An essay on the understanding of the semiotic-cultural notion of «space»

IF it is true that we live in a time when «border» is no longer a cartographic concept to impose itself as an arena in which geopolitical demarcations generate friction, confrontation, and invasion, it is no less correct to consider the significant role of each area of research in which space grew up as the main object of study. Although the semiotic approach of culture doesn’t exist in the so-called «spatial turn» research, one can not deny that concepts such as «chronotope» by M. M. Bakhtin; «Semiosphere», by Iúri Lotman and «Umwelt», by Jokob Von Uexküll and Thomas Sebeok, were conceived when the notion of emerging «field of relations» was born from relativity of space-time concept. Thus, the study of space is much more culturalized by systems of signs than theorists can imagine. Such is the hypothesis of the space study conducted within the cultural scope of Tartu-Moscow semiotic school. From the point of view of cultural semiosis the notion of chronotope became the basis for the construction of the historicity of culture as an environment of relations in time and space. With this the cultural spaces are configured as a field of frontier relations in which confrontations grow up in the actions of geographic, geopolitical and also communicational nature. According to Lótman's understanding it is a complex of tensions in which the boundaries enhance the interaction of confronting cultures (of languages, customs, interests). So cultural semiosis is due more to relational contingencies than to common sense of languages. It follows that in the game of the forces in dispute the socio-historical inheritance realigns human interactions with the environment in the dynamics of its Umwelt, which makes the space of relations unpredictable and ready to explosions. The line of reasoning outlined here composes the argumentative nucleus of our study of space according to the semiotic formulations of Russian theories whose most evident legacy was Bakhtinian dialogism. In his investigative trajectory on the systems of signs of the culture, Lótman turns to the intercultural relations in living environments loaded with frictions and shocks guided by the question: How different cultures and languages communicate? When tracing investigative paths to his inquiry, he faces not only different semiotic behaviors but also different spatialities. So he inquiry the relations between translation and untranslatability manifested in the confrontation between internal and external space, boundaries and borders, the self and the foreign. Although semiotics is not a discipline taken for granted by the space turn, problems of intercultural communication are visible and demand investigations. After all, geopolitical conflicts depend on the knowledge about the auter and inner space - spaces of external relations to the terrestrial domain destined to the cybernetic machines (of geolocation, telecommunications, telematic networks, satellites) performance and they are able to translate the planet and reconfigure it with closed codes of space-time. Do the Space Sciences and the Space Humanities really ignore their dependence on signs for the understanding of the topographies and topologies they manipulate? In doubt we cannot give up research increasingly semiotically culturalized space.
País: 
Brasil
Temas y ejes de trabajo: 
Semiótica de la espacialidad (geografías, territorios, fronteras)
Institución: 
Universidade de São Paulo
Mail: 
irenear@usp.br

Estado del abstract

Estado del abstract: 
Accepted
Desarrollado por gcoop.