In search of the other: Reading Victoria Welby's significs
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Wen Song
Wen Song (b. 1967) is an associate professor at Nanjing University of Science and Technology 〈songwenyangzhou@yahoo.com.cn 〉. Her research interests include gender, urban experiences, public spheres, and semiotics of writing. Her publications include “Beauty connection – An analysis of Zadie Smith'sOn beauty ” (2008); “An analysis of Virginia Woolf'sBetween the Acts ” (2009);Cross borders – History, space, and gender in Virginia Woolf and Jeanette Winterson (2009); and “An analysis ofAtonement from the perspective of the Bildungsroman novel” (2012).
Abstract
This essay employs the logic of otherness as the key concept to approach Welby in relation to her life and research. Her unconventional childhood and her network of relations (the “Welby Network”, as Susan Petrilli proposes) help shape a vision of the world that is characterized by its dialogic and polyphonic nature. Her response to the religious crisis of her age challenged by Darwinian evolutionary theory is to update religious discourse in the light of progress in science and philosophy beyond dogmatism and orthodoxy. For Welby, “woman” is the guardian of the logic of “differences” or “distinctions” that must interrelate dialogically. Her mother-sense recovers the connection with the body and the relationship between signs and values. Welby develops the concept of meaning with a special focus on the dimension of significance. She presents significs as a method for creating interconnections and encouraging dialogue among different voices, what she calls a “translative method” and “philosophy of interpretation, translation, and significance”. A development on significs today is Susan Petrilli's “semioethics.”
About the author
Wen Song (b. 1967) is an associate professor at Nanjing University of Science and Technology 〈songwenyangzhou@yahoo.com.cn〉. Her research interests include gender, urban experiences, public spheres, and semiotics of writing. Her publications include “Beauty connection – An analysis of Zadie Smith's On beauty” (2008); “An analysis of Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts” (2009); Cross borders – History, space, and gender in Virginia Woolf and Jeanette Winterson (2009); and “An analysis of Atonement from the perspective of the Bildungsroman novel” (2012).
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Lady Welby and Lady Petrilli
- Victoria Lady Welby – A pioneer of semiotic thought rediscovered by Susan Petrilli
- The life of significance: Cultivating ingenuity no less than signs
- Mother sense and the image schema of the gift
- Signification, common knowledge, and womanhood: The significs of Lady Victoria Welby and beyond
- Science: The question of its limits
- Susan Petrilli's archival research on Victoria Welby and its implications for future scholarly inquiry
- The “dialogue” between Victoria Lady Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin – Reading Susan Petrilli's Signifying and Understanding
- Christine Ladd-Franklin's and Victoria Welby's correspondence with Charles Peirce
- Tracing signs of a developing science: On the correspondence between Victoria Lady Welby and Charles S. Peirce
- Signs, senses and cognition: Lady Welby and contemporary semiotics
- Space and time: Continuity in the correspondence between Charles Peirce and Victoria Welby
- Significs and semiotics: Chronicle of an encounter foretold
- Hic et nunc: Evidence from canine zoosemiotics
- Lady Welby: Significs and the interpretive mind
- The translating and signifying subject as homo interpres and homo significans: Victoria Welby's concept of translation – a polyfunctional tool
- Semiosis and intersemiotic translation
- Signs, translation, and life in the Bakhtin circle and in Welby's significs
- Significs and mathematics: Creative and other subjects
- The sense, meaning, and significance of the Twin International Covenants on Political and Economic Rights
- Significal Designs: Translating for meanings that truly matter
- Mysticism and mind in Welby's significs
- On the translatability of liturgical texts: A significal perspective
- Money and metaphor in Welby Prize winner F. Tönnies' “Philosophical terminology”: Some critical considerations
- Lady Welby and logic
- Willing science – observing nature: Welby and Latour lift the veil
- In search of the other: Reading Victoria Welby's significs
- The aphasic utterance: A significal perspective
- The articulate music of language in The King's Speech
- Applying significs
- Presentation: Two texts at the beginning of a research itinerary. From significs to semioethics
- Theory of meaning and theory of knowledge: Vailati and Welby
- Sign and meaning in Victoria Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin: A confrontation
- Early recognitions of Welby's significs and the movement it inspired in the Netherlands
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Lady Welby and Lady Petrilli
- Victoria Lady Welby – A pioneer of semiotic thought rediscovered by Susan Petrilli
- The life of significance: Cultivating ingenuity no less than signs
- Mother sense and the image schema of the gift
- Signification, common knowledge, and womanhood: The significs of Lady Victoria Welby and beyond
- Science: The question of its limits
- Susan Petrilli's archival research on Victoria Welby and its implications for future scholarly inquiry
- The “dialogue” between Victoria Lady Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin – Reading Susan Petrilli's Signifying and Understanding
- Christine Ladd-Franklin's and Victoria Welby's correspondence with Charles Peirce
- Tracing signs of a developing science: On the correspondence between Victoria Lady Welby and Charles S. Peirce
- Signs, senses and cognition: Lady Welby and contemporary semiotics
- Space and time: Continuity in the correspondence between Charles Peirce and Victoria Welby
- Significs and semiotics: Chronicle of an encounter foretold
- Hic et nunc: Evidence from canine zoosemiotics
- Lady Welby: Significs and the interpretive mind
- The translating and signifying subject as homo interpres and homo significans: Victoria Welby's concept of translation – a polyfunctional tool
- Semiosis and intersemiotic translation
- Signs, translation, and life in the Bakhtin circle and in Welby's significs
- Significs and mathematics: Creative and other subjects
- The sense, meaning, and significance of the Twin International Covenants on Political and Economic Rights
- Significal Designs: Translating for meanings that truly matter
- Mysticism and mind in Welby's significs
- On the translatability of liturgical texts: A significal perspective
- Money and metaphor in Welby Prize winner F. Tönnies' “Philosophical terminology”: Some critical considerations
- Lady Welby and logic
- Willing science – observing nature: Welby and Latour lift the veil
- In search of the other: Reading Victoria Welby's significs
- The aphasic utterance: A significal perspective
- The articulate music of language in The King's Speech
- Applying significs
- Presentation: Two texts at the beginning of a research itinerary. From significs to semioethics
- Theory of meaning and theory of knowledge: Vailati and Welby
- Sign and meaning in Victoria Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin: A confrontation
- Early recognitions of Welby's significs and the movement it inspired in the Netherlands
