Semiotizing the Sphere: Organicist Theory in Lotman, Bakhtin, and Vernadsky

Abstract

Semiotic theory during the 1980s and early 1990s in the former Soviet Union departs significantly from earlier, structuralist models. Central to this new declination is Yury Lotman's theory of the semiosphere, a metaphor that, in its spatialization of meaning, draws on Vernadsky's concept of the biosphere and Bakhtin's idea of the logosphere. This article evaluates the semiosphere from historical, comparative, and feminist critical perspectives. The historical perspective situates Lotman's theory within the Russian organicist philosophical tradition (including Vernadsky and Bakhtin), and the comparative considers Russian theory as a counterpart to Western models of signification. The feminist critique is motivated by the fact that, in relying on metaphors borrowed from reproductive biology, organicist theory participates in a theoretical discourse that has perpetuated stereotyped categories based on gender differences. (AM)