Abstract
One of the most important assumptions in semiotics is the existence of a space before or outside semioticization, against which the fundamental concepts of semiotics are defined. Such an approach is entirely justified from a heuristic point of view. The error consists in the mixing of principles that occurs when we begin to confuse logical conventions for empirical reality.
A similar convention is the assumed existence in dynamic processes of some kind of starting point, a relative zero, although a “zero state” is never available to us in empirical reality.
Originally published as “O dinamike kul’tury,” Trudy po znakovym sistemam 25, 1992: 5–22. The translation here is from Iurii Lotman, Semiosfera, 647–663. Saint Petersburg: Iskusstvo—SPB, 2000.
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Notes
- 1.
See Prigogine’s concept of bifurcation points in dynamic processes in Prigogine (1980, 103–130).
- 2.
Bashmachkin’s surname derives from the Russian word bashmak, meaning “shoe.” (Translator’s note).
- 3.
Lotman is probably referring here to the Greek work ἄκακος, meaning “guileless,” “innocent,” or “simple.” (Translator’s note)
- 4.
Something analogous, although to an immeasurably lesser degree, is displayed when an animal ends up in a situation that is radically anomalous for it, for example, a geological disaster. There the stable behavior of an animal comes into conflict with an altered world, just as significantly altered behavior on the animal’s part brings it into conflict with a stable world.
- 5.
The dynamics of human behavior, in its turn, significantly influenced the behavior of animals. It would be wrong to think that an animal of the Stone Age acted like the animals of today. They were much less vulnerable. The contemporary behavior of animals would seem “crazy” to them, insofar as many features of that behavior were the result of contacts with humans.
- 6.
We should distinguish these cases from those involving the ritualized non-coincidence of behavior and its interpretation, as with, for example, ritualized laughter at funerals and wakes or the ritualized weeping of the bride-to-be in marriage rituals.
- 7.
A glove or a car could be thrown in someone’s face, serving as a sign of a slap, or on the ground, as a sign of a sign. Osip Mandelstam challenged Aleksey Tolstoy to a duel by simply touching his palm to Tolstoy’s cheek. Valentin Stenich, according to Elena Tager, described this episode, seeing in it only the comic mismatch of Mandelstam’s face and the “chivalric” situation. He was probably right that Mandelstam’s behavior was an extremely refined form of insult. Any resemblance to a fight that would have been understandable and natural to Tolstoy was completely replaced by the insulting gesture of touching his cheek.
- 8.
This phenomenon is, of course, from the start dual. Similar to the way in which an individual human personality is both a part of the collective and its likeness, a separate history of literature or of any other field of art or a history of art as a whole can be viewed as part of a cultural whole and as its likeness.
- 9.
For deep analysis of this dimension of the cultural history, see Bakhtin (1984).
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Lotman, J. (2019). On the Dynamics of Culture. In: Tamm, M. (eds) Juri Lotman - Culture, Memory and History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14710-5_7
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