“General Semiotics” as the all-round interdisciplinary organizer ― On General Semiotics(GS) vs. Philosophical Fundamentalism
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The so-called “general semiotics” or “general theory of semiotics” can be dealt with by two different ways: either in terms of semiotic history or by dint of an anatomy of the constitution of the actual semiotic practice in addition to the analysis of the relationship of the semiotic practice with other humanities disciplines. This paper adopts the latter line, stressing that we should not limit ourselves in the conventional way of organizing a general theoretical system by just tracing back the developing line of the current semiotic projects, instead we should expend our theoretical horizon to the larger academic and even wider intellectual world. And then we can find a much more significant role the semiotic can play than its traditional one in our new century. Facing a new global interdisciplinary/cross-cultural intellectual context we are confronted with a desirability and necessity of reorganizing the theoretical configuration of the humanities in general, and then theoretical semiotics could become ever more than before important tool for such a new original strategic project: a pan-academic institutional analysis. Originally as a general semantic/communicative analysis semiotics should now be open to a new field called the institutional-semantic studies which will focus on the studies of structure, constitution, operation, production, communication of different related disciplines of the humanities at the both individual and combinative levels. The meaning of the traditional ambiguous humanities discourse can be more effectively explored by a multi-dimensional methodology, including that of research about the institutional predeterminations in connection with their political, social, historical and ideological aspects. Therefore our general semiotic theory should help penetrate into the internal organization of the humanities as a whole. Based on this deep anatomy we may more precisely and clearly grasp the complicated-formed signification of humanities discourse of different kinds. In terms of this the semiotic practice must also enhance its significance in the entire world of human-social sciences.