Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

If the name do not signify: "Asemiotic" in Lotman and Uspenskij myth theory

Publication at Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Institute for Language and Preparatory Studies |
2022

Abstract

In their joint work, Lotman and Uspenskij refer to mythological thinking as paradoxical; it allows us to consider "completely different, from the point of view of non-mythological thinking, objects as one." At the same time, in "a mythological world depicted in this manner a rather specific type of semiosis takes place which can in general be reduced to the process of nomination: the sign in mythological consciousness is analogous to the proper name". If we agree that in the mythological paradigm a proper name and what it designates are one and the same, then we can assume that a proper name, closed on itself, loses the function of designation