Volume 11, Issue 3

The theme of all international congresses of semiotics is “the bridge of various civilizations” and the key problem discussed in the congresses is metalanguage. However, the international problem of international language barriers has not been solved. Based on artificial intelligence, computer science, linguistics, semiotics, and system engineering, this article puts forward the Interlanguage Protocol (ILP) (standard), a global translation network (system and instrument) based on human/machine consensus language and the platform (applied) for global semantic communication and cooperative work, and constitutes Interlanguage system (ILS). Studies show that it is possible for people of different languages to communicate with each other. The Interlanguage system (ILS) may be a bridge of communication between languages (semantic transmission) with no barrier and a method for the problem of metalanguage.

This paper draws on the deconstruction(ist) toolbox and specifically on the textual unweaving tactics of supplementarity, exemplarity, and parergonality, with a view to critically assessing institutional (UNESCO’s) and ordinary tourists’ claims to authenticity as regards artifacts and sites of ‘cultural heritage’. Through the ‘destru[k]tion’ of claims to ‘originality’ and ‘myths of origin’, that function as preservatives for canning such artifacts and sites, the cultural arche-writing that forces signifiers to piously bow before a limited string of ‘transcendental signifieds’ is brought to full view. The stench of the aeons is thus forced to evaporate through a post-transcendentalist opening towards originary myths’ original doubles.

Taking the concept of semanalysis as Julia Kristeva’s proposition of a cross-disciplinary work on that which is trans- beneath-, and also beyond the linguistic, it is logical and inevitable to read its psychoanalytic stems, specifically from Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, along with their further dispersal and redirection or utilization in poststructuralist feminism. This article shows how the playing field of these interacting lines re-elucidates Kristeva’s concept of semiotic also as providing with a political dimension the sought out “deeper and hidden meanings”. Further, the article argues that the poststructuralist profiling - Lacan’s semioticizing Freud, Kristeva’s rewriting their common equaling of women with negative/death/lack/void and her further tuning with Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray, - reveals what semanalysis is about, and what it can lead to. The article also looks for a possible actualization of semanalysis along with Rosi Braidotti's nomadic matter-realist thought.

Both Umberto Eco and Charles S. Peirce have been concerned with the notion of background knowledge. Eco refers to background knowledge as the encyclopedia; Peirce’s term of reference is collateral experience. The aim of this article is to investigate the degree to which these two concepts are comparable. We focus on one major metaphysical issue, viz. the fact that Eco defines collateral experience, which is the first step in any process of cognition, as private, whereas Peirce, as a realist, would never accept the concept of private thoughts, feelings, etc. We suggest that freeing collateral experience from its nominalistic nomenclature makes possible a comparison and synthesis of Eco’s and Peirce’s conceptions when seen from the perspectives of their cognitive type, nuclear type, and molar content.

Uexkullian phenomenology is derived from the Umwelt theory of the Baltic-German biologist Jakob von Uexkull. Its basic premise is that we can assume the universal existence, in the realm of life, of a genuine first person perspective, i.e., of experienced worlds. This assumption characterises Uexkullian phenomenology and makes it a genuine perspective within phenomenology. In this article I prepare the ground for such a phenomenology by treating the notion of phenomenology, the relation between semiotics and phenomenology, Husserl’s notion of Lebenswelt, and finally the notion of Uexkullian phenomenology. The purpose is to make the case that Uexkullian phenomenology is justified, and to situate it within phenomenological and semiotic thought at large.

In this paper I apply the concept of migratory aesthetics to practices of performance and installation art. I begin with two examples of artists-migrants, the Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare and the Vietnamese-American artist Dinkh Q. Lê, and continue with Chinese artists who took the Great Wall of China as the locus but also the main motif of their performances and installations. I selected the work of Concept 21, the Yuanmingyuan group, and Xu Bing. I stress the importance of these art forms in relation to migratory aesthetics. I argue that it is the combination of signifiers inspired by Western art and Chinese iconographies - with sometimes intentionally encrypted symbols - that gives us a better understanding of the mobility and hybridity of aesthetics in times of globalization, which is therefore not restricted to artistic practices of migrants.