Semiotics

My head hurts from reading about three paragraphs of this stuff. Is there any area with so much demurral as modern theory? They'll start with something like, "Saussure said this, but Peirce said that, while modern semioticians, influenced by the Marxian model, concentrate on some other thing, except for Eco, who says yet something else altogether." If you simply are looking for the core concept, it's almost impossible to find. Which boils down, as always, to being forced to read the actual people themselves. In this case, my recommendation is Peirce, who may be old-fashioned, but at least is literate (as in readable).

Whatever happened to readable, anyhow? Why is modern theory, which has some perfectly good and fun aspects, so bogged down in bad writing? Is it simply a factor of most of your modern theorists being raised in the educational world where self-esteem trumped spelling and grammar? That may have something to do with it. And, of course, there is a need for academicians to cloak their prose in mumbo jumbo in order to make their thoughts look profound. This is a basic need of all shamans, be they adademicians or accountants or choreographers or, well, shamans. If you just say something simple that everyone can understand, you probably don't deserve your position of high authority. But if you say something complicated, then the mumbo jumbo effect is so much stronger, and your audience is wowed and cowed, and you've cemented your authority that much further. Profound thoughts in themselves are, of necessity, simple. But so few people really have any profound thoughts, or at least any profound thoughts of their own, that something must be done to make this not appear so obvious.

Jeesh.

This, of course, does not take into account the incomprehensibility of the French. Then again, what could?

We're going to start with the concept of narrative, because that does underpin everything I want to say about mo and pomo (funnily enough, the deeper I delve, the more fun I find mo and the less fun I find po). I'm reorganizing the caveman notes to make one complete unit on narrative alone, beginning with the concept at the dawn of time and taking it straight through to semiology. I will publish it all here, and in the Hillary Duff, and try to make notes of it at the same time. My estimate now is that the next version of the lecture will take place in 2007. Save the date!