Listics

[First, thanks to RB for pointing me toward Geertz as I stumbled through a conversation with him the other night. Chris was all erudite and witty, somewhat self effacing… “I don’t read books, I read bookstores.” I was all “Like, I can’t remember the word for that but what I’m trying to say is, well… gee I’d like to express this better but I must have lost my vocabulary or something.” Anyway, thanks RB, for pointing me to the layered descriptions that provide meaning and cultural context, and to the fact that we can agree that ultimately, when all the layers have been peeled back and explicated, that truly it remains a matter of turtles all the way down from there.]

Semiotics is the study of how signs and symbols relate to the things they represent. As becomes evident in discussions about culture, the meaning of a sign or symbol is not fixed; it varies over time, in different contexts, and by the intent of the speaker/writer. The relationship between a symbol or sign and what it represents can also be contested — different individuals or groups of individuals might have different views on the content of a specific sign/signified relationship (as is the case with the word “culture”). Someone interested in this process of meaning-making — a semiotician — might study the process by which contested meanings arise and are resolved. (A more familiar word, semantics, has very similar meanings.)

“The concept of culture I espouse. . . is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after. . . . (Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973)”

Webs of significance. I’m thinking about that, and Tom Matrullo’s recent revelation that Ted Rall will no longer be found in the New York Times. I’m thinking about our reluctance to address meaning in our politics and power structures, our desire to gloss over the obvious in favor of the comfortable. I’m thinking about kicking some ass.

Look out New York Times. We’re coming to get you.