1983: Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics
This book brings together semiotics and psychoanalysis—which, if you think about it, is a pretty good combo. After all, Freud’s analysis of dreams was all about getting to the root of some of the weird images swimming around deep in our minds. Summarizing the major semiotic theories and lingo, Silverman highlights the role that language plays in establishing ourselves as subjects.
However (and this is what sets this book apart), she also points to sexual difference as another major force that shapes signifying and social activity. So, Silverman emphasizes that being male/female isn’t just a matter of biology, but of culture, and that we need to recognize how this comes into play in both psychoanalysis and semiotics.
Silverman states that “the individual” isn’t just another way of saying “a person”: in cultural terms, it has traditionally referred to someone stable, independent, male (this isn’t explicit but we know the score), and untouched by historical or cultural context. Silverman consequently prefers the concept of “the subject.” So why’s that? In what ways does that terminology improve on or deconstruct the idea of “the individual”?
Silverman defines a cultural code as “a conceptual system which is organized around key oppositions and equations, in which a term like ‘woman’ is defined in opposition to a term like ‘man,’ and in which case each term is aligned with a cluster of symbolic attributes.” Are there any other binary (either/or) oppositions that you see as playing a major role in life—and texts—today? How is the use of binary forms of understanding key to semiotics as an analytical method?