The topography of Yuri Lotman’s semiosphere

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to examine Yuri Lotman's models of the semiosphere and of semiotic spaces in literature and culture in the context of the spatial turn in cultural studies. It argues that Lotman's writings anticipate the 'spatial turn' in cultural studies. Lotman's semiosphere is a metaphor, which offers a spatial model for the interpretation of culture. A semiosphere is surrounded by a boundary. Its internal places are discontinuous and heterogeneous as well as homogeneous in some respects. Typical constellations of the locations within the semiosphere are opposition and bipolar asymmetry. Furthermore, the semiosphere is a space which can in some respects include itself in a way in which the included space is an icon of the including space. The article shows that Lotman's topography of the semiosphere has undergone a change from a structuralist to a post-structuralist conception of culture.

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“…Winfried Nöth (2015), in his article on Lotman's semiosphere, states that "this asymmetry is reflected most typically in the bipolar asymmetry of the centre, with its conservative tendencies towards stability and stagnation, vs the periphery, with its tendencies towards instability and creativity" (19). Due to being advanced in its development, the center requires no further transformations whereas the unstable peripheries tend to be more prone to change in order to enhance their functioning.…”

Is the Semiosphere Post-Modernist?

“…Lotman's account of the semiosphere is not bereft of ambiguities which have turned out to be particularly inviting to diverse scholarly interpretations 1 . Nöth (2014) rightly claims that Lotman exhibits a considerably varied definitional approach to the concept of 'semiosphere'. "The terms 'semiosphere', 'semiotic space' and 'culture' are not sharply delimited in relation to each other" (Nöth 2014: 2).…”

“…Sebeok (2001: 164): "Biosemiotics presupposes the axiomatic identity of the semiosphere with the biosphere" (14) "semiosphere is thus the totality of interconnected signs, a sphere that covers the Earth" (Emmeche et al 2002: 21) (15) 'semiosphere as a continuum of culture' (16) 'semiosphere is the region of multiple realities' (or, semiosphere is the world of several realities). essence of the concept ("Lotman, in his first paper 'On the semiosphere' explicitly rejects the metaphorical interpretation of the semiotic space of culture" [Nöth 2006: 251]), as Nöth (2006Nöth ( , 2014 remarks, metaphorical aspects clearly appear to be seething into the semiosphere's definitional scope. However, in order to account more concretely for why the semiosphere is not merely metaphorical, it is suggested that we address, complementary to Nöth's argument for the capacity of the semiosphere to function as modeling blueprint of culture, regardless of whether its existence may be conceived of separately from a strictly delimited in naturalistic terms biosphere, and hence as generativist mechanism of metaphors, rather than being a metaphor itself, Lotman's (1990) own contention that a natural space (e. g., the space of a city) is always already semiotized.…”

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“…Il successo di questa operazione artistica mette in luce, a mio parere, il cuore del problema. È infatti nella possibilità di dialogo tra sistemi valoriali che si percepiscono come mutualmente incompatibili, ovvero come anti-culture (Harelty 2015;Lotman 1975;Nöth 2014), che il murales di Blu acquisisce un ruolo ibrido. Se da un lato i piani urbanistici del Comune di Bologna e l'esistenza del centro sociale XM24 non sono in alcun modo compatibili, tanto che il primo cerca di demolire il secondo, #OccupyMordor si colloca strategicamente in un punto di frizione e, così facendo, si sdoppia.…”