Re: VMs: semiotics & vms: homepage

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gabriele,

> For now, what I have in mind is a much humbler project. I'd just like, first
> of all, to put together the most promising thesis and research about the VMs
> and express them in proper semiotic terms. Secondly, I'm working on a
> "structuralist semiotic"-style (à la Hjelmslev) conceptualization of
> "encryption" / "decryption" / "polygraphy": it shouldn't be too complex.
> Step three, I'm going to try to include _decryption_ in Eco's
> "intrasemiotical / infrasemiotical translation theory". Addendum: I assume
> (as an exercise) that the text in the VMs is glossolalia and I try to stress
> the characteristics that induce readers to make guesses and make such an
> artifact so appealing --> some kind of semiotics of hoaxes.

Critically evaluating your professor's theories is a high risk strategy - 
while professors are normally flattered, giving you a very high mark 
(however deserved) might be a sign that they've learnt something from you, 
which could be a sign of intellectual weakness on their part. Unless, of 
course, your paper is about the semiotics of academic weakness and marking 
strategies - but even that might be perceived as an academic double-bluff, 
and marked low accordingly. :-)

Rather, you might consider using your professor's theory to destroy someone 
else's theory (professors are normally too well-mannered to do this 
themselves - far better to get an academic cat's paw [read: grad student] 
to do the dirty work on their behalf). :-)

> What the VMs could suggest to semiotics? first of all, some proposal for a
> semiotic definition of cryptography, steganography, encrypting and
> decrypting. Such a definition won't help decoding the VMs, but could still
> be useful.

Certainly, there are semiotic analyses of "secret codes" out there which 
you might like to track down first, before driving yourself too crazy with 
this whole endeavour. :-)

> And, on the other hand, the VMs should teach practitioners of semiotics like
> me to be a little more humble ;-)

I characterise semiotics as a kind of "reactive foundationalism" - 
semioticians have a vast smorgasbord of (foundational) frameworks to choose 
from when responding to an external "text" stimulus, all of them different 
yet all of them alike. My only wish is that, when discussing a text, they 
be honest about how bad a fit the 80% of frameworks they rejected were, 
rather than simply how good a fit the 20% of frameworks they ended up using 
were. IIRC, Thomas Pavel describes this kind of structural & 
post-structural selectiveness almost as a kind of intellectual fraud, and 
there's more than a little reason to suspect that he's right. :-o

So: don't be humble, just be honest - you never know, it might catch on. :-)

Cheers, ....Nick Pelling..... 


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