Semiotics

We have to try to figure out what Saussure is up to, and let's move on to begin to do so.

Semiology, what is semiology? It's the study of existing conventional communicative systems.

All of these systems we can call languages, and language, that is to say the words that we use when we speak to each other, is one of those systems.

Other systems, the gestures that mimes use, railroad semaphores, a stoplight.

It has an element of what's called catacresis in it, and therefore in a certain sense, as we read the sentence, necessarily undermines the sentence's grammatical structure.

This is the point that de Man is making in Semiology and Rhetoric, that there is a perpetual tension in any utterance between grammar and rhetoric.

There's no utterance that's not grammatical.

There's no utterance that's not rhetorical, but unfortunately grammar and rhetoric are always rather openly or subtly at odds with each other, just in the way that metaphor and predication really have to be at odds with each other.

It's an intersection in the world of metaphysics and an intersection in the world of semiotics, which is the study of representation.

So I want to take a look at how John Dee's life and his times and his thought interact in that.

Semiotics was my passion from age 13, 14 onward.

I bought all of Umberto Eco's stuff, read Charles Sanders' purse, read Fernanda Saussure, Roland Barthes, all those guys.

And I really wanted to do that for my PhD after theology.

He says as much in the introduction.

And so we can nearly see why the question of metaphysics is germane to talking about the business of John Dee and his and his world.

Semiotics is a bit different, and this is a field that doesn't get a lot of play in the anglophone world.

What was your major in college?

You know, I went to Brown and they had a film program that was called Semiotics.

I spent some time in Italy and I'm Italian.

So my, you know, in Brown, you were able to do your own thing.

Okay.

When you think about, um, semiotics, the art of understanding signs-

Okay

... okay, um, and when you think about visual rhetoric-

What was your major in college?

You know, I went to Brown and they had a film program that was called Semiotics.

I spent some time in Italy and I'm Italian.

So my, you know, in Brown, you were able to do your own thing.