1 Institute of English and American Studies Attila Kiss [544260; akiss@lit.u-szeged.hu] Office hours: Wed. 12:30-14:00 and by app.

FROM SIGN TO SUBJECT

Postsemiotics and literary theory

survey ......................COURSE EXTRACTS AND KEY WORDS......................

........................I........................
AN OVERVIEW OF MAJOR TRENDS IN LITERARY THEORY
Basic difference in orientation: SELF-ENCLOSED, autonomous, organic unit, conveys aesthetic values independent of context. Network of interrelations within the closed "object". LWA

OPEN UNIT, "discursive space" where different verbal-textual practices cross each-other: intertextuality interaction between work and reader, context and traditions.

1. TEXTUAL SCHOLARSHIP (philology) - a necessary prerequisite for criticism and literary history - has to provide the basis for study: the TEXT itself - thus, it always has an inevitable ideological function in the historically specific canon-formation - has an especially important role in the study of older texts: which version is "authentic", which one are we supposed to examine? - Hamlet, for example, has three contemporary forms (First Quarto 1603, Second Quarto 1604, First Folio 1623) 2. TRADITIONAL
APPROACHES

a/ Historical-Biographical - "topical" quality of the work: we need background knowledge to interpret the work - environmental determinism: space, milieu, history is reflected, mirrored in the work - the personal biography of the author helps us to reveal how his/her life is manifest in the work b/ Moral-Philosophical - goes back to classical moralism and utilitarianism

2 - Horace: "dulce and utile" - the larger function of literature is to teach morality (social corrective role) and to investigate the basic "transhistorical" philosophical issues

3 3. FORMAL CRITICAL TRENDS Formalistic approaches are mainly interested in: - the "deformation" of ordinary language ("deviation") - the poetic devices which "defamiliarize" automatized conventions or perceptions - the tensions, ambiguities, or paradoxes, with which the poet grasps the "complexity of experience" a/ New Criticism - objective: to make the study of literature a separate discipline - "organicism": the LWA is a complex "verbal icon" of the author's experience; its poetic "texture" is a network of correspondences, oppositions: dialectic between parts and the whole unit - important strategy introduced: close reading - the meaning of the work cannot be reduced to external factors, context b/ Russian formalism - focus on the technical aspects of literature - study of distinctive linguistic properties of literary languages makes formalism an independent discipline: science of literature = a complete knowledge of all the formal effects that make up literature - influence of structuralist linguistics - literature, through a special usage of language, defamiliarizes and deautomatizes our usual experience of reality - process of analysis: 1. mastering the meanings of the words (is it possible without historical context?) 2. looking for patterns, structures, interrelationships between words 3. patterns reveal a form, a principle according to which patterns are organized 4. the "internal logic" of the work governs the relationship between idea and form c/ Structuralism - the principle of "binary oppositions": fundamental binarisms (masculine / feminine, night / day, open / closed) govern existence and thought: they take on meaning and become cultural signs - binary logic is characteristic of Western thought - the discovery of BOs governs reading&interpretive strategies - structuralist narrative theory: narrative structures in the work: thematic/linear/narrative structures, deep (master plot) and surface structures, typology of functions (theory of actants) d/ Phenomenology - "predecessor" of reader-response criticism - Husserl's philosophy: our sole source of knowledge about reality is our consciousness, objects are intentional object, formed and

4 intended by the naming, interpreting consciousness, but: this consciousness is capable of getting to know the "essentials", the real, authentic features of reality through the intentional procedure of "bracketing out" subjective prejudices and disturbances.

5 - phenomenological criticism: the LWA is an intentional object, containing, manifesting the author's consciousness for the reader: the act of reading is the "coming together of two consciousnesses: we get direct access to the mind of the author. LWA maintains a direct link between the author's & the receiver's mind. - phenomenological reading: the work is a consistent manifestation of a state of consciousness, which governs the vision of the writing 4. READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM - rather a perspective, a critical attitude than a separate school: emphasis on interaction between reader and text, the act and temporality of reading, the reader-dependent ontology of meaning, the importance of the reading community. - Reception Theory: - influence of Gadamer's hermeneutics of (historical) understanding: interpretation is always a fusion of horizons: "under the shower of traditions" The text's meaning and significance is a result of the dynamic interaction between text and reader: the text is not an independent set of characteristics, but the reader is not totally free in reading either. -Wolfgang Iser: The Act of Reading: reading is an active process in which the reader actualizes the text on the basis of its "responseinviting structures" that create the "implied reader". These structure predispose us to follow certain interpretive strategies: the text is full of GAPS that have to be filled by the "actual reader": this actualization is based on the reader's repertoire and the networks of gaps. The structure of theme and horizon: parts illuminate the whole, the whole makes the parts understandable: reading is a continuous selfcorrection. - H. R. Jauss: the reader's interpretive activity always depends on his/her historical situatedness: we always read within a dominant horizon of expectations. 5. POSTSTRUCTURALISM a/ The Semiotics of the Sign and the Subject - Saussure: language is a system of differences where elements attain (a negative) value only in relation to all the other elements, and not to reality. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is conventional, arbitrary: reality, the referent is not part of the signifying system. - Poststructuralism: the signifier's arbitrariness and instability determines signification: the signifier has an uncontrollable capacity to refer to various signified, and: a signifier does not refer to a

6 signified in the first place, but to other signifiers: the signified is sliding on the chain of signifiers: the fundamental characteristic of language is this free play which the subject cannot control, we only try to fix this chain when we produce meaning, but the meaning is always unstable. Since the signifier is not tied to the signified, the author cannot have power over the writing after the point of creation: "the death of the author" (R. Barthes). - E. Benveniste: language is constitutive of subjectivity: "ego is he who says ego". Human subjectivity is produced in a social "symbolic order" (language!) where the signifiers that work in meaningproduction are always ideologically determined.

7 - Thus: the signifier is constitutive of the subject: semiotics studies how the codes setting up possible relations between signifiers and signified are determined by historically specific social/political strategies. b/ Psychoanalysis - the "Freudian revolution": the subject is a heterogeneous system: the signifying process has two modalities, the unconscious and the conscious are both participating. - the concept of the unconscious: the repressed region of primary processes (attachment to the mother, identification with the outside, desire). The social subject is constituted by the successful repression of primary desires through the realization of the Father's (phallus: key-signifier) power: fear of castration and acceptance of the Father's ( = the social patriarchal symbolic order) rule: Oedipalization. - Jacques Lacan: "The unconscious is structured like language." The agency of the Signifier is constitutive of the subject both on the conscious and the unconscious level. The psychic apparatus is formed by signification, subjectivity is produced by the emergence of the signifier which separates the subject from the Real. The Signifier emerges as a compensation for the losses through which the split subject is produced (loss of the mother, the breast, etc.): the engine of signification is the Desire continuously emanating from the core of our repressed primary desires. - the unconscious makes itself manifest through linguistic symptoms: word play, slippages, failure of communication, puns, ambiguities, metaphors. c/ Deconstruction - aims at uncovering the logic of Western metaphysics behind our discourses: signification is always meaning- or truth-production, but the elements participating are dependent on a hierarchy of value (soul / body, good / bad, masculine / feminine) which is always metaphysical (i.e., socially conventional, not inherently true). The rehabilitation of the disprivileged supplement. Process of deconstructive analysis: 1/ showing the metaphysical hierarchies that constitute the (ideological) framework in which the text participates 2/ reversing the hierarchy, showing that the system has no inherent fixity, there is no "central, key signifier" or a "transcendental signified" (eg., God in theology) that determines or guarantees values and "the one and only meaning" of things 3/ leaving the free play between the two orders rather than setting up one as prior to, better than the other d/ New Historicism - rejection of traditional (positivistic) historicism which studies literary history as a linear development reflecting the nation's

8 evolution and the "spirit of the age". - Michel Foucault: social discourses (eg. literature) are governed by historically specific technologies of power which determine what can be part of our language, i.e., our knowledge. Power/knowledge is a social functioning setting up regimes of truth, systems of exclusion that shape our reality through ideological discourses and institutions. - Ideology is the most extensive technology to set up relations of power in society: certain marginal or subversive discourses may try to undermine this dominance of ideology.

9 - Literature often fulfills this subversive role: it questions the legitimacy, the working of the ideological apparatuses, the position of rulers, etc. BUT: resistances like this may always be pre-scripted and contained by ideology itself (eg., the "safety-valve theory"). - New Historicism studies how texts reflect the antagonisms, struggles, ideological tensions and discontinuities of a historical era, always bearing in mind that our interpretations inevitably contain our own historical positionality: we cannot have an "objective" approach to history, which is always our fictional discourse about the past. e/ Feminist criticism - Western society is a patriarchal, male-dominated structure, with the constitutive male / female binarism, which sets up technologies suppressing women and assigning them to definite social roles and categories (psychoanalysis: the Phallus is a key-signifier according to which the human subject is constituted and enters society's symbolic order) The critique of the ideological canon: - canon-formation and editorial policy have been determined by these patriarchal rules in the Western literary institution - the male perspective usually organizes the fabric of the LWA: the male GAZE working in the text assigns a predetermined role to the reader: feminist criticism aims at showing these biased strategies and inherent prejudices in literature through the application of a different, feminine perspective - literature as a semiotic practice is also "feminine" (Julia Kristeva) in the sense that it plugs the subject back into (repressed) psychic drives attached to the MOTHER (mainly through rhythm and deviation): this practice resists the patriarchally determined identityformation of the main social discourses (psychoanalysis again!)

........................II........................ SEMIOTICS
From Sign to Subject I. CULTURE
AS SIGNIFICATION

- human culture relates to reality: what are the methods? ... SIGNS everywhere - meaning-production in society: meaning is not the inherent quality, attribute of reality - human beings: operationally closed systems: access to reality only through interpretation: no direct communication with reality --no transparency of language and reality

10 no direct communication with one-another --SIGNIFICATION everywhere (production and exchange of meaning): - to study culture, we need to study the sign: - Semiotics: theory of signification and theory of communication CULTURE is a semiotic mechanism, a system of texts.

11 II. CULTURES
AND SIGNIFICATION

The nature of the sign: arbitrary, non-motivated, compound, negative. Ferdinand de Saussure: language is a system of differences: logic of negativity. This logic applies to all social formations as well: structuralism, str. anthropology. Claude Lvi-Strauss: the idea of system and structure (deep and surface) in society. In every culture there is a basic semiotic disposition, attitude to reality. Lotman: semiotic typology of cultures: Medieval World Model//[Renaissance]//Enlightenment World Model/ [Postmodern]//??? high semioticity//epistemological crisis//reduced semioticity//epistemological crisis//??? Postmodernism: information overflow, the precession of simulacra (Jean Baudrillard). Enlightenment: the Cartesian self-identical and homogeneous individuum as the foundation of the "project of modernism": belief in the human being, science, reason, society, the conquest of reality and the universe (--positivism). III. THE CARTESIAN
HERITAGE OF MODERNISM

The Cartesian subject: self-transparency and mastering of language; inherent, transhistorical human quality, not context-dependent. Hierarchy between language and subject: individuum masters language. 20th century: belief in omnipotent science and self-identical subject is shaken. Benveniste: ego is he who says ego -- subjectivity is a linguistic category. But: subject uses language to have access to the categories of I/non-I, or language "uses" subject? Freud: the subject does not (fully) know who it is and what it is speaking. Lacan: ego is he who is spoken by language. The classical hierarchy is inverted. The heterogeneous subject in the Symbolic Order: the agency of the signifier in the human consciousness and the discursive practices of society. IV. THE

CONSTITUTION OF THE SPEAKING SUBJECT

IV.i. The microdynamics of the subject

12 Lacan: the subject is constituted through losses: the fundamental experience of the human being is that of lack. Self-reflexivity (ego, subjectivity, identity) presupposes: 1. a system of differences in which the human being experiences itself as being separate from reality (the mirror effect); 2. a conceptual framework (sign-system) that the human being can use to refer to this feeling of being separate (language).

13 Differentiation from reality: 1. the "hommelette" 2. the territorialization of the body thorough stimuli at the orifices 3. the Mirror Stage: primary repression of demand and the drive to identify with the Mother 4. Oedipalization: secondary repression, submission to the rule of the phallic center, the Name of the Father, insertion into the Symbolic Order and the use of language. The signifier will function as a stand-in between the subject and lost reality. The logic of language is the same as that of the Symbolic Order as a system of power relations. The metaphysics of language works on the basis of the guarantee given by "the third party": the mirror, the mechanism of society, the Symbolic Order which is a system of signifying positions that only operate in relation to oneanother and in relation to the (phallic) center. IV.ii. The macrodynamics of the subject Human beings are born into subject positions in society that are distributed continuously by discursive technologies of power. Power interpellates the subject (Louis Althusser): "ideology has no history." Ideology or power objectivizes and subjectivizes the human being at the same time: internalizing a false feeling of individuality (misrecognition) is becoming an object to power. Power sets up regimes of truth in society (Foucault): 1. dividing practices (turn reality into a system of binary oppositions); 2. institutionalization of binarisms (disciplines that regulate knowledge); 3. power is exercised on free subjects only: self-subjection (voluntary submission to the establishment.

.......................III.......................
THE CRITIQUE OF STRUCTURALISM
The theory of literature must be based on a theory of the PROCESS of signification, as opposed to the structuralist understanding of meaning as the result of a linguistic ACT which is carried out by that transcendental ego of phenomenology which is the Cartesian self-identical subject. The study of the MICRODYNAMICS AND THE MACRODYNAMICS of the subject opens up the homogeneous, self-transparent Cartesian ego for its

14 socio-political positionality and its psychosomatic heterogeneity, in a signifying process that is not static but is a dialectic of macrodynamic and microdynamic agencies.

15 Western metaphysics has always been obsessed with the idea of PRESENCE to the center of the systemic STRUCTURE (eg., the "I" of subjectivity, the logos of creation, the phallic position in social formations); however, the very idea of center is impossible since it should be located outside the structure to avoid the FREEPLAY of the structure. DECONSTRUCTION: critique presence. of the phallogocentric metaphysics of

DERRIDA DIFFRANCE: meaning is always in a relentless process of deferral, postponement in the SIGNIFYING CHAIN: every signified immediately turns out to be a signifier, there is not final union between signifier and signified. Also: the signifier does not represent the signified for the subject, but the subject for other signifiers (Lacan). The reversal of the hierarchies of binary logic: Western thinking is based on the privileging of one pole of binary opposition at the expense of a SUPPLEMENT. BARTHES The idea of the PLURAL TEXT: the structuralist attempt to discover every possible text in the deep structure of a text is criticized by the poststructuralist realization that every text is based on a play of DIFFERENCE, referring to everything that has already been written. READERLY TEXT: classic expressive realism, the reader is a passive CONSUMER of a fixed, prefabricated meaning. WRITERLY TEXT: modern practice, reader is an active producer of meaning. Death of the author: author is the epitome of capitalist ideology, born with empiricism, rationalism, the prestige of the individual; however, the play of the signifier is not controlled by the author, the plural text has an infinite meaning-generating capacity. No teleological origin or closure of meaning. Every signifying practice articulates a position for the subject which either solidifies subjectivity by the relationality produced by the meaning in the predicative act (symbolic fixation), or puts the subject in process by questioning and denying that comfortable position. Automatized reception of text: positions are internalized, literature as a technology of INSTITUTIONALIZED binarism; canon-formation, literature as confession and self-hermeneutics. TYPOLOGIES OF TEXTS: - readerly vs. writerly (Barthes) - classic realist vs. interrogative (Belsey) - genotext vs. phenotext (Kristeva) KRISTEVA Every signifying process involves a SEMIOTIC and a SYMBOLIC modality that

16 are always simultaneously at work. Symbolic fixation is always propelled and at the same time threatened by the heterogeneity of the unstructured semiotic, fed by the semiotic CHORA. The theory of literature has to account for the idea, the possibility of PRACTICE, change (Revolution in Poetic Language), for those limits of meaning that are beyond the scope of structuralist laws of grammar and environmental constraints: SEMANALYSIS.

17

.......................IV.......................
A beszlszubjektum elmlete Posztstrukturalista kritikai gondolkods: - decentralizlni, dekonstrulni a liberlis humanizmus kartzinus szubjektumfogalmt, az nmagval nmagtl fogva azonos, nmagnak jelenlv homogn kartzinus egot , - feltrni a szemizis s a szubjektum klcsnviszonyt, a jell( d)s logikja s a kultra klnfle szintjeinek logikja kztt lv sszefggst: - a nyelv klnbsgek rendszere, amelyben az elemek egymstl val klnbz sgkt fogva, s nem nmagukbl ered vesznek l en fel rtket - a kultra mint szemiotikai folyamat s mint rendszer a nyelvben m kd negatv rtkek logikjra pl (strukturlis antropolgia, Claude Lvi-Strauss) - a kultrkat lehet a jelhez s a szubjektum jellkapacitshoz val viszonyuk alapjn kategorizlni: a kultra szemiotikai tipolgija (J. Lotman) - a kultrkat s szvegm kdtet eljrsaikat lehet a szubjektum szemiotikai sttusa alapjn tipologizlni (Julia Kristeva) Irodalmi "kommunikcis modell": kritikai orientcik hangslyeltoldsa: szerz intenci, kontextus, pozitivista rekonstrukci --- formalizmus, i szvegcentrikussg --- befogadselmlet, interakci szveg s olvas kztt --- posztstrukturalizmus, a szubjektum pozicionltsga, a szveg mint fellet: KI OLVAS? (kiolvas?) I. II. III. Tisztzni kell a jelentsalkots s a szubjektum kapcsolatt, hierarchijt. A szubjektumot, a jelentst, a jelet ltrejvetelkben, folyamatknt s folyamatban kell vizsglni. Nincs olyan humn rtk, trtnelmileg stabil emberi min sg, amely kontextustl fggetlenl garantlhatn a jelhasznl szubjektum transzhistorikus nazonossgt, "emberi min sgt". Az emberb trtnelmileg specifikus hatalmi technolgik ltal l irnytott diszkurzv szocilis krnyezetben lesz szubjektum, azltal, hogy ebben a krnyezetben elfoglal egy pozcit; a mindenkori pozicionltsg nlkl jelhasznlatra kptelen lenne, mert: A szubjektum a jelhasznlathoz (pontosabban a jell hz) kpest s a nyelven keresztl konstituldik (E.Benveniste: "Az ego az, ami azt mondja, hogy 'ego"."): a nyelv szimbolikus trsadalmi rendjbe val beilleszkeds a jelhasznl ego kialakulsnak felttele: a folyamat ltalnos pszicho-szomatikus s pszicholgiai rendjt ideolgiailag meghatrozott diszkurzusok irnytjk. Vizsgland, hogy hogyan alakul ki a szubjektum a jell tudati felbukkansn keresztl: a szubjektum, a jell s a jellt mint homogn manifesztcik kzti mechanikus sszefggs helyett azt

IV.

V.

18 kell elmletbe foglalni, hogy milyen a szubjektum s az rtelem keletkezsi rendje a mindenkori trsadalmi pozicionltsg fggvnyben. Milyen a szubjektum identitsa s a jelentsalkots kzti kapcsolat? A szubjektum felplsnek makrodinamikja: trtnelmi, szociolgiai, trsadalmi (Michel Foucault: archeolgiai s genealgiai) megkzelts: mik azok a trtnelmileg sajtsgos hatalmi technolgik, melyek a jelhasznl tudat kialakulst s m kdst irnytjk.

VI.

19 - a hatalom s a szubjektum reciprocitsa; - a hatalom konmija, dimenzionalitsa s trsadalmi trendez dsei - az objektifikci hrom fmodalitsa: 1./ a beszlalanyt objektumm alakt disciplink 2./ "megoszt stratgik" ( rlt/normlis, etc.) 3./ "n-szubjekci": a szubjektum nmaga alaktja magt trsadalmi alanny a hatalom/tuds ltal determinlt pozcikba lpve A szubjektum felplsnek mikrodinamikja: pszicholgiai, pszichoanalitikus-szemiotikus megkzelts. Freud: a szubjektum heterogn rendszer. Lacan: a tudatos s a tudatalatti egyarnt gy strukturldik, mint a nyelv A jell dominancija a szubjektumban: egy differenciarendszer felttele s a beteljest amely "levlasztja" a szubjektumot a je, prediklt klvilgtl. A jell nem a jelltre vagy a referensre utal, hanem vgtelen lncolaton keresztl jabb s jabb jell kre (a lncolat alatt elcsszik a jellt). A jells, a jell szntelen kibocstsa s a Valsgos kzeltgetse k mgtt az alapvetmotor a Msik irnti Vgy, amelyr a szubjektum l (a jellkzbekel dsvel) leszakadt. (a beszls autoerotikja!) A szubjektum hinyzik a jell l. b A jell nem a jelltet, hanem a szubjektumot jelli ms jell k szmra. A jells motorizmusa soha nem kompenzlhatja teljesen a vesztesgeken s hasadsokon, elfojtsokon keresztl ltrejtt szubjektum vgyakozst. A szubjektumot a klvilgtl elklnbztet differencia-rendszer elfojtsokon s a jell tudati felbukkansn keresztl alakul ki. A vesztesgek (anya, fallosz, klvilg, a Msik) s az elfojtsok (tkrszakasz, dipalizci) alapvet en heterognn teszik a szubjektumot (kvetkezskppen nem lehet a jelents ura s garancija). A jellsben a tudatos s a tudatalatti folyamatok egyarnt rszt vesznek. A jells kt alapvetmodalitsa (Julia Kristeva): 1./ A szemiotikus chora: a tudatalattiba szortott, msknt szabadon raml energik, motilits, pszichoszomatikus ingerek strukturlatlan znja. Ez mozgatja, energiatelepe a jellsnek, de elfojtott, a szimbolikustl elzrt terlet. 2./ A szimbolikus: a szubjektum "tudatos", strukturlt, teht grammatikai s szocilis szablyok szerint jell ket hasznl szintje. A kt modalits felttelezi egymst. A jelentsalkots olyan dialektikus folyamat, melyben a szubjektum (szimbolikusan prediklt) identitsa llandan felpl (pozicionldik) s (a szemiotikus fluidits fenyegetsn keresztl)

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X. XI.

XII. XIII.

20 XIV. XV. lepl, megkrd jelez dik, vlsgba kerl. A jells nem stabil, hanem alapvet heterogn folyamat: en a szubjektum = folyamatban lvszubjektum (subject-in-process) A kultra (a Szimbolikus Rend) sok tekintetben a szemiotikustl val elhatroldson keresztl definilja magt: tabuk, tilt kdok bizonyos terletek felett (fluidits, identits-bizonytalansgok, tiszttalansg, a feminin ritulis megklnbztetse, rlk, hulla, stb.), s az n. marginlis diszkurzusok felett (ellenszegls a szimbolikusnak, a grammatikusnak). "potikus szveg"=szubjektumkizkkents (Kristeva)

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TYPOLOGY OF CULTURES
MEDIEVAL WORLD MODEL ENLIGHTENMENT POSTMODERN WORLD MODEL TRANSITION RENAISSA NCE ('project of modernis m') CLASH Theatre of the World

Analogia Mundi levels of meaning positivism LITURGICAL

Imperial Mission Postcolonialism universalizing virtualization PSYCHOLOGICAL SATIRIC & ABSURD & DRAMA HEROIC DRAMA RITUAL DRAMA SENTIMENTAL

COMEDY

--------high semioticity Book of Nature vertical, organic symbolic reduced semioticity information overflow Clockwork Universe Simulacra horizontal, mechanic cyberspace syntagmatic

------------------

---------------

SECULARIZATION POLITICIZATION EMBLEMATIC THEATER PHOTOGRAPHIC THEATER EXPERIMENTAL THEATER

THE ONE (Absolute Scriptor) THE OTHER (non-culture) THE HETEROGENEOUS human being: inherent signifying capacity individuum: subject: Cartesian cogito interpellated inherent identity and subjected

22

FROM SIGN TO SUBJECT

TERMINOLOGY Icon Ideology Index Interpellation Interpretive communities Interrogative text Logic of negativity Macrodynamics of the subject Meaning and significance Medieval world model Microdynamics of the subject Mirror stage New Criticism New Historicism Oedipalization Ontology of meaning Organicism Phallic position Phenomenology Phenotext Power/knowledge Primary repression Readerly text Reader-response criticism Regimes of truth Repertoire Repressive desublimation

Abject Ars Erotica Autopoetic system Binary logic Canon formation Cartesian subject Classic realist text Close reading Code Code-sharing Containment Contextual critical approaches Deautomatization Deconstruction Desire Dissemination Enlightenment world model Environmental determinism Epistemological crisis Form Formal critical approaches Formalism Gender Genotext Heterogeneity of the subject Historical hermeneutics Horizon of expectations

Response inviting strategies Safety valve (carnivalesque) Scientia sexualis Secondary repression Semiotic chora Semiotic disposition of culture Semiotic modality Semiotic typology of cultures Semiotics Sign Signified Signifier Signifying chain Structuralism Structuralist anthropology Subject-in-process Subjection Subversion Symbol Symbolic modality Symbolic order Technologies of power Temporality of reading Thetic break Transcendental ego Unconscious Writerly text