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This article has been published in: Ocula 12, Alibi: an Approach to the Semiotics of Travel

author: Francesco Galofaro (Centro Universitario Bolognese di Etnosemiotica (CUBE), Bologna (IT))

Krakowiak. Fragments from a Misinterpretive Ethnosemiotics

language: italian

abstract: The first part of the article consists in some travel notes from the "nonexistent country", as once Jarry defined Poland. The second part is an attempt to draw some metasemiotic consequences of the impact of a different culture I was not prepared to face. I do not deny that in such cases we try to make inferences, but I believe they are always wrong. There is no cognitive, pre-existent, inborn mechanism capable to make our hypotheses always successful. Furthermore, the objects alone, which, according to some scholars, constitute the trigger of semiosis, are in themselves, as an exhausted candle, totally unable to feed it. To this purpose there exist codes: the appropriation of a town goes through a series of performances intimately tied to the language, which is the primary modelling system, and by which we recognise what is ours in the other's, making in such a way our culture and the other's mutually accessible.

citation information: Francesco Galofaro, Krakowiak Frammenti di una etnosemiotica misinterpretativa, "Ocula", vol.13, n.12, March 2012. DOI: 10.12977/ocula4

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