Integration and Explosion
Perspectives on Yuri Lotman’s cultural semiotics
International Conference
October 23-25, 2008
University of Konstanz
Where for a long time the observation of social order centered around the concept of integration, Yuri Lotman’s cultural semiotics places its emphasis on the interdependence between both regular and irregular circumstances and stable and instable sign processes, and on the relation, rich in both social and semiotic tension, between center and periphery.
Disorderliness, anomie, and disintegration are phenomena usually only granted deviant status—a status outside normative borders—in descriptions of social circumstances. Within Lotman’s cultural theory, they emerge as key moments of social dynamics and cultural semiosis with the help of concepts such as entropy, explosion, and periphery. This involves, on the one hand, an overcoming of the hierarchical conceptualization of integration and disintegration as, respectively, norm and deviation; and, on the other hand, a focusing on indeterminacy as a central factor in cultural dynamics.
The conference’s aim is to illuminate cultural semiotics from a perspective that is both comparative and oriented towards the history of science; and to examine the suitability of the theses and concepts at work here for current developments in cultural theory. In this respect, the following thematic focal points stand in the foreground:
- Culture and power
- Discursive asymmetry
- “Explosion,” “entropy,” etc.: the metaphorics of cultural semiosis
- The poetics of culture
Contact
PD Dr. Susi K. Frank
susi.frank[at]uni-konstanz.de
Dr. Cornelia Ruhe
cornelia.ruhe[at]uni-konstanz.de
Alexander Schmitz
alexander.schmitz[at]uni-konstanz.de
Location
Conference Room V 1001
Susi K. Frank, Cornelia Ruhe und Alexander Schmitz (Hg.): Explosion und Peripherie.
Jurij Lotmans Semiotik der kulturellen Dynamik revisited.
Bielefeld: transcript, 2012.
Jurij M. Lotman: Kultur und Explosion
Herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort von Susi K. Frank, Cornelia Ruhe und Alexander Schmitz. Aus dem Russischen von Dorothea Trottenberg.
Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010.
Jurij M. Lotman: Die Innenwelt des Denkens
Eine semiotische Theorie der Kultur
Herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort von Susi K. Frank, Cornelia Ruhe und Alexander Schmitz. Aus dem Russischen von Gabriele Leupold und Olga Radetzkaja.
Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010.