to a specific necessity within a specific cultural set. Explosion, finally, allows culture to overcome periods of instability (or non-equilibrium), where cultural actors determine the path that will be taken (Gherlone 2016: 99).

Explosion is itself unpredictable by nature, in Lotman’s theory, but its impact on culture is always highly relevant–sort of like a cultural earthquake. Explosion is a property of a semiosphere, without any specific rate or predetermined result–the only givens are that it will happen, that we don’t know when it will happen, and that it will produce a noticeable cultural change. In what follows we will further discuss the possibility of application of the theory as a methodology on culture and cultural change.

4.1 Semiotic warfare

That information serves a role beyond that of conveying x to y is not contentious. The weaponization of information is, as mentioned earlier, a relevant topic, with information warfare taking a central stage in concerns about, for instance, democracy and the legitimacy of institutions (Bennett and Livingston 2023), and fake news being one of the main current concerns for the public (Aïmeur et al. 2023). Here we are particularly interested in meaning-making as a tool for cultural shift, i.e. resignification, within a cultural system. Reflecting on the usage of information for individual control, Eco (1986) reflects on semiotic guerrilla warfare as a means of attacking centralized information sources in order to regain control of interpretation, and Paolucci (2023) has proposed that such an account may be better suited to explain the phenomena of information warfare in the public sphere. This leads us to ask what exactly counts as semiotic warfare, no matter what the scale of the conflict is.

Semiotic warfare, while having the appearance of a technical concept, is not one that has been thoroughly developed. Kurtz (2007) defines it as “the process by which subcultures and activist groups attempt to question the meaning of cultural signs and symbols” (1,276), placing emphasis in a similar situation as that of Eco (and, to an extent, Morris)–the fight against psychological control of individuals by means of symbolic interaction. Köppel-Yang (2003: 35) makes the claim that art is done through aesthetic signs, which are conditioned by social norms, cultural values, discursive practices, etc. These latter are normative regarding both individuals and groups, but signs reflect changes to culture. While the language is different, we can find some similarities to Lotmanian concepts here in the idea that change is reflected on the signs that are used.

It seems to be the case that for something that we could call semiotic warfare to happen, we would need a system of apparently incompatible oppositions, guided by specific agents that strive towards the destruction of the meaningful ends of said opposition. Opposition itself, following Lotman, is not an actual issue–semiotic systems emerge from the existence of oppositions and complementarity–, but it is social antagonism what drives the idea of semiotic warfare, most likely. The point is, information is weaponized through the manipulation of signs and texts. From this we understand that the manipulation of texts itself can effect change to some degree within a particular system, as semiotic warfare seems to show.^[9] Semiotic warfare allows us to exemplify the decision for the metaphorical methodology of ‘building’ a semiotic bomb.

4.2 How to build a semiotic bomb

Looking back at the earlier definition we gave of a semiotic bomb, we can use it to craft one within the Lotmanian framework. This would serve as a model of explosion within a contained scope. As mentioned earlier, the idea of a semiotic bomb is that of ‘an artificial meaningful event crafted with the intention of shifting cultural change towards a specific direction.’ Explosion should be a natural feature of a semiosphere (or a semiotic system), which is why causing an explosion should, in principle, be artificial if our intention is to make it happen at all. As explosions are meaningful events where specific texts expand, resignify and modify other texts, a semiotic bomb is bound to explode and be thus one such event. The intention of shifting cultural change towards a specific direction is tricky because predicting cultural change itself is not something we are very good at, even when it comes to the necessities evidenced in gradual change, according to Lotman. We may be able to state, for instance, that we need faster ways to move between cities given the rising costs of real estate in central areas of economic hubs, but we can only prophesy what the changes to our current transportation systems will look like, without being able to actually know where or what change will occur specifically.^[10]

Conceptually though, what we need in order to build a semiotic bomb is a conceptual core, detonation triggers and casing. This, of course, is metaphorical talking, but the model works along Lotmanian semiotics as a theoretical construct in each of its parts:

1. Conceptual core: The central item of a semiotic bomb should be its conceptual core, the underlying meaning to it. A conceptual core can be clearly or loosely defined, but it should be context-dependent to the degree that it can be situated at least partially within the frame of reference of a particular semiosphere. In other words, the conceptual core of a semiotic bomb is relative to where it is bound to explode. A conceptual core can be political, aesthetic or even economic. What should matter in its conception is that it does not completely overlap with current central meanings in a semiosphere.

2. Detonation trigger: The context of a semiotic bomb requires strategic planning. As the trigger causes the expansion of the conceptual core within its casing and its subsequent explosion, it should be defined as the elements that foster the appearance of the core. A situation of opposition without overlap in the culture should be used or created for the core to be active.

3. Casing: This should be the instantiations of the conceptual core. The parts of the casing should be multifarious in appearance and execution. After all, a conceptual core should not be an appearance, but an abstraction that can be represented somehow. As the core expands and explodes, the casing becomes fragmented, reaching throughout both the center and periphery of the semiosphere.

These, we believe, are the essential elements that can lead to explosion in the Lotmanian sense. For an idea x–the core–we may want to find representations and a means to make available in its context. Still, there is no guarantee of its efficiency. If we are correct, however, in the assessment of what is necessary to generate an explosion, we need to specify how the trigger will act.

4.3 How to detonate a semiotic bomb

Context-dependence means bomb construction and its detonation mechanism are both strongly linked. The issue lies in making an argument for an effective bomb. Explosion within the system being unpredictable means we do not have a solid grasp on what exactly causes it except in hindsight. There are at least two basic possibilities we can envisage for such a theoretical object as a semiotic bomb, one being a statistical argument and the other, an aesthetic argument.

The statistical argument would simply states that we need a sufficient concentration of representing items (casing) with various presentations to reach a threshold for the core to explode. Functionally, we could formalize this idea by saying that for a semiosphere sized Cx; Px, where C stands for the center and P stands for the periphery, the casing of a semiotic bomb should comprise enough elements to cover both partially, C(x−y); P(x−y), where y stands for the size of the casing. As measuring the actual size of either a Center C or a Periphery P is not something we can truly calculate, both because of the extension of the semiosphere and the nature of its composition, we must assume that in order to cause change we need an ample number of elements conforming the casing of the semiotic bomb. We could, conservatively, estimate that if we can somehow flood the semiosphere with what amounts to half of all the existing texts, (x/2) for both C and P, we would have enough power to produce an ample message and effect resignification.

This, in all practical matters, is unrealistic, because of the large amount of texts already existing in the semiosphere and the closed nature of the center. The actual size of a semiotic bomb would depend on the feasibility of presenting texts within the semiosphere, gradually increasing its load in time. This leads to different issues on momentum and text interaction, but for the purpose of this model, we will simply state that the detonation process itself will probably depend on the rapidity of cultural elements appearing: Make it too fast and it will be easily detectable; make it too slow and it may dilute into oblivion. However, the abstract point to make is that given a sufficient amount of different cultural elements that point towards a specific core, we may have a chance to produce an artificial explosion in culture. The gist of the statistical argument is that the more texts in the casing, the more likely we will be to succeed in detonating a semiotic bomb.

The second argument is an aesthetic one, but its sheer randomness and complexity makes it much harder to put into action. The idea is that for a core, what is needed is something that profoundly appeals to cultural consumers or actors at large to the point that the core will explode not by virtue of sheer numbers, but by the quality of the work. The problem with this view is that the artificiality of aesthetics is generally detectable, either because of the distribution of knowledge or by individual intuition, and that the proper development of an aesthetically impactful cultural object appears to be less of an act of engineering than we may expect. The reason why this is a plausible argument, however, lies in the existence of applied propaganda as marketing, where elements of consumption make one particular text stand out as relevant. A case can be made about superhero movies^[11] as an individual text, its impact having an explosive relevance over film-making and general cultural consumption, but while the jury is still out on that one, there is reason to believe this engineering of a text with actual economic and aesthetic results can be considered a type of hybrid semiotic bomb, where the aesthetics of the text as a whole are coupled with a propagation machine in the sense of the statistical argument. However, such a cultural event may not fully entail the sense of a semiotic bomb as we have been using it in that there does not seem to be any conceptual core to the text. A more thorough analysis is necessary to fully understand the phenomenon from this perspective.

4.4 Bombs, messages and surrogate art

Essentially, a semiotic bomb should be a theoretical device capable of expressing an idea that can produce change in its cultural environment. Lotmanian explosion–the natural phenomenon of rapid and far-reaching cultural change–is the expression of this change in culture, and unpredictable as it is, the idea of the semiotic bomb is to produce a more or less predictable way of generating the effect of an explosion. This, of course, is only a theoretical construct, but, as we have seen earlier, information warfare holds the key to the feasibility of the idea.

Let’s imagine we want to convey the idea that people ought to drink more water as our conceptual core. This core implies a kind of behavioral change, but in order to enact such change, we need not only to get the message across, but to make it compelling so as to foster said behavioral change. An advertisement campaign will do just that: Present the idea throughout multiple avenues (a casing) and in a compelling fashion (a trigger). Figuring out what counts as compelling is already a functional part of advertising, and practices often resort to covert means of influencing the receivers of these messages (Wojdynski and Evans 2020). Advertising, in this context, exploits semiotic functions to cause behavioral change, as first seen through Morris. In an overview of unconventional methods of advertisement, Peverini (2014) recognizes that efficacy of the message is related to the framing of the discursive strategies of warning, suggestion and condemnation (222), echoing the point that humans both prescribe and self-prescribe in terms of social control (Morris 1946: 208). These unconventional means act as a sort of trigger–a message getting across by unexpected means becomes more effective in the right context (Peverini 2014: 226). If we want to convey the message that people ought to drink water, we need to be able to present it to the subjects we are interested in influencing, by means that will make the message compelling–displaying perhaps shocking or suggesting images of dryness, thirst or disease by means other than traditional advertising forms.

The scale and breadth in which we have been referring to the possibility of a semiotic bomb stand, however, at a higher level in terms of reach. Although examples from advertising help us understand just what the principles in action are when compelling people to do things, it is, we could suggest, insufficient to cause an explosion in the Lotmanian sense. Instead we argue, with Arkhipova and Viidalepp (2023), that multidimensionality and large scale can effect changes in cultural dynamics (155).^[12]

A semiotic bomb as a means of Lotmanian explosion requires extreme efficiency, revealing thus the reach of explosion itself. Lotman (2010) doesn’t believe that powerful explosions can “encompass the entirety of the complex richness of social layers” (166), and the core of the semiosphere can sustain such hits, but change is an immediate effect, with long-lasting implications. Lotman’s focus on the artistic text gives priority to explosion from an aesthetic perspective, but he does recognize that textual variety is at the heart of the contradiction of perception of texts within the cultural system (116). For our bomb to be effective, it must be grounded in a variety of texts. Moreover, Lotman reminds us that in artistic creation, the real and the surrogate are in conflict (120), with unauthentic art having the power to instruct, propagandize, moralize and so on. We can perhaps connect this to Lotman’s imitative explosions (9), but this is only mentioned in passing in his work. The general idea seems to be that imitative art, whatever may qualify as such, is an inorganic way of manipulating the cultural space. In any case, an explosion will still have the power to modify behavior in culture. Whether organic and inorganic explosions can be separated beyond a post-hoc analysis is not something we can tackle here.