About the Book
Ostentation of the Subject is a practice that is asserting itself ever more in today's world. Consequently, criticism by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists has been to little effect, considering that they are not immune to such practices themselves. The question of subjectivity concerns the close and the distant, the self and the other, the other from self and the other of self. It is thus connected to the question of the sign. It calls for a semiotic approach because the self is itself a sign; its very own relation with itself is a relation among signs. This book commits to developing a critique of subjectivity in terms of the "material" that the self is made of, that is, the material of signs.
Susan Petrilli highlights the scholarship of Charles Peirce, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Mary Boole, Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Claude Levi-Strauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Morris, Thomas Sebeok, Thomas Szasz, and Victoria Welby. Included are American and European theories and theorists, evidencing the relationships interconnecting American, Italian, French, and German scholarship.
Petrilli covers topics from identity issues that are part of semiotic views, to the corporeal self as well as responsibility, reason, and freedom. Her book should be read by philosophers, semioticians, and other social scientists.
Table of Contents:
1: The Sign “Self ” and Its Interpretations; 2: A Terminological and Conceptual Intermezzo; 3: The Inner-Outer Illusion; 4: The Self as Opening to the Other; 5: Self, Other, and Values; 6: The Self in Language and Communication; 7: Critique of Identity: For an Extracommunitarian Self; 8: Self, Freedom, and the Word’s Otherness
About the Author :
Susan Petrilli is an associate professor at the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy. She is author of many books, including Expression and Interpretation in Language and The Self as a Sign, the World, and the Other.
Review :
-A dazzling book . . . brilliantly written with . . . power, polemical force, and chilling clarity.-
--Dinda L. GorlEe, American Book Review
-This lucid, insightful, and comprehensive account of the subject-object relationship as well as of the relation of the self to the other, is the first comprehensive elucidation of this com-plex interconnection within the context of semiotics analysis.-
--Frank Nuessel, president, Semiotic Society of America, 2001
-Blending semiotic structuralism with post-structuralism seamlessly and in a truly original way, this book presents a powerful theory of identity and selfhood as semiotic construc-tions that are attuned to world events and situational factors.-
--Marcel Danesi, professor of linguistic anthropology, University of Toronto
"A dazzling book . . . brilliantly written with . . . power, polemical force, and chilling clarity."
--Dinda L. GorlEe, American Book Review
"This lucid, insightful, and comprehensive account of the subject-object relationship as well as of the relation of the self to the other, is the first comprehensive elucidation of this com-plex interconnection within the context of semiotics analysis."
--Frank Nuessel, president, Semiotic Society of America, 2001
"Blending semiotic structuralism with post-structuralism seamlessly and in a truly original way, this book presents a powerful theory of identity and selfhood as semiotic construc-tions that are attuned to world events and situational factors."
--Marcel Danesi, professor of linguistic anthropology, University of Toronto
"A dazzling book . . . brilliantly written with . . . power, polemical force, and chilling clarity."
--Dinda L. GorlEe, American Book Review
"This lucid, insightful, and comprehensive account of the subject-object relationship as well as of the relation of the self to the other, is the first comprehensive elucidation of this com-plex interconnection within the context of semiotics analysis."
--Frank Nuessel, president, Semiotic Society of America, 2001
"Blending semiotic structuralism with post-structuralism seamlessly and in a truly original way, this book presents a powerful theory of identity and selfhood as semiotic construc-tions that are attuned to world events and situational factors."
--Marcel Danesi, professor of linguistic anthropology, University of Toronto
