Semiotizing the Sphere: Organicist Theory in Lotman, Bakhtin, and Vernadsky Author(s): Amy Mandelker Reviewed work(s): Source:

PMLA, Vol. 109, No. 3 (May, 1994), pp. 385-396 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463075 . Accessed: 18/02/2013 13:05
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Amy Mandelker

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

In memoriam Jery Leo

AMY MANDELKER, associate professor of comparative literatureat the GraduateCenter, City University of New York,is the author of Framing Anna Karenina: Tolstoy, the

Bring this vision actually before your sight, so that there shall be in your mind the gleaming representationof a sphere, a picture holding all the things of the universe... Plotinus, Enneads 5.8

Woman Question, and the

Victorian Novel (Ohio State UP, 1993) and of articles on Russian and European literature and literary theory. Editor

of Tolstoy Studies Journal,

she recently received a National Endowmentfor the Humanities Fellowship Awardfor her work on Tolstoy. She is working on a book, "Icons of Theory and Theoriesof Iconicity in Russian and Western Aesthetics."

HE EVOLUTION in semiotic theory during the 1980s might be compared to the shift from Newtonian to relativistic physics. Semiotics of the Moscow-Tartu school evolved from a theory rooted in Saussurean linguistics and in mathematical procedures to a biological, organismic approach.1 In a series of largely untranslated articles from the 1980s, Yury Lotman, the leading figure of the Moscow-Tartu school, proposes the model of the semiosphere, a metaphor based on principles of cell biology, organic chemistry, and brain science, to map cultural dynamics. In the work of Lotman and his colleagues, the sphere is also a dialogic model, by analogy to the asymmetrical function and interplay of the two hemispheres of the human brain. Terminologically and conceptually, Lotman's semiosphere derives from Mikhail Bakhtin's logosphere, itself adapted from a source that also inspired Lotman directly: Vladimir Vernadsky's notion of the biosphere. Bakhtin and Lotman respond to problems in discourse theory by suggesting an ecological and organismic philosophical approach. The organicist strategy is compelling because it revivifies some moribund issues in epistemology. At the same time, concepts of embodiment, of difference, and of symmetries superimposed on asymmetries falter when expressed in gendered terms and risk circumscribing meaning

385

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386

in Lotman,Bakhtin,and Vernadsky Theory Organicist

within a metaphoric arena that was intended to liberate.

individual initially possesses an "autistic" form of presocial, preverbal signifying mentation that is subsequently lost, deformed, or coopted when it is made to conform to arbitrary general linFrom Prison House to Ecosystem: Russian of and the guistic practice during language acquisition and Ecology Meaning Dialogics socialization (84). This development parallels the loss of preverbal communion with the mother in The starting point for the organicist impulse in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, recent semiotic theory2 is the challenge posed by which generates the nostalgia and desire Lacan Bakhtin's critique of structuralism and semiotics and Derrida, among others, see residing in the (see Ivanov): "My attitude toward structuralism: I am against enclosure in a text" 'Moe OTHO- conventional relation between signifier and sigIIpoTHB 3aMbIKaHHIS nified. Language, in this Western view, becomes IeHHe K cTpyKTypaJMH3My. the site of anxiety, nostalgia, and eternal failure. B TeKCT' ("Toward a Methodology" 169; "K in In an alternative, Russian view represented In Made "From Notes MeTo,aoJIorHH" 372). 1970-71" ("I13 3anicei 1970-1971 roaoB"), by the psychologist Lev Vygotsky, the theorist Valentin Voloshinov, and Bakhtin, the individBakhtin attacks semiotic theory for its reliance ual is social from the moment consciousness ocon a concept of textual context as a codified curs: "The conscious psyche is a socioideological "a code is a deliberately established, grammar:
killed context" 'Ko a--HapoIHTO ycTaHOBsJeHIn distinction, HbIi, yMepIIIBJeHHbiiKOHTeKCT.'

his theory continually emphasizes the living speech act. Criticizing the Saussurean opposition of langue and parole and the concepts of grammatical competence and "deep structure" associated with Noam Chomsky, Bakhtin exposes the "deep structuralism" in semiotics: with the transmission of Semioticsdeals primarily ready-madecommunicationusing a ready-made code. But in live speech,strictlyspeaking,communicationis first createdin the processof transmission, and thereis, in essence,no code. The problem of changingthe code in innerspeech. (147)
CeMHOTHKa nepegaaei 3aHiTa nrpeHMyinecTBeHHO c nMOMOIbi rOTOBOrO roToBoro Koaa. coo6IIueHHI B WKHBOHi Ke pexH coo6meHHe, CTporo roBopa, BnepBbie co03aeTca B nponecce nepeaaH H HHKaHeT.npo6JleMa nepeMeHbi KoroKoaa, BCymHOCTH, KoAaBOBHyTpeHHei (XKHHKHH). (352) peHH

fact" 'cy6ieKTHBHaA ncHxmca ecTb o6beKT H noHHMaIoieH ,aeojiorHuecKoro nOHIHMaHEIH coLUHaJMHO--HaeoJIorHIecKOi HiHTepIIpeTaIuH'

In other words, Bakhtin rejects a view projecting an artificial code (langue) onto individual speech acts (parole) and focuses on the internal mechanism of language as a living speech act-that is, on mental representation or "inner speech."3 The concept of inner speech proves to be critical in the attempt to characterize the interaction between language and thought. According to Jean Piaget's child psychology, the

(Volosinov 25; 28).4 There is no arbitration or separation or loss: I and the other are an I-other in an embodied discourse of inner speech. Lotman increases the complexity of these theories by replacing the general notion of interior thought (the region of anxiety for logophobes) with a specific, technical, scientific model of communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. He characterizes this type of inner speech as a "dialogue" ',manaor'consisting of alternating reception and transmission, or silence and noise. Lotman acknowledges his debt to Bakhtin's suggestive notion of the "logosphere," that "dialogic sphere where the word exists" 'aIaJiorHIqecKaa c(epa rAe cymecTByeT CJIOBO' (Bakhtin, "From Notes" 150; "143 3anHcefi"359). Bakhtin's logosphere encompasses the regions where a speech act's unrepeatable and, therefore, uncodifiable moments occur: "Through the utterance, language joins the historical unrepeatability and unfinalized totality of
the logosphere" '"epe3 BbICKa3bIBaHHe I3bIK K HCTOpHIeCKOH HenOBTOpHMOCTH npHo6ilaeTM H He3aBepmeHHOH ueJIOCTHOCTH Jioroc4CepbI.'

The space around the utterance is, first and most simply, silence: "Silence-intelligible sound (a word)-and the pause constitute a special logosphere, a unified and continuous structure, an

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387

MbICJieHHbIH3ByK (cnoso)--nay3a

analogously as a kind of superior intelligence of the planet. The multiformity of all planetary life is integrated into a singular organismic mechaoco6yio jioroc4epy, eAIHyIo H HenpepbIBHylO nism dedicated to the functioning of the earth CTpyKTypy, OTKpbITIOK (He3aBepmuMyio) ueenocTHOCTb' (134; 338). While the bare elements of the and to the photosynthetic incorporation of solar utterance may be examined and codified by rays into the order-and structure of life. Vernadlinguistics or semiotics, the logosphere, a living sky's ecological theory embeds humanity in the space with a plenitude of unfinalizable meanings, biosphere by positing conscious thought on the requires its own science: planet as a distinct geological force-the "noosphere" (named from the Greek v6oo The utterance(speechproduct)as a whole enters 'mind').7The emergence of human consciousness into an entirelynew sphereof speechcommunica- is another stage in the development and refinement of the biosphere and of its processes. tion (as a unit of this new sphere),whichdoes not admitof description or definition in the termsand Vernadsky cites other scientists' conceptions methods of linguistics or-more broadly-seof this stage. Joseph Le Conte calls it the "psymiotics.This sphereis governedby a speciallaw, chozoic era," for James Dwight Dana it is and its studyrequires a specialmethodology and,it marked by the "cephalization" of nature, and shouldbe said outright,a specialscience. (135) Pierre Teilhard de Chardin considers it to incorporate the culmination of cosmic consciousness, BbIcKa3bIBaHHe uejioe (peHeBoe npoH3BeaeHie)KaK permitting nature to contemplate and cognize BXOAHT B COBepmeHHOHOByIO c4epy peqeBoro itself. In Teilhard's view, humanity as a macroo6imeHHa (KaK elHHHima 3TOH HOBOHic4)epbI), cosm is the universe's cognitive organ (VernadHe H B KOTOpaA no.raeTcs onHcaHHio onpeaejieHmHi H JIHHFBHCTHKH sky 9). H-UIHpeTepMHHaX MeTO)laX Bakhtin engages the facet of Vernadsky's conceMHOTHKH. 3Ta c(epa ynpaBsJaeTca oco6oi 3aH Tpe6yeTAJrm cBoero H3yMeHHI cept of planetary evolution that reflects these KOHOMepHOCTbIO OCO6OHi MeTOJOIOrHH H, MOKHO npaMOCKa3aTb, influences:
COCTaBJIMIOT

open (unfinalized) totality" 'MojrqaHHe-oc-

oco6oii HayKH (HaymHofiAHCHHnJmHbI).

(339)

The importance of the logosphere in this thinking motivates Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist's observation that for Bakhtin "[l]anguage is not a prison house; it is an eco-system" (227). This characterization tacitly acknowledges Bakhtin's reliance on the ecological biosphere theory of the Russian geochemist, earth scientist, and philosopher of science Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945).5 Vernadsky was the first to hypothesize that, in addition to an atmosphere, the earth has a "biosphere," a conceptual "membrane"over the planet surface comprising the aggregate of living matter and functioning as a unified totality.6 The metaphor of the biosphere may become clearer if compared to the cellular slime mold (Dictyostelium discoideum), whose units-individual organisms-bond chemically to form a supraorganism that can operate physically and cognitively in a manner impossible for each individual organism. The biosphere may be understood

When consciousnessappeared in the world (in A stone existence)... the worldchangedradically. is still stony and the sun still sunny,but the event of existenceas a whole (unfinalized) becomescombecausea new andmajorcharacter pletelydifferent in this eventappearsfor the firsttime on the scene of earthly existence-the witnessand thejudge... This cannot be understoodas existence(nature) beginningto be conscious of itself in humanity, to reflectitself.... No, something absobeginning
lutely new has appeared, a supra-existence has

emerged.

("FromNotes" 137)

C HnoaBseHHeMCO3HaHHM B MHpe (B 6bITHH), a MO)KeT 6bITb, H c HOABJIeHHeM HGnoJorHHecKOi

)KH3HH (MO)KeT 6bITb, He TOJIbKO 3BepH, HO H

H cyJAT) MHp AepeBba H TpaBa CBHIeTejibCTByIOT MeHaeTca. KaMeHb ocTaeTca (6bITHe) paaHKaJIbHO
HO co6bITHe KaMeHHbIM, COIHue --OJIHHeHbIM, 6bITHSI B ero UnejoM (He3aBepmiHMoe) CTaHOBH1TC

coBepmeHHo apyrHM, HnTOMyMTOHa cueHy 3eMHOrO 6bITHE BnepBbie BbIXOaHT HOBOeH rJIaBHoe
AeHCTBayioiee JiHo co6bITH14-cBIHAeTe.ib H eyAHA.

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OrganicistTheoryin Lotman, Bakhtin, and Vernadsky

...

3TroF

HeJIb3A HOHHMaTb TaK,

qTO 6bITHe

(npHpoaa) CTaJIo oco3HaBaTb ce6s B MejoBeKe, cTaJo caMooTpa)KaTbc .... HeT, noABHJIOCb HeITO a6coJnoTHO HoBoe, InoaBHJIcbHao6blTue.

be solitary?).The absolute (can this I-for-myself freedomof this I. But this freedomcannotchange
existence, so to speak, materially ... change only the sense of existence.... -it can

("1433anHceH" 341)

("FromNotes" 137)
HeqTO a6comoTHO HOBoe: HaaneJIOBeK,Haaa-, TO H cyAbS eceeo qeJioBeKa, (Bcero 4), ecTb CBHWeTeJIb He n, a opyzoi. yxKeHe IeJosBeK, cieAosBaTeJhHo, B ce6a 3MHHpHqeCKOM apyroM, qepe3 OTpaeaeHHe KR-OA4-Ce6R Haao npoHTH, ITO6bI BbIfiTH KOTOpOrO -cAn4-ce6R 6bITb OJHHOKHM?). (MOKeT JIH 3TO A6coJmoTHaa CBo6oAa 3TorO S. Ho 3Ta cBo6oaa He
MOKeT pHaJIbHO . . . -OHa CMblCC6bITH. .... H3MeHHTb 6bITHe, TaK cKa3aTb, MaTeMO)KeT H3MeHHTb TOJIbKO

Bakhtin avoids the teleological, Hegelian overtones of Teilhard's picture of humanity's historical phase in the development of the Weltgeist and works more closely with the biological aspects of Vernadsky's model. This model is based on the principle of specularity, or mirroring, on the interplay of symmetry and asymmetry, and on the reproduction of life by the union of enantiomorphic (mirror image) pairs. Vernadsky derived his theory of the paired structure of life-forms from the work of Louis Pasteur and Pierre Curie, who studied the asymmetrical disposition of the crystals of biomolecules and investigated piezoelectricity, a form of electric polarity in crystals. Vernadsky observed asymmetrical pairing to be the essential (or universal) pattern in the replicative function of life-forms. He suggests that the same pattern underlies both molecular asymmetry and the sexual dimorphism of complex organisms that reproduce by sexual intercourse. The life force becomes universalized in the principle of functional asymmetry-from cytoarchitectonics, at the biomolecular level, to cerebral lateralization, at the cognitive level, to sexual dimorphism, at the reproductive level. Attributing a biological or living energy to events in consciousness, Bakhtin similarly argues that developments in self-awareness, the production of thought-like the production of beings -can only take place through contact with an other. Comparing the emergence of conscious thought in the individual mind to the birth of the noosphere, he observes: Somethingabsolutelynew appears here: the suthe supra-I,that is, the witnessand the praperson, judgeof thewholehumanbeing,of the wholeI, and someonewho is no longerthe person, consequently, no longerthe I, but the other.[Thatis, the development of individual consciousness allowsthe self to reflection of the self in the empirical otherthrough whom one must pass in orderto reachI-for-myself
know the self, as if it were an observing other.] The

(" 43 3anHcei" 341)

Bakhtin's conclusion here implicitly interrogates Vernadsky's theory: how do shifts in consciousness (the plane of the noosphere) affect material reality (the plane of the biosphere)? Bakhtin rejects Vernadsky's view of an active noosphere cultivating the biosphere and instead adopts an almost Husserlian subjectivity where the inner dialogic relation between existence and consciousness functions only to alter perception. The Semiosphere:Breaking with Semiotic Totalitarianism Lotman explores the dialogic relations between existence and consciousness by narrowing the focus of his work to the biochemical processes of the mind-that is, to the communication between the functionally asymmetrical hemispheres of the brain. The dialogic relations Lotman describes at the intracranial level he then interprets as microcosmic models for larger events in life and in the universe of meaning. In this passage he traces his commitment to resolving these questions: The biologist V. I. Vernadsky[found] it more of strucproductiveto study the interrelationship turesthatarebinary,asymmetrical, andat the same time, unitary.This is the approachwe [in current semiotictheory]will be adopting. (Universe 3) Lotman builds on the biosphere and logosphere theories by developing his own bioecological,

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neuroculturological theory of the semiosphere in articles from the 1980s: "Asymmetry and Dialogue," "Culture and the Organism," "The Brain, the Text, Culture, and Artificial Intelligence," and "On the Semiosphere."8 He investigates the issues attendant on the functional asymmetry of the human brain in a series of technical neuropsychological and neurolinguistic experiments. Together with his collaborator, the neurolinguist Nikolai Nikolaenko, Lotman explores the types of functions allocated to each hemisphere and, more important, the mode of dialogic exchange-the transmission of information-between the two hemispheres. This work expands on psycholinguistic models that posit two modes of cognition. In a study of aphasic patients, Roman Jakobson observes that the two prominent forms of aphasia (Wernicke's and Broca's) are deficits either in verbal selection (the axis of similarity) or in verbal combination (the axis of contiguity) and argues that the literary tropes of metaphor and metonymy respectively could be allocated to these axes. It has been claimed that this dichotomy in linguistic processing parallels the division of labor between the two hemispheres of the brain: the right hemisphere is dedicated to holistic, synthesizing activities (facial recognition, musical phrase analysis, etc.), while the left performs sequential differentiations (linguistic function is known to be situated primarily in the left hemisphere). The performance of each hemisphere is impaired or impoverished, however, if the neurochemical circuits between the two are severed. The hemispheres seem to require each other in order to interpret the input they synthesize.9 Lotman emphasizes the communication patterns between them, which he characterizes as the essential interplay between somatic experience (the right hemisphere) and the cognitive aspect of recollective and retroactive understanding through language (the left). Bakhtin's statement that we have not experienced an event until we re-present it to ourselves in words (through inner speech) is reiterated in Lotman's model, where the left brain cognizes and interprets the impulses received by the right. Information is thus exchanged in the brain between an asymmetrical

pair that is functionally united into an autonomous, teleologically harmonized sphere. Lotman promotes this model into a universal principle for dialogic semiosis on all levels. He argues that in cultures, for example, it is the left hemispheric function that civilizes, since it is liberated from inarticulate experience to generate a free play of signs within cultural conventions. Curiously, this interpretation reverses the more popular perception of the right hemisphere as the source of creativity. In Lotman's view, however, the right hemisphere is nonfecund and inarticulate, merely absorbing sensory perceptions, which are cognized and re-created when transferred to the left hemisphere. Only the left hemisphere, therefore, is capable of a free play of signs liberated from the senses. Since the right hemisphere requires the left in order to comprehend extrasemiotic reality, dialogue between the two is a necessity. The image of the sphere, a space uniting the asymmetrical pair, becomes imbued with the mission of facilitating communication and of developing consciousness. Lotman terms this model the semiosphere, "that semiotic space outside of which semiosis cannot
exist" 'TO ceMHlOTHIecKoe npocTpaHCTBO, BHe
KOTOpOrO HeB03MO0KHO CaMO cyILeCTBOBaHIe

ceMH03Ica'("O ceMHoc4)epe" 7). A semiosphere enters into dialogic relations with other semiospheres, as well as nurturing dialogue within itself in the interactions between its interior elements and their correlative functions. Lotman makes the asymmetrical dialogue of the cerebral hemispheres emblematic of cultural trends and transitions, asserting a principle of polarization in cultural evolutions and explosions. In "Reconsidering the Mysterious 'Golden
Mean"'
("CHOBa 3TO 3araAoHHoe <<3OJOToe

Lotman and Nikolaenko suggest cenIeHHe>"), that the history of art and architecture may be described as the oscillating dominance of the brain's two hemispheres. This thesis is based on clinical studies demonstrating that the way a subject conceives of space when drawing or viewing art becomes polarized after one of the subject's hemispheres is impaired or excluded through pathology or experimentation. Left hemispheric dominance causes vertical drawings with elongated, ectomorphic figures, while right

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OrganicistTheoryin Lotman, Bakhtin, and Vernadsky

hemispheric dominance stimulates the production of horizontal drawings with rounded, mesomorphic figures. Lotman and Nikolaenko propose that the golden mean, the desirable ratio of spatial asymmetry described by the Greeks, results from dialogue between the hemispheres and representsthe tension between the two in the visual field. Lotman and Nikolaenko offer periods and trends in the history of art when one tendency may be said to predominate. For example, the Gothic period would reflect lefthemisphere preferences for elongated, vertically elevated forms and the baroque period righthemisphere predilections for the ornate, rotund, and earth-directed. The spatialized and biologized concept of the semiosphere enhances the earlier Moscow-Tartu school notion of inner and outer cultural perspectives.10 First, the spherical model presumably escapes the gridlock of the traditional bipolar structuralist schema. Ovoid spaces must contain elements that cannot be predicted by the graphics of correlated functions and binary oppositions erected by traditional structuralist analyses. Further, the sphere accommodates the concepts of center and periphery more comfortably than does a graph or grid and thus deepens attempts to map cultural dynamics. The sphere also invites the borrowing of some suggestive topics from biophysics and cell biology: enclosure and disclosure, resistance or responsiveness to penetration, and the assimilation of intruding and extruding elements. The progression in modern Russian theoretical thought from the biosphere to the logosphere and then to the semiosphere constitutes a new organicism that restructures Russian structuralism in a way paralleling poststructuralist reconsiderations of formalism, structuralism, and semiotics. Inevitably, however, the metaphors and paradigms in organicist philosophy become associated with gender, as Donna Haraway demonstrates. Whether this effect opens up or closes down the production of meaning remains at issue. Circling the Problematics of Organicism Organicism, the philosophical strategy of attributing organic status to inorganic objects, is pred-

icated on a vision of a polyphonic and harmonized totality of life that is isomorphic at its every level-from the microorganism to the human brain and its manifest behaviors and beyond to the macrocosm of the universe.11Most important, the organicist approach rejects as reductionist the traditional biochemical method of analysis, emphasizing instead the interconnections of a system or organism that produce a whole greater and more meaningful than the sum of its parts: Now the essential featureof an organicunityis that the partsmanifestthe whole-that, sincethe whole as a unityis what it is, the partsmustbe whatthey are. This ... is reallythe case with all wholes,and therefore all wholesare reallyorganicunities. 161) (McTaggart The organicist metaphor is both liberating and confining. The model of the sphere organicizes as it organizes. It operates positively as a figure of autonomous enclosure in geological theories of oscillation and as a figure of the dynamic equilibriumof homeostatic systems. It also functions discriminatively as a figure of definition distinguishing between the external and the internal, demarcating what is alien to the enclosure and what is native. In its culturological function it becomes a mechanism for delimitation or, alternatively, translation. The gendered imagery connected with organicism and with the sphere as a model raises questions about their viability. The discourse of organicism is saturated with biological metaphors that necessarily include images of gender and reproduction. Furthermore, the theory derives from the ancient philosophical tradition that interprets the union of opposites ("marriage") as the fundamental sign of God in nature and hence as the emblem of the divine creation of life and meaning. Tracing the metaphor of the union of opposites in the Western tradition from Plato through alchemy, Evelyn Fox Keller finds that a critical reevaluation during the Industrial Revolution resulted in the degradation of the "feminine" component. With the separation of gender roles in the marketplace, the feminine poles of the categories mind/body, science/na-

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ture, reason/emotion, public/private, official/domestic were simultaneously debased and idealized. The division of the natural world into the simply beautiful (conceived in feminine terms) and the sublime (valorized as masculine) was the keystone of Romantic philosophy and aesthetics, and Kant's elaboration of these categories made them the basis of most subsequent aesthetic philosophy. The view that the life principle is refracted into differentparticulates whose conjunction generates new life-a notion encouraged by the capacity of enantiomorphism and sexual dimorphism to suggest a unity of difference-is basic to many philosophical traditions and to natural science. Like the female body, the enclosing sphere evokes the creation of life and of meaning, a mystery that must be penetrated and acquired. In "On the Semiosphere," Lotman uses terms of reproductive biology when he discusses how meaning is generated and transmitted. For example, he contrasts the stasis of a barren, isolate semiosphere with the productivity of a semiosphere in dialogue. Thus semiosis-the process by which signs of one semiosphere are made intelligible to another-gains a sacral-sexual character: intercourse is required for something new and meaningful to be created. The sphere may be compared to the circle of necromancy, which distinguishes what is enclosed and what is excluded and thus privileges the necromancer, who communicates with both. The necromancer must own a special language and ritual to bridge the uncrossable line. In modern idiom, the necromancer is the scientist, who intellectually dominates and manipulates the vegetative body and its inarticulate mysteries (as the noosphere cultivates the biosphere). The sphere, the cell membrane, the boundaries of a culture, the limits of language require dialogue with what is beyond and dialogue between the elements that are within. Lotman's vision and extension of Bakhtinian dialogue reintroduces stereotypes of reproductive intercourse into semiotic theory. Yet, despite his awareness of the problematics of logocentrism, Lotman seems oblivious to the epistemological biases in his own vision. As he biologizes meaning and relies on procreative metaphors in his model of

dialogue and asymmetry, Lotman reproduces the tendency in epistemology to construct a binary system of modalities on the polarity of gender. Feminist critiques of scientific thought indict epistemological speculation based on gender stereotypes.12 As Keller says of postBaconian scientific thought, "[G]ender ideology [was] a crucial mediator [at] the birth of modern science . ."; there was a significant "role played by metaphors of gender in the formation of the particular set of values, aims, and goals in the scientific enterprise . . ." (43-44). A similar charge has been leveled against narratology, Lotman's in particular. Teresa de Lauretis asserts that Lotman ascribes the active plot functions to masculine heroes and the passive ones to heroines (ch. 6). Lotman's plot typology relies on a spherical or cyclical model to account for narrative structures ("Origin"). Elaborating a notion similar to Joseph Campbell's "monomyth" (3-46), Lotman suggests that plot events are constituted by passages across boundaries-active, penetrating movements performed by male heroes. The heroines of narrative, by contrast, remain static, territory to conquer. The use of gendered metaphor in literary criticism and philosophy often becomes automatic in the attempt to spatialize meaning or describe an embodied discourse. The persistence of these metaphors throughout the debate in epistemology over the separation between body and thought or between experience and cognition suggests a mental habit of labeling cognitive types masculine or feminine. Researchers who do not interrogate the stereotyping of attributes according to gender can habitually abuse epistemological categories. Thus brain scientists readily sexualized the two cerebral hemispheres in ways that have since proved to be unscientific. It could be argued that by introducing a dialogic model, Lotman expands the reproductive analogy beyond the body. Yet according to his model the communion of the two hemispheres of the brain in a larger totality requires one to silence the other: funcUndernormalconditionsof the simultaneous of the brain,we see the tioningof both hemispheres

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rents" 'npoTeKaIoT MrHOBeHHbIe COCTOAHHH' ("AcuMMeTpIa"20), the right hemisphere is always mute. Additionally, Lotman invests the semiosphere with the feminine attributes of passivity and characterizing it as inert, a brake on (T.e.HopMaJIbHOi) pa6oTe gravidity, fnpH OAHOBpeMMeHHOH and on the creation of new cultural evolution HMeeT MeCTO o6oHxInojymapHH roJIoBHoro Mo3ra meaning-an entropic absorber of semiotic enH3BeCTHO B3aHIMHOe TOpMO)CeHHe aKTHBHOCTH ... qTO6bI yiaCTByiOIuHe Ka)KAoro HHX CTOpOHbIergy. Energy is generated outside, and it peneaKTHBHOCTb trates the semiosphere, causing "excitation" ... OCymUeCTBJlJII4 KOMMyHHKaTHBHyi OHH BO c 'Bo36yKgeHHe' of the "mother text" 'MaTeBpeM1 KOTOpbIX nonpeMeHHo, nay3aMH, nIOAaBJIMiOT CBOiK aKTHBHOCTb Ha BOCIHpHATHe pMHCKHETeKCT'("TeKcT"10), which then reaKTHBHOCTH napTHepa. ("AcHMMeTpHB" 20) arranges its constituent elements to give birth to new meanings ("<<BTOpeeHHI>> TOHI HJM HHOH o6Ha The passing of electrical impulses between the <<tIyKy)>> <<TeppHTOHiO>> CTpyKTypbI B03HHKHOBeHneural circuits of the brain's two hemispheres CMbICJia, pa3yIOTnopo)KeeHHm HHe HOBOIH HHIHopMaMHH" and, by extension, the semiotic transmissions ["O ceMHoc4epe" between individuals and cultures acquire a Without semiotic insemination, the semio13]). sphere remains an infertile territory. hegemonic character, necessitating interruption, and silence. Lotman's Lotman's last work, Culture and Explosion submission, suppression, of silence and embodembraces, encloses, sphere (KyJmTypa H B3pbIB),sketches a cataclysmic ies the utterancejust as the biosphere, in the form model for cultural change that seems partly of the earth goddess Gaia, embraces all life and influenced by recent events in the former Soviet lies passively open to men's husbandry (the Union but that may more simply be a sign of action of the noosphere; see Lovelock). drift from Vernadsky's position of evolution and But perhaps silence need not be the result of change, both geologic and socioideological. In Bakhtin considers the oppression. "I-for-myself" this later theory, which he only began to articuto be without words until its 'a-aii-ce6a' late, Lotman attenuates the role of penetrated and fertilized semiospheres. He continues to use thought is structured responsively by the "I-forothers" 'a-AIa-gApyrHx'("From Notes" 138; "H3 a biological model for the production of mean3aniicei" 342). In Bakhtin's version, silence is ing, affirming the unification of opposites "in a gestational, free, and productive, while the versingular, simultaneous working mechanism" 'B balization of experience is secondary and encule!HHOM,OAHOBpeMeHHO pa6oTaioIleM Mexaturated. Lotman does not allocate the same HI3Me' (25), but he stresses the dynamics of an values to these two modalities. Rather, he exalts internally heterogeneous semiosphere, a cacothe creative free play of signification that can phonous plurality of semiologically ordered eleoccur only when semiotic activity is liberated ments unified through interrelations "so complex from experience.13 as to facilitate the possibility of a breach in the The enforced silence that has traditionally determined space. This function is fulfilled in the been the part of the feminine in all semiosexual moment of explosion, which constitutes wintransactions is perpetuated in Lotman's model. dows in the semiotic layer" 'HacTOJIbKO CJIO)KHBI, In demarcating the actions of the two hemiqTO B03MO)KHOCTH B npOpbIBa C03AaIOTCA spheres, Lotman privileges the masculinized left 3anpeAeJbHmoe npocTpaHCTBO. 3Ty 4yHKUHIO TaK>Ke BbIHOJIHIOT MOMeHTbI B3pbIBa, KOTOpbIe hemisphere, with its freedom from extrasemiotic reality and capacity for the free play of signs, MOryT C03AaBaTb KaK 6b1 OKHa B CeMHOTHMeCKOM and secures the right to its somatic impulses, nracTe' (42-43). Although the interior of the tying down semiosis to reality from that side. semiosphere is now increasingly active, to the Despite Lotman's emphasis on "alternating curpoint of inviting its puncture or rupture, the

well-knowninterinhibitory activity of each hemisphere,as it were,the exclusionof one hemisphere of the other'sactivity.... Each and the stimulation its activity, must take a turn pausing,suppressing to the partner's anddirecting its attention activity.

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aperture still must be penetrated before the explosion makes the interior accessible. By relying on biological metaphors without confronting their implicit sexual meanings and sexism, Lotman draws a circle that is too confining: "The magic circle is drawn, but the spirit that it should enclose, appears not, being disobedient to the call of him who thought a creation possible through mere form" (Schelling 110). Although Lotman transcends the structuralist gridlock in ways that have yet to be recognized by theorists in the West, the biological metaphor in his thought reproduces sexual domination. By contrast, Bakhtin's dialogics seem refreshingly neuter, although critics are divided over whether his logosphere gives adequate space to the issue of gender difference.14While Bakhtin never developed a model of intracerebral dialogue, his musings on the body-mind problem (in the early essay "Toward a Philosophy of the Act" ["K nocTymca"]) propose a polyphony or (HJIOCo0H1H heterophony of embodied voices, distinct from Lotman's model of voice over silence. Lotman's conception requiresevents to be transferredfrom one hemisphere or semiosphere to another, a procedure that dilutes what Bakhtin terms "eventness" 'co6bITHiHOCTb'15and that privileges the semiotizing hemisphere and, by extension, the realm of systematizing and theorism. For Bakhtin, however, existence cannot occur in a theoretical vacuum: "It is impossible for any practical orientation of my life to occur in the theoretical world; it is impossible to live there
. . " 'HHKaKai npaKTHmecKaa Moeii opHeHTaUHIa
MHpe HeB03MO)KHa, )KEI3HH B TeOpeTHqeCKOM B

live experience of life" '[c]JnoBo, H3i,aTOe H3

... pacceaHO noBciory, orpaHH1IHBas, HanaJora H TOpM03AMbICJIb H )KHBOH OHbIT' HaIIpaBJIMA

("From Notes" 133; "H133ainHceH" 337). For both Bakhtin and Lotman, Vernadsky's concepts of biosphere and noosphere offered seductive organic metaphors for figuring the embodiment of discourse and meaning. In opposition to the structuralist tradition, where parole is ancillary to langue, the Russian organicism outlined here privileges an embodied and living discourse, which the system of meaning would fix and pin to the page. The reordering of event, meaning, and discourse in a bioecological model liberates the production of meaning from the prison house of theory.'6 Within the ecosystem of organic substance and living speech, the dialogue of difference continues.17

Notes
IThe writings of the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics, formerly also known as the school of Soviet semiotics, appear primarily in its periodical, Sign Systems Studies (TpyabI no 3HaKOBbIM Most of the available English transcHCTeMaM). lations of works by Russian semioticians are drawn from writings published in the 1970s. The exception, Ann Shukman's excellent translation The Universe of the Mind, containing writings by Yury Lotman, includes some more recent material, but the volume does not do justice to the innovative work Lotman did in the last decade. Critics have only infrequently given attention to Lotman's recent work or observed its indebtedness to Bakhtin and Vernadsky (see Reid; Salvestroni; Shukman). 21 make a distinction here between semiotic theory-that enterprise which explores the parameters of a theory of semiosis-and semiotic practice, or the analysis of texts to reveal their semiosic structures. 30n the concept of inner speech and its treatment in Bakhtin and Lev Vygotsky, see Emerson's excellent analysis ("Outer Word"). 4The debate over the authorship of Voloshinov's work (sometimes ascribed to Bakhtin) is far from resolved. I retain the convention of attributing the work to the author under whose name it was published. 5Vernadsky, one of the major founders of the sciences of ecology and geochemistry (termed "biogeochemistry"by the Vernadsky school of earth science), gave his name to the Institute for Geochemistry and Analytic Chemistry in the

HeM HeJIXK31 KHTb ..

.' ("K 4)HJIoco41HH" 88).

Bakhtinian existence and experience occur only in carnate action; the somatic ontological moment is united with the cognitive apprehension of it. Bakhtin's philosophy of the act juxtaposes the semiotic realm with the existential realm but locates life and self in the latter, death and pseudoconsciousness-false transcendence-in the former. Any word that is not spoken by an embodied voice is for Bakhtin "a word removed from dialogue . . . spreading everywhere, limiting, directing and retarding both thought and

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in Lotman,Bakhtin,and Vernadsky Theory Organicist

than women do, and as a result men are more spatially former Soviet Academy of Science in Moscow. Because of oriented and women more verbally oriented. The gender his role in the history of Russia's ecology movement, he has biases of such views have been criticized most extensively by become popular in recent years, even figuring in Gorbachev's Fausto-Sterling. speeches. Bailes compares this notice with the fashion for 10In"Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures (as Applied Bakhtin but does not explore the connections in the authors' to Slavic Texts)," the leading semioticians of the Moscowphilosophies (x-xi). Tartu school propose a picture of the cultural organization Bakhtin admired Vernadsky's work, as Vern McGee obof information that juxtaposes membership and marginaliserves in a note to his translation (Bakhtin, "SpeechGenres" zation in in "From Notes a (Lotman et al.). This model sets up the usual system and refers to 57nl6), Vernadsky passage of binary oppositions: inner versus outer, order versus chaos, Made in 1970-71" that must have held significance for us versus them, same versus different, and so on. Lotman: "Vernadsky on the slow historical formation of 1lI use the term organicism comprehensively to include a basic categories (not only scientific but also artistic) . . . common Herein of but as a not as a sum theory within philosophy, biology, and aesthetics. totality). (culture phenomena, See discussions in Abrams; Orsini; Phillips; and Terras. lies [Aleksandr] Veselovsky's strength (semiotics). Literature '2See, among others, Bordo; Hankinson-Nelson; Harding; is an inseparable part of the totality of culture and cannot Keller; and Tuana. be studied outside the total cultural context.... The world 13I am indebted to Caryl Emerson for making me aware of culture and literature is essentially as boundless as the o MeJneHHOMHCTopHqeCKOM of these distinctions. universe" 'BepHaAxcKHf 14Althoughmany feminist critics, notably Bauer and those (OpMHpoBaHHH OCHOBHbIXKaTeropHi (He TOJIbKO HayIHbIX, HO H xyAO)cecTBeHHbix) . . . (KyJIbTypbi He KaK CyMMbI anthologized in Bauer and McKinstry, find that Bakhtin's B 3TOM a KaKUeJIocTHOCTH). BeceJIoBcKoro theory accommodates their aims, Emerson notes that the CHJia ABJneHHi, issue of gender is strikingly absent from his work ("Bakhtin (CeMHOTHKa). JIHTepaTypa-HeOTpbIBHas qacTb IenjocTand Women" 3). Yet by avoiding the pitfalls of stereotypical KOHBHe uejiocTHoro HOCTH ee H3yMaTb HeJIb3s KyJIbTypbI, TeKTa KyJIbTypbI. ... MHp KyjIbTypbI H jHTepaTypbI B thinking that entrap Lotman, Bakhtin arguably succeeds in H BceneHHas' creating a nonhegemonic model of dialogue. TaKae 6e3rpaHHteH, KaK cyIUHOCTH, (139-40; 15This translation is suggested by Morson and Emerson "H13 3anHceHi" 344). (7). that the term biosphere origi6Vernadsky acknowledges 16In his critique of structuralism, Jameson dismisses the nated with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Eduard Suess (10nl). premises of organicism as follows: "The relaphilosophical was his university Vernadsky's primary influence probably tionship of part to whole reflects an older logical model, professor V. V. Dokuchaev, a soil scientist, who promoted a which is no longer useful in the solving of the new kinds of vision of soil as a heterogeneous totality of interacting problems posed by the peculiar nature of language" (25). organic and inorganic matter. For a thorough intellectual 17Briefversions of this paper were presented at the annual of see Bailes. biography Vernadsky, of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic meeting was to the term jointly 7According Vernadsky, noosphere and East European Languages in December 1989 and at the invented by the French mathematician and Bergsonian phiPostmodernisms: Russia and the West" panel "Comparing and Le and the Edouard geologist philosopher losopher Roy at the Modem Association convention in DecemLanguage Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (9). ber 1990. I am indebted to a number of individuals who H opraHH3M," H llHajor," "KyJmbTypa 8"AcHMMeTpHS studied Lotman, Vernadsky, Bakhtin, and neurobiology with H HCKyccTBeHHbIi and HHTeJnIeKT," "Mo3r-TeKcT-KyjlmTypa me and whose careful readings of this paper and suggestions "O ceMHoc(epe." Unattributed translations in this essay are for improvement I deeply appreciate: Carol Any, William my own. A slightly different version of "On the Bleisch, Ellen Chances, Caryl Emerson, Richard Gustafson, Semiosphere" appears as part 2, "The Semiosphere," in Leo, David Mandelkern, Alexandar Mihailovic, Gary Jerry Lotman, Universe(123-204). Saul Morson, Cathy Popkin, Stephanie Sandler, Thomas G. 9An enormous literature on the functional asymmetry of Winner. the brain exists; see, for example, Geschwind and Galaburda, ch. 5, "Asymmetry of the Human Brain." The interdependence of the two hemispheres was first documented in studies of epileptic patients whose corpora callosa had been therapeutically severed and who thus had no intracerebral communication. The patients were able to draw objects they had seen but not to name them, because visual information could not pass from the right halves of their brains to the left. These Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory studies are summarized in Gazanaga, ch. 3, "Split-Brain and the Critical Condition. London: Oxford UP, 1953. Studies, the Early Years." Bailes, Kendall E. Science and Russian Culture in an Age of The theory that hemispheric specialization may be a basis Revolutions: V. I. Vernadskyand His Scientific School, for gender differences has become popularized. According to 1863-1945. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990. this theory, for example, men use the right hemisphere more TBopnecTBa. cJosBecHoro Bakhtin, Mikhail. 3cTeTHKa [The

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