Fernando de Toro

The end of theatre semiotics? a symptom of an epistemological shift

In the 1980s, theatre semiotics faced an epistemological crisis with respect to its approach to the theatre. This crisis was also confronted by the whole epistemological edifice of formalism towards the end of the 1970s; that is, the end of the formalist paradigm that began with the Russian Formalists and reached its maximum development during the 1960s and 1970s with European and particularly French semiotics and structuralism. This crisis brought structural semiotics to an end but the signs of the crisis were apparent from the very beginning of the structural and semiotic enterprise. In order to understand the end of that type of theatre semiotics, one must understand the epistemological underpinnings of literary and theatre theory from the beginning of the twentieth-century until approximately the end of the 1970s. I explore these underpinnings here and their relation to theatre semiotics and its eventual dead end, which, in fact, came at the very same time that the whole edifice of structuralism collapsed with the advent of the postmodern condition and post-structuralism.In the 1980s, theatre semiotics faced an epistemological crisis with respect to its approach to the theatre. This crisis was also confronted by the whole epistemological edifice of formalism towards the end of the 1970s; that is, the end of the formalist paradigm that began with the Russian Formalists and reached its maximum development during the 1960s and 1970s with European and particularly French semiotics and structuralism. This crisis brought structural semiotics to an end but the signs of the crisis were apparent from the very beginning of the structural and semiotic enterprise. In order to understand the end of that type of theatre semiotics, one must understand the epistemological underpinnings of literary and theatre theory from the beginning of the twentieth-century until approximately the end of the 1970s. I explore these underpinnings here and their relation to theatre semiotics and its eventual dead end, which, in fact, came at the very same time that the whole edifice of structuralism collapsed with the advent of the postmodern condition and post-structuralism.

Toward a socio-semiotics of the theater

During the past few years there has been a profusion of new proposals about how to approach the theater on its various levels of analysis, such äs the studies by Pavis (1985a and b) and de Marinis (1982). In these studies an attempt is made, for the first time, to link the semiotic approach to a possible socio-semiotics — that is, to connect two theoretical and epistemological levels of the theater phenomenon: the formal and the contextual levels. We also find proposals that claim there is nothing that may be called theater research. Van Kesteren (1984), for example, Claims to propose a new approach to the theater by developing common levels of analysis coupled with a common scientific language. These attempts are similar in their intent to those being developed in the semiotic field in general (Zima 1981, 19S6) and in literary sociocriticism itself, where new ways of approaching literature from a sociological perspective are being developed (Duchet 1979, Kuentz 1979, Fayolle 1979, etc.). This opening of the various theoretical and methodological fields is indeed a step in the right direction, since up to now the Situation has been divided grosso modo into two apparently opposing epistemological and theoretical attitudes. On the one hand sociocriticism in general, whether from a Marxist or a non-Marxist perspective, has concentrated primarily on the more explicit aspects of the literary text, such äs themes, content, ideological components, etc., paying very little attention to the formal aspects of the text and in fact disregarding this level äs irrelevant. In many cases, particularly in Latin American criticism, to be concerned with the text äs a signifying structure has been branded äs formalist. Some exceptions are to be found in Robin (1973), Pecheux (1975), Williams (1977), and particularly Eagleton (1978); others, from a Marxist perspective, have attempted to go beyond a simplistic and reductionist sociological approach, integrating, for instance, several semiotic conceptions into

Borges, Pierre Menard, rhizomaticity, and the simulation of palimpsestic writing

Abstract Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote shares with Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius several central aspects in the construction of the text, fundamentally the doubling of writing: that of Borges and Pierre Menard, where both simulate to tell story that it never gets told; and the creation of a world that is generated from pure discursivity. The text is divided in two sections, as indicated by Borges himself: one is the visible work of Pierre Menard, and the other is inconclusive work (1962 [1956]: 48–55). The first part is a catalogue of Menard’s library and the second letters by Menard addressed to Borges. In what follows we will analyze the gesture of inscribing writing.

Borges and the construction of “reality”

Abstract In “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” Borges challenges the veracity of any discourses that presents itself as Truth, particularly pertaining to master narratives such as philosophy and History, and engages in a deconstruction of these narratives. In order to this, Borges introduces a number of strategies: a) the cancellation of the difference between fiction and reality, b) the creation of a world based on a marginal comment in his own narration, and c) the circulation and dissemination of discourse that pretends to have an ontological reality. In what follows we will examine these three strategies which Borges uses to construct the truth of Tlön.