Dominio e semiosfera. Politica e potere in Ju. M. Lotman: ricerche attuali e prospettive future / Dominion and semiosphere. Politics and power in Ju. M. Lotman: state of research  and future paths

Pietro Restaneo

Pietro Restaneo

Keywords: Jurij Mihailovič Lotman, political semiotics, theory of hegemony, history of semiotics, semiosphere

Abstract

The present paper aims at reviewing the current state of research about the relationship between semiotics and power in Jurij M. Lotman. In the first part, the article will illustrate and review the current international researches that apply, in the political field, concepts derived from the Lotmanian theories. The article will examine two cases: the first will be that of cultural studies, where recently some scholars started employing Lotmanian concepts such as autocommunication, boundary, center/periphery. The second will be the case of the so-called semiotic theory of hegemony, developed in Estonia, that combines concepts from Lotman and Laclau. In the second part, the article will instead focus on the historical research concerning the political tropes of Lotman’s theory, sparked by the reflection initiated by the researches shown in the first part. Starting from the cultural environment of Lotman’s early years, the paper will illustrate how certain semiotic concepts, such as personality and dominant, acquire a political meaning when related to the cultural environment of 1930s Soviet Union.

References

BACHTIN, Mihail (1979), Estetika slovesnogo tvorčestva, Iskusstvo, Mosca, 1979 (L’autore e l'eroe. Teoria letteraria e scienze umane, trad. di Clara Strada Janovic, Torino, Einaudi 1988).

BRANDIST, Craig (2015), The dimensions of hegemony, Brill, Boston.

DRECHSLER, Wolfgang (2009), «Political semiotics», in Semiotica, n. 173, pp. 73-97.

EGOROV, Boris (1999), Žizn’ i tvorčestvo Ju. M. Lotmana, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Mosca.

FERRARIO, Edoardo (1977), Teorie della letteratura in Russia 1900-1934, Editori Riuniti, Roma.

GUHA, Ranajit (1983), Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Oxford University Press, Delhi.

GUKOVSKIJ, Grigori A. (1965), Puškin i russkie romantiki, Izd. Hudožestvennaja literatura, Mosca.

LACLAU, Ernesto e MOUFFE, Chantal (2001), Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, Verso, Norfolk.

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1963), «Die Entwicklung des Romans in der russischen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts», in Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Slawistik, n. 28, 1963, pp. 22-51.

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1967), «Metodi esatti nella scienza letteraria sovietica», in Strumenti critici, n. 1/2, pp. 107-127.

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1970), Struktura hudožestvennogo teksta, Iskusstvo, Mosca (La struttura del testo poetico, trad. di Bazzarelli Eridano, Klein Erika e Schiaffino Gabriella, Mursia, Milano 1972).

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1971), «Problema “obučenija ku’lture” kak ee tipologičeskaja harakteristika», in Trudy po znakovym sistemam, n. 5, pp. 167-176 (La cultura e il suo insegnamento come caratteristica tipologica, in LOTMAN, Jurij M. e USPENSKIJ, Boris, Tipologia della cultura, trad. di Faccani Remo, Bompiani, Milano, 1995, pp. 69-81).

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1973), «Different cultures, different codes», in Times Literary Supplement, Oct. 12, pp. 1213-1215.

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1975), Dekabrist v povsednevnoj zˇizni (Bytovoe povedenie kak istoriko-psichologicˇeskaja kategorija), in BAZANOV, Vasilik G. e VACURO, Vadim E., a cura di, Literaturnoe nasledie dekabristov, Nauka, Leningrado, pp. 25-74 (Il decabrista nella vita. Il gesto, l’azione, il comportamento come testo, in ID., Tesi per una semiotica delle culture, trad. di Strada Janovic Clara, Meltemi, Roma, 2006, pp. 185-259).

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1984), «O semiosfere», in Trudy po znanokvym sistemam, n. 17, pp. 11-24.

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1985), «Dinamika kul’turnih sistem», inedito (La dinamica dei sistemi culturali, in ID., La semiosfera: asimmetria e dialogo nelle strutture pensanti, trad. di Salvestroni Simonetta, Marsilio, Venezia, pp. 131-145).

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1992), Kul’tura kak sub’“ekt i sama-sebe ob’”ekt, in ID., Izbrannye stat'i v trech tomach, vol. 1, Aleksandra, Tallinn, 1992, pp. 639-647.

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1993), Kul’tura i vzriv, Mosca, Gnosis (La cultura e l'esplosione, trad. di Valentino Caterina, Milano, Feltrinelli 1993).

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1993), Cercare la strada: modelli della cultura, Marsilio, Venezia.

LOTMAN, Jurij M. (1997), Pis’ma 1940-1993, Jazyk russoky kul’tury, Mosca.

MADISSON, Mari-Liis; VENTSEL, Andreas (2015), «‘Freedom of Speech’ in the self-descriptions of the Estonian Extreme Right Groupuscules», in National Identities, n. 1−18, pp. 89-104.

MARKOVIČ, Vladimir (2002), «Koncepcija “stadialn'osti literaturnogo razvitija” v rabotah G. A. Gukovskogo 1940-h godov», in NLO, n. 55, http://magazines.russ.ru/

nlo/2002/55/mark.html (19/6/2015).

MARZADURI, Marzio (1989), Gli anni universitari di Ju. Lotman. Gli studi e i primi scritti, in AA. VV., Dalla forma allo spirito. Studi in onore di Nina Kauchtschischwili, Guerini e Ass.ti, Milano, pp. 267-284.

MIKHAIL, Epstein (1999), Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of Creative Communication, St. Martin’s Press, New York.

MILLER, Tobey (2001), a cura di, A companion to cultural studies, Blackwell, Malden.

RESTANEO, Pietro (2013), «Il concetto di potere nel pensiero di Ju. M. Lotman», in Studi filosofici, n. 36, pp. 209-234.

SAID, Edward (2001), Orientalismo, Feltrinelli, Milano.

SALIZZONI, Roberto (2010), «Il silenzio di Lotman», in Leitmotiv, n. 0, pp. 89-105.

ŠČERBA, Lev V. (1934), Jazykovaya sistema i rečevaja dejatel’nost’, Nauka, Leningrad.

SCHÖNLE, Andreas (2006), a cura di, Lotman and cultural studies: a case for cross-fertilization, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.

SEDDA, Franciscu (2012), Imperfette traduzioni, Nuova cultura, Roma.

SELG, Peeter e VENTSEL, Andreas (2010) «An outline for a semiotic theory of hegemony», in Semiotica, n. 182/1, pp. 443-474.

SÉRIOT, Patrick (2005), a cura di, Un paradigme perdu: la linguistique marriste, in Cahiers de l'ILSL n. 20.

SMITH, Anna Marie (1998), Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary, Routledge, London.

SPIVAK, Gayatri Chakravorty (1999), A critique of postcolonial reason, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

TYNJANOV, Jurij N. (1977 [1924]), Literaturnij fakt, in ID., Poetika. Istorija literaturj. Kino, Nauka, Mosca.

USPENSKIJ Boris A., IVANOV Vjačeslav V., TOPOROV Vladimir N., PJATIGORSKIJ Alexander M., LOTMAN Jurij M. (1973), Theses on the semiotic study of cultures (as applied to Slavic texts), in ENG, Jan van der e Grygar, MOJMIR, a cura di, Structure of Texts and Semiotics of Culture, Mouton, The Hague-Paris, pp. 1-28.

WALDSTEIN, Maxim (2008), The soviet empire of signs, VDM Publishing, Saarbrücken.

ŽIRMUNSKIJ, Viktor (1978), Nacional’nyi jazyk i social’nye dialekty, Prideaux Press, Letchworth.