Becoming unmotivated of the symbol

In his project of semiotics, Peirce seems to have been more attentive than Saussure to the irreducibility of this becoming-unmotivated of the symbol. In his terminology, one must speak of a becoming-unmotivated of the symbol, the notion of the symbol playing here a role analogous to that of the sign which Saussure opposes precisely to the symbol:

Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, particularly from icons, or from mixed signs partaking of the nature of icons and symbols. We think only in signs. These mental signs are of mixed nature; the symbol parts of them are called concepts. If a man makes a new symbol, it is by thoughts involving concepts. So it is only out of symbols that a new symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbolo.

[Elements of Logic, Hartshorne and Weiss]

Peirce complies with two apparently incompatible exigencies. The mistake here would be to sacrifice one for the other. It must be recognised that the symbolic (in Peirce's sense: of “the arbitrariness of the sign”) is rooted in the non-symbolic, in an anterior and related order of signification: “Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, particularly from icons, or from mixed signs.” But these roots must not compromise the structural originality of the field of symbols, the autonomy of a domain, a production, and a play: “So it is only out of symbols that a new symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbolo.”

- See the journal French Metablog with today different posts - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Three linguistic representations

Allegory is a way of shaping a story so that the characters and the setting are developed so as to have both a literal meaning on the primary level and a secondary meaning on the next level.

Symbolism is the use of the literary symbol, or the use of an object so that the attributes of the object become a substitute for some idea or entity with special significance.

Typology is subtly different from symbolism and is in fact often used as a synonym for symbolism, but it refers more specifically to the representation of things by objects in the sense of representing an entire class or type in one symbolic representation or character.

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Time and allegory

According to Paul de Man, symbol is a feature of an art which attempts to transcend , avoid, or deny the inescapable fact of temporality in embodied human existence.

Allegory not only does not attempt to avoid temporality, it highlights human finitude.
In symbol, subject and object are a unity: "the symbol is founded on an intimate unity between the image that rises up before the senses and the suprasensory totality that the image suggests."

In allegory, subject and object are irreconcilably different and separate: "in the world of allegory, time is the originary constitutive category . . . . The meaning constituted by the allegorical sign can . . . consist only in the repetition . . . of a previous sign with which it can never coincide, since it is of the essence of this previous sign to be pure anteriority."

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PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Operator of the future

Memex in use is shown here.

On one transparent screen the operator of the future writes notes and commentary dealing with reference material which is projected on the screen at left. Insertion of the proper code symbols at the bottom of right-hand screen will tie the new item to the earlier one after notes are photographed on supermicrofilm...

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See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
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Symbol as a negative moment

According to Paul de Man, the Coleridgean symbol represents the "negative" moment of the romantic dialectic; the positive moment is allegory, a system of signs in which the relation of a sign to signified is superseded by tile relation of signifier to signifier in a temporal sequence.

"Whereas the symbol postulates the possibility of an identity or identification, allegory designates primarily a distance in relation to its own origin, and, renouncing the nostalgia and the desire to coincide, it establishes its language in the void of this temporal difference".

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See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Renouncing the nostalgia

Whereas the symbol postulates the possibility of an identity or identification, allegory designates primarily a distance in relation to its own origin, and renouncing the nostalgia and the desire to coincide, it establishes its language in the void of this temporal difference.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/

See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Symbol and allegory

• According to Paul de Man, symbol is a feature of an art which attempts to transcend , avoid, or deny the inescapable fact of temporality in embodied human existence


• Allegory not only does not attempt to avoid temporality, it highlights human finitude.

In symbol, subject and object are a unity: "the symbol is founded on an intimate unity between the image that rises up before the senses and the suprasensory totality that the image suggests."

In allegory, subject and object are irreconcilably different and separate: "in the world of allegory, time is the originary constitutive category . . . . The meaning constituted by the allegorical sign can . . . consist only in the repetition . . . of a previous sign with which it can never coincide, since it is of the essence of this previous sign to be pure anteriority."

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/

See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts