The Soviet Empire of Signs: A History of the Tartu School of Semiotics
(Paperback)
by Maxim Waldstein
This book examines the history of Yuri Lotman's Tartu(or Moscow-Tartu)
School of Semiotics, which wasactive in the Soviet Union in the
1960s-1980s, andcombines a comparative perspective on the Tartuparadigm
with close attention to its social context. Comparing Tartu with other
major idioms in culturaltheory from Russian Formalism to
(post-)structuralism, this study reconstructs its evolutionfrom the
early ideal of "exact science" to a variety of conceptual frameworks
which combined an emphasison the autonomy of cultural texts with
elaborateanalysis of the social and intellectual environmentof their
production and reception. Working from lifehistory interviews, archival
research and textualanalysis, the book demonstrates how this evolution
reflected and refracted the intellectuals' changing strategies of
negotiating personal and professionalautonomy and authority within
Soviet academia. TheTartu School serves as a window into the
distinctivecharacter of intellectual production and thephenomenon of an
unofficial public sphere in thepost-Stalinist Soviet Union, and
challenges stilldominant Cold War assumptions about the nature of Soviet
science, culture and society.
* Paperback: 236 pages
* Publisher: VDM Verlag (August 25, 2008)
* Language: English
The Soviet Empire of Signs: A History of the Tartu School of Semiotics
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
1. The History of the Tartu School in Focus: Issues, Theories, Methods
The Tartu School: Toward Understanding Its History and Significance
Approaching Soviet Science: Knowledge and Power
Methodology, Data and Organization of the Book
2. Soviet Science and Academic Autonomy: The Structuralist Sturm und
Drang
Stalinist Science and Its Legacy
Cybernetics, Structuralism and the Reform Movement in Soviet Human
Sciences
From Moscow to Tartu: Yuri Lotman and the New Beginnings
3. The Making of Parallel Science: The Tartu School and the Public
Sphere
Networks, Institutions and Parallel Science
The Tartu-Moscow School (1964-1974): Playing the Glass-Bead Game
The Tartu Discourse of Archaism
The Tartu School as Lotman's School (1975-1986)
Politics and the Academic Intelligentsia during the Perestroika
(1986-1991)
Parallel Science and the Public Sphere in the Soviet Union
4. Toward a Global History of Structuralism: Roman Jakobson in the
Center
Structuralism and Semiotics in the West: Guidelines and Frontlines
Poetics and Communication
Western and Eastern European Structuralism on Evolution and History
A Short History of the Reception of the Tartu School in the West
5. From Rules to Texts: The Idioms of Soviet Structuralism
The Applied Semiotics of Modeling Systems
Mythology and Folklore: A Mythopoetic Paradigm
Text, Art, Human Nature: The Dialectics of Emergence
Textocentrism as Cultural Politics
6. Thinking Culturologically: Tartu Perspectives on Culture
The The "Cultural Turn" and Russian Culturology
Of Culturology: Competing Paradigms
Tartu Culturology and "Imperial" Semiotics
7. Playful Self-Fashioning: A Neo-Historicist Theory of (Russian)
Modernity
Life into Theater: A History of Modern Personhood
Playing Modern is Being Modern
Theatricality and Modernity: The Prospects
Conclusion
Appendix A: Members and Associates of the Tartu School
Appendix B: Personal Interviews
Appendix C: The University of Tartu: A Historical Note
Bibliography
Index
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