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Home Page Papers by Peirce Peirce-Related Papers
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A Semiotic Framework for the Social
Imaginar
FERNANDO ANDACHT, Urugua
Programa de Ps-Graduação em Ciências da Comunicação,
Unisinos (Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos),São Leopoldo, RS, Brasil
ABSTRACT: The paper is an attempt to provide a semiotic or
sociosemiotic basis for the much used notion of «social
imaginary». A frequent notion in the writings on the social
sciences, the social imaginary can benefit from a more strict
characterization. The triadic model of sign action or semiosis
elaborated by C.S. Peirce is ideally suited for that theoretical
framework. Castoriadiss notion of social imaginary is
criticized, and some concrete examples are given of how a
semiotic-based concept can account for some important social
phenomena, namely the representations of mass media in
relation to a countrys hegemonic ideology.
[1
THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY IN THE IMAGINATION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Theoretical terms do not escape the fate of other more earthly
and tangible goods: their star rises and falls according to
fashion. There are indications that for some time now THE
SOCIAL IMAGINARY (henceforth, SI ) has occupied a centralplace in some of the recent literature of the social sciences in
Europe and Latin America. A quick look at recent publications
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in sociology, history and political science will bring an
abundance of titles such as "The workers' imaginary in
industrial cities (1890-1913)".1 A first doubt arises: is SI a new
concept or just an old one in new garb? The so called death of
ideologies may account for the strategical need to find some
valid substitute for the worn out and no longer attractive
concept of 'ideology'. There is some evidence that this couldbe the case, a sort of lift up job of a traditional approach to
society.2
[2
This paper, however, will explore the first alternative: in spite
of some common concerns with classic studies of ideology or
even 'mentality',3 there is some evidence that we are facing a
new comer to the field. The influential writings of the Greek-
French thinker Cornelius Castoriadis
4
on SI have started a livelydiscussion, even a new perspective for the study of society. In
spite of the many interesting roads opened up by this
provocative concept, there are many problems in accepting
the theory behind SI . Peircean triadic phenomenology, his
phaneroscopy , is postulated here as a more complex and
suitable theoretical environment wherein to develop and
account for some of the valuable implications of SI . Thus I
hope to advance in the construction of a possible
sociosemiotic. The paper ends with a brief consideration of SI in the light of two concrete cases drawn from the transition
from dictatorship towards democracy (1973-1984) in what was
called the first Welfare State of Latin America, Uruguay.
[3
FIRSTNESS AND SI: TWO POSSIBLE ANSWERS TO THE SAME QUESTION
So the social principle is rootedintrinsicall in logic. (5.354)5
A full characterization of SI should deal with both of its
defining aspects, that related to the imagination proper ('imaginary'), and the collective dimension ('social') which
qualifies the former. Of the many definitions to be found in the
work of Castoriadis, the following provides a suitable entry for
such a discussion:
I call imaginary those significations because they do
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not correspond to "rational" or "real" elements and
they are not sufficiently dealt with in reference to
them, but they come into being by creation, and I
call them social since they only exist as instituted
and as an object of participation of an impersonal
and anonymous collective entity. (1986:68 emphasis
mine)
6
[4
Prominent in this definition are 'the imaginary social
significations', according to Castoriadis they constitute a key
aspect of SI , its representative power. He further specifies that
this mode of semiotic creativity characterizes the very being
of history - as opposed to the material dimension:
But creation, as the work of the social imaginary of
the instituting society (societas instituens, not
societas instituta), is the mode of being of the
socio-historical realm. Society is self-creation which
unfolds (itself) as history. (1986:73)
[5
Two dimensions then can be clearly elicited from this
definition of SI : its scope (=social) and its nature (= semiotic
capacity). I shall present now both aspects and their
relationship to Peircean semiotic in some detail.[6
Max Weber's influence on Castoriadis is visible and
acknowledged.7 Thus the latter's emphasis that 'man only exists
in society and by society' (1986:66) or that 'the opposition
between individual and society is a total fallacy' (1990:52). In
the same vein, Castoriadis rejects marxism as a form of
'functionalism', a vision he accuses of considering 'society as a
collection or gathering of individuals (...) while both
individuals and things are social creations' (1986:66). For
Castoriadis human imagination can only be studied in its
natural, that is, social environment. What remains outside of it
is just the animal part of man, or, at any rate, something that
cannot become a legitimate object of the social sciences. The
parallelism with Peirce on this point, mutatis mutandis, isagain striking.
[7
In his presentation of phaneroscopy, Peirce highlights both itsformal and its social nature, the latter being a kind of corollary
of the former. He characterizes the phaneron, phaneroscopy's
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object, as 'the collective total ... present to the mind' (1.284).
Its social nature is made explicit when Peirce forwards an
answer to a possible question regarding whose mind he refers
to:
If you ask to whose mind, I reply...(I never
entertained) a doubt that those features of the
phaneron that I have found in my mind are present
at all times and to all minds. (1.284, emphasis mine)
[8
A few years later, in one of his last definitions of the sign,
Peirce makes it quite clear that signs are a social instrument,
and semiosis a collective affair:
A Sign has for its Object some fragment of history,
that is, of history of ideas. (Ms 849, 1911)8
[9
Therefore, Castoriadis and Peirce describe a non-individual
sort of entity: both SI as an account of human creativity, and
Firstness, the phaneron's mode of being which accounts for
the possible in human experience, respectively, are construed
as pertaining to the community.[10
Let us now turn to the second definiens of SI , the one dealingwith its semiotic capacity for conceiving the new, or, as
Castoriadis says, for 'instituting' the social. Not only or mainly
a stock or Thesaurus of mental images,9 SI is presented as a
power to bring forth what is not to be found in the previous
social context. The concept is proposed by Castoriadis as an
answer to the central question 'what brings forth new and
different forms of society?' (1986:66):
The central (imaginary) significations are notsignifications "of" something, neither are they
significations "added to" or "referred to" something.
(1975: 320)
[11
'Radical'10 often replaces 'social' as an attribute of 'imaginary'
in Castoriadis. From the above description, I believe 'radical'
should be construed as totally autonomous. Again, the
phaneroscopic category of firstness apparently meets thisdescription:
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The quality in itself is a Firstness, a new possibility.
The relation of inherence does not change the
quality in itself, but merely imparts to it existence.11
[12
To sum up Castoriadis' characterization, SI is
a) Capable of Semiotic creativity
b) Radically opposed to the Socially Instituted
c) Absolute or autonomous
I now propose to consider critically these three central
features of SI in the light of the three phaneroscopic
categories for analysing the universal modes of being. My
approach involves the 'development from within' or 'mingling'
of the categories,12 that is, their recursive application to
themselves.
[13
In the Lowell Lectures of 1903, Peirce speaks of three kinds of
firstness, each being the result of exhaustively applying this
category to the whole set. Thus he attains the 'purest
conceptions' or Primity , Secundity and Tertiality (1.533). In
their less abstract manifestation, that is, considering them as
modes of experience, Peirce calls them 'quality, existence and
mentality'. They correspond to each of the three features
which define SI . 'Mentality', one of Peirce's term for the
Firstness of Thirdness captures well the semio-poietic aspect
of SI :
thought in its capacity as mere possibility... mere
mind capable of thinking... (1.537, emphasis mine)
[14
Castoriadis insistently poses SI as an irreconcilable antagonist
of the socially instituted, i.e., as the material and already
legitimized aspects of society. The latter could be construed as
reaction or 'existence', the Firstness of Secondness, minus the
polemical dimension so central in Castoriadis' theory, i.e., as
the sheer actualization of the possible:
'the general Firstness of all true Secondness is
existence' (1.532)
[15
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Last, in order to account for the autonomy of SI , we have the
category at its most abstract or 'pure Firstness', the subject
considered
'positively such as it is, regardless of aught else (...)
only a positive qualitative possibility' (1.25).
[16
But what is the point of this matching and reconciling
operation? Just a neat arrangement to conclude both Peirce
and Castoriadis are talking about the same, but use a different
terminology? Far from such a superfluous exercise, I propose
to construe SI as constituted of three aspects or phaneroscopic
dimensions.13 The advantage of this approach over Castoriadis'
absolutist, non-relational model of society is clear. Below I
attempt to deconstruct in Derridean fashion Castoriadis'
apparent dyad into a monad: the only "true" realm being SI .Before that, and to show the main flaw of the theory of SI , Iwant to present some of the conclusions at which M. Balat
arrives when he compares Peirce's triad to Lacan's imaginary-
real-symbolic.[17
Balat (1992: 106) draws a convincing parallelism between
psychoanalysis and semiotic; in both theories each category is
already presentas a possibility
in the other two:
(Firstness) is not pure form, but form already
"worked upon" by the other two instances. The
three categories of Peirce (correspond with) the
originality of the primordial form, the obsistence of
objectivation, and the transuasion of language.
[18
For Balat there is an homology between semiotic Firstness and
psychoanalytic Imaginary . Both are three-in-one conceptions:
each is a 'matrix' which bears 'in germ' the other two
categories. Instead of talking of one category, SI , pitted
against the other, as in Castoriadis' (pseudo) dichotomy, I
propose the necessary interplay of three categories: mentality,
reaction and qualitative possibility. Castoriadis (1975:308-12)
speaks of 'capitalism's imaginary social signification' as being
something different from and opposed to capitalists, actual
machines and market laws. In a similar vein, Peirce talks of the'total feeling' or ' flavour ' of the King Lear tragedy, as an
illustration of 'universal Firstness', something which is to be
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found neither in the actual dramatic experience nor in the
language of the play. The two examples seem to refer to the
same concept. However, the semiotician insists throughout his
vast work that the structure of experience is made up of three
and no less than three dimensions, and the three are equally
important and central to semiosis. For Castoriadis 'difference'
means radical "confrontation." This leads me to anotherapparent point in common between the two models, which
also turns out to be a substantial difference.
[19
WHO IS AFRAID OF THE IMAGINARY?
Nothing separates me more surel
from that unreal object: the
imaginar world is entirel isolated ,
I cannot penetrate in it except by
becoming unreal.
(Sartre, 1940:253 emphasis mine)
Just like Peirce, Castoriadis (1986:152) explicitly disclaims all
ontological commitments, those that lead Sartre, for example,
to reject the imaginary realm because it is 'unreal and
inexistent':
Phaneroscopy is the description of the phaneron...
the collective total of all that is in any way or in any
sense present to the mind quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not.(1.284, emphasis mine)14
[20
Ironically, it is Castoriadis' unacknowledged ontological
commitment which accounts for the main flaw of SI
as asociosemiotic model. To prove this, I must make a short
digression.[21
To understand the full purport of SI , we must place it in the
light of an old intellectual controversy on the power, good or
evil, of images, a field that a recent study called 'iconology'.15
The larger-than-life, even titanic aura around SI in Castoriadis'
descriptions should be read as a reaction to the ideas of Jean
Paul Sartre in a book-long study which precisely bears the titleof The imaginary .16 Sartre's basic contention is that what he
calls 'l'imaginaire' is to be blamed for much that is inauthentic,
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false and even perverse in human life, as the following
eloquent description shows:
We can distinguish two classes of feelings: the true
feelings and the imaginary ones. The latter are
unreal and only appear in front of unreal objects,
and the apparition of the real ones is sufficient to
make them run away, just like the sun clears the
shadows of the night. (1940:280)
[22
The French thinker's damning account of mental images makes
him a fervent iconoclast. Besides, he approaches the issue as
something pertaining to the individual, not to society. This is
the exact reversal of Peirce's own account of the effect of
mental images on human action, as we shall see later. What in
Sartre is helplessness to deal with reality or bad faith,17
constitutes the very engine for any possible change, for the
semiotician. More recent notions such as 'the effect of the
real' and 'the illusion of a direct renvoi to reality',18 attributed
to images or to the iconic domain, can be read as later days
avatars of Sartre's iconoclasm. Such conceptions bespeak of a
fascinating but treacherous legerdemain imputed to images
and to what can be imagined through them. The seduction of
the (supra) sensual is thus morally opposed to the reasonablepersuasion of the logical and the reassuring sturdiness of the
real.[23
At first sight, Castoriadis' own position about the imaginary
seems to be closer to Peirce on this point, but his fervent
iconophilia,19 leads him to a monadic vision that is quite alien
to the Peircean triadic epistemology. Actually, SI is presented
in the guise of a true hero embattled against society's
reactionary reified ways, namely 'instituted society'. This is thedirect outcome of Castoriadis' rejection of a central semiotic
concept, that of determination.20
Essentially, the imagination is rebellious to
determination. (The already instituted) conditions
and limits it - but it does not determine it. (1988:
150)21
[24
It is at this point that Peirce and Castoriadis part ways.
Firstness and SI do have many points in common, which we
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could sum up in their poietic and autonomous nature. To
define Firstness as those 'qualities themselves which, in
themselves, (are) mere may-bes, not necessarily realized'
(1.304) does not imply to forswear, however, 'some
determination, otherwise we shall think nothing at all' (1.303).
Determination, then, is not contradictory but complementary
with the kind of cooperative action Peirce called "semiosis":
an action or influence, which is or involves the
cooperation of three subjects (...) such a tri-relative
influence not being in any way resolvable into
actions between pairs. (5.484)
[25
While semiosis involves a network of relationships without
which it just would not make sense, in both senses of the term
- it would not be able to generate meaning, and it would be
alien to Peircean relational semiotics - Castoriadis' SI relies on
a pollemical or dualistic model. From the perspective of such a
model, life in society is an either/or duel between the positive
forces of the radical imagination or SI , on the one hand, and
its reified and antagonistic products on the other. This has a
familiar look: it is G.Vico's verum factum principle revisited in
the dark light of Orwellian social dystopia. My assumption
accounts for Castoriadis' many references throughout his workto 'the concealment of' SI or to its 'total and flagrant
occultation' by philosophy. This conspiracy usually bears the
name of 'traditional ontology', its principal instrument
(weapon?) being 'the fundamental hypercategory of
determination (Greek peras, German Bestimmheit)' (1986:65).[26
Far from being an obstacle to emancipation or the source of
human stagnation, determination is what makes semiosis
evolve:
A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand is so
determined (that is specialized, bestimmt) by
something other than itself, called its Object, while
on the other hand, it so determines some actual or
potential Mind... (8.177)22
[27
It is not very hard to deconstruct Castoriadis' apparentbinarism into its underlying monad:23 all the power to the
(radical) imagination. Against what Castoriadis states, his
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reductionistic model has, in fact, room for only one element,
SI , the 'instituting force'; the rest is nothing but its shadow or,
better still, nemesis - the very role imputed to the imaginary by
Sartre. In Castoriadis' model, the instituted is conceived of as
the negative moment of the social. The new to come and the
already established in society are 'winter-locked brothers', to
use Dylan Thomas's powerful expression for a deadly fraternalstalemate 24
[28
What Castoriadis has in mind, actually, is not determination,
the process whereby signs grow and reference of one sign to
another results, but determinism which, indeed does lead to
the abolition of time and change, as Castoriadis fears.25 By
conflating Secondness - experience and facts or teukhein,
Castoriadis' (1975: 315) term for the instrumental or technical
domain, with Thirdness, his legein, as the dimension of representation and speech (Ibid ) in a single realm, the
instituted or reified society cut off from SI , we end up with a
pollemical and rigid binary framework that pursues the
imposition of one term over the other. It is this non-relational
scheme and not determination which disavows time and
change.[29
What is then the crucial difference between considering as
Peirce does, that which is not related to anything else, namelyFirstness, and that which being radical and autonomous is alien
to any determination, namely SI ? The answer is prescision, the
kind of logical analysis Peirce borrows from Duns Scotus for
his phaneroscopy.26 After postulating the triadic structure as
inseparable from the structure of the phaneron, Peirce
considers the three essential elements of any form of semiosis
at its most abstract, just A, B and C:
There must be one of the three, at least say C,
which establishes a relation between the other two,
A and B. The result is that A and B are in a dyadic
relation, and C may be ignored , even if it cannot be
supposed absent. (Ms 908)
[30
The difference then is that which exists between pretending
something is not there for the sake of analysis ( prescision),
'our imagination (being only) constrained by the reality of the
phaneron',27 and claiming that there is only one true or
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authentic social force, SI , while the rest is sheer antagonism to
it. Thus an ontological claim has gotten in through Castoriadis'
back door: the absolute hegemony of SI over everything else in
society. The actual existing institutions and their generality or
legitimacy are forced together in a single dimension, the
inevitable and antagonistic forces of the instituted. This is
what separates Peircean mobile semiotic from Castoriadis'static social theory. The former respects Ockham's razor: it
does not need to include any kind of supremacy to account for
the production of new information in society. Neither does it
call for the supposition of a conspiracy of silence over the
ways of SI .[31
My next step will involve a demonstration of the adequacy of
the triadic model to account for changing society, conceived
as an endless journey from the hardened preconceptions of experience to the reasonable realm of verisimilitude through
the fragile ('airy nothingness') realm of dreams.
[32
AT PEIRCE'S KITCHEN: DREAM PIES, SHOCKING APPLES ANDSWEET DESIRES
'Einmal ist keinmal'
(German proverb)
Peirce takes us in a guided tour through the kitchen of his
semiotic, there he gives us a recipe for wishing, asking,
preparing and eventually getting an apple pie, which is also a
recipe for understanding the working of phaneroscopy. Thus,
we witness the semiotic process whereby the possible, the
actual and the general work together to produce sense.
[33
It all starts with a quite simple craving expressed in a not so
simple manner:'An apple pie is desired' (1.341).28 Why use the
marked syntax, the passive, instead of the much more obvious
and unmarked active form, e.g. I desire an apple pie? The
passive voice, I think, is central for Peirce's purpose here. The
absent, and thus unmarked, passive subject of that sentence -
by me or by somebody - points to the presence of a collective,
anonymous semiotic agent, what Aristotle called doxa.29 So
the sentence could be paraphrased thus: It is well seen orcompletely legitimate to desire an apple pie (and not a snake
pudding, for instance). Desire is thus presented as a form of
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Thirdness or generality , the explicit topic of the whole
paragraph. In an apparent contradiction to the very formula he
uses ('an apple pie') and to common sense, Peirce deems it
impossible to desire anything as an absolute singularity , 'we
seldom, probably never desire a single individual thing'. What
we obtain as a result of that desire is, he adds, 'a certain
pleasure of a certain kind.' [34
Thus Peirce links 'desire' and 'generality' in a strong way.
"Desire" in this technical sense appears to be what elsewhere
he calls the social 'endorsement'30 or convalidation of what
may be recognized or acknowledged as a demand. We can
desire anything but not every thing in the same way. Even a
debauchee like the Marquis de Sade, just like any black mass
acolyte, knows well that in order to infringe a ritual one must
be a thorough and knowledgeable, even if renegade orquestionable, performer of that very ritual. Otherwise it is not
out of perversion but out of sheer ignorance that one behaves
in that peculiar fashion (wild orgies or inverted crosses). To
desire the unlawful one must be well read in the law, as saint
Paul reminds us:
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid.
Nay, I had not known sin but by the law... (Saint
Paul, Romans, 7:7)
[35
Indeed without the law the desire to sin or to eat an apple pie
is 'dead'. To talk of a desire for 'a kind of pleasure' not for a
single one, is to describe the (socio)semiotic place from where
we formulate all our desires. It is because apple pies are a
normal source of (North American) gastronomic delight that
one/Peirce feels entitled to ask for them on certain occasions.
This concrete circumstance brings us to anotherphaneroscopic category. Secondness is 'the experience of
pleasure' which is a once only sort of event, i.e., the haecceity determined by that particular pastry I ate on a certain
occasion. However, that alone is not what allows me to
conceive of apple pies as an edible and tempting dessert.[36
A desire, no matter how legitimate, and solid green apples, are
not enough, Peirce's recipe leaves for the last that 'airy
nothing' (6.455) which makes the world go round; we are
talking about the 'dream of eating' such a pie. Guided by
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Peirce's desire for a kind of sweetness (a typical pastry), the
cook handles 'shocking', i.e., real apples31, but does so to
'realize the dream of eating an apple pie' in him. This 'dream'
is Firstness, and as such it lacks 'prominent thirdness, it is
utterly irresponsible: it is whatever it pleases'. Instead of
opposing this volatile element or pure, unrealized quality to the
generality of law (social institutions), as Castoriadis does,Peirce links both realms in a radical manner: 'desire has
nothing to do with particulars; it relates to qualities.'[37
Translated in terms of the triadic sign relation this means that
'an interpretant is simply the addressing of an impression to a
concept', as one of the drafts of the "New List" of 1867 puts
it.32 The path of semiotic determination (the 'addressing') runs
from the manifold of impressions or pure qualities to the unity
of a concept or general. Desire refers to these qualities, andthus transitively connects the concrete instances of experience
to the concept.
[38
FROM TYPICAL SAFETY TO RISKY POSSIBILITY
Let us recapitulate our apple pie recipe. Some 'fragment of the
history of ideas' (Ms 849), not only the pie as a traditional
pastry but also the familiar sensation of appetite at a regularhour and place, i.e., the sign as Secondness determines a
range of possible, unrealized qualities, the sign as Firstness.
The vision or 'dream' of something or anything sweet
constitutes the possibilities to be determined. This airy realm
of absolute freedom is steered to a goal: of the myriad ways of
satisfying that familiar experience of appetite there is the
probable or acceptable manner associated with apple pies (in
general). Of course, there is always the possibility of not
wanting to eat that (traditional) kind of food. In this tensionbetween the unexpected and innovative and the wholly typical
and established way lies what we call (human) freedom.
[39
I foresee an objection to my example: the desire of an apple
pie seems to leave us well within the safe boundaries of the
wholly acceptable and predictable. Castoriadis' point is
precisely that the instituted in society prevents us from
imagining new ways, and from even seeing ourselves ascapable of excercising that power. There are, however, two
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instances which come from Peirce's work to help me prove
that it is in the cooperation of the categories and the semiotic
subjects of the sign that we are to find possible new ways, not
in the dyadic confrontation of Firstness and the other two
realms fused into one.[40
On one occasion, Peirce tells us, he must kill time at a railway
station. So he starts reading the advertisements on the walls
and musing about
different trains and different routes which I never
expect to take, merely fancying myself to be in a
state of hesitancy. (5.394)
[41
Slight as this imaginative occasion seems,33 Peirce sees in this
'feigned hesitancy' the very same attitude demanded by 'theproduction of scientific inquiry' (5.394). The gap between the
banal and the sublime, when Firstness as an imaginary journey
is concerned, seems to be narrow. The possible itineraries
traced by 'the firstness of thirdness' or 'mentality' (1.533) may -
or may not - play a decisive role at some non-theoretical
future occasion, as the next example shows.[42
Twice Peirce writes about the anecdote of how his brother
Herbert, when he was 'scarce more than a child', reacted with
astonishing deftness and courage to an accident in his house.34
The explanation the semiotician gives is that his brother had
previously imagined that dangerous circumstance. So his
behaviour is presented as 'a striking example of a real habit
produced by exercises in the imagination' (5.487). Still more
central to the argument presented in this paper is Peirce's
explicit connexion of the possibilism of imagination (Firstness)
with the lawfulness of habit, as a general tendency (Thirdness):
This act of stamping with approval, "endorsing" as
one's own, an imaginary line of conduct so that it
shall give a general shape to our actual future
conduct is what we call a resolve. (5.538, 1902)
[43
Such a process, we are told, is pertinent not so much for the
sake of 'practical beliefs' but for theoretical ones. I do not
doubt to include among the latter the kind of political
engineering we are familiar with since Plato's Republic. Both
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cases I take to be illustrations of how 'a mere imagination of
reacting in a particular way seems to be (...) capable of
causing the imagined kind of reaction really to take place'
(5.538). There is also an interesting coincidence between
Peirce's mental experiments and the role Erving Goffman
(1986:277-78) attributes to fictional frames such as the theater
or cinema in society. Artistic portrayals of taboo subjects arenot to be taken only as symptoms of what goes on in the
community - mere reflections of reality - argues Goffman, but
as imaginary experiments which actually bring about more
tolerance concerning the real situations they depict fictionally.
[44
OF THE DAYS AND DREAMS OF JOSÉ BATILE Y ORDÑEZ
We shall move now from Peirce's homely culinary backstage to
the high power kitchen where Realpolitik is cooked. The leap
from Peirce's sweet dream of apple pie to the vision of a new
kind of society is bold but feasible. Contrary to appearances,
from that domestic realm to the macropolitical scene there is
a change in size, not necessarily in structural complexity.
[45
There was once a man who hated bullfights, loved culture and
became the democratic leader35 of Latin America's first full
fledged welfare State. After his first term as president of
Uruguay (1903-1907), José Batlle y Ordóñez (henceforth JBO)
was living in Europe, not just waiting for the occasion to run
for re-election, but passionately studying the ways of European
democracies and how the sociopolitical system of his own
country, Uruguay, could be changed in order to resemble all
that he considered admirable in the modern nations of the Old
World (particularly Switzerland). It is in this mood that he
writes a letter to two of his close political allies in Uruguay. Init we can reconstruct the exciting experiences he had had, his
dream of a brave new political world and the desire for
building it:
I think of what we could do to build a small model
country where education is vastly spread, where
arts and sciences are cultivated with honour, where
ways are mild and refined. (February 7, 1908)
[46
This 'utopist's'36 statement became the very foundation of
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modern Uruguay's SI , one which in spite of severe economic
crisis, a decade of dictatorship, and other social upheavals
seems to still enjoy good health, eight decades after JBO's
days. Thus was born the realm of mesocracy or the social
hegemony of the average, the non-exceptional, a white collar
empire of civil servants, doctors and lawyers. The calm
exploits of these low key figures have been celebrated over thefeats of industrial enterpreneurs, captains of capitalism, or
military heroes. Bureaucrats and politicians seem to embody
best the mesocratic ideals.[47
I do not intend to make out of that capable statesman a
superhuman figure, one who had in his brain the perfect and
final shape of the future country he dreamt of, and which he
then single-handedly built. Far from that, what I propose here
is a sociosemiotic analysis which accounts for modernUruguayan ideology as a continuum of permanence and
change. As part of such a continuum, JBO's sociopolitical
desire became the driving force with which all dreams,
individual and collective, had to negotiate to become true
(desires). Such a negotiation, I believe, is mostly unconscious,
like many other semiosic acts which 'sink into consciousness'
and thus become 'automatized and mindless', as Merrell
(1991:10) rightly asserts. Thus the strength but also the flaws
of Castoriadis' model and the convenience of the
phaneroscopic categories as the basis of an alternative one
will become apparent. Instead of the reductionistic dichotomy
of an oppressive instituted social realm opposed to what may
still be imagined or dreamt of, I appeal to a triadic model. In it
to move from Secondness - what has been, the semiotic Object
as everybody's archeology - to Thirdness - what will be as habit
or tendency - necessarily involves crossing the domain of
'irresponsible' vision, which furnishes a global, 'tout ensemble'emotional tone to life in society. Two examples will help me to
illustrate this constant although not conscious process whereby
JBO's legacy is reshaped and even reinvented in Uruguayan
society.[48
By 1980, the Uruguayan military had not only broken brutally
with the legitimate order of mesocracy dreamt of by JBO, but
were ruling a financially successful country. 37 Still, they
deemed it necessary to have an election, actually a plebiscite,
in order to change the constitution and make their presence in
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power legitimate. What was the need, one could ask, since
they were absolute and efficient, albeit ruthless, rulers?38 Only
the fully 'irresponsible' dream of Firstness, combined with the
country's many decades of democracy (Secondness) and the
goal or telic force defined by the mesocratic myth (Thirdness)
can account for their strange attitude. In JBO's letter, just
before the quoted passage, the statesman had written abouthis distress on hearing about a project to legitimize once again
in Uruguay the then banned bullfights:
(Bullfights) would be in my opinion a step towards
barbarianism, which is the kind of pleasure felt in
front of the risk of human life, and of bloodshed,
even if this be not always human.
[49
Universal learning was supposed to suppress such bloodthirsty
leanings. The military just like the Uruguayan guerrilla, the
MLN-Tupamaros or National Liberation Movement, had rebelled
against that peaceful dream, inseparable from JBO's ideal of a
quiet nation of cultivated mesocrats. Within this sociosemiotic
framework to vote had always meant far more than a civic
duty, it was one of the highest gifts of that 'model country'.39
Not even the military could dispatch that desire into total
oblivion. I take their attitude as an evidence of the utterfreedom of the imaginary; firstness indeed goes where it
pleases, in a wholly 'irresponsible' way. Without any physical or
political resistance in the country, these all powerful de factorulers dreamt of appealing to the democratic approval of an
election. It was their 'musement' (6.461) which took them to
the paradoxical position of dreaming and then officially
desiring the impossible. So in 1980, through a plebiscite, they
sought for a collective endorsement of their government. With
almost no media support the opposition won: 57% voted
against the plebiscite's proposal of a constitutional amendment
presented by the dictatorship. Paradoxically, the military's
electoral defeat was a consequence of the people's own
mesocratic dream, translated as a desire to vote for real
politicians, beyond any concern with the actual (healthy) state
of the economy. My hypothesis is that had these military not
shared, partly at least, the mesocratic dream, they would not
have invested elections with that kind of value.40 This wrongpolitical move is precisely what constitutes their 'Originality'.41
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This is a semiotic dimension which is neither reasonable nor
practical, if I had to name it, maybe 'esthetic' would suit it
best.[50
A second example. On May 8th, 1989, the corpse of one of the
men that had dramatically changed Uruguayan modern history,
the guerrilla leader Raúl Sendic, is brought back to the country
for his massive burial.42 Television faces a dilemma: shall they
miss one of the greatest news of the year, or shall they risk to
show it in all its multitudinous pomp and glory? To do the
former is bad for business, but to do the latter runs counter to
mesocratic norms: it is to put one of the "bullfighters" banned
by JBO full in the limelight. Two of the three private channels
choose silence, but the third comes up with an ingenious if
farfetched strategy.[51
The 7.30 pm news of Channel 10 begins that day with an
announcement of an announcement of an announcement. This
complex triple structure includes
a. first, a brief and vague preliminary comment on a
'rather unusual beginning',
b. the use of an old News fragment from 1984, and
c. the "official" introduction back in 1989
[52
This elaborate presentation is supposed to insulate in a triple
metamessage the explosive potential of broadcasting this
burial. After a very slight routine opening, came the 1984
piece, which was not announced as such but simply broadcast
as a "normal" introduction of the day's news. In it a visibly
upset anchorman speaks to his audience about starting to
broadcast once again, after a week-long suspension decreed
by the military.43 At a climactic moment of his stern narrative,
he asserts with suffused anger that the dictatorship had thus
achieved what not even a terrorist act of the Uruguayan MLN-
guerrilla had been able to do. Back to the present, and still
without any mention of this peculiar back and forth
movements, the 1989 anchorman comments on an irony of the
recovered democracy: the MLN (by then a political party) is
now able to bring the corpse of their leader back to thecountry and have it buried with the full ceremony of a hero.
After so many expensive prime time digressions, the newsman
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finally goes to point:
As an homage to the democracy we are all trying to
build... we begin our news of today with a coverage
of the arrival and burial of the body of R.Sendic...
[53
The third and most explicit metamessage discloses the "teamwork" of dream, desire and experience. This news program
has imagined a new possible way for showing what could not
be shown, at least not as a legitimate desire of that mesocratic
channel. How to cover this burial and not seem to be also
paying an homage to the guerrilla leader? How to stop
television from using its audiovisual power to make that ritual
even more glorious, by showing it to a much larger crowd than
the one that had attended the ceremony? Thus television
dreamt of this complicated box-within-a-box format for not
endorsing this kind of radical politics, and still show the
massive and highly moving participation of a huge crowd of
followers of the dead leader in this last good-bye. Television
news is endorsing 'democracy', not the man and his deeds,
announces the complex framing device set up for that specific
coverage. There was also that chief mesocratic desire of not
being extreme or outstanding. In another democratic country,
five years after the end of the dictatorship, that piece of newswould have had enough intrinsic historic value to amply justify
the possible risk of television coverage's being interpreted as
an apology for the no longer existent terrorist movement of
the previous decade.[54
The final metamessage quoted above does not tell the truth
though: they do not 'begin the news' of that day by the
coverage of R.Sendic's burial. Actually, they begin by showing
an intricate, long negotiation between desire, dream andexperience, the phaneroscopic mingling of the lawfulnes of
Thirdness, the irresponsible pure qualities of Firstness and the
hard historical facts of Secondness.[55
In my two examples, there is the creation of something new
inseparable from the experience of the past and from the
future goal pursued by semiosis. This is the way SI operates. By
calling for a plebiscite the military unwittingly begin the long
road that would end their dictatorship; the only Uruguayan
channel which dares to cover that multitudinous funeral opens
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up a new possibility for dealing w ith delicate political subjects
on Uruguayan television. There is in both episodes the
possibilistic vision which attempts to come to terms in an
original manner with 'a fragment of the history of ideas',
Peirce's (Ms 817) description of the past as represented in
semiosis, and also to meet the goal of all sense production,
i.e., to become legitimate.
44
[56
Instead of talking of these two instances, as Castoriadis
probably would, as if they were two battles won by SI , two
victories of the 'radical imaginary' over the dark forces of the
instituted, I prefer to think of these episodes in terms of the
'trirrelative influence' of the phaneroscopic categories and the
logical subjects of Peircean semiotic. The three realms are
equally real, the three participate actively in the progressive
determination of what we call human (social) life. Which onepredominates is a question that cannot be answered a priori,but one that a Peircean-based sociosemiotic should be able to
study and answer on each particular occasion.
[57
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BECOMING VERISIMILAR: KALS,ÉTHOS, EIKS, THREE SOCIOSEMIOTIC DIMENSIONS
My journey through the mysterious land of the social imaginaryis about to end. There are many valuable insights to be found
in it. But to appreciate them, we must accept the force of
determination as the nature of all meaning. Determination is
not the prison-house of wishes, but the power that moves
semiosis in its three aspects as Firstness, Secondness and
Thirdnes and as Sign, Object and Interpretant. This points out
to the relational nature of social meaning. Phaneroscopy and
semiotic proper provide a reliable theoretical framework for
the study of issues such as ideology, public opinion andcollective identity. This is, I believe, the sociosemiotic realm,
accurately described by Flynn (1991:5) as the locating and
analysing of 'meaning structures and signification systems from
the point of view of the producers' use and conceptualization
of them.'
[58
If we leave aside the deadlock confrontation of an instituting
or radical imaginary pitted against the instituted or socio-historical imaginary, a far more complex and interesting
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semiotic landscape emerges. To attain a better understanding
of its workings, we need to go one step down in the
architectonic of Peirce's science classification. It is to the
normative realm of esthetics, ethics and logic that I now
appeal to find the rules that account for society's ways in a
'retrodictive' manner.45 Originality is absolutely unconnected
only when prescinded, that is, when considered by itself foranalytic purposes. In the actual semiosis of the Lebenswelt, itreceives its own specification (Bestimmtheit) from the past
(knowledge as 'history of ideas'), while it further specifies that
dual relationship in terms of the law.[59
The three normative sciences (2.198-199) attend to what is
kalós (right as goodness), ethos (one's own acknowledged
purposes) and eikós. Since mine is a sociosemiotic
perspective, I have substituted Peircean 'logic', i.e., 'the studyof the means of attaining the end of thought' (2.198), for the
spontaneous methods used by people - Logica Utens - for
becoming verisimilar or eikós. The latter is to social
interaction what the former is to science. The relationship of
the three domains precludes the supremacy of one over the
rest. We may be inspired by the kalós, as Peirce seems to
suggest,46 but the past as the burden and also assurance of
what has been thought of, and the future as the 'ascending
mimesis' of human aspiration,47 contribute in equal parts to
produce society as co-produced meaning.[60
These normative sciences allow us to reconstruct the ways of
society according to the three semiotic dimensions present in
every action. Human purpose in society is the resultant of
personal visions, objective conditions and collective projects
acting in close interaction with the limits of semiotic systems.
Based on Peirce's interpretant, Liszka (1989:61-96) developsthe concept of transvaluation. It is a remarkable synthesis of
linguistic theory (markedness and hierarchy) and Peircean
pragmaticism (the central role played by purpose). Liszka
defines "transvaluation" as
The comprehension of sign translation in terms of
rank and markedness (...). In its most general form,
transvaluation is a rule-like semiosis which
revaluates the perceived, imagined, or conceived markedness and rank relations of a referent as
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delimited by the rank and markedness relations of the system of its signans and the teleology of thesign user . (1989:71 - emphasis in the original)
[61
Concerning the same theoretical issue, Shapiro (1981:315)
talks about an 'evaluative superstructure' in order to describe
the process of reframing the sign-object reference in terms of human designs. This is an account of the dialectical tension
between these two telic forces: the semiotic agency and the
system's own pattern.48 I would like to add a third element to
this configuration. The third factor involved in transvaluation
is verisimilitude, a central matter of classical rhetoric. In his
Rhetoric (1357a 34-36), Aristotle defines the verisimilar - tóeikós - as that which 'happens in general (...) it concerns that
which may be in some other way.' From this perspective, wemay think of a person as 'a semiotic squid which covers up its
non-verisimilar movements under the thick semiotic fluid of a
seemingly easy consensus'.49 Transvaluation is the theoretical,
and, therefore, general term which accounts for the whole
range of strategies used by people to attain this specifically
human aim. Many years ago, Goffman's teacher, Ray
Birdwhistell (1970:14) expressed this idea in a most succint
manner: 'being in some measure predictable constitutes the
sine qua non of sanity and humanity.' To become eikós is tostand in the right end of transvaluation: to make our actions
and purposes seem unmarked , i.e., normal. Normality, in this
sense, means that others may accept us and our demands
without jeopardizing their own semiotic systems.[62
Transvaluation, Liszka's central contribution for the study of
the acceptance and rejection of ideas (in the guise of stories,
myths, fables, movies, etc), helps us understand how the three
normative domains of what is deemed kalós, êthos and eikósmeet and mingle to create sense in society. We can predict
human behavior, in spite of admitting the sheer creative
freedom of Firstness as SI , because of that tripartite semiotic
cooperation which is guided but not tyrannized by the
hegemonic (= unmarked) values in a community. We may make
our greatest efforts to attain certain collective ideals, but,
whether we know it or not, our actions end up by
transforming these norms, and thus changing the past.[63
Human life consists in the triple coexistence of the right thing
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or kalós, with the familiar behavior or êthos, all leading to the
social endorsement or eikós. The weight of past experience
connects with the whirlpool or anarchy of wishes and with the
aspiration of continuity or agreement with what is
consensually defined as true at a certain moment in the life of
a community.[64
Of course, nothing in real life and politics is as simple and
smooth as I have presented it in this paper. There will be
regressions and breakdowns: the Obsistence of tough interests
levelled painstakingly by the Transuasion of constant
negotiations. However, for the judge (the law) to find the
proper sheriff (the actual), as in Peirce's famous example
(7.532), we must also have the legislator as a dreamer (the
possible). Without the imaginary resolve to leave behind a
world where the use of violence is the tacit rule, we do noteven have or need a judge to begin with. To the poets, and
pure mathematicians mentioned by Peirce in the Universe of
Firstness (6.455), I would like to add law-makers and fashion
designers, and just about anyone whose 'airy nothings' furnish
the limitless space where we house our desires.
NOTES
Click on the note number to return to the place in the text
where the reference to the note occurs.
1 Some other recent examples: J.Arnason (1989), G.Cornu
(1990); A.Moles (1987)
2 I will not follow this lead, though it seems also promising.The description of ideology in D.Vidal (1971:36), based on N.
Poulantzas, as a device to conceal in 'an imaginary plane real
contradictions' shows an interesting parallelism with SI : 'It isnot representation which gives the key of ideological
intelligibility, it is the "opacity" of its structure which makes
that representation intelligible'.
3 The kind of historical analysis associated with J. Le Goff and
his school. A famous instance is his description of the 'birth of the purgatory' in medieval times (La naissance du Purgatoire). I
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shall also leave aside the anthropological approach of the
imaginary associated with G. Durand.
4 As a fair sample of his thought, reference will be made to
Castoriadis 1975, 1986, 1990. These texts cover almost three
decades of elaboration of the SI concept.
5 References to Peirce are made in the conventional way: tovolume and paragraph of Hartshorne, Weiss and Burks (eds),
(1931-58). Manuscripts references are to Robin (1967).
6 An obvious source of the SI notion is Aristotle's speculation
on human fantasy, as the author explicitly acknowledges. See
Castoriadis' (1988: 149-76) discussion of the 'first fantasy' in
"The discovery of the imagination".
7 Castoriadis (1990:39) calls himself 'an old acquaintance andadmirer of Max Weber'. For a detailed account of this point see
"Individu, société, rationalité, histoire", in Castoriadis (1990).
8 This consideration pertains to Peirce's Speculative Rhetoric
(e.g. 1.444), since the problem of 'collateral observation' is
presupposed by any study of human communication, namely
the common cultural universe of reference between
individuals.
9 Such a reductionistic fallacy is found in much of the current
literature on SI , e.g. in the approach of Moles (1987).
10 For my present purpose, I will neglect an early distinction
made by Castoriadis (1975: 328) between 'social imagination
as instituting society' and the 'radical imagination as what
creates at the psychological and somatic level.'
11 V. Potter (1967:15)
12 Ibid .
13 In the same sense in which Liszka (1989:38, emphasis
mine) says Object, Sign and Interpetrant 'are but three aspects
of the process of sign determination.'
14 Another approach which I deem central to the foundation
of a Peircean based sociosemiotic is Erving Goffman's frameanalysis. He presents it in distinctly non-ontological terms, not
based on but akin to phaneroscopy. Goffman (1986:6)
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criticizes the James-Schutzian idea of 'multiple
worlds/realities' since 'what (scholars) are often concerned
with is not an individual's sense of what is real, but rather,
what it is he can get caught up in, engrossed in... and this can
be something he can claim is really going on and yet claim is
not real.'
15 The term is used by W.J.T. Mitchell (1986) in a suggestive
essay, "The rhetoric of iconoclasm".
16 Of course, I do not mean that Sartre is the only thinker
involved in this controversy, Castoriadis mentions Merleau
Ponty, and many others could be included. The former's work
is only an illustration of this ideological position, and a
paradigmatic one at that.
17 This is an echo of Marxian 'false consciousness', as it is
formulated in The German Ideology : an optically distorted
image of man's real social conditions which serves the
interests of the ruling class.
18 Barthes (1970) and Sercovich (1977), respectively. For an
interesting Peircean approach to this issue see F. Merrell's
(1991:8) discussion of two types of 'de-generacy' whereby the
sign relations become 'indexicalized' (R-O) and 'iconized' (R-I).The former leads the semiotic agent to believe in a direct
access to reality without semiotic mediation, the latter to such
an engrossment in sign fiction that we forget 'it is not the
"real" thing.'
19 I refer thus to his radicalization of the SI concept: 'the
radical imaginary.'
20 Castoriadis (1975:283-334 and 1986:65) appeals to theGerman concept of 'Bestimmheit', just as Peirce (8.177) does,
but for the opposite purpose.
21 When he describes the emergence of capitalism,
Castoriadis (1989:310, emphasis mine) argues about the
insufficiency of 'things for making capitalistic relations come
into being, since (the former) do not determine (the latter)'. It
is true, not things but (semiotic) objects do determine
capitalism in this sense.
22 For an enlightening discussion on the two senses of
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"determine", 'logical and causal' in Peirce's definitions of sign
see J.Ransdell (1992), specifically his chapter "Peirce's
definition of the representation relation".
23 In the same fashion than Derrida's analysis of the
Saussurean metaphysical assumptions underlying the supposed
superiority of the spiritual Signified. The signifier is, in this
vision, only reified opacity, just like instituted society for
Castoriadis.
24 In his poem "There was a saviour" (Dylan Thomas, 1953).
25 Indeed, determinism implies that 'all that has been and
what is and what will be, what happens and will happen, is
fixed beforehand, conditioned and established, there cannot be
or happen anything but what was fixed, conditioned and
established beforehand', as Ferrater Mora (1980) defines it in
his dictionary of philosophy.
26 Houser (1989:91) quotes C.Dougherty on this point, and on
the identity of the practice of prescision and phenomenology.
27 Houser, op. cit. 93
28 Unless indicated all quotations in this section are from this
passage in the Collected papers, it dates from 1895.
29 "Doxa" meant not just common opinion, but also 'good
reputation or fame', according to commentator and translator
A. Tovar's (1953).
30 See Peirce (5.538) on the role of the imagination as
preparation for legitimate and efficient action.
31 Peirce seems to identify Secondness with varying degreesof the 'shock' of otherness or non-self: 'That shock which we
experience when anything particularly unexpected forces itself
upon our recognition... Low grades of this shock doubtless
accompany all unexpected perceptions; and every perception is
more or less unexpected' (1.332,emphasis mine).
32 The passage is quoted in M. Murphey (1961:83-85).
33 The context of these considerations on publicity from suchearly marketing period is quite interesting and central to
Peircean semiotic: the Pragmatic Maxim is introduced here.
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34 His mother's muslin dress catches fire and Herbert puts it
out as if he had always done it. This must have impressed
Peirce: not only does he write about it in 1902 and 1903,
5.538, 5.487, respectively but he also changes the identity of
the victim: the second time it is a guest of the house.
35 For a full discussion on the political myth associated withJ. Batlle y Ordóñez see F. Andacht (1992).
36 This is how his opponents called him. See M. Vanger (1980)
37 The dictatorship lasted from 1973 to 1984.
38 On this point I draw many ideas from C. Perelli and J. Rial's
(1985) excellent analysis of the period.
39 A sociologist compares voting in Uruguay with the highest
expectation of the people, almost as if the election's result
were the outcome of a match of soccer between the two
traditional rival teams. See Solari (1965).
40 This is the mechanism of transvaluation. See J.J. Liszka
(1989, passim)
41 I agree with Balat's (1992:205) decision to adopt thisPeircean term to designate Firstness.
42 For a more developed analysis see "Chronicle of an
overannounced burial" in F. Andacht, (1989:37-56).
43 As in the legendary broadcast of O. Welles's War of theWorlds, lots of people actually called the TV station to find out
why the station had been closed. This took place in 1989, four
years after the return of democracy!
44 This strategy is part of the 'phatological dimension' (F.
Andacht 1992a), that is, all those aspects of semiosis
concerned with legitimizing the self in any kind of interaction.
45 See Liszka (1989:8-12) on the type of explanation afforded
by social sciences, opposed to the predictive nature of the
laws of natural sciences.
46 Peirce (2.199) makes the other two sciences 'depend on'
esthetics.
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47 The term appears in P.Aubenque's (1962:498) masterful
exegesis of Aristotle's metaphysics: 'L'imitation
aristotélicienne n'est pas une relation descendante de modèle à
copie comme l'était l'imitation platonicienne, mais une
relation ascendante par laquelle l'être inférieur s'efforce de
réaliser ... un peu de la perfection qu'il aperçoit dans le terme
supérieur...'
48 Shapiro (1981) compares and combines in a subtle way
Saussure's central notion of value, with the Peircean
interpretant, in the light of Jakobson's markedness theory.
49 F. Andacht (1992a: 1470)
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