‘Semiotics and the Anthropology of the Moderns’, University of Limoges - Schedule
Work on the connection between AIME and semiotics will continue at a study-day organised by CeReS at the University of Limoges (Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, in the Petit Amphi) to be held on the 22nd April 2015:
Within the framework of the CEMES (‘Emerging Cultures and Semiotic Mediations’) research programme, and in association with CeReS, a study-day will be held at the University of Limoges on the 22nd April 2015 on the topic of ‘Semiotics and the Anthropology of the Moderns’. It will consider the encounter of the semiotic project – which is asserting its presence more and more in the fields of the human and social sciences, even as it attempts to construct for itself a conceptual apparatus sufficient to such an orientation – with the vast project of the anthropology of the Moderns that has been conceived of by Bruno Latour, culminating in his publication of An Inquiry into Modes of Existence in 2012. In spite of the differences in ‘scientific style’ between the two approaches, this has been, we believe, a mutually-enriching encounter, one whose history we would like to consider, insofar as it has the potential to usher thinking about the meaning of the social into a new era. This movement is in some way to respond to and learn from the observation of sociologists who have argued that semiotics was correct, but too soon and too far ahead of everything else.
This encounter, with its mutual enrichment, evidently poses a number of questions, many of which will be covered here. These include: the confrontation between semiotic forms of habitual living and the dynamics of social modes of existence, or, more generally, the compatibility between the social conceived as structure and the social conceived as pure syntagm; the possibility of reaffirming the validity of the semiotic perspective upon the field of the social; the ontological weight that can be attributed to enunciation, which might seem to correspond to the contemporary turn to metaphysics; and the ‘actantial’ specificity of social domains, including the degrees of conflict between them (for example, between mass media and politics).
SPEAKERS: Nicolas Couégnas (introduction), Bruno Latour, Denis Bertrand, Maria Giulia Dondero, Jacques Fontanille, Sémir Badir, Sylvie Périneau (conclusion).
ORGANISERS: Nicolas Couégnas, Aurore Famy, Sylvie Périneau.
ADDRESS: Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Petit Amphi.
You will find the full programme (in French) for the study-day here.
External resources:
Fabula, « Journée d’étude : “Sémiotique et Anthropologie des Modernes” ». URL : https://www.fabula.org/actualites/journee-d-39-etude-semiotique-et-anthropologie-des-modernes_67929.php.
« ANR-CEMES ». URL : http://anr-cemes.com/.
« CeRes | Centre de Recherches Sémiotiques | CeRes ». URL : http://recherche.flsh.unilim.fr/ceres/.
(Kindly translated by Timothy Howles)