SemioticsofTime:aResearchProgramwithinExistentialSemiotics(KristianBankov)

Semiotics of Time: a Research Program within Existential Semiotics

KRISTIAN BANKOV, NEW BULGARIAN UNIVERSITY

Infinity, a fascinating notion, could have a lot of definitions, one of them for sure is the bibliography on the topic of time. Small part of that infinite bibliography is about semiotics of time, though, considered the various languages of the publications, it is still a huge task to encompass. Nevertheless, there is not yet a reference book or a landmark author, who can be considered the founder of such a brunch in the doctrine of signs. Thus the research program, suggested here, is driven by the modest ambition to build, in several years of work, the ground for an unified inquiry in this direction. And such an idea would have not been possible without the establishment of the research field of Existential semiotics by Eero Tarasti. According to my basic assumptions, it is namely the balanced involvement of structural semiotics, interpretive semiotics and continental philosophy in Existential semiotics, which makes it the right approach for the study of time. And here some clarifications are needed, since a lot of interesting contributions on time and music has already been made within existential semiotics. Thus the most part of the existing materials on semiotics and time are with textual and aesthetic orientation, which is also in accord with the mainstream Existential semiotic inquiry. My intention, instead, is to include the temporality as a constitutive ground for the semiosis, and then to reconsider the existing classical models of the sign and the signification in new light. Among the already published theoretical contributions the most relevant for the present project are four articles in the collection Signs & Time. Zeichen & Zeit (cf. Hess-Lttich, E. W. B. & Schlieben-Lange (eds.) 1998) written by Jerzy Pelc, Elisabeth Walther, Lucia Santaella Braga and Grard Deledalle. In all those texts

SemioticsofTime:aResearchProgramwithinExistentialSemiotics(KristianBankov)

are stressed various aspects of the deep and organic unity of time and semiosis in the philosophy of Peirce. Another major source for my project is the magisterial work of Paul Ricoeur Time and Narrative (Ricoeur 1984-1988), where, among many other relevant points, the French philosopher develops a systematic critique of the structuralist consideration of temporality and Greimas in particular. This point is extremely important, since it helps to distinguish the ontological from the narratological level of temporality. In the latter level are situated the great majority of the existing analysis of the narrative manipulations of time. This is very interesting and important domain of research, which, nevertheless, will be taken in consideration only as a secondary matter, focusing our primary interest on the former level.

The semio-temporal structure of the World

In the works of Tarasti the Heideggerian term Dasein is used mainly to refer to the unity of the self, involved in aesthetic experience. In order to distinguish the Semiotics of time approach and in the same time keep on referring to the same entity, I would prefer the term Welt/World, as it is introduced by one of the most important pupils of Heidegger H. G. Gadamer. In his major work, Truth and Method, in a chapter entitled Language as Experience of the World, the notion of Welt is opposed to the notion of Umwelt, as the typically human free and distanced attitude towards reality, realised in language (Gadamer 1979: 402 403). I have further developed this point (cf. Bankov 2003, 2006), introducing two main constitutive axes semiotic articulation and temporal projection. The semiotic articulation is constitutive for the construction of the World since it represents the only possibility for the human cognition to adopt a system of

SemioticsofTime:aResearchProgramwithinExistentialSemiotics(KristianBankov)

differentiations, through which a meaningful projections (hypothesis) are possible. The language is the medium, which introduces the formal and socially shaped structure of the differentiations, but its existence would have been impossible and unnecessary if it was not ontogenetically prepared by the nascent temporal consciousness. Thus both axes presuppose each other and this is examined in a very detailed way in developmental psychology. The adoption of the first series of verbal signs is the step, which brings the debuting mind of the baby to the so called displacement of reference in the memorization of experience. In other words, it is the initial accumulation of signs of things which introduces the possibility to entertain the consciousness with meanings, which are not directly related to the actual data of sensory perception. This displacement of reference is the condition of both temporal and spatial autonomy of mental representation. And the most important consequence is that the displacement of reference automatically presupposes the formation of past and future in the administration of experience. In the very moment the mind is able to generate meaning about something, which is not present, this is recall of the past. The past is continuously accumulating and starts to represent the main source of meaning. Actually the identification of whatever object of thought is possible only as relation to what is already present in the ordered record of the passed experience. At the same time memory is never present to consciousness in its integrity, even in the very dbut of that faculty. Recalling presupposes always selection, and the selection is motivated by the prospects of the present situation, which introduces the future dimension. The displacement of reference has its mirror structure in the involvement of both past and future as a complementary elements of any meaningful cognition. And this is the core assumption of the semiotics of time, as it is conceived in the outlined research program.

SemioticsofTime:aResearchProgramwithinExistentialSemiotics(KristianBankov)

The core assumption

The core assumption of Semiotics of time involves an inedited combination of overlapping perspectives. Thus, besides the empirically oriented developmental psychology, in which the nascence of the semiotic and temporal structuring of experience is examined, we have also a heavy philosophical background, deriving from the analysis of time of Bergson, Husserl and Heidegger. Those authors, for the first time in the history of philosophy, open a perspective, which is explicitly oriented to account for the temporal structure of the formation of meaning and experience. Bergson calls it dure and in Matter and Memory (1988) his main concern is to provide a theory, in which perception and recollection are seen as one and the same parallel process, involving past an future in kind of present, provided with thickness of duration. Heidegger accounts for the same structure as an ecstatical unity of past and future, which constitutes the temporality of the care, i.e. the modality the human being is thrown in the World (Being and Time, $ 65). Both authors insist on the priority of future over the other temporal dimensions, and here comes Peirce, bringing one more perspective. In one of his most quoted texts, What pragmatism is, in the part dedicated to Pragmaticism, the properly semiotic perspective is revealed:

And do not overlook the fact that the pragmaticist maxim says nothing of single experiments or of single experimental phenomena (for what is conditionally true in futuro can hardly be singular), but only speaks of general kinds of experimental phenomena. Its adherent does not shrink from speaking of general objects as real, since whatever is true represents a real. Now the laws of nature are true. The

SemioticsofTime:aResearchProgramwithinExistentialSemiotics(KristianBankov)

rational meaning of every proposition lies in the future. (CP 5.426-427, Peirces italics)

This passage, I would dare to say, contains a key for the comprehension of the basic concern of the whole Peircean doctrine of signs and also summarizes his theoretical (and not cosmological) reflection on time. I see here the temporality as the ground for the formal structure of language, and in general, of all sign systems. The temporal foundation of cognition condemns the symbolic representations of reality to be concerned with the future, or forthcoming, of what is not yet, and this entity, by principal, cannot be a singularity. And here we are speaking of our cognitive grasp on reality, of its meaning, of what Bergson and Heidegger would call project or projection, and not of reality itself, never accessible as such. The meaning of reality requires identification and identification presupposes involvement of meaningful units, which are already present in memory, i.e. situated in the past. The recollection of the significant units, through which we are identifying the forthcoming, presupposes generalization. The ecstatical temporal unity of our cognitive structure in permanently requiring a formal relation of the project with the available passed meaningful experience. The selection of that experience implies generalisation, otherwise it wont be possible to recognize whatever as something. And this mechanism is absolutely not limited to the perception of tangible objects. Our ability for anticipation of the forthcoming has the same structure as the perception/recollection (in the mentioned bergsonian sense). The memory is involved in the construction of virtuality that, which is not yet, and, in the case of the fictional worlds that which never will be. The above mentioned semiotic way of administration of the passed experience works also with longer spans of time. Our projection of the future could employ analogy with existing stories of

SemioticsofTime:aResearchProgramwithinExistentialSemiotics(KristianBankov)

our passed life. But to claim that an analogy constitutes the relation of the project of a story that is not yet and the recollection of a story that has already been, again we are condemned to generalization. And the generalisation in the case of represented and constructed sequences of events opens the huge perspective of the narrative structure. It is the formal structure of a passed sequence of events which makes them eligible for analogy with a project, which is not yet. And I dare to say that our life is dominated by the concern or care about a long lasting story like projects about professional realization, interpersonal relations, property administration, etc. and not by the perception of isolated objects and words. And here is already Ricoeur from Time and Narrative speaking, although with slightly different terminology.

The arbitrary access to passed experience

Another way to stress the relevance of the structural perspective for the semiotics of time is to develop the deep Saussureian intuition about the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign1. Following the Bergsonian and Heideggerian analysis of the role of the past, it results that we need a particular way, in which the memory of the past is articulated and available for the constitution of the World. Arbitrariness of meaning here is in opposition of the stimulus-response motivatedness of the access to memory in non human animals, i.e. the freedom of modelling a plurality of possible worlds through our internal narration and the free will administration of our behaviour. Only the socially shaped human languages can provide the formal ground for the articulation of the passed experience in arbitrary accessible way. And again, in this way the memory is
Here the debts go to De Mauro (1967: 385-389, 414-417), not for the temporal interpretation, but for drawing the attention to the philosophical relevance and centrality for Saussure of the notion of arbitrariness of the sign.
1

SemioticsofTime:aResearchProgramwithinExistentialSemiotics(KristianBankov)

seen not as the storehouse of the facts of our life, but as an infinite trace for reconstruction of always new and inedited trajectories of self narration, where the facts of our life assume different structural and actantial roles, dependent on the projection of the future, they serve.

Sources for empirical evidence within the research program

The main ambition of the research program is to bring theoretical semiotics to the concern for empirical evidence. A good example for such a move is Ecos theoretical turn towards cognitive sciences after the second half of nineties. But first of all the validity of the approach should be grounded in the study of the huge database with child development databases. The awareness of the course of the time and the complexification of the sign use in babies are parallel processes. It should be observed how the ability of construction of more and more complicated verbal representations lays on the expansion of the time span in which the debuting mind extends itself. There could be conceived tests for the measure of child development, based on the narrative abilities to manipulate temporality in imagination or problem solving. The semiotic and structural awareness for this activities should bring new quality of the existing research. In the modelling of the cognitive processes of the adults also the temporal dynamization could bring qualitative improvement. For instance the decision making is always presented from the logical perspective, where it is obvious that in real life decisions are taken after comparison of extended in temporality scenarios about the consequences of the considered action. Thus the weight of the various parameters of the decision are never absolute, but derivative of the narrative role they take in the constructed scenario.

SemioticsofTime:aResearchProgramwithinExistentialSemiotics(KristianBankov)

The examination of the identity of the individuals is also an empirical test for the semiotics of time. The collective and personal identifications introduce the self in different kinds of temporal awareness, which determines the interpretation of given social fact. What we call manipulation could be more effective in certain individual time administrations and less in others.
References: Bankov, K. 2003 Analisi semio-temporale dellidentit: su una tipologia della memoria, in Logica, Dialogica, Ideologica, Patrizia Calefato and Susan Petrilli (ed.), p. 249-258, Mimesis, Milano. . 2006. A semio-temporal analysis of identity, based on a typology of memory in Subject Matters: a Journal of Communications and the Self , Vol. 2 No. 2., 2006, London Metropolitan University Press. Bergson, H. 1988 [1896]. Matter and Memory. Tr. N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer. New York: Zone Books. [Orig.: Matire et mmoire: Essai sur la relation du corps l'esprit. Paris: Flix Alcan.] De Mauro, T. 1967 Note in Saussure, F. Corso di linguistica generale, Roma-Bari: Laterza. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1979 [1960]. Truth and Method. Ed. John Cumming and Garret Barden. London: Sheed & Ward. [Orig.: Wahrheit und Methode.Tbingen: J. C. B. Mohr.] Heidegger, Martin. 1962 [1927]. Being and Time. Tr. John Robinson and Edward MacQuarrie. New York: Harper and Row. [Orig.: Sein und Zeit. Tbingen: Niemeyer.] Hess-Lttich, E. W. B. & Schlieben-Lange, B. (eds.) 1998 Signs & Time - Zeit & Zeichen: An International Conference on the Semiotics of Time in Tbingen, Tbingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Peirce, C. S. 193448. Collected Papers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (CP). Ricoeur, P. (1984-1988) Time and Narrative, Volumes 1-3, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press)