Between Signs and Non-Signs

352 Pages·1992·33.518 MB·English

by  Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, Susan Petrilli

BETWEEN SIGNS AND NON-SIGNS
CRITICAL THEORY
Interdisciplinary Approaches to
Language, Discourse and Ideology
Series Editors
Iris M. Zavala
Myriam Díaz-Diocaretz
Advisory Editorial Board:
Jonathan Culler (Cornell University, Ithaca)
Teun A. van Dijk (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam)
Fredric Jameson (Duke University)
Teresa de Lauretis (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Jerome McGann (University of Virginia, Charlottesville)
Cesare Segre (University of Pavia)
Gayatri Ch. Spivak (University of Pittsburgh)
Mario Valdes (University of Toronto)
Volume 10
Ferruccio Rossi-Landi
BETWEEN SIGNS AND NON-SIGNS
BETWEEN SIGNS
AND
NON-SIGNS
FERRUCCIO ROSSI-LANDI
Edited with an introduction by
SUSAN PETRILLI
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio.
Between sign and non-sign / Ferruccio Rossi-Landi ; edited with an introduction by
Susan Petrilli.
p. cm. -- (Critical theory, ISSN 0920-3060; v. 10)
Essays, written directly in English, which were previously published 1953-1988.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Semiotics. I. Petrilli, Susan. II. Title. III. Series.
P99.R58 1992
302.2-dc20 92-24183
ISBN 90 272 2419 6 (Eur.)/l-55619-177-4 (US) (hb; alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1992 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. -P.O. Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • 821 Bethlehem Pike • Philadelphia, PA 19118 • USA
Table of Contents
Introduction by Susan Petrilli ix
Notes xxiii
References xxvi
Sidelights by Ferruccio Rossi-Landi 1
I. Signs and Masters in Semiotic History
1. A Fragment in the History of Italian Semiotics 7
Premise 7
1.1 Communication in the History of Ideas 7
1.2 Flour from My Own Mill 11
References 15
2. Signs about a Master of Signs 17
2.1 A Personal Premise 17
2.2 Remarks about This Selection 18
2.3 Semiotics and Philosophy 20
2.4 At the Threshold of "Social Practice" in FTS 25
2.5 Semiotics as a Biological Science in SLB 29
2.6 Sign-behavior vs. Behavior-as-communication 30
2.7 Sign-vehicles, Signifiants, and Signs 35
2.8 Meaning and the Three Dimensions 39
2.9 Summary and Conclusions 43
2.10 Writings by Charles Morris 46
Notes 51
References 54
3. On some Post-Morrisian Problems 59
3.1 Introduction 59
3.2 Semiotics and Philosophy 61
3.3 Signs and Values 64
3.4 Charles Morris and Social Practice 65
VI BETWEEN SIGNS AND NON-SIGNS
3.5 Semiosis and Meaning 69
3.6 Behavior and Communication 74
3.7 Behaving and "Moving About" 79
3.8 Conclusion 81
References 83
4. Wittgenstein, Old and New 87
4.1 Foreword 87
4.2 Wittgenstein's Iceberg 89
4.3 Wittgenstein and Semiotics 93
4.4 Ideas for a Common Approach to Marx, Freud, and Wittgenstein 100
4.5 Wittgenstein and Alienation 103
References 106
II. Signs as Cognitive and Evaluative Instruments
5. Toward an Analysis of Appraisive Signs in Esthetics 111
5.1 Morris's Behavioral Approach 111
5.2 Draft of an Operational Approach to Esthetic Values 117
Notes 126
References 128
6. On Absurdity 131
Head Note 131
6.1 "Category Mistakes" and the Reductio AdAhsurdum According to 136
Linguistic Philosophy
6.2 Ryle's Procedure 138
6.3 General Weakness of the Appeal to Absurdity 140
6.4 Various Types of Absurdity, from "Linguistic" to "Real" 142
6.4.1 Unknown Words and Their Combinations 142
6.4.2 Odd Combinations of Words 143
6.4.3 Difficult or Contradictory Combinations of Words 144
6.4.4 Illegitimate, or Spurious, Combinations of Words 147
6.4.5 Strangeness in the Thing Reported or Spoken About 148
6.4.6 Self-effacing Combinations of Words 150
6.5 Absurdity and Logical Types 151
Notes 153
References 154
7. On the Overlapping of Categories in the Social Sciences 157
7.1 Some Cases of Paired Terms 158
7.2 Instances of Overlapping Categories 160
TABLE OF CONTENTS vii
7.2.1 Production and Consumption 160
7.2.2 Public and Private 162
7.2.3 Communication and Behavior 164
7.2.4 Language and Thought 165
7.2.5 Thought and Social Institutions 166
7.3 A Hint at the Dialectic of Essence and Phenomena 167
Note 168
References 168
III. Signs, Linguistic Alienation and Social Reproduction
8. Introduction to Semiosis and Social Reproduction 111
8.1 Foreword and Outline 171
8.2 Does Semiotics Exist? 173
8.3 Social Reproduction in General 176
8.4 Social Reproduction vs. Reality 184
8.5 Three Complementary Approaches 186
9. Articulations in Verbal and Objectual Sign Systems 189
Foreword 189
9.1 Artefacts and Work 190
9.2 Homology of Production 194
9.2.1 First Level: Presignificant Items 194
9.2.2 Second Level: Irreducibly Significant Items 197
9.2.3 Third Level: "Completed" Pieces 199
9.2.4 Fourth Level: Utensils and Sentences 203
9.2.5 Fifth Level: Aggregates of Utensils 206
9.2.6 Sixth Level: Mechanism 208
9.2.7 Seventh Level: Complex and Self-sufficient Mechanisms 214
9.2.8 Eighth Level: Total Mechanism or Automation 215
9.2.9 Ninth Level: Nonrepeatable Production 217
9.2.10 Tenth Level: Global Production 219
9.3 Plurality of Articulations 220
10. Sign Systems and Social Reproduction 233
10.1 Social Reproduction as the Principle of All Things 233
10.1.1 Social Reproduction, Social Practice, and History 233
10.1.2 The Idea of a Catalogue of Social Reproduction 235
10.1.3 Social Reproduction as the Matrix of All Possible Categories 236
10.2 The Articulations of Social Reproduction 238
10.2.1 Production, Exchange, and Consumption 239
10.2.2 Structure and Superstructure 240
viii BETWEEN SIGNS AND NON-SIGNS
10.2.3 Modes of Production, Sign Systems, and Ideological
Institutions 242
10.3 Sign Systems in Social Reproduction 244
10.3.1 The Presence of Nonverbal Sign Systems 244
10.3.2 The Influence of the Nonverbal upon the Verbal 245
10.3.3 The Position of Language in the Structure-superstructure
Circle 247
10.3.4 Planning at Three Levels of All Behavior 249
10.3.5 Sign Systems and the Production of Consensus 249
Notes 251
References 251
11. Ideas for the Study of Linguistic Alienation 253
11.1 Introduction 253
11.2 Linguistic Capital, Constant 256
11.3 Linguistic Capital, Variable 258
11.4 Total Linguistic Capital 259
11.5 Linguistic Exploitation 262
11.6 Linguistic Consumerism 264
Notes 265
References 266
IV. Signs and Material Reality
12. Signs and Bodies 271
Notes 276
13. Ideas for a Manifesto of Materialistic Semiotics 277
14. Toward a Theory of Sign Residues 281
14.1 Introduction: Sign Systems and Social Reproduction 281
14.2 The Typology of Signs as a Function of Social Reproduction 284
14.3 The Totality "Sign," and "Sign Residues" 285
14.3.1 Residues on the Side of Signantia 289
14.3.2 Residues on the Side of the Signata 294
14.4 Signs as Mediating between the Material and the Social 298
References 299
Writings by Ferruccio Rossi-Landi 301
Index Auctorum 311
Index Rerum 317
Introduction*
1. The type of cultural organization required by capitalism in its present
phase is intimately linked to the development of the capitalist system itself:
indeed they identify with each other. From this it ensues that, firstly, it i sdif­
ficult to separate ideological interests from the objective, material interests of
the development of capital; not only is ideology a constituent part of produc­
tion but, more than this, it produces profit. Secondly, given that culture is
made of signs and that without signs ideologies cannot be conveyed, indeed
cannot even be produced, this interrelation between cultural organization and
capitalist system concerns both verbal and nonverbal signs, which play a
determining role in the current phase of social reproduction. Today, the
expression 'cultural capital' is no longer a mere metaphor, but a reality. Work
operations and forms of behavior of the most disparate types produce and
develop cultural capital and, as in all capital producing processes, such cultur­
al capital is in turn augmented through surplus value and therefore through
surplus work. Not only does all this come about without the subject knowing
what the aims of his work are, but often he is not even aware that some of his
most basic activities may be defined as work.
Immediate consequences of all this are what may be referred to as the
"invisibility" of ideology determined by its functionality to the development
of capital, and the "imperceptibility" of exploitation determined by its dis­
semination throughout most of our activities. It might well be maintained that
we are now experiencing one of the most difficult times ever as far as the cri­
tique of ideology and analysis of social alienation is concerned, and it is not
incidental that such issues are quickly set aside by proclaiming the "crisis," or
even the "end" of ideology, and by judging expressions like "alienation,"
"class interest," and "social exploitation" as outdated. On the contrary, for an
adequate critique of the present-day cultural system we must study the mech­
anisms that regulate the reproduction of cultural capital and describe the new
role carried out by ideology, and therefore by the signs that form ideology
and culture in general.
X BETWEEN SIGNS AND NON-SIGNS
The increased involvement of signs and ideology in the reproduction pro­
cess of capital has caused the individual to take on a new role in that process;
consequently his role as a subject must now be re-examined. The notion of
"alienated subject" does not fully describe the situation of unconscious inte­
gration in a process in which the goals are unknown to the individuals
involved. The expression 'alienated subject' takes the very concept of subject
for granted, whilst it should be questioned given its specific ideological char­
acter. The subject is overlooked not only in the case of "visible alienation,"
which society denounces and relegates as abnormality, pathology, or, "mental
alienation," and which results in a lack of functionality to the system, but also
in the case of "invisible alienation," alienation in the Marxian sense, which no
longer only concerns life in the factory but extends to most if not all spaces of
the social and, unlike "visible alienation," is functional to the system.1
The Italian philosopher Ferruccio Rossi-Landi (1921-1985) conducted
pioneering work in semiotics and the philosophy of language from the 1950s
to the second half of the 1980s. One of the main aspects of his research is his
critique of language and subsequently of ideology in relation to sign-produc­
tion processes, considered, in turn, in relation to the overall process of social
reproduction. Present-day social reality confirms Rossi-Landi's updated defi­
nition of the ruling class as the class that controls communication channels
together with the rules governing the formulation and interpretation of mes­
sages, as well as his theory of the sign-mediated character of the relationship
between so-called structure and so-called superstructure.
The above-mentioned years covering Rossi-Landi's intellectual produc­
tion coincide with the formation of a new phase in the social reproduction
process, as well as with a period in which the fundamental role of signs and
of verbal and nonverbal communication programs in the production process
of capital was accentuated.2 It would not have been possible to study the
unconscious programs underlying verbal and nonverbal behavior before the
assertion of neocapitalism, just as the demystification of bourgeois economy
would not have been possible, with its consequent unveiling of man's exploi­
tation and oppression within the production process, before the full develop­
ment of capitalism and, therefore, before the progressive weakening of the
organic structure of capital and of the value of workers in favor of that part of
capital which remains constant. As Rossi-Landi writes (1972b: 18-42):
Man acts according to programs in any socio-economic situation whatever
and certainly not in the neocapitalist one alone. [But] that such program-