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______________________________________________________________________ The "Zeitschrift für
Semiotik"
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Introduction Yoshihiko Ikegami Jan Brouwer Masatoshi A. Konishi Paravastu H. Govindarajan Hans Petschar Gerard J. van den Broek Frank Fiedeler Enclosure Introduction Roland Posner, Technical University Berlin Summary. Since the members of a society apply and modify codes in producing and using
artifacts, sign processes are carried out continually in every culture. They serve to
transmit experiences from generation to generation and constitute the identity of the
culture in its interaction with other cultures. Intercultural exchange is performed in a
culture-specific way: While the European system of cultures has a limited openness for
outside experiences, present-day Japan is more receptive, which is explained by the
Japanese conception of the empty center, and Hindu India is more closed, which is
explained by the Indian comparison of society with the human body. The sign practises of
Indians, Chinese, and Japanese cannot be described easily with the concepts of Western
sign theories. Semiotically challenging are the assumption of senderless semioses, the
abstention from using codes that determine the interpretation, the abolishment of the
sender’s monopoly for meaning production, the emphasis on the performance instead of
the results of semioses, and the distinction of context-free meaning vs.
situation-dependent content vs. recipient-dependent effect in semiosis. Anthropologically
challenging is the degree to which the cultures of India, China, and Japan project the
structure of their society onto their system of artifacts, their codes, and their
segmentation of nature. This observation gives rise to a general discussion of how much
meaning projection is necessary for stabilizing a culture’s identity.
The function of the empty center in Japanese society Yoshihiko Ikegami, University of Tokyo Summary. The city of Tokyo, the Japanese haiku poem, the role of the leader in Japanese
industrial firms, and the functioning of the imperial government of Japan are all analyzed
as instantiations of a semiotic structure with an empty center. In each case, the empty
center provides a means of reducing opposition and contrast through a semiotic mechanism
involving two steps: (1) the (arbitrary) assignment of distinct functions of two
contrasting terms, which leads to (2) the creation of a complementary relation between
these terms and thus to their equality. Examples of cultural and linguistic borrowing such
as native versus Western dress or native words versus Westerns loans are adduced and the
function of the "empty center" is reinterpreted in dynamic terms as the
principle of homologization.
Society as a body: gender-specific work distribution in the south of India Jan Brouwer, University of Leiden Summary. Using the methods of semiotic ethnography, this contribution analyzes the
constraints which control the way in which crafts are practised by women in South-Indian
castes. The data from fieldwork with 14 artisan castes in Karnataka in the early 1980s are
reduced in several steps to yield the rules which make participation of a woman in a craft
predictable. These rules refer to the type of caste the woman belongs to, the origin of
the raw materials dealt with, the kind of instruments used, the properties of the working
process, as well as the lifespan and intended use of the products. When a Hindu woman
works in a caste-specific craft, she belongs to a non-migrant "right" caste,
deals with raw materials found near water, tends to use a knife and no instruments
classified as female, performs central operations in the production of short-lived goods
or auxiliary operations in the production of long-lived goods, and concentrates on
products that can be used in liminal regions of the human body. Exceptions to these rules
are made after a woman’s husband dies. These features of women’s crafts can be
explained as consequences of collective conceptions about the male (the right) vs. the
female (the left), about society as a human body, and about contaminating vs.
non-contaminating cooperation between the members of a society or the parts of a body,
respectively. These conceptions are subject to change, as is pointed out with respect to
the transformation in the obtaining of raw materials, the transition from a migrant to a
non-migrant lifestyle, and the confrontation of Hindu villagers with Muslims and
Christians. The symbolism of Bengali floor painting: the Âlpanâs of the Mâghmandala ritual Masatoshi A. Konishi, Rikkyo University Tokyo Summary. Even today in many parts of India special types of ornaments are drawn on the
floor in front of the entries to private houses in the course of regularly performed
rituals. These floor drawings (called alpana) serve to keep bad spirits from entering the
house and to lead protective gods to the family altar, making them aware of wishes
articulated in prayer. The Maghmandala ritual is practiced in Bengal in the winter; it
implores the sun to recover its power and enhance fertility by granting early marriage,
birth of sons, and general prosperity. The floor drawings produced in the course of this
ritual depict the cosmos and place symbols of desired events in it in order to make them
become real through magic. The present contribution describes the underlying
symbol-system. It emphasizes that the symbols are considered to be magically effective
only during the process of their production; the completed floor drawing is regarded as a
trace of a past ceremony only and heedlessly left to destruction.
The use of hand gestures in classic Indian art dance
(Bharata Nâtya) Summary. The art of classical Indian dance, which was already codified in Panini’s
time (4th century B.C.), has developed a system of symbols for the communication of ideas,
which include hand gestures (hastas) that are accompanied by movements of other parts of
the body (angas and upangas). The Indian tradition distinguishes insignificant hand
movements, which are only produced for aesthetic reasons in order to embellish the dance,
from significant hand gestures, which associate an elementary meaning with a visible form.
On the basis of this meaning, a dance combining several hand gestures can communicate
numerous ideas, pertaining to human relations, social castes, the planets, various
guardian spirits as well as the deities of the Hindu pantheon. Movements of the
dancer’s head, eyes, and body play an essential role in this communication process.
The aim of classical Indian dance is to evoke a specific aesthetic mood (rasa) in the
audience. This effect can only be reached when all details of the dance (especially the
hastas, angas, and upangas) occur in total coordination. The present contribution
describes the symbol system of the hand gestures and analyzes the semioses that occur in
their production. It shows how much dance considered as a sign process has in common with
other arts and media according to the Indian tradition.
Chess as a reflection of culture: a comparison of the rule system in India, China, Japan and Europe Hans Petschar, Austrian National Library, Vienna Summary. The pieces and the rules of the game of chess and their Indian, Chinese, Japanese and European variants are described and compared. Indian chess represents the division of Indian society into four classes and systematizes their distinctive features. Chinese chess hierarchizes the space around the emperor piece and gives the pieces the capacity of blocking space. Japanese chess decentralizes the system of pieces and their space and emphasizes the temporal dimension by introduction of rank change and readmission of lost pieces as vassals of the adversary. European chess substitutes a queen for the ministers or generals, introduces casteling and extends the space accesible to some of the pieces, thus accelerating the game. It is shown that these metamorphoses of the game of chess are not accidental but mirror the structure of the cultures in which chess used to be played: the cast society in India, Chinese imperial culture, Japanese military aristocracy, and the court-society of mediaeval Europe. Totemism in industrial culture: brand signs in the
People's Republic of China Summary. The purpose of this essay is twofold: it introduces the reader to the exotic
world of Chinese brand signs and it opens up new perspectives for a deeper theoretical
understanding of the emblem. Taking the approaches of Lévi-Strauss and Sebeok (among
others) as his point of departure, the author transcends their views and proposes a new
model of the emblem which requires the presence of not just one symbol (as was formerly
thought), but the interaction of two symbols.
Semiotic logic in the Book of Changes (Yijing) Frank Fiedeler, Free University Berlin Summary. The Book of Changes presents an archaic theory of semiosis, the origins of which can be traced back to the time when the written language of Chinese characters was developed (the 2nd millenium B.C.). The evolutionary logic of this theory, which was understood as both the logic of cultural creation of symbols and the logic of biological evolution, is represented in the structure of an oracle system. It has striking analogies with the pattern of the DNA-code. The universal paradigm from which it was derived is the celestial order of the calendaric phenomena, with the moon as its focal point. This formed the basis of a semiotic theory of evolution which because of the above-mentioned structural analogy can be applied not only the the semioses of human languages, but also directly the the biogenetic structure of the genetic code.
Enclosure Götz Wienold, University of Constance Summary. Japanese gardens are carefully arranged to the viewer. The artistry of arrangements helps develop observation and perception. In this contribution elements, groups, and frames are given particular attention. Gardens which are looked at while walking (wet gardens) are discussed as well as gardens where the viewer sits on a gallery (dry gardens). Dry gardens substitute sand for water, rock gardens stones for plants. Heaps of sand (called morizuna) are described as having a specific function which facilitates the transition from using a garden to viewing it as an object of meditation. This leads to the question whether elements or groups in the garden "represent" objects or "replace" them. |
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