CC BY
0DOI: 10.31249/metodquarterly/02.01.06
The Third Centenary Debate of February 15th.
For citation: The Third Centenary Debate of February 15th. (2022). METHOD: Moscow Quarterly Journal of Social Studies, 2(1), P. 62-85. http://www.doi.org/10.31249/ metodquarterly/02.01.06
Mikhail Ilyin: Hi, Gabriela! [Laughter]
Bob (on the screen inscription Gabriella Coronado): Hi
Valery Demyankov: Hi
Ivan Fomin: Hi
Mikhail: Okay, so it's time already. I suggest we wait a few more minutes. As I informed you yesterday, Suren confirmed that he is better and ready to join us.
Valery: What happened to him?
Mikhail: Covid, but he is recovering. We shall wait for Suren and Sergey, I think.
Bob: Sergey said he had a problem, didn't he? With this time.
Mikhail: Sergey is available. He just mailed his small notes for today's talk. Have you seen it?
Bob: Yes.
Mikhail: Since he did it a few minutes ago that means that he is awake and thrilled to join us. Probably it is just a technical obstacle of some kind. Anyway, I hope that Sergey and Suren are about to join us any minute.
Before they join and we start, I'd like to briefly sum up the main points of the previous debate. I have been very much impressed with it. When I read the transcript done by Eugenia, I really enjoyed it. There are lots of interesting things. If we continue like this, we will get some significant results.
Valery: Our revelations are in progress.
Bob: I was wondering whether we can discuss issues like this without the others being present. Would that be okay? Because I am looking at the transcript and I can see how that could be polished into something quite interesting, but then I wonder what your expectations are of this meeting now.
Is there going to be another transcript and how does it relate to the other transcripts?
Mikhail: Well, I expect that if we continue like we have already started it makes a very good base for producing METHOD quarterly. My pragmatic intention is to prepare ourselves for publishing the first quarterly of 2022 and to do it very
quickly. This is the pragmatic reason of launching this round table. But, content-wise, I think that it is up to you to choose where to concentrate and what to highlight.
Since Suren is with us, let us start. First, I would like to wish Suren good health and to say that I am very happy that he is with us.
Suren, we have been missing you greatly last time. The thing is that in our last discussion, there were several points of disagreement, and at the same time some agreements, and sometimes very ambivalent debates on points of agreements and disagreements.
But before giving you the floor, I shall go quickly through the list of the major points we raised.
Valery started the last time with the idea of explanation of classics by Lotman which is actually an interpretation of classical heritage and which could also be interpreted as translation and transformation of the heritage. And he gave us a very good lead which, I believe, influenced many of our contributions. This line of thought was developed, and it's a pity that Suren was missing last time, because again and again we were coming to the problem of translation and the translatable, and Sergey singled out this as one of the key points with Yuri Lotman, and I think he did it very well, and I would like to thank him for that.
Ivan continued with the idea of transformation and translation as well, discussing the issue of overcoming social and cultural divide. And he demonstrated that Logonomic interpretation and explanation could be a very good way out and would also correspond with the logic of Lotman's discussion of cultural semiotics. This also introduces the idea of multi-modality, then I also tried to contribute to this discussion and problematized the in-and-out divide that is this system and out of the system and all this important Lotmanian distinction.
Then Bob also jumped on and contributed with his famous and well-advised multiscalar analysis and multiscalar approach, and he gave us somewhat different but continued in the same vein. And again, Sergey which I mentioned already, came with translating, and translatable. But he also added one more thing which is the idea of many languages in Lotman. This is extremely fruitful, I think, it's not just multi-modality, it somehow develops it further. It's the idea of many languages, and again the idea of translation, and the idea of mutual interpretation and transformation.
I was very fascinated particularly by this idea because it corresponds with my current interest, and I am going to speak about this today. It is languaging. Thank you, Sergey, for drawing attention to it.
Then I was trying to somehow problematize those overcoming devices in many different aspects that co-exist by introducing temporal and evolutionary dimensions. You remember this talk about my idée fixe how it is possible that people, languages, cultures, polities, economies remain the same but become different while they change so on.
There were rebuttals and disagreements which I find, in a way, agreements, then Bob mentioned the idea of permanent contradictions and heterogeneity as something which is endemic and cannot be got rid of, which is very natural and there is nothing unnatural about it. 52
And Sergey also reminded us of Aristotle's idea of many souls, very nice contributions which I liked very much, and he mentioned the idea of semaphorontes which is also extremely constructive.
Valery also continued with the idea of self-identity, and I would rather say self-identities, and there again in his discussion, as well as further along with the debate, we in a way returned to Lotman, since Lotman was a constant reference. But if you turn to Aristotle again with his idea of many souls, self-identities, and here I think Valery discussed it in this very vein the problem of "I" - the first person in our speech -, or self. How many "I"s or selves are there, and what are facets of this first-person agent in our speech? It is an extremely valuable approach. It helps to better grasp the problem of being the same and being different at the same time.
The problem was conceptualized by Ivan in the logic of memory, and I think that is extremely fruitful. Not just memory but also thinking in time, because we should not only consider the past but also the future, alternative state, and other things. I would like to thank Ivan for producing this idea.
He also reminded me of the idea of semiotic work by Gunther Kress which is very resonant with some ideas of Lotman, but I would like to mention one thing; that it is a very resonant work by Terrence Deacon. His works are extremely charged with central concept which is also very valuable for the idea of development, be it logical, human, development of body, or development of mind, or both; everywhere this idea works, and in Deaconian sense it's very important. Of course, there were other things worth mentioning, but I couldn't mention them all. I highlighted some points to facilitate further debates, so that we'll continue the same way in touching sensitive points which were already fixed.
And I would like to use this opportunity to thank Sergey for providing us with a small summary of his would-be contributions for today, which is very valuable. Unfortunately, I was not able to read it carefully due to time constraints, but I think that the idea resonates with my thinking and idea of a fractal; the multiplying similarity is extremely important. His rebuttal to Lotman is also worth discussing, and I think, in my understanding, when Lotman discusses explosions, he is not as mechanistic as it may sound. He tries to avoid the limitations.
Sergey Chebanov: This is my idea and opinion of personal communication.
Mikhail: Okay, then you will discuss this later, but now I would like to say that I am particularly happy that Suren is here with us. Suren, as you can see from the minutes and my summary, your idea of translation was very central to our previous debate, and I think it is going to continue that way. Therefore, if you are ready, then, probably, we will ask you to contribute before others begin.
Suren Zolyan: Misha, I'll begin my small comment on Lotman's idea by suggesting that maybe it would be more correct to call it untranslatability. Lotman insists on constant changes in the translation process rather than on the preservation of meanings. But it is another question that is very interesting. What can synthesize in some aspect and reconcile those two concepts: transferability and nontransferability? This requires using the concept of metaphor. It is important to see the connection between the three aspects of Lotman's concept -
translatability, untranslatability, and the possibility of their synthesis which he associated with the mechanisms of metaphor. It is not enough to insist exclusively on untranslatability. It is necessary, according to Lotman, to find mechanisms of correlation between translation, which preserves the content of the text and its semantic extensions and transformations. Let us recall the original connection between such concepts as translation, transfer and metaphor. At the beginning, since the times of Cicero, it was understood as the same complex of text transformation. The untranslatable is translated in a certain way, but through a holistic metaphorical representation. The notion of transfer is the new thing. Imagine, now we can combine translation with the transfer. Of course, they are united and working. Lotman provides an opportunity to deliberate on it. This is my small initial comment.
Mikhail: Okay thanks, that was a short remark, but do you want to make kind of a more substantive presentation at this stage or later?
Suren: Later maybe. I am not sure that I can go to Tartu, but I hope to do so because I feel better now. But I am not sure how it will be in a week. However, I have some plans on going to the congress, and it will be interesting to discuss results with colleagues.
Bob: I will just react to the summary, and the summary is one version that goes alongside with the others, but I will like some mentioning of the explosion as something relevant to our reactions and to Lotman in general that will mark a stage in his thinking. How important is that concept, where it has come from Lotman, and where does it go? Just to have it in the agenda, not as the proposition of matters.
Mikhail: I think that is quite reasonable, and if you noticed, Sergey begins his paper which he contributed to this meeting exactly with this explanation and debate of the concept. So, probably, I will suggest that we all take into consideration that particular suggestion by Bob, and, particularly, I would like to ask Sergey, since we have got your new text. You start and elaborate more on explosions and other points that you raised in your paper.
Sergey: Okay, for the beginning I want to make one remark. This is very funny, but I do not understand what philology means. Philology is a subject, absolutely beyond understanding for me because, from my point of view, philologist uses many metaphors, but after that we say: "We do not have to use metaphors".
We, philologists, use notions, not metaphors, but metaphors are productive for producing new knowledge. But I cannot understand the difference between notions and metaphors in a philological sense. That is utterly beyond the understanding of my own.
Mikhail: That is a big issue.
Sergey: This is reason, why, for instance, only structural techniques are of interest in philology for me. Technique is something interesting to me, something that I can understand and discuss, not images, emotional or any other images that cannot be discussed discursively, but at the same time there are no notions that could be discussed. But this is just a preface. 54
I want to say several words about Lotman's concepts of explosion. Yuri Lotman in his work «Culture and explosion» talks about two important ideas. The first of them is the idea that the binary structure of Russian culture leads to the fact that explosions occur in it from time to time, during which it is proposed to «destroy everything to the ground and then build a new world.» The second one is that in order to order to get out of the vicious circle of such repeated explosions, Lotman proposes to switch to a ternary culture.
In my opinion, this concept raises a number of objections, and the process of development of post-Soviet Russia has taken a different path.
In my opinion, a significant limitation of Lotman's concept is that, from Lotman's point of view, culture is a mechanistic system. Therefore, the focus of the discussion is the functioning of culture. But functioning is a fundamental limitation of freedom. Therefore, explosions do occur from time to time.
I see that Lotman changes his opinion about culture many times by using different kinds of metaphors. This gives Lotman the opportunity to consider very interesting empirical material and discuss it in a variety of directions. But this variety of metaphors imitates the integrity of culture, and each metaphor individually represents culture as a mechanism. Therefore, I insist that Lotman's conception of culture is mechanistic.
If we talk about culture as an organism, then its fundamental characteristic is life. But life is a chronic miracle. Therefore, a living culture does not explode, but is transformed. Sometimes these transformations are very significant and then they resemble an explosion.
Mikhail: Sergey, are you not mechanistic yourself in making this statement about systems and no freedoms?
Sergey: I am mechanistic?
Mikhail: Well, if you support this interpretation.
Sergey: I do not support it.
Mikhail: Then I am waiting for your challenge [laughter].
Sergey: But I think Lotman's state vs limitation is very significant for culture, and this is the point I disagree with because culture is some sort of organism.
The second point of my objections is related to the fact that Lotman acts as a representative of classical culture or, at best, as culture of modernity. But we live in a postmodern culture. Therefore, in my opinion, not a third position is being formed in order to move from a binary position to a ternary one, but the denial of both positions in order to bet on chaos, on what is called «controlled chaos». At the same time, it is possible to induce the population every day either to tolerance, or to xenophobia, or to universal values, or to nationalism, or to modernization, or to conservatism. A very interesting fractal mosaic appears.
It is noteworthy that this fractal mosaic refers to both the geographical space of the territory and the phase space of culture. Then it turns out that most of the boundaries ofthe internal and external do not refer to the enclosing boundaries of geographic space, but to the enclosing thickness of the phase space of culture.
Systems are not designed that way. That's how organisms are. The boundaries of the internal and external in the thickness of the phase space, contoured by geographical space, cannot be attributes of the system. However, such boundaries are similar to the cell membranes of a living organism. At the same time, such membranes as media interfaces have the ability to transform from external to internal and vice versa.
Thus, during phagocytosis, which is comparable to external borrowing, the plasmolemma - the outer cell membrane - turns into the inner membrane of the phagocytic vacuole, which, merging with the lysosome (= mechanisms of cultural reception), turns into a digestive vacuole. After the digestion process, the digestive vacuole with undigested residues approach the plasmolemma, integrate into it (now the inner membranes of the vacuole have become part of the outer membrane) and the undigested residues are released, in our case, the rejection of unattached material or intellectual artifacts.
In the body something similar happens not only at the level of individual cells, but also at the level of tissues and organs, for example, the intestinal epithelium.
It is important that the membranes, the places where vacuoles are formed in them or waste is released, are not fixed morphological structures, but like vortices in a very slowly flowing liquid, more precisely in a gel, which turns into a sol and vice versa.
Such fluidity of the phase boundaries of a culture determines the viability of a culture. The collapse of these boundaries means the collapse of culture, and the loss of plastic boundaries, the hardening of boundaries, makes the organism inhospitable to life and turns culture from an organism into a system in which an explosion can occur. Thank you.
Mikhail: Okay, thank you, and that was a very valuable contribution. Who would like to continue? Bob, I think that some points were actually very resonant with your logic and way of reasoning, with this multi-scalar approach - about this space with different phases, - so what is your reaction?
Valery: May I have a remark, please? I think we should distinguish two things, the explanation and the explication. What Sergey has been talking about was an attempt to criticize several explications of phenomena. The explication is mechanistic in a way, it must be syntactically structured. Logic may be the first attempt within a syntactic approach in the explication of phenomena in the world. The techniques of explication may be different, among other things it may consist of introducing new notions, of distinguishing additional details in the emerging picture of the explication, etc. In this sense, the explication looks like a mechanistic procedure. Whereas explanation, by definition, may be vague, something desired and never arrived at.
Mikhail: Valera, am I right to suggest another parallel which is analysis and interpretation? Doing discourse analysis, I face two polar options. One is a strict analysis. It is really very rare in discourse analysis. Not many people are consistently doing this despite the claim of discourse analysis. Another option is interpretation. It is more widespread but also limited. The majority are doing 56
neither analysis nor interpretation. Typically, they just make impressionistic claims of all kind.
Valery: That's true. Preliminary explanations are vague in the everyday scientific discourse, but explications have to be more definite and tangible, that is, mechanistic. Anyway, I would like to point out this distinction between the explanation and the explication, which involve concomitant ideals and standards of explicitness as well as readiness to see the world in a certain light.
Mikhail: Thank you.
Yes, Sergey, please go ahead.
Sergey: In my opinion, that explanation is a very long explication, proceeding until one participant in the discussion is in such a state to eventually agree with another.
Valery: Yeah, that is another important aspect; the 'schizophrenic subject' is at play here.
Bob: Can I comment? So, these distinctions, explication and explanation analysis, and the whole set of words should include synthesizing, catalysis, and range of others. From the point of view of method, presumably, we would want to develop these ideas in their own terms and maybe apply them to Lotman.
Or should we just be trying to say, where Lotman is dealing with similar issues of this nature. What would you like us to be doing?
Suren: I would like to react to some ideas expressed here. First, it's a very difficult task to systemize Lotman's ideas because we can see quite different approaches. When he wants to find a solution, he goes to the concrete details; for instance, he offers some theoretical explanations and explications. But he does this explication not through some model but through some cases from Russian History or other semiotic systems. He also goes to some exemplification method of explication or explanation. He starts with theoretical concepts and then explains his vision through some instances and other times. I think exemplification is important to him because it provides opportunity for holistic and comprehensive representation. Some theoretical distinctions were not important to him. Sergey discussed, if Lotman's approach is mechanistic or organic. Lotman used these notions as synonyms - he wrote - Culture is a mechanism (if not an organism) instead of going into the difference between organisms and mechanistic. He supposed that a correct description of facts would lead to correct methodological results, whereas a focus on the theory could be inconclusive or erroneous.
For instance, he persuaded me not to go into theoretical details of the theory of culture and concentrate myself on Russian culture of the 18th century, because that way I could find out ideas that are impossible to reveal through theoretical studies on semiotic of culture. What is needed, is not expansion but deepening - he used the metaphor of descent to the foremothers, referring to Franz Grillparzer'u drama «Die Ahnfrau» (1817). So, he has a very interesting type of mentality. He underlined his anti-post-modernist stands. For him the ideal situation was French classicism and French rationalism. He insisted that a rational explanation should be first. He explains this not in his article but in his letters, and we can find there very strong objections and criticism towards
his post-structuralist colleagues. He doesn't take them seriously as a scientist because he evaluates them from the 18th century which may be the most favorite time for him. The only exception was Foucault - but not as the most post-modern person, but quite for the opposite reason - for Lotman he was a descendant of the 18-century French sharp wit.
All of this must be considered, if you want to give some rigid classification of Lotman's conception, but I think that it is impossible because we cannot find the ultimate conclusions in his works. I agree that Lotman was very interested in the issues of binary and ternary oppositions, it was a crucial point for him. But when he describes the development of the semiosphere, he uses binary oppositions.
He speaks about the insufficiency of binary oppositions in Russian culture, but when he wrote the types of development of semiotic, he insisted on binary systems. Binary oppositions were complicated by mirror asymmetry, so in the process of explication one receives non-symmetric structures. Therefore, it was their change from binary semiotics to non-semiotic structures, which provides a transfiguration, based on the difference from the initial position. How does he reconcile this problem? He describes it as an interaction of different heterogeneous systems, at least two. and both of them may work on binary oppositions, but their synthesis becomes nonbinary.
And besides, he provided the other additional mechanism (or organism) of this. In spite of the fact that he did not use the word "fractal", he used fractal techniques and provided a lot of examples about fractalization technique from medieval arts. He finds this technique as another important direction of his studies and texts when one introduces the same picture in different segments. How we can see pictures within pictures, text within text, message within messages - all those instances of fractalization were of great interest for him.
So, as you can see, he used very different techniques and methodologies, but he did not have any overwhelming and comprehensive picture. I tried to find the definition of structure; he used some quotations from Benveniste but not his own. In his last work, he wrote ironically: of course, it is interesting to give a general definition of structure but it's beyond my abilities. So, we must see comprehend the very paradoxical range to systemization and theoretical in Lotman's work.
Mikhail: Thank you, any further comments?
Suren: May I give some comments on Valery's arguments? Of course, it is very interesting and very important because Lotman did not speak about some human subjects. His point of view is very interesting, he notions semiotic "I" because in his text he sees some subjects created by semiotic systems and semiotic self-organization, which sometimes have different names, like Monads, and you can see the reference to it in different centuries, and the semiotic "I" isn't the personal "I" but the semiotic "I". It belongs to the system and text.
Valery: Thank you, Suren, it is tremendously important what you have said.
Mikhail: Yes, Sergey, go ahead.
Sergey: One important technical remark, I absolutely agree with Suren about Lotman's fractal modules, but fractal is the very special structure described by numbers, constant numbers. But there are more general structures - automodel 58
symmetries. Automodel symmetry describes not quantity invariant, but semantic invariant in a Roman Jakobson's sense. And in this situation, you have different outwardly visible figures for the presentation of the same form, and this is very important for organisms, but Lotman disagrees with such presentation of culture. It was very surprising for him that the organism we must describe in this way.
Mikhail: Okay, thank you.
Ivan and Bob to follow.
Ivan: Well, I guess I can relate to this discussion of mechanistic imagery in semiotics. If we consider the fact that semiosis is fundamentally based on Thirdness, i.e. on necessity, regularity, and law, then, in fact, we end up with having the mechanistic model of semiotic systems. Those systems appear as systems of rules that necessarily produce particular signs. So if we only look at this aspect of semiosis, it is difficult to account for how new meanings can emerge in such system of fixed rules.
It is metaphors that in this respect seem especially important, or, more generally, semiotic systems in which multiple instances of regularities work together. The interplays of instances of regularities make possible the emergence of life, emergence of living organisms, emergence of agency, emergence of selves (cf. Deacon's ideas on how teleodynamic selves emerge from interplays of morphodynamic regularities).
One of the examples of how multiple systems of semiotic regularities can work together is metaphor. In metaphors, as well as in lotmanian "representational verbal signs" (symvols, obrazes, "images") and in Barthes's myths, verbal semiosis of linguistic signs is built into the second-level iconic semiosis. Another important case is the category of multimodality, which also grasps the principle of interplay of multiple semiotic systems.
Mikhail: Thank you.
Bob, please continue.
Bob: As I listen to these discussions, I keep on bringing to bear the category you brought in diplomacy in the outer. As I apply these categories to Lotman, my methodological problem is the way he writes and thinks that makes it so easy to dive into the rabbit hole, connecting ideas with ideas, and explication never becomes expedition because probably that is not what Lotman wanted to do.
What he wants to do is, in effect, to create a personal semiosphere that is equivalent to a culture that is mostly inside his head, and methodologically this leaves a problem. How can you leave this endlessly ramifying suggestion of a theory, which is never going to be satisfied, and constantly while I do this, I build up a compulsion to leave out the world of Lotman into [inaudible]? So methodologically I find that the example of Lotman's thought is a case in point for a world that ultimately is so optimistic, without declaring that as its real nature. Therefore, taking on the side, in a way, motivated me to generate from a Lotman a theory of the essential presence of the actor for any effective semiotic thought. This then becomes something I propose methodologically as indispensable to study some of his theories, seem to deny the possibility of the outer. Anyway, that is a response to the problem of Lotman.
Mikhail: Thank you. I think you have done a very good job by making this prevacation. I would say there is a whole set of prevacation. Personally, I have been particularly provoked by the image which you used. This is an image of diving into a rabbit hole. And I was thinking about what is going to happen at the other side. What about diving out of the rabbit hole? Because if you dive into then you somehow dive out at some juncture.
Valery: It depends on the whole and on the hole.
Mikhail: Is it symmetrical, or asymmetrical? Is it whole or just a hole within hole? Probably Sergey will say that something like multiplying fractal structures will emerge out of this dual move, I don't know. It's up for further discussion. Valera, you wanted to say something?
Valery: Some (w)holes are so attractive that you don't want to leave them.
Mikhail (laughs): Probably, the holes of rabbits?
Valery: Yes.
Ivan: If Bob jumps into the rabbit hole in Australia and we jump into another one in the northern hemisphere, we eventually will meet somewhere in the middle.
Bob: This is the material embedding the metaphor into a material context, leading to ask questions like what it about real rabbit holes is. Do I really think that if I go into any random rabbit hole, I won't ever reach Russia? And I don't think so.
Mikhail: Well, I don't know, from Sydney - probably, if you go straight in a rabbit hole, I'm not sure where you will dive out. Surely not Russia, some other place maybe. It's quite possible.
Yes, Valera, you wanted to say something?
Valery: Anyway, it's the shortest way from Australia to Moscow.
Mikhail: I guess it does not go through the centre of the earth, but definitely close to it.
Valery: Unless you meet a rabbit on your way.
Mikhail: You have to dive in, very deep to reach us, and we too, if we choose to pay a return visit.
Bob: I think the next morale of rabbit holes is actually not inviting it to think of going anywhere. The reptile is a metaphor for not wanting to go anywhere else. Because you believe the rabbit hole is a total universe, and I just say no, no, no its never a total universe.
Mikhail: Cosmologically speaking, (it's a very interesting theme) black holes. According to some theories, black holes are just the beginning of another universe somewhere out there, out of our observable Universe. And there is some kind of fractal multiplication of universes linked by black holes.
Bob: It might be more science fiction than science.
Mikhail: Anyway guys, I have been very much impressed by the last discussion of ours. But the present discussion impresses me even more, and now I would like to make a small comment as an editor of METHOD. I think that now I have gotten the idea of the form. Because it's the most important thing when you are making a journal, and you are collecting things from different sources, 60
different people, sometimes miles apart. Probably a greater distance than Russia and Australia. The thing is how to make this - all those different views come together. And I must say that it's important to think of a form that could bring them all together. And now I think I have a kind of a guess, because when I was thinking about it before our meeting, I was thinking of a set of short articles. Relatively short articles. Very concise.
Our own table talks, extractions from our own table. This seems to be quite reasonable but still, something was missing. And now, when I was listening to you today, I think am getting a better idea of a possible form, and this form is going to be - I am going to suggest, it's up to you, we will have to debate - but I would suggest, these are the same 5 or 6 or how many pieces, fairly concise, with the debate. So, we split this into that debate. But at the same time, I think it will be inevitable that we have correspondences and exact kind of debate between the text and within the comments.
So, we will have multiple junctures. Junctures between the text and the comments. Junctures between the text themselves. And junctures between the entire semiosphere of comments, where you could go in different directions: through the center, on the surface, getting out into space and returning. This could be very provocative and give an additional impetus to the ideas we are going to share.
One more thing, since nobody is inclined to react immediately. I want to comment on multimodality, no, sorry, languaging. Of course, in its present form, this whole debate on languaging is very much linguistically biased. People are speaking about different languages that overlap and interact, particularly things like colorization of languages, or study of foreign languages, or, say, languages of small children and how they (inaudible). But what I think could be and would be even more interesting is the idea of a base for multimodal communication and languaging. It is logonomy or logonomic systems. Vanya is constantly speaking about it, and I occasionally try to support him.
I would say that in actual communication and interactions with each other we get some acceptable results not because of abstract logonomics systems, but our hectic efforts, not only by using languages, or grammar rules, or some semiotic devices - probably they matter too, - but there are more fundamental and immediate activities of ours. Probably there is something, or just as well -some things, if you may call them "things" - that happen to our bodies and with our bodies despite or above our communication. You feel hungry and it's a factor in your communication. You feel increased blood pressure and it's a factor in your communication. You get irritated, or something like that, or you see the bad weather around and you react to it, and it is a factor of communication. Logonomic systems in the broader sense of the word should include, in a way, everything that happens to us.
Now I was giving you examples related to our bodies, but there are many things which are happening to our souls as well. They are happening sometimes due to communication, but sometimes parallel to communication. I would suggest that semiotically, it is very promising to look at it through the pattern
of languaging. That is the holistic system that we discussed here. The problem with Lotman's definitions of system. Mechanistic or non-mechanistic as the case might be. Whatever!
Suren quite clearly indicated that Lotman was very skeptical about giving a clear final definition. As Sergey mentioned last time and repeated it again, it's also actual languages (or languaging?) within the capital letter Language of theoretical linguistics. Actual culture languages within the Culture. So, from this point of view, we are redefining our languages and the Language of theoretical linguistics by what we are doing, what we are living through. We are recreating our languages all the time, be they classical, lingual languages or be they body languages, or be they languages of political actions, or be they languages of economic transactions.
Well, am really shocked by the fact that our economists are calculating all kinds of things about economic processes, but they never consider the problem of signification in economic processes. My Russian colleagues use the term denezhnye znzaki (денежные знаки) or monetary signs for currency, coins and banknotes, but they never interpret dollars or rubbles as sighs at all. Or they probably say "ok, they are kind of signs, but important things are behind those signs". They are just some nice pieces of paper with some inscriptions there. But they don't take them seriously as signs. They calculate them as items of matter or energy, but even that is not typical. The same is true about political science. When I start speaking about semiotics in politics they say "oh, gosh, stop this linguistic talk". But that's not linguistics. That is political science, but my colleagues fail to recognize it, although really bright minds like Charles Merriam and Harold Lasswell did a century ago. Sorry for this very personal comment.
Sergey wanted to comment.
Sergey: In the early 1990s, when I was not making money at the Institute of Evolutionary Physiology, I made money by advising new economic institutions such as banks, joint-stock companies, stock exchanges on the semiotics of money.
Mikhail: Good idea.
Bob: Just getting back to the concept of languaging. That is a word coined by Michael Halliday. It didn't exist in English. It existed because Halliday used rules to generate it himself. It was comprehensive but it isn't and wasn't actually a word in English. Therefore, no one can really say what it really means because Halliday invented it. He could try saying what it means. He didn't in fact bother to do that. So, no one knows what languaging means in English. So, I ask you what does it mean in Russian? How do you capture the aberrance of this term? Language is boringly familiar, you know. I don't know how many times the word language has been used by turning it into a verb with the present participle. Whatever it is in English, it must be computed averagely in Russian, and therefore the unique leave the semiosphere of Russian to inter- idio semi-sphere in English thus created by Michael Halliday, and if so, how are you going to make sense to anyone either Russian or English?
Mikhail: Ok, very extremely interesting question. And, by the way, if you can give me citations of the first instances of the use of languaging by M.A.K. Halliday, I will be really thankful, because all I managed to find out was about 62
the origins of the notion, it was reference to Umberto Maturana who was using the term el lenguajare. A very strange word in his writings, well back in the late 70s or 80s, something like that. In Russia, we discussed this with Valery a few years ago. When I told him, I couldn't find the equivalent, he said - you are fully read in linguistics because it is an already established term oiazykovlenie (oH3biKoeneHue). You can translate it into English as something like "turning or transforming something into a language". Of course, I'm not discussing the inner form because the inner form will be a bit more complicated. And a very interesting thing is that also in Russian language there was and equivalent for trans-languaging. It is even better. Absolutely perfect. It is pereiazykovelanie (nepeH3biKaoenenue) - reinventing or reshaping something into another language.
Valery: Or just re-languaging.
Mikhail: Re-languaging? Yes, possible. It's extremely interesting. By the way, Bob, probably, you could write about it, or we could write about it, or we could find somebody to write about it for the Linguistic Frontiers special issue on languaging. I am commissioned to put the special issue together.
Bob: As a native speaker, reflecting on the differences on languaging, I see languaging as something that is invented and has never caught on because it's a possible form in English. You can turn any verb into a noun. You can do it, but whereas if you have the prefixes, those come from a separate set of morphemes, in a way, they normalize, clearly not as a word in English but as a technical word. English speakers respond to relanguaging familiarized by reading and trends. In fact, those are normalized as new concepts, so anyone hearing them doesn't expect them to be normal because they are signaled as unfamiliar. Probably, there might be a negative attitude to it. They might be seen as comprehensible but special. That is my reaction to languaging.
Mikhail: Ok, thanks. Now my question goes to Valera. I am not well read in German linguistic literature, but he must be, as a long-term Trier professor. Do they use the English term languaging or do they use their own German term?
Valery: Yes, there is a German term - die Versprachlichun that is the action of verbalizing thoughts which previously existed without languaging (Handlung, etwas Gedachtes sprachlich auszudrücken).
Mikhail: Oh, Versprachlichung. It is very interesting.
Valery: But this term is ambiguous. 'Versprachlichung' like other words with the prefix 'ver-' may also have a negative connotation 'doing something wrong with the language'. Just like the verb 'verbauen' derivative of 'bauen' "constructing". 'Bauen' means "to construct something'. But 'verbauen' means "constructing in a wrong way". So 'Versprachlichung' may, in principle, mean both 'languaging' and 'mis-languaging' or 'mis-verbalizing'. Hence the idea of 'Sprachkritik' consists in finding flaws in the usual ways of Versprachlichung.
Mikhail: But that's not just negative. Rather it's an indication that the process is not complete.
Valery: Yes, the process is not quite complete and it's not always standard.
Mikhail: Exactly. Not complete and not standard. It is still in the process of evolving. So, it's not evolved and consolidated, but it's only started to evolve.
Bob: In English, the non-regular expected word in that area would be verbalizing, turning into words. The difference in connotation of that with languaging is that the word languaging sounds mysterious. You don't know exactly what its relationship to language is. So, in a way, it declares itself as a kind of metaphor. Where its verbalized, is just a straightforward description of certain words.
Mikhail: Sure. Verbalized strictly limits as with the linguistics, but with languaging we go out of the domain and involve all the human activities, all our living.
Bob: It's a metaphor.
Mikhail: Yes, it's a metaphor. Because the phenomenon is actually metaphoric in its actual sense. The phenomenon of becoming is a metaphor for transformation, metaphorization which is changing into something different.
Valery: 'Metaphor' in modern Greek - ^sxa^opá - stands for "taxi". Going by taxi means using metaphor. That is, using a car which, properly speaking, does not belong to you.
Mikhail: Taxi? Interesting.
Sergey: Not only for taxis, but for any transport, any transportation.
Valery: Yes, that's true. Transport is a metaphor. It's logical. Metaphor is transfer. It transfers.
Mikhail: Yes, the prefixes are different in Greek and Latin but the root is the same - yép and fer and PIE *bher. Anyway, we all live by metaphors as we know from George Lackoff and Mark Johnson. We have no other choice. We can't avoid it. We can't help living with metaphors. Suren, you want to contribute?
Suren: I shall address another issue. I sent you, Misha, earlier, the unpublished Lotman of 81. It is a very interesting text of course. Now I have completed the special issue of Slovo with publication of this text. I think the journal will be published around March, and it will be possible to make a connotation from his text. And besides, there will be my commentary there because I participated on this seminar and made a report there. There will also be an article by Grigory Tulchinksi and the other comments on this publication of Lotman. I don't know if it's possible to translate all that stuff.
Mikhail: I think we can think of some at least. Of course, Bob's translation is really problematic because I know this piece. This piece is Lotman's contribution to one of the regular seminars in Tartu. It's extremely interesting, and I'm not sure that an automatic translation will actually manage to reflect the content adequately. Probably, it would help to grasp certain minor points, but otherwise it will rather mislead you. To do proper translation? I don't think we have the time or resources to do that. But anyway, the Russian text exists, but I am afraid, you will be misled, if you simply use the computer translation to read it.
Valery: The computers would be grateful to us, but not the humans.
Mikhail: But nobody reacted to my ideas about the form. So, there was an initial idea about the form which I got a couple of days ago, when I was thinking about not the whole round table - our round table is quite big, - but say somehow condensed compressed round table. Plus, personal contribution, developing 64
something from this round table; that's one option. Another option - we will have the other way round; we will have individual contributions and debates after each of it. Probably, they could be taken from this round table or could be done independently as the case may be. What seems to all of you more promising?
Ivan: Maybe we can start with trying to do the thing with the discussions about each piece. But there are several of those. If we see that there are still many in this round table - these discussion around the pieces do not cover only topics we discussed in these meetings, - we transcribe them to the public round table. Because for now I really like the idea that discussions are on each article, I just don't want to lose some of the interesting lines of discussion that work here, but probably will not be reflected.
Mikhail: Well as for that: because of the very kind contribution by Eugenia, we have the text, and the texts could be made available. We can even somehow put them on the internet in our center so that it won't be lost, as you are saying, so it would be available. But what I'm discussing is not just that, but how to take further steps. How to process this into a more focused, concentrated, pointed and more elegant form than just this debate as it goes spontaneously.
Sergey: I didn't understand how to organize a connection between joint text and personal text.
Mikhail: Yes, that's what I'm asking you, and that I'm looking for. So far, I only have an idea of a form. But it is crucially important. When I have an idea of the form, then I'll try to put material into this form. It's somewhat different from what Auguste Rodin did. He was just getting unnecessary things out, while we are to take necessary things in. Je prends mon bien ou je le trouve. Let us put everything on the table. We shall see what fits. We shall experiment.
Sergey: I see the possibility.
Mikhail: We shall all do this. We get the idea of the form, and you may highlight references to other people in your text, not necessarily by making a footnote, you just indicate it somehow, and then we will see how they resonate. I believe it is quite possible. The same is true about comments. For example, if I have your text and I write a comment, I can highlight in my comments some of your thoughts, but also some of Valery thoughts, and even probably some of the things which were meant to be said by Lotman, or by Suren, or by anybody else. Why not? Something like a hypertext, if you wish. But not with explicit links. Sometimes, probably, explicit links, but sometimes not - just hints.
Sergey: Then it is something like a Talmud-type organization (as text with hyperlinks).
Mikhail: I am not an expert in the Talmud-type organization. If you are speaking about those big great texts like Bible...
Valery: Talmud is not simply a holy text. It is the text adapted for teaching. The Hebrew root 'LMD' in the word 'Talmud' means learning and teaching (cf. the Hebrew *f^a1fmelammed "teacher'), just like in a different Semitic language, in Arabic, 'lammada' means "he taught". Talmud is something you teach with. Well, all writings may serve for this purpose, but not all nominations stress the didactic aspect of the written text.
Mtshna
Mikhail: Yeah, good idea.
Bob: At the moment we're dealing with a text, which potentially exists, but, probably, none of us has its very clear. Maybe we should look at the complete transcripts. I suppose, they are completely proofread. Then we make a judgment on that extra object around the idea of different talks. That is how seriously it takes work, and if we put it alongside the transcript of this discussion, does that work and, in particular, does it work for anyone else? Because I think that's the crucial thing, if we publish it, because we believe that is has values and not just for ourselves. At this minute I cannot answer that question. As I am in the midst of this discussion, I just imagine that there will be a need for editing, because that's just how normal discussions are. So could the text we produced, as translated by Eugenia for the two sessions, be something that could be edited, with each author contributing to the editing of his own contributions, nothing better to be something that could be done.
Mikhail: You will be the one that is likely to be given the task, so to me, it is a concrete form that sort of corresponds to your picture. Your picture, is in general, is something that we could look at and say "yes, it deserves to exist" or "it doesn't really". We need to use that as a basis for writing formal articles. There are six or so formal articles which will be typically academic self-contained learning. It is dull and discouraging, without relating to what is said by the others. So basically, I sum that up by saying - let's look at what Eugenia produces and come up with a decision of whether it is a sort of staff that shapes into the form I suggested. We shall see, if it is within reach of something publishable as a hypertext, or whether it's a very useful record that will enable us to write interesting separate articles.
Ivan: I also want to remind that we are to publish something on the actual birth date of Lotman on February 28th on our website.
Mikhail: Well, if we have a transcript, we can publish a transcript, or we can publish a combination of transcripts merging them.
Ivan: Yeah, but its better if they are not completely raw transcripts.
Mikhail: Sure. I think, Bob mentioned, they need careful editing. But, Bob, you have never edited the previous transcript. Please, next time do this. The initiative is yours. Do edit your own contribution.
Bob: I think the words that come out of my mouth, even if I'm mistranscribed, are a part of history that I can't alter. 66
Mikhail: It's not part of history. It's part of the future.
Ok, guys, I must say that we have a very good aide, a helper who organizes everything. She is Eugenia. We are thankful to Eugenia, and we will look forward to getting this transcript as soon as possible. There is another aid which is substance. Because substance itself longs for a form, when you try to do something, you cannot just move it at your own will. It always resists it and somehow shapes into its own kind of form. The substance itself would give us hints of what it is the better form. We all have to contribute of course. And we have a general idea on how to shape it. But also, the substance itself will be helping us. It would be insisting. It wants its own form. We are only to help it maieutically with languaging.
Valery: Well, a good substance finds a good note.
Bob: Just getting back to Vania's important note. Either we have something which could be published on the actual day, or that would be a reason for cutting some corners with this. Probably, what we produce might not be the carefully polished academic presentation, but it will be justified because of its purpose. It is a decision I would like to make on the basis of seeing the transcripts. When we look at them, I think the question we need to ask is: "Do we have any time to edit these into a form, which we could publish for a very specific purpose?' If we think so, well that's what we'll do. Otherwise, other options may crop up on the table. That would mean, we have to provide a much slower timeline and so on.
Valery: Which may be very helpful.
Mikhail: I suggest the following. Eugenia circulates the text as long as she produces it. Hopefully, you can do this very soon. Then Vania and myself will sit together and look at how to plan further steps. And of course, we will circulate it to all of you. You will do editing and we will go step by step. Definitely by the 28th of February we should have something. The minimal thing would be a summary of our debate. Fit just for history or the future of learning as the case might be.
Valery: Circulating dialogues with several participants
Mikhail: Yes, if we'll manage. Probably, we will do something more subtle. But definitely it will still not be the final result. It could be the intermediary result, but publishable, so to create attention. We are to create expectation, and then the result will be the electronic quarterly of METHOD which we publish sometime in March. I hope it will be ready by the end of March. So that is the idea. It's impossible to fix a clear plan at this juncture. Probably, it will become clearer and clearer step by step.
Ok then guys, so let's call it a day. You did a very good job by discussing these many new ideas. Now everything crucial depends on Eugenia. Eugenia, we are imploring you to do your best, please.
Thanks a lot. Goodbye.
