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Once translated into images, food acquires a broader meaning. Food is no longer merely something to eat, but to show, share and look at. The increasing amount of images and pictures of dishes on our social networks, associated with hashtags such as #foodporn, expresses this renewed social, communicative and provocative function of food. However, the exhibition of these images is quite ambivalent when it comes to establishing determined patterns of visual and social relationships with and between users. The aim of this article is to analyze and attempt to provide mediation to this ambivalence. The pornographic exposition of food images no longer presupposes a transitive form of consumption by the user, but becomes pure and self-reflexing spectacle. The images are obscene (Baudrillard [1981] 1994) and characterized by an excess of transparency on their object which abolishes any form of seduction (Baudrillard [1979] 1990). Barthes ([1980] 1981) defines this kind of image as unary. Pornographic images are an emblematic example. In terms of their self-evident objectivity, these pictures lack any punctum, any piercing sign of a relationship with or openness to the observer (see Eco 1962; 1979). Nevertheless, behind their apparent transparency, the images are always products of specific perspective cuts, and still able to convey mystery, meaning and involvement. The unary image of food is a further fragment in a series of multiple perspectives on the same object. Such potentiality is actualized in our (social) media culture in which sharing and continuous remediation of images and pictures of food constitute a complex storytelling of the object. This, in turn, fosters further participation by the users. The ambivalence between the indifference of the pornographic image and the involvement in the serialization of the detail is synthetized by the notion of fetishism (Baudrillard [1972] 2019). The social (and) media scenery seems to exemplify and radicalize a sort of commodity fetishism, in which social relationships between users are shaped and mediated by (social) media relationships between images of food.
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This anthology book is published on the occasion of the bicentennial of the birth of Friedrich Engels, an exceptional thinker and theorist of the revolution. Editors Maroje Višić and Miroslav Artić gathered renowned domestic and international scientists who tried to reevaluate Engels' works and his scientific contribution. The idea behind the book is to point out the everlasting value and significance of Engels’ revolutionary philosophy. Contributing authors offered analytical reading of Engels' ideas, addressing pressing issues in economics, politics, religion, feminism, ideology and in other segments of contemporary society. The papers in an anthology are organized under the chapters: The Reception of Engel’s Philosophy, Actuality of Engels Today with subchapters on working-class and precariat, peasantry as the subject of change, early Christianity as an inspiration; and the last chapter is Revalorization of Family and State. The first chapter tackles the questions if Engels was more than an interpreter of Marx or simply the first Marxist who contributed to the banalization of Marx. It then investigates reception of Engels’ philosophy in ex-Yugoslavia specifically and in philosophical theory in general. The second chapter demonstrates actuality and relevance of Engels today by discussing the topics of working-class and precariat, by making comparison between early industrial society and contemporary society and by tracking development of socialism from utopia to a science. Chapter also deals on the peasantry whose role as a subject of change is thoroughly problematized. Special part of the chapter is dedicated to the influence of the practice of early Christianity on the formation of Engels’ revolutionary idea and to what extent original Christian community served affected the development of Engels’ thought. Final chapter brings papers that, under new circumstances, re-examine the understanding of the state-family relation and their dynamic. This comprehensive anthology attempted to revalorize and appraise Engels’ own contribution to science and philosophy 200 years after his birth. For this it was necessary to “divorce” Engels from Marx so that the fallacy of statement that Engels was second violin to Marx becomes striking.Chapter one tackle the question of whetherEngels was more than an interpreter of Marx or simply the first Marxist to contribute to the banalization of Marx.= Engels' reception is then examined both in the former Yugoslavia and in philosophical theory in general.Special part of the chapter is dedicated to influence of the practice of early Christianity on the formation of Engels’ revolutionary idea. That is, to what extent the examples of the original Christian communities influenced the development of Engels' thought
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In life, decisions are not only taken by considering logical reasoning, but they are influenced by images, symbols, and myths. Moreover, in our multicultural and multiracial societies, we must express ourselves with attention, to use careful comparisons and especially neutral expressions. Symbols multiply the effect of words, and consequently, the risk of saying something wrong is increased. Also, if each person one discusses with will know how to decode your words is a wrong assumption. The symbols mentioned are also influenced by other factors, and they are part of a more comprehensive concept, namely the imaginary. This study is a conceptual review of the imaginary concept. There are many disciplines that study the imaginary, and many definitions for it, given by researchers coming from all fields, but there are few papers that explain how the imaginary is formed and how it influences our lives. By reviewing the literature, we have identified major limitations of the theories and models that treat the imaginary. Studying all those studies was useful for us because from the beginning we wanted to understand how the imaginary is formed and how it can be decoded, so we developed our own framework. The key conclusion of this paper is that symbols are a useful concept for understanding imaginary, since they can be seen both as forms of communication of the intangible culture, but also as productions of the imaginary. By settling symbols in the middle of our conceptual model, imaginary can be easier understood and further used in other scientific investigations.
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Dear Chuck, I think the first time I ever became aware of your work was in the spring of 1973. It must have been at UCLA which I visited as a result of an invitation that Michael Moerman had arranged. On this occasion, as I recall, I also visited Irvine, and met Harvey Sacks, even stayed with him for a night in his Geodesic Dome house. Either at UCLA or perhaps during my visit to Irvine (I cannot now recall precisely) I joined a “data session” with Moerman, Schegloff , Sacks, Gail Jeff erson and perhaps one or two others, where we went over a video called “Auto Discussion”.
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We’re talking about J. Anthony Lucas’s classic argument that Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem rules out man-machine equivalence. This is an argument that Penrose revived and popularized in the 1990s. This fallacious argument is a thoroughly dead horse. But I’ll give it another beating here. Do note that the Lucas-Penrose argument is a completely distinct issue from PenroseHameroff speculation that the brain can act as a coherent quantum computer. It’s to Penrose’s credit that he’s associated with multiple controversial ideas!
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Review of: Frederik Stjernfelt - Review of Peirce’s Speculative Grammar: Logic as Semiotics by Francesco Bellucci. New York, London: Routledge, 2017, 388 pages
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The structuralist André-Weil–Claude-Lévi-Strauss transformation formula (CF), initially applied to kinship systems, mythology, ritual, artistic design and architecture, was rightfully criticized for its rationalism and tendency to reduce complex transformations to analogical structures. I present a revised non-mathematical revision of the CF, a general transformation formula (rCF) applicable to networks of complementary semantic binaries in conceptual value-fields of culture, including comparative religion and mythology, ritual, art, literature and philosophy. The CF is a rule-guided formula for combinatorial conceptualizing in non-representational, presentational mythopoetics and other cultural symbolizations.
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The article discusses some semiotic approaches to the relation between nature and culture. Starting with outlining the structuralistic approach to this issue, especially the ideas of Juri Lotman and Algirdas Julien Greimas, the author finds parallels between different views on the relation between the natural world and human beings. First, the juxtaposition of Eero Tarasti’s existential semiotics with selected concepts of biosemiotics is discussed. The following part of the paper is dedicated to Bruno Latour’s ideas on nature–culture relation, hybrids and mediations. Then the author refers to Lotman’s notion of the semiosphere as the common space for all living and inanimate elements. Closing the paper with a return to biosemiotics, the author comes back to Tarasti’s ideas and compares these with some ideas in biosemiotics, paying special attention to the concepts of unpredictability, choice and dynamics. The comparison shows that some intuitions, assumptions and theses of these different scholars turn out to be surprisingly convergent. The author believes that the outlined parallels between Tarasti’s view, Latour’s and Lotman’s concepts, and biosemiotics may be promising for further research, inviting detailed study.
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The article provides a commentary on Umberto Eco’s text “Animal language before Sebeok”, and an annotated bibliography of various versions of the article on ‘latratus canis’ that Eco published together with Roberto Lambertini, Costantino Marmo, and Andrea Tabarroni.
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Accountability in the common usage often implies something like ‘responsibility’ or a kind of judicial accounting imposed from the outside. Here our semiotic approach focuses more on the -ability part. This is more in accordance with the etymological building blocks of the term. We consider the aspect of semiosis that makes it able to be accounted for – if the full conditions for such are present. That is, what is proper to not only semiosis but to the sign relation (proper to and fundamental for semiosis) is not temporal but logical in a sense that does not depend upon the arrow of time. So if one can fix the interpretant at the appropriate angles, one can find out the “semiotic truth of the matter” in the present or in retrospect. And the only thing keeping one from being able to establish this truthful relation would be access to the interpretant in whatever domain needed. That is, we may not have current access to some domain (like someone’s internal thought life), but what keeps us from establishing the truth of the sign relation is not on the semiotic side. If we can find a way to access the relevant domain, the sign relation will “give itself up” to view. It has no agenda to collude with us in our purposes to obscure the reality of our past (or present) semiosis.
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Learning and adaptation are central problems to both edusemiotics, or semiotics of education, and biosemiotics. Bildung, as an especially human way or form of learning, and evolution as the main form of adaptation for many biologists after Darwin are often regarded as mutually exclusive concepts even though human beings are undeniably one biological species among others. In this article I will try to build a bridge between the biosemiotical, edusemiotical and Bildung-theoretical stances. Central to this discussion is biosemiotician Kalevi Kull and some of his recent publications where he considers adaptation, evolution and learning. The primary theoretical resource that I utilize here, in addition to the general Greimassian, edusemiotical and Bildungtheoretical starting points, is perceptual control theory (PCT) to which I compare the Uexküllian conception of functional circle.
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The study focuses on the repeated visits of Russian-born Harvard linguist Roman Jakobson to Slovakia. The author traces Jakobson’s Slovak contacts from the interwar period up to 1968. Based on analysis of secret police documents and memoir literature, the research offers an insight into contemporary academic and cultural life in 20th century Czechoslovakia.Jakobson’s first Slovak contacts in the 1920s were linked to his activities in the Prague Soviet legation and the Charles University. In the 1930s he visited Bratislava more frequently, while teaching at Brno University. During the Stalinist era in Czechoslovakia, a number of his friends and colleagues were politically prosecuted. Only in 1957, was he able to return to Czechoslovakia for Slavonic Studies conferences in Prague and Olomouc, using this occasion to give a lecture also in Bratislava. In the approaching wave of hate-campaign against local “unreliable intellectuals” he was denounced as a “cosmopolitan” and “Western agent”. Subsequent attempts for Jakobson’s academic and public rehabilitation, urged by his Czechoslovak friends, became a reality only during his visit in 1968. The presentation ceremony of the Golden medal of the Slovak Academy of Sciences to Roman Jakobson was scheduled in Bratislava on August 21, 1968, the day of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact.
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Advertising is one of the most well-known parts of marketing communication. Advertisement text has a specific structure and consists of a headline, sub-headline and body copy. These elements belong to different language levels: phonetic, grammatical (morphological and syntactical), and lexical. To make the advertisement effective different promotional strategies are employed, which imply the use of various linguistic and extralinguistic means. Linguistic means include paradigmatic and syntagmatic expressive means and stylistic devices. We may mention lexical, syntactic, phonetic, and semasiological expressive means (speech) and stylistic devices (language). Extralinguistic means include colours, different types of fonts, pictures and so on and can be considered as visual communication with the potential customer. Advertisement text often contains basic semiotic elements: icon, index, and sign. Some of them are used as a trademark or logo and accompany advertisement. The visual perception of the advertisement is very important; linguistic means enhance it. The combination of linguistic and visual means allows us to consider the advertisement text as a semiotic construal.
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Subject: A diatonic harmonica as the cultural and symbolic text containing extensive information about the Adyghe traditional culture. Purpose of study: To disclose the sense of the basic national notions and the ideals coded in a harmonica as a material and spiritual object of culture. Methods: Comparative-typological, semiotic and field observations.
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The paper explores theoretical foundations of the frame from two semiotic perspectives: that of the Saussurean dyadic sign dominant in the European tradition and that of the triadic sign of the Peircean/American descent. If – within the post- Saussurean agenda – meaning can be fairly easily “framed” and closed in the field of the signified, Peirce’s concepts of interpretant and infinite semiosis implement a mechanism which inherently obliterates the frame. Given this duality of approaches, the contention “No meaning without a frame” is thus true and paradoxical at the same time, and that paradox goes far beyond the Derridean concept of the parergon, which only belongs to both the inside and the outside. The frame, as construed in this paper, is not merely a material or imaginary, inactive partition, but is itself an operational agent which isolates and delineates a text ontologically as the other of the context, and simultaneously subverts that otherness by necessitating further semiosis and its own partial self-erasure. Regarding the interrelations amongst texts and between text and context, the frame is thus envisaged, and investigated in the paper, not so much as a factor of resistance or separation, but as an osmotic boundary facilitating rather than preventing a bi-directional flow of meanings. Putting this in epistemological terms, one may say that interpretation – paradoxically again –requires an enframing of its object, but at the same time it dissolves the stipulated frame and reaches beyond it.
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According to the quotational theory of meaning ascriptions, sentences like “‘Bruder (in German) means brother” are abbreviated synonymy claims, such as “‘Bruder (in German) means the same as ‘brother’”. After discussing a problem with Harman’s (1999) version of the quotational theory, I present an amended version defended by Field (2001; 2017). Then, I address Field’s responses to two arguments against the theory that revolve around translation and the understanding of foreign expressions. Afterwards, I formulate two original arguments against both Harman’s and Field’s versions of the theory. One of them targets the hyperintensionality of quotations and the other raises a problem pertaining to variant spellings of words.
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Conscience is an element of the linguistic portrayal of the human person. The manner in which conscience is conceptualized in a language certifies that it is an intellectual judgment, moral imperative, moral reflection, a force to do good and a force restraining from evil. Specific linguistic connections certify what is meant by conscience in contemporary Polish. The contexts of occurrence of conscience allow for distinguishing two orientations, which are not only characteristic of Christian thought. They are: axiological orientation and pragmatic orientation. The first can be found in texts of a legislative nature, the second – points to the sociological and psychological motivations for using the concept in a specific context. This allows for a reconstruction of the image of conscience on the basis of specific mental operations that affect the formation of specific language constructs.
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In the study, the movie La Montana Sagrada (1973) was analyzed using the method of semiotic analysis. The works in the film have been analyzed in two sections as "Footprints of the Past" and "The Modern World". In this context, the reinterpretations of works such as Goya's 3 May, Michelangelo's Pieta, an anonymous work Gabrielle d'Estrees and Sister's Portrait and the works directly used by artist Manuel Falguerez were analyzed. In the section "Footsteps of the past", some of the most striking examples of art history are semiotically revived in the transfer of difficult concepts such as religion, politics and exploitation. In the "Modern world" part of the film, postmodern works were used as a means of transmission in re-questioning concepts such as religion, war and exploitation that evolved in a different direction after modernism. With this film, Jodorowsky made a narrative through the works and at the same time revealed one of the most interesting examples of performance art.
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