Adrian: My first thoughts are to question whether the Peircean categories can be separated, as you are doing, from the semiosic triad. I don't think they can be so separated.
You seem to be trying to describe three aspects of art interpretation - and are using metaphors or synonyms [as I think Jerry is also suggesting] to do this. You don't need the Peircean categories for this; you just need the metaphors. The Peircean categories don't operate in an ordinal or linear order. Check out the ten sign classes [2.256]. And they are more complex than your outline; there are two types of Secondness, and three of Thirdness. That is - I don't see what you are gaining by using the Peircean terms. Your MER outline, or, EMR - are not a semiosic triad, which requires: Object-Representamen-Interpretant - and in that order. Not Firstness-Secondness-Thirdness. And each site can be in any of the three categories. As you know, you could have a triad operating in only one category; or only two; rather than all three. So- I'm not sure that I see the point of your using the three categories as metaphors. I think you can get the same result by using such terms as 'openness' or 'brute fact' or whatever. Since you are not analyzing the art-experience as a semiosic-experience, then...why use them? Edwina ----- Original Message ----- From: Adrian Ivakhiv To: Peirce-L Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2016 11:33 AM Subject: [PEIRCE-L] How do Peirce's categories best fit the study of the arts? Dear all: I'm struggling with a way of tying Peirce's categories down to the 3 main elements by which we can make sense of art works: their materiality, our experience of them, and their meanings. Putting it that way suggests one ordering, but a deeper thinking through of the process (and nonlinear) nature of the categories suggests another. I'm interested in gauging what Peircians may think. I'd appreciate any comments directly on the web site below: http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2016/02/09/rethinking-the-3-categories/ Thanks! Rethinking the 3 categories February 9, 2016 by Adrian J Ivakhiv I've been struggling with how my triadic framework for interpreting art works relates to C. S. Peirce's categories. When I first developed my triadism (fleshed out in Ecologies of the Moving Image) into the non-Peircian terms of materiality, experience, and representation - which I did in the context of teaching a course on the environmental arts - I loosely considered the first of these to be analogous to Peircian firstness, the second to secondness, and the third to thirdness. The point, in my teaching, was not to adhere strictly to Peirce, since my students weren't studying him, but just to have a handy triadic formula that would be useful for making sense of the eco-arts in ways that get beyond the customary overemphasis on representation in favor of experience (including affect) andmateriality. Materiality deals with the stuff that's just there (one element); experience involves a second - the artist, the reader or viewer, et al. (two); and representation makes sense and meaning of the stuff and its shapers and perceivers in real-world contexts (three); thus Peirce's categories loosely fit. Whether students got the Peirce or not, they could follow that. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this way of ordering the three may be un-Peircian. Or at least that there was a second way of connecting it to Peirce that was sufficiently different from the first and had important consequences. Let me break it down here. To continue reading, go to http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2016/02/09/rethinking-the-3-categories/ ______________________________________________________________________________ Adrian J. Ivakhiv Professor of Environmental Studies/Environmental Thought & Culture Rubenstein School of Environment & Natural Resources University of Vermont, Burlington VT 05405 U.S.A. Tel 802.656.0180 Fax 802.656.8015 Email: [email protected] http://vermont.academia.edu/AdrianIvakhiv http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv http://www.uvm.edu/~aivakhiv ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
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