[ecrea] Reintroducing the Semiosphere

        *Reintroducing the Semiosphere*


        *The 8th Annual Lotman Conference at Tallinn University*

Confirmed keynote speaker:**Dr. John Hartley, John Curtin Distinguished
Professor, School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University

The Estonian Semiotics Repository Foundation is inviting submissions for
the 8th Lotman conference at Tallinn University, 27 – 29 May 2016,
this year organised in cooperation with the Department of Semiotics,
University of Tartu.

In the recent decades, humanities and social sciences have been devising
approaches better suited to make sense of the social and political
relations in the globalising world. Increasingly the non-linear network
logics based on the view of different elements as interdependent has
emerged as a central outlook. The key concepts that this kind of
approaches operate with are reciprocity, relationality, networkedness,
rhizomeness, etc. In this connection the conception of semiosphere
worked out by Juri Lotman (“On the Semiosphere“ 2005 [1984],
/Universe of the Mind/ 1990) can offer a productive direction of
development for the methodology of social sciences and humanities.

Lotman first formulated the concept of semiosphere in analogy to that of
Vladimir Vernadsky’s ’biosphere’. For Lotman, semiosphere
designates the totality of all texts, languages and sign processes in
the world; importantly, however, that total semiotic space, rather than
a single sign or a language,  is also the smallest functioning unit of
meaning-making. A sign cannot make sense without the context of other
signs and ultimately without the presupposition of  the multilayered and
interactive semiosphere as a whole (Lotman /Universe of the Mind/; Kotov
and Kull “Semiosphere is the Relational Biosphere“ 2011).

Cultural semiotics studies cultures as parts of the semiosphere,
analysing the hierarchical correlation of the languages of differing
complexity that constitute it  (Lotman e.a. “Theses On the Semiotic
Study of Culture“ 1975 [1973]. Thus, to understand a culture it is
important to recognise and extricate the diverse communicative processes
in its variety of languages. This is a complex task as the cultural
languages can only heuristically be described as separate systems, in
reality they are always interdependent and interwoven.

In Lotman’s theory the processes are described as those of continuous
dialogue and translation across and within the borders of different
cultural units. These dialogical processes underlie both a variety of
types of cultural change and cultural reproduction mechanisms. It is
noteworthy that among cultural languages Lotman consistently drew upon
the examples of the languages of art when developing his conception of
the semiosphere. He saw the study of art languages as methodologically
vital for the attempts to model sign processes in general, because of
their complexity and dynamism among sign systems (“The Dynamic Model
of a Semiotic System“ 1977 [1974], /Universe of the Mind/, /Culture
and Explosion/ 2009 [1992].

The conference explores the heuristic potential of the notion of
semiosphere in the  conceptualisation and analysis of the relationality
of cultural elements and their social environment. Lotman’s work
offers a fruitful focus to study contemporary globalising forms of
culture, including networked media, as well as their local
historical-cultural underpinnings and ramifications.

The conference welcomes both theoretically-methodologically oriented
contributions, as well as relevant case studies from different
disciplines. The topics to be discussed include, but are not limited, to
the following:

  * Different understandings of ’relationality’ in semiotics,
    politology and other fields**
  * Relationality, reciprocity and (self-)identification as aspects of
    the semiosphere**
  *   Different understandings of ‘dialogue’ in Lotman, Bakhtin and
    other approaches**
  * The boundaries of the semiosphere and the boundaries of semiotics**
  * Boundary and translation **
  * Globalisation, relationality, physical and symbolic borders in the
    contemporary world**
  * The freedom of the subject in the networked world and
    autocommunication**
  * The media- and internet sphere as part/model of the semiosphere**
  * The arts as**part/model of the semiosphere; **
  * History and semiotics; a historical era as a part/model of the
    semiosphere**
  * The methodological inspiration of**‘semiosphere’ for
    ‘distant reading’ approaches and multimodal digital humanities**
  * Lotman’s work at the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s

*Submissions: *

The conference invites submissions from a variety of fields, such as
semiotics, politics, media studies, cultural theory, history, studies of
arts, etc., as well as inter- and multidisciplinary contributions. We
welcome submissions in English and in Russian, the two working languages
of the conference. The submissions should be sent via e-mail no later
than *14 March 2016* and include:

  * The title and a short abstract of the proposed presentation (up to
    2000 characters with spaces)
  * A short CV (name, surname, institutional affiliation, scholarly
    degree, description of scholarly interests — up to 1000 characters
    with spaces).

The organising committee will choose the presenters based on scholarly
merit and thematic relevance for the conference.  The results will be
announced via e-mail no later than 4 April 2016.

The submissions in English should be sent to Piret Peiker:
(piretpeiker /at/ hotmail.com) <mailto:(piretpeiker /at/ hotmail.com)>

The submissions in Russian should be sent to Tatjana Kuzovkina:
(tatjana.kuzovkina /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(tatjana.kuzovkina /at/ gmail.com)>

Speakers shall be allocated 30 minutes in total: 20 minutes to deliver
the presentation and 10 minutes for discussion. **

*Useful information:*

The conference will take place in the Mare building of Tallinn
University, 5 Uus-Sadama Street, 10120 Tallinn, Estonia.

There is no conference fee. All conference events are free of charge for
the presenters. The conference cannot offer any grants for travel or
accommodation. However, please do not hesitate to turn to us, if you
need advice making your arrangements. If you need our help with
obtaining the Estonian visa, please let us know.

Organising committee of the 8^th Lotman conference at Tallinn University:

Rein Raud (chair), Ðœarina Akimova, Boris Egorov, Indrek Ibrus, Tatjana
Kuzovkina, Mihhail Lotman, Daniele Monticelli, Vadim Parsamov, Piret
Peiker, Peeter Selg, Andreas Ventsel

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