0784 So, there are two models of the binary in Russian theory.

0785 One model conforms to the West, consisting of two equipotent elements, such as Wilhelm Hegel’s trope of thesisand antithesis.  As long as the potential of synthesis is suppressed, then a thesis (as matter) will substantiate its antithesis (as form).  Perhaps, antagonism is perpetual, because the thesis (as matter) cannot substantiate its antithesis(as form).  So each accuses the other.  The thesis says, “You are the wrong form.”  The antithesis says, “You are the wrong matter.”

0786 The other model suggests that Russia and other Slavic civilizations embody one form relating to two matters, one substantiating and one entangled.  The confounding is dangerous because, unlike equipotent thesis and antithesis (both interested in suppressing the possibility of synthesis), there are two matters that will vary in potency, especially with respect to one another.

The author tells a personal tale where, as an intellectually inclined youth, in rebellion from his academically renown father, considered binarism as a methodological device.

0787 Binarism is a scholarly illusion, so to speak.

Boris Uspenskij argued with the youth, offering the following historic example where the archaic primal imagery of reform characteristic of Peter the Great ends up literally building a new capital, St. Petersburg, as an icon of the new Russian Identity and Will.  However, at the moment when the vision is realized, the capital thing gets entangled with allusions to the Vatican and Rome.

0788 Yes, Moscow… er… St. Petersburg is the Third Rome, but exactly how Vatican-like can it be?

Oh, the St. Petersburg coat of arms clearly alludes to the Vatican’s coat of arms.

Coincidence?

0789 The author goes on to say what happened next.

To many, the confounding resolved in favor of entangled matter.

The form (of the capital of St. Petersburg, as well as Moscow) remains the same, more or less.

But now, the form is substantiated by “the czar” (the Russian word for the Latin “Caesar”).  The Tsar is a fusion of spiritual and spiritual authorities.  I figure that such a fusion characterizes the narod, the prepolitical Slavs, whose rulers spontaneously manifest as both spiritual and physical winners before… you know… the Vikings arrive with their shallow-hulled boats and their ferocious swords.  Talk about identity and will!

0790 Yet, the allusions to Vatican (spiritual) and Roman (political) imagery makes it seem like the form of the Russian capital is substantiated by Christianity as matter. 

0791 And what gets entangled?

Does the Vatican and the capital of Rome constitute Christianity?

Protestant churches preached against the Czarist’s Christian thing.  They, along with the freemasons and other private circles, get entangled as matter.

0792 At this point in the article, the author slides into the methodology of typology, which attaches labels with the goalof “to name it is to know it”.

The typology labels three types of oppositions.

The thesis and antithesis type is “equipollent”.

The confounding and its resolution type is “privative”, “gradual” or (may I add?) “explosive”.

0793 Sometimes the labels are confusing.

Otto Mandelstam (1891-1938) offers a short story where a criminal (as thesis) and his victim (as antithesis) are regarded as the same.  The crime remains as long as justice (as synthesis) never arrives.

While the criminal and victim are equipollent (in terms of matter), they are different when the story is cast as “privative”.  The criminal is originating matter.  The victim is entangled matter.  

The form is the crime.

0794 Of course, the author does not detail the above diagrammatic conceptual apparatus.

Instead, he explains the semiotics in ways that are descriptive, rather that diagrammatic.

Diagrams assist in illuminating the inherent relationality in both semiology and structuralism.

0795 Perhaps, this examination will assist in constellating a second incarnation of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics.

Diagrams expand the TMS sphere of understanding.

0796 Now, I repeat myself, more or less, with an awkward shift in associations.

On page 268, the author makes an important observation.  There is a popular saying that Soviet people (Russians in the USSR) think one thing and say another.  This is a joke.  This is also an act of will_1a, as opposed to truth_1a.  If I spoke_2awith truth_1a as the potential_1a underlying my intellect_3a, then one could estimate that what I think (as matter)_2a from the form of what I say_2a.

Obviously, there is a problem with previous associations to the Greimas square, where my (Russian) truth_1a (D) contrasts with my (Russian) will_1a (C), contradicts my Russian identity_3a (A) and complements the dyadic actuality of {what I think_2am [substantiates] what I say_2af} (B).

0797 The author thinks that the actuality_2a comports with George Orwell’s doublethink, where one holds two contradictory ideas in one’s consciousness.  Is that like one form and two matters?

Consciousness itself is doubled.  Each consciousness is intrinsically coherent.  Plus, the two consciousnesses do not seem to communicate with one another.  The person experiences a “split reality”.

0798 Does this “split reality” conform to the character of spoken language as two arbitrarily related systems of differences?

0799 The Greimas square may assist.

If I focus on my Russian identity (in a Soviet regime)_3a as a manifestation of my intellect_3a (A), then the following associations fall into place.

The subscript “om” stands for “originating matter”.  The “en” stands for “entangled matter”.

0800 The focal term (A) is my Russian identity (in a Soviet regime)_3a, corresponding to the normal context of the content-level of the interscope for the post-truth condition.

B contrasts with A.  What I say as a content-level matter_2ma substantiates (rather than entangles) my official consciousness as form_2af (B).

Somehow, what I say_2a changes from form to matter.  Plus, consciousness_2af stands as the form.

I suppose that the normal context_3a and the potential_1a must be different than before.

0801 Notably, this thing (B, matter and form) serves as phenomena for psychometric analysis by experts.

What are the experts trying to evaluate?

Obviously, Soviet experts are assessing my Russian will_1a (within the Marxist denkstyle) (C).

Currently, in the USDB, two types of experts are employed, each utilizing a scientific format in order to camouflage their theoretically incompatible denkstyles (of capitalism and of communism).  

Of course, expert valuations built by two incompatible ideologies and inscribed in disciplinary languages that mimic scientific layouts, may seem incoherent to people without academic credentials.

Consequently, many in the USDB no longer trust the science.

But, that is another story.

0802 Right now, my American will_1a (which underlies my intellect_3a) (C) speaks against what I say as matter_2aom and my official consciousness as form (B).  My American will_1a (C) complements my American identity_3a (in the USDBregime) (A) and, in doing so, partially accounts for the joke in point 0046.

0803 The joke is fulfilled when my private consciousness as form, which is a facet of my consciousness which is not official, entangles what I think_2am as matter, implying that what I think_2am cannot substantiate what I say_2af.

0804 Ha…ha…ha….was that an awkward shift in associations?

I suppose that the USSR and the USDB are not so… um… what was I going to say?

Maybe the following diagram will assist.

0805 I have been warned.

Never try to explain a joke.

Jokes are dangerous, just like confoundings.

0806 If I return to a color-coded Greimas square for Russian identity_3a (or reasoning_3a(1a)) during the Cold War Among Materialist Ideologies (1945-1989), then it becomes clear that the joke reveals that my official consciousness (B) and my private consciousness (D) are not contrasts, but are (weirdly) intrinsic to my Russian identity_3a (A) and my Russian will_1a (C), respectively.  They are intensions, according to the Soviet regime and the Marxist denkstyle, of what I am supposed to say_2a and what I am supposed to think_2a.

0807 Indeed, the dyad of {my voice_2aom [substantiating] my official consciousness_2af} (B) depicts the “mental geography of the Soviet regime”, that substantiates Soviet… er… Russian identity_3a (A) and Russian will_1a (C).  In effect, B is official Marxist imagery_2aom.

The following figure depicts the elements of the above Greimas square as a confounding.

It makes me wonder about the nature of the Greimas square.

0808 The essence should be substantiated official consciousness_2af.  But, since the Russian has both an identity_3a (A) and will_1a (C), and since identity_3a (A) associates to official consciousness_2af (B) and will_1a (C) associates to private consciousness_2af (D), then a freakish doubling of consciousness occurs when I think_2aem (D).

0809 Now, this type of dualism, as funny as it appears, my also have been at play… quite literally… in medieval diglossia.

Boris Uspenskij describes this phenomenon, where Church Slavonic language_2a (which would go with B) substantiates Russian literary language_bm (which would go with both A (Orthodox identity_3a) and C (Russian will_1a)) and entangles Russian wit_2aem (which goes with D).  If the literary text_2bf is synonymous with wit_2a (what I think_2aom D), then Russian civilization is much more… um… hilarious than western Europeans are willing to admit.

0810 The author provides several examples, one of which is the practical business-oriented Julian calendar (which appeals to official consciousness) and the somewhat off-kilter theology-oriented Gregorian calendar (which appeals to private consciousness), leading to questions about whether one can celebrate New Years if it comes before Christmas.

0811 The author now introduces a typology of cultural betweenness.

Two antithetical mechanisms constitute the basis of Russian identity_3a and will_1a.  One concerns sovereignty (that is, “official consciousness”).  The other concerns my relations to others, including my most private self (that is “private consciousness”).

This implies an esse_ce and essence of official consciousness and an entanglement with the esse_ce of private consciousness.  Russian identity_3a and will_1a resonates with the form of official and private consciousness.

0812 Here is a picture.

0813 If geography orients my official consciousness as form (B) and if my truth goes with my private consciousness as form (D), then I may conclude, along with the author, that form (B) entangles matter (D) in an ambivalent and complicated manner.

0814 A split reality resides “in between” B and D when my Russian identity_3a (A) is the focus of attention and my Russian will_1a (C) speaks against {what I say_2a as matter [substantiating] my official consciousness as form} (B).

0815 What contrasts with my Russian identity_3a (A)?

It is what I say_2aom [substantiating] my official consciousness_2af (B).

What contrasts with my Russian will_1a (C)?

It is my private consciousness_2af entangling what I think_2a (D).

0816 Here is the corresponding Greimas square, once again.

According to the rules of the Greimas square, my Russian will_1a (C) complements my Russian identity_3a (A), just as my private consciousness (D) complements my official consciousness (B).

0817 I remind myself that the topic is a typology of cultural betweenness.  The author offers three types of cultural relations: interaction, alliance and identity.

0818 Do these three types fit into the Greimas square pictured above?

Here is my guess.

Oh, it looks like I have one association too many.  Cognition is not on the list of types.

However, it may belong to interaction.  Cognition is like matter.  Interaction is like form.

0819 Plus, I have an odd substitute for D, one which throws me back to points 0015-0017.

0820 There is a historical progression in imagination, where “imagination” corresponds to {my private consciousness” as form [entangling] what I think as matter} (D).   “My private consciousness” is the esse_ce entangled by the essence of my official consciousness.

The long historical progression goes from pagan narod (1), to Christian narod under sovereign rule (2), to an atheist people (3), to a Christian people (4).  This progression comports with Comments on Alexander Dugin’s (2012) Fourth Political Theory, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0821 In the above figure, D comports with the third step: an atheist people.

Ironically, this (3) is where both Juri Lotman and Boris Uspenskij operate during the 1950s through the 1980s, while they both construct a “scientific” mode of interpretation that transcends both “Soviet” and “Socialist” labels.

Now, times have changed (4).  So, this examiner can risk putting in a qualifier that comports with the philosophy of Alexander Dugin (4).

0822 The author offers a table listing how political theorists express identity (A), cognition (B), interaction (B) and alliance (C).

0823 Identity (A) concerns Russian civilization (identity writ large) in relation to other civilizations.  Expressions by political theorists include incomparability, identifying with the industrious West, identifying with the mysterious East, and synthetically identifying with the best of Eurasia.

0824 Interaction (B) concerns how um… “cognition”… passes in and out of Russia.  Expressions by political theoristsentail cognitive flows in both directions.  Cognitive flow from the industrious West or mysterious East may involve servile interactions.  Isolation combats servitude.  Cognitive flow without interaction, I suppose, goes without comprehension.

Mimicry is the highest form of flattery.

0825 Alliances (C) form in order to maintain civilizational identity (A).  Expressions by political theorists include alliances with the industrious West or with the mysterious East, as well as isolation.

0826 Amazingly, Lotman’s analysis applies to Russia’s political conundrum in the mid-2020s (see point 0002).

Maybe Russia needs space.

Oh, what am I saying.  Russia has space!

0967 Since the word, “chronotope” and “isotope” both contain “tope”, I use the latter as an analogy for the former.

The analogy is admittedly, odd.

0968 Here is a comparison of the two entangled things.  For chemistry, an isotopic thing (the nucleus, at least) gets entangled in the matter of radioactive instability.  For the medieval scholastics, a mind-independent being ends up entangled with mind-dependent matter.

0969 Now, how do these two confoundings resolve?

They can resolve in favor of the originating matter, resulting in a stable isotope for chemistry and an objective mind-independent being for scholastic discourse.

They can resolve in favor of the entangled matter, resulting in a new element produced by radioactive decay and a subjective mind-dependent being, apparently useless for scholastic discourse.  Radioactivity and opinion?  Yeah, both may be damaging.

0970 Here is a picture of the example.

0971 Confoundings are dangerous.

Whenever I see one, I say, “Watch out!”

0972 The adjusted title of the article under examination is “Semiotics of Cultural History: An Inquiry into the Chronotope”.

So, I step onto a path of analogy and example, by offering my first comparison.

0973 What is “cultural history”?

It is a historical thing.

While the literary construction of the thing suggests that history may be the form and culture may serve as matter, the realness of the historical thing runs in the opposite direction.  History pours into culture, like bronze pours into an empty plaster shell in the lost wax technique.  Culture, as form, recalls history, as matter.  So, “history” should serve as the matter and “culture” should label the form of “the historical thing”.

0974 At this point, the historical thing might be regarded by a scientist as a noumenon that exhibits a variety of phenomena that can be observed and measured.  Then, the observations and measurements may be modeled according to ways that material arrangements substantiate human conditions, using the disciplinary languages of Keynesianism or Marxism or whatever.

0975 The next step on the path of analogy and example, introduces semiotics as entangled matter.

Then, the confounding resolves in favor of the entangled matter.

0976 So, let me walk through this figure using the example.

History corresponds to mind-independence as matter.  I suppose this implies that history may be regarded as a sequence of real events.  So, these events substantiate a real form.

Culture corresponds to “ens reale” as form.  Ens reale transliterates into real being.  Doesn’t everyone regard culture as a real being?  Well, I suppose that those who don’t are either sociopaths or insane or both.  If culture is not a real being,then what is?

Semiotics, or sign-systems studies, is analogous to mind-dependent matter that gets entangled with the form of the historical thing.

0977 The resolution in favor of the entanglement acts like radioactive decay that changes the elemental thing and like {mind-dependent matter [substantiating] ens rationis}.

0978 In other words, as soon as semiotics gets entangled with the historical thing, the historical thing is no longer the same. 

0979 Ah, I may now cross out the historical thing and insert Torop’s term, “cultural history”.

0980 The semiotics of culture has the potential of offering explanations that are not available to historiography.  

At the same time, historiography records (literally, “graphs”) those explanations.

0981 For a relatively recent example, at the start of the Third Battle among the Enlightenment Gods (1945-1989 AD), the contesting ideologies of capitalism and communism directly appeal to mass audiences.  Their representatives aim to capture hearts and minds.  By the end of the Cold War Among Materialist Ideologies (1945-1989), both capitalists and communists cloak their discourses in scientific professionalism.  Experts rely on (apparently) precise technical vocabularies.  Experts offer normative valuations that demand sovereign implementation.

0982 In terms of semiotics, the sign-system changes from presenting arguments that appeal to the hearts and minds of the masses to providing normative valuations to an administrative state.  Rhetoric transmogrifies into scientific demeanor.  Experts know best.

0983 In terms of historiography, events speak for themselves.  The so-called “Iron-Curtain” rises as soon as the so-called Second World War (1937-1945) ends in the defeat of “fascist powers”.  Soon, walls are built between “capitalist societies” and “communist societies”.  The walls are supplemented by nuclear weapons.  Consequently, warfare between the contending ideologically driven polities is narrowed to proxy-warfare.  In America, these proxy wars occur in Berlin, Korea, Vietnam, and so on.  Spy-craft conducts subterfuge.  Self-identifying “Americans” tell a frightened public that “We are fighting communism.”

 0984 In 1963, an American president dies from subterfuge from his own “side”.

In 1968, Soviet tanks crush a rebellious “Prague spring”.

Clearly, both incidents are signs that historiography cannot “graph” without changing the cultural coordinates.

Both incidents indicate that the capitalist and the communist ideologies no longer appeal to the masses.

The ideologues will now turn to expertise, in the style of science.

0985 The end of The Third Battle Among Enlightenment Gods (1945-1989) marks the opening of the fourth: Empirio-normative Domination of Subject Populations (1989-present), as elaborated in Razie Mah’s three-part e-book, Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0986 Well, perhaps I have provided more than an example.

0987 Shall I skip to the beginning, and provide a complement to Torop’s narrative?

The First Battle of the Enlightenment Gods, the Tragic War Among Naive Mercantilists (1914-1918), ends with the Russian Revolution, and Russian’s sovereign power falls into the hands of communist ideologues.  Who paid for those ideologues?

Perhaps, the mercantilists were not naive.  At the same time, they might not have heard about Husserl’s phenomenology, Freud’s psychoanalysis, the semiology of Ferdinand de Saussure and the semiotics of Charles Peirce, bubbling up in intellectual circles.  All these new schools move the Zeitgeist closer to science, or to something that appears in the guise of science.  After all, when discourse sounds scientific, then it must be scientific.  Isn’t that so?

0988 Karl Marx, riffing from Hegel’s spiritual phenomenology to materialist economics, formulates one of the most resilient models to appear in the guise of science.  The model is really a thing, because it_2a mimics the first step in natural philosophy: the recognition of matter and form as two contiguous real elements.  A thing is {matter [contiguity] form}.

Not unsurprisingly, this turns out to be how Charles Peirce characterizes the category of secondness.  Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.  Secondness is the realm of actuality.

0989 Here is a picture of Marx’s thing.

0990 Well, the Soviet shakers-and-movers, celebrating their acquisition of sovereign power, intend to implement a turn towards science for all institutions within the regime.  Why?  Because Marx’s thing dictates that… if one changes material arrangements, then one changes human conditions.

What better way to alter material arrangements than through scientific formulations?

0991 So, what is a professor in Slavic languages and literature to do?

Well, at first, German formalism offers an opportunity to reduce literary texts to their underlying rhetorical tropes.  But, once such a reduction is performed, the professor can only offer a list of tropes.  Tropes are not very convincing material arrangements.  But, over time, they may ripen into chronotropes, which I have mistakenly mixed up with Bakhtin’s “chronotope”.

0992 Somewhat embarrassed at this, I ask myself, “What would be Bakhtin’s chronotope for this narrative?”

I suppose that it retains its “tope” over time, but changes is “chrono” with time.

Perhaps, the term is similar to the German word, “Zeitgeist”.  The spirit remains the same, but its manifestation depends on the times.

0993 Here, the “tope” or the “geist” is the 20^th century’s mounting confidence that all reality will come under the domain of science.  Using Peirce’s… or is it Marx’s terminology, thirdness and firstness will fail based on their own internal contradictions.  Does that mean that the “chrono” and the “Zeit” will change with material arrangements and human conditions?  If so, then only secondness, the realm of actuality, the Marxist thing, is credible.

I conclude that the relevant “chronotope” may be the purely dyadic structure of Marx’s thing.

0994 However, for professors in Slavic languages and literature, Saussure’s discovery that spoken language consists of two arbitrarily related systems of differences offers a parallel to Marx’s thing that is more suitable for their subject matter.  So, these thought leaders argue that Saussure’s thing is… well… a good substitute for Marx’s.

0995 Here is a picture.

Mental operations as matter correspond to langue.

Spoken words as form correspond to parole.

0996 Let me offer a simplification.

Here is a picture of the resolution of history substantiating culture and culture entangling semiotics as a century-long chronotope.

0997 The story starts with the Russian Revolution at the end of the first World War.

Saussure’s thing is a viable alternate to Marx’s thing soon after the end of the second World War.

The first manifestation of the Tartu-Moscow School becomes a star in the constellation of Russian Theory during the third World War.  The fundament interscope is constructed.

The production of the derivative interscope and the formulation of Lotman’s thing occurs in the waning years of the third and the early years of the fourth Battle Among The Enlightenment Gods.

0998 Here is a date for orientation.

In 1973, Juri Lotman and others publish Theses on the Semiotic Study of Culture (as Applied to Slavic Texts).

The literary text is incorporated into a science-oriented model.

0999 To start, Saussure’s dyadic actuality_2a is placed in the proper normal context_3a and potential_1a.

Here is a picture.

1000 Many features of Formalism may be repurposed to explain how spoken words as things_2a emerge from (and situate) the potential of ‘signified [and] signifier’_1a within the normal context of Saussure’s semiology_3a.

1001 In short, the content-level encompasses topics familiar to linguists and scholars in rhetoric.

1002 Next, Saussure’s thing on the content level is situated by a literature-loving thing on the situation level.

1003 Culture enters the picture here as the milieu in which language_2bm substantiates a work of art_2bf.

Culture also enters the picture in the guise of influence_3b(1b)), corresponding to the normal contexts₃ and potentials₁ of both the content_a and situation_b levels.  Here, artistic expressions are situated by genre, style and so forth.

1004 For example, from the situation-level point of view, the parole_2af of dance consists of movements that constitute artistic expression_2af.   A dancer trips over something on the floor.  That is not part of the parole_2af of the dance_3a, because it_2am has no corresponding langue_2am.

During a performance_2bf, dancers adhere to certain laws of choreography_1b that vary according to the dance genre_3b.  Tap dancers make lots of noise.  Ballet dancers do not.

1005 Each language_2a must be performed_2bm.

1006 The language_2a supporting the performance_2bm is universal.

For example, a dance where the dancers merely wriggle in place looks like the visual equivalent of babbling.  Similarly, a dance where the dancers merely perform acrobatic feats does not demonstrate… well… artistic effort.  Also, a dancer wrapped up in linen as to appear as a round ball can only be said to be on a roll.  So, there must be something universal to the language_2a that corresponds to what the author calls “subtextual meaning”.

1007 The performance_2bm should be intelligible.  For dance, the coordination of bodies moving in unison offers a feeling of intelligibility.  Often, cinematic approaches to dance cut away before movements are complete, often in unintelligible manners.  Also, dance is rarely composed for cinema, even though cinema offers unique points of view, unavailable to stage.

1008 So, what am I saying?

What am I asking?

Will a model_2c put all this into perspective?

Does a model_2c bring the intelligibility of the performance of a particular work_2b into relation with the universality of the “words” of its language_2a?

Well, a model_2c can do this, only when the model_2c is not mathematical or mechanical.

1009 What if the perspective-level follows the appearance of the empirio-schematic judgment, where the normal context of a disciplinary language_3c brings the actuality of a mathematical and mechanical model_2c into relation with the potential of ‘observations and measurements of phenomena’_1c?

1010 Here is a picture for how that perspective-level category-based nested form may appear.

1012 The normal context of a language that allows formal and final causes_3c brings the actuality of a semiological_2astructuralist_2b model_2c into relation with the possibilities inherent in the observations and measurements of artistic phenomena_1c.

1013 Well, that is close enough to science that a scholar schooled in Slavic languages and literature gets.

I call the resulting interscope, “fundament”, because it takes the inquirer from the mother tongue_2a through the composition of the text_2b, to a model_2c that is based on the nature of signs_3a and on the way that any particular genre, style, fashion, and artistic expression constitutes a system_3b bound by rules_1b.  The fundament applies to a wide range of “languages” in so far as a specific style of artistic expression displays distinct elements, or forms_2b(2a), that correspond to mental thoughts_2a and linguistic matter_2b.

1014 Here is a picture of the fundament interscope.

1015 Perhaps, most striking is the Aristotelian character of the fundament.  The content-level hylomorphe_2a is universal.  The situation-level hylomorphe_2b should be intelligible.  The perspective-level model_2c is a relation that brings the intelligibility of the situation-level hylomorphe_2b into relation with the universality of the content-level hylomorphe_2a.

The fundament seems to be an exercise in aesthetics as much as modern science.

Juri Lotman labels it, “Russian theory”.

1016 Is it any coincidence that Russian Theory spontaneously constellates at the same time as Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology?  Both strive to assess what the noumenon must be, given the phenomena of matter and form.

1017 Phenomenology re-articulates technical achievements (such as a particular style of architecture) as social things, arriving at noumena whose phenomena engage the social sciences.

See the e-book course, Phenomenology and the Positivist Intellect, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  Also see the three part e-work, Biosemiotics as Noumenon.

1018 Russian theory re-articulates literary achievements (as well, all the modern arts) in Slavic civilization as… um… semiological and structural judgments_2c, lingering like Byzantine shadows of Aristotle in the Marxist-illuminated hallways of Moscow and Tartu Universities.

1019 Indeed, the fundament is so… um… profound that Marx’s thing gets entangled in semiotics as matter.

1020 How confounding.

The dangers of this confounding are palpable in the interview with Vyacheslav Ivanov, appearing in Kalevi Kull and Ekaterina Velmezova (eds.), Sphere of Understanding: Tartu Dialogues with Semioticians (2025, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston, pages 47-68).

1021 One can only admire Lotman’s bravado when it comes to the bureaucratic morons, who are both culturally Slavs (having an intuitive Orthodox appreciation of entanglement) and indoctrinated not be be Slavs (by the Marxist insistence that Christian superstition is scientific nonsense) and are therefore already conflicted.

Sometimes, morons can advance science by simply not resolving their conflictions.

1022 But, that is another story.

1023 Here, on page 321 of the text under examination, Torop shifts into the technical details of a literary order.  He offers a table, listing levels for intratextual and extratextual relations.  Intratextual relations concern the text itself.  Extratextual relations concerns what type of text it is.

1024 The actualities of the fundament interscope compare well with Torop’s intratextual relations.

1025 On the content level of word and meaning, Saussure’s dyadic actuality compares to subtextual and lingual meanings.  In short, an author must craft thoughts_2am into words_2af.

1026 On the situation level of the structure of the textual material, the dyad of {language as matter_2bm [substantiates] the literary text as form_2bf} compares to what Torop calls “the structure of material (dominant element or level)”.

1027 What does the term in parentheses imply?

Does “the dominant element or level” represent the normal context of structure (or sign-system)_3b operating on the potential laws of the system_1b?

For example, a text on history may be an epic tale, a historical analysis or a fairy tale.  Each manifests a different structure_3b and lawfulness_1b.

1028 On the perspective level of poetics, a semiological structuralist model_2c compares to textual specificity.  To me, both actualities contain some sort of judgment.

For example, let me propose a thesis in the humanities that consists of concatenating plagiarized passages from various experts on a particular topic.  When the submission is debated by the student’s faculty committee, they may consider the fact that the passages were chosen by the student may represent a unique intellectual advancement offered by the student.  In comparison to the visual arts, the submitted text is a collage.

The problem is obvious.  A submission on say, a Slavic work of literature, cannot be labeled a “thesis” when it is really the textual equivalent to a collage.

1029 So, Torop’s label of “poetics” for the perspective level conveys a certain irony.

1030 When the lazy faculty members vote to award the degree on the basis of this “literary collage”, and after the funds for the college’s endowment are released by a nervous, yet protective donor, a rumor goes out that the nature of the academic thesis in languages and literature has changed.  “Literary collages” are now accepted as original academic work.

1031 Spoken words can be so slippery.

So, actions speak louder than words.

1032 Of course, in order to justify the move, one of those lazy faculty members may be induced to write a defense, in which a semiological structuralist model_2c is constructed in order to portray the student’s submission as a literary text_2afthat emerges from the potential of ‘the meaning of an intellectual accomplishment’_1a in the normal context of… well… a positivist intellect that is more compromised than that of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics_3a.

1033 Here is a picture of the perspective-level of the fundament interscope and the content-level of a derivative interscope, which is not under the umbrella of Russian Theory for this example, because the entire exercise is a scam.

1034 The semiological structuralist model_2c of perspective-level of the fundament interscope stands for the literary text_2af on the content-level of the derivative interscope in regards to a modern intellect_3a operating on the potential of ‘positivist meaning’_1a.

1035 According to Peirce, a sign-vehicle (SV) stands for a sign-object (SO) in regards to a sign-interpretant (SI).  The above diagram expresses what I call “the interventional sign-relation”, as described in Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in October, 2023.

In this case, the guilty faculty member’s semiological structuralist model_2c of the “collage thesis_2bf“ (SV_i) stands for literary text as form_2af (SO_i) in regards to the academic institution’s positivist intellect_3a (which is not TMS, for sure) operating on the potential of ‘an acceptable intellectual accomplishment, worthy of an advanced degree’_1a (SI_i).

1036 Recall that the semiological structuralist model_2c brings the intelligibility of the literary text_2b into relation with the universality of language_2a.

So, a semiological structuralist model_2c that that brings the intelligibility of a concatenation of plagiarized texts_2b into relation with the universality of the language of the visual arts_2a (SV_i) stands for the way that {this literary text as a form_2af [entangles] the language of meaning as matter_2am} (SO_i) in the normal context of an obviously compromised academic stance_3a operating on the potential that ‘a literary study may be compared to a visual collage’_1a (SI_i).

1037 Enough of this.

I’m sure the reader has a good idea that this academy engages in sophistry.

Can one build a sensible interscope on an exercise of sophistry?

Well, one can try.

Here is the general sensible construction that anyone with integrity would produce.

1038 I leave it to the reader to produce the sensible construction specific to the scam.

1039 Why?

I am plunging headlong into displaying the derivative interscope, which emerges from and situates the fundament interscope.

Here is a picture.

1040 On the content level, a positivist intellect comparable to that of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, in its 1960s-1980s hey-day_3a, brings the actuality of the dyad of {the fundamentally modeled literary text as form_2af[entangles] a discursive and derivative language as matter_2am} into the relation with the potential of ‘meaning’_1a.

Here, the potential_1a does not refer to subtextuality, but to “functionality”, in the broadest sense of the word.  ‘Meaning’ is not “functional” unless it satisfies the formal requirements of its design_3a and the intentions of its final causality_3a.

1041 On the situation level, the normal context of cultural studies concerning the reception of the work_3b brings the actuality of the dyad, {cognition as matter_2bm [substantiates] social interaction as form_2bf}, into relation with the potential_1b of ‘a presence’ that situates the matter of language_2am.

1042 Returning to the scam, in the next academic year, the department of languages and literature receives many applications by students eager to explore the opportunities offered for constructing a thesis based on plagiarized material cut and pasted into a “literary collage”.

1043 The problem arises when this new style of thesis is compared to theses from other academic institutions.

I suppose this problem figures in the general perspective-level category-based nested form in the above figure.

Perhaps, this is why the perspective level is left empty.

1044 The derivative interscope compares to the table on extratextual relations in Figure 1 on page 321.  The title of Figure 1 is “The construction of text”.

1045 Here is a table comparing the virtual nested form in actuality for the derivative interscope with Torop’s extratextual relations.

While the fundament interscope addresses the text itself.  The derivative interscope assesses the text in relation to other texts.  Such an assessment characterizes extratextual relations for the work.

1046 Are the correspondences sufficient to conclude that this examination’s fundament and derivative interscopes and Torop’s intratextual and extratextual relations are similar… if not identical?

If the answer is “yes”, then this examiner has a clue to the nature of the missing perspective-level actuality_2c.  The perspective-level actuality_2c assesses how a particular text relates to other texts, and in doing so, weighs the intelligibility of the reception of the work_2b against the universality of its functional meaning_2a.

1047 An affirmative answer also brings this examiner to the topic of Bakhtin’s chronotopes.

Figure 2 on page 322 of Torop’s essay presents what may be Bakhtin’s chronotopical system.

In fact, the table in Figure 2 is assembled from a short piece, “Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel”, written around 1937-1938, along with “concluding remarks” added in 1973.  Plus, there are entries in various notebooks, scribbles on papers that were preserved, and so on, adding clarity… and weirdness… to a distinction between architectonic time (corresponding to the chronotope) and the time when the story or artwork is composed (and, presumably, the author and the author’s cultural scope are alive).

1048 For example, consider a sci-fi author completing a story about “life in the future”, the day before the world ends.  The chronotope must be life in the future.  The time when the story is composed corresponds to the day before an asteroid hits the Earth.

Oh, this is the twist.

The author belongs to a rare breed of dinosaur living 65 million years ago.

The translation occurs when an AI program trained to scan fossilized dinosaur nests suddenly recognizes patterns within the nesting material that correspond… through comparison with patterns in other… what?.. ancient Mesopotamian glyphs, allowing for some sort of translation.

1049 So, what is the title of this unbelievable literary text?

“Actuality to be determined_2c“.

1050 Am I saying that Bakhtin’s chronoscope is the actuality to be determined_2c?

Am I saying that the actuality to be determined_2c is more than intertextual specificity?

It_2c is the time envisioned in a story written the moment before the author, and the author’s cultural scope, vanish into the past.

1051 So, what is this moment in the present, where the past recedes and the future awaits the text itself?

It must be the moment when langue_2am [substantiates] parole_2af.

1052 Just as there is a time-piece within a radioactive atom that determines when the unstable isotope decays into another element, there is a time piece within every author and cultural scope.  That time-piece determines when the time of composition and the chronotope separate into the author and the text.

1053 An academic can study the author and the text in order to produce, using the fundament interscope, a semiologiccal_2a structural_2b model_2c.  This model_2c, when regarded as the noumenon of the text_2af, may entangle key elements within the chronotopical system, as shown in the following figure.

1054 But, there is a problem.

The closer that the semiotician swerves into Bakhtin’s chronotopical system, the more and more the semiological structuralist model_2c looks… well… irrelevant. 

Look at the poetics level.

Surely, a semiological structural model_2c is bland and uninteresting compared to topographic, psychological and metaphysical realities.

No?

1055 Okay, there is another problem.

It is not at all obvious that my one-to-one association with each of Bakhtin’s triads corresponds to content-, situation- and perspective-level actualities.

The chronotope does not seem to match the fundament and derivative interscopes, at least not directly.

Plus, Torop loves Bakhtin as much as he does Lotman and Uspenskij.

The essay makes that obvious.

1056 On top of that, the article itself swerves from the TMS school (olive color) to Bakhtin (orange color) and back (to olive color).

Here is a picture with color-coded section headings.

1057 So, the author goes from the TMS school to Bakhtin and back again.

What does this imply?

The swerve into Bakhtin must be crucial.