Cover not available

In:Iconicity in Cognition and across Semiotic Systems
Edited by Sara Lenninger, Olga Fischer, Christina Ljungberg and Elżbieta Tabakowska
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 18] 2022
► pp. 47–62

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Iconicity as a key epistemic source of change in the self

The film The Lives of Others revisited in the light of triadic semiotics

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de la República, Uruguay
Published online: 10 November 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.18.03and
Abstract
In this text, the phenomenological categorial analysis at the basis of Peircean semiotic is used to explore the working of iconic signs and their relationship to the self as an ongoing interpretative process as well as to the manifold of identities that human beings adopt in the different circumstances they go through. A film was chosen to describe the relevance of iconicity for the evolving self-interpretative process that serves to adapt us to life changes. The plot of The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, von Donnersmarck 2006) brings out in exemplary fashion the epistemic function of iconicity to account for spontaneity as the origin of the new and unexpected in the lifeworld. Peirce’s triadic analysis of the imagination elucidates how change is introduced even in a most authoritarian sociopolitical system, whose main goal is to avoid the irruption of the freewheeling possibilism of iconicity.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: From a deadening Law to life-enhancing spontaneity
  • 2.Iconicity and the emergence of “variety and diversity” in the universe
  • 3.The transgression of iconicity against the Law and its submissive indexical signs
  • 4.The working of indexicality in the realm of the Law: In the semiotic penal colony
  • 5.The intervention of art in the conversion process of a State official
  • 6.Conclusion: Once upon an iconic instant…
  • Notes
  • References
References (19)
References
Alexander, T. 1990. Pragmatic Imagination. Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society 2(3): 325–348.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Andacht, F. 2013. The lure of the powerful, freewheeling icon: On Ransdell’s analysis of iconicity. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy 49 (4): 509–532. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Andacht, F. and Michel, M. 2007. El turista accidental: el cine como ensayo icónico-simbólico sobre la identidad humana. In Colección Latinoamericana de Semiótica. Semióticas del Cine, I. de Molero, A. Mosquera and J. E. Finol (eds.), 23–40. Maracaibo: Universidad del Zulia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2005. A semiotic reflection on self- interpretation and identity. Theory & Psychology 15 (1): 51–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barrena, S. 2007. La razón Creativa. Madrid: Rialp.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cantor, P. 2014. A long day’s journey into Brecht. The ambivalent politics of The Lives of Others. In Totalitarianism on Screen: The Art and Politics of The Lives of Others E. Scott and F. Taylor (eds.), 83 – 110. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dueck, C. 2008. The humanization of the Stasi in Das Leben der Anderen. German Studies Review 31 (3): 599–609.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, O. 2010. Redeeming the demon? The legacy of the Stasi in Das Leben der Anderen. Memory Studies 3 (2): 164–177. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garton Ash, T. 2007. The Stasi on our minds. The New York Review of Books, 54 (9).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hausman, C. 1979. Value and the Peircean categories. Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society. 15 (3): 203–223.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindenberger, T. 2008. Stasiploitation: Why not? The scriptwriter’s historical creativity in The Lives of Others. German Studies Review 31(3): 557–566.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ortega y Gasset, J. 1957. El hombre y la gente. Madrid: Revista de Occidente.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peirce, C. S. 1931–1958. The Collected Papers of C. S. Peirce. Vol. I-VIII, C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss and A. Burks (eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University PressGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, E. and Taylor, F. 2014. Totalitarianism on Screen: The Art and Politics of The Lives of Others. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stein, M. B. 2008. Stasi with a human face? Ambiguity in Das Leben der Anderen. German Studies Review 31 (3): 567–579.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taylor, F. 2014. Post-totalitarianism in The lives of others. In Totalitarianism on Screen: The Art and Politics of The Lives of Others, E. Scott and F. Taylor (eds.), 19–34. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wiedemann, M., Berg, Q. (Producer) and von Donnersmarck, F. (Director). 2006. Das Leben der Anderen [Motion Picture]. Germany: Bayerischer Rundfunk Arte.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wiley, N. 1994. The Semiotic Self. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilke, M. 2014. Fiction or lived history? On the question of the credibility of The Lives of Others. In Totalitarianism on Screen: The Art and Politics of The Lives of Others E. Scott and F. Taylor (eds.), 171–182. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue