Existential Semiotics

Existential semiotics posits an a priori state of signs; it studies the ways in which signs are fixated into objective entities. Tarasti's work is hermeneutic and phenomenological, with its sources in Husserl, Schutz, Merleau-Ponty, Hegel, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Heidegger. As a member of the Paris School of Semiotics (and following the lead of A. J. Greimas in particular), Tarasti is seeking less-categorical, less-Cartesian approaches. He sees semiotics in transition, shift, rupture, and flux, something which is "becoming" rather than "being". His theoretical ideas are illustrated with examples from high culture -painting, music, and literature- as well as from contemporary media and popular culture, including landscapes, gastronomy, novels, Walt Disney films, and postcolonial practices. Signs are examined in their interdisciplinary connections in this thougtful collection of essays.

CONTENIDO:

Part One: Philosophical Reflections
1. On the Paths of Existential Semiotics
2. Signs and Transcendence
3. Endo-/Exogenic Signs, Fields, and Worlds
4. Understanding, Misunderstandings, and Self-Understanding
5. Signs of Anxiety; or the Problem of Semiotic Subject

Part Two: In the Forest of Symbols
6. From Aesthetics to Ethics
7. The ?Structural? and ?Existential? Styles in 20th Century Arts
8. On the Authenticity and Inauthenticity of Art

Part Three: The Social and Cultural Field of Signs
9. On Post-colonial Semiosis
10. Semiotics of Landscapes
11. Poetics of Place (particularly in music)
12. Walt Disney and Americanness: An existential-semiotical exercise
13." ...and you find the right one?: A narratological analysis of an advertising film
14. Senses, Values-and Media

Index