ABSTRACT
Of the many interpretive frameworks represented here or otherwise available to political theorists, the semiotic techniques of Algirdas Julien Greimas, the Lithuanian-French linguist, demand perhaps the most justification. For that exact reason, however, his ideas are also probably the least controversial. The reason that both propositions are possible at the same time is that Greimassian semiotics are almost wholly unknown, and even less used, in political theory. Harris (1982), Waever (1990), and Grunberg (1990) represent the few instances of Greimas’work put to use in the broad discipline of political science.1, 2, 3 In the more narrowly defined field of political theory, Ferguson (2007) briefly applies the ideas of Greimas in his ruminations on aesthetics.4 Outside of these few examples, his work seems all but unknown in political science. Semiotics as a broad category and an ally of structuralism has been largely overshadowed by the constellation of ideas belonging to the rubric of post-structuralism.5 Indeed, it seems that before structuralism or semiotics could influence political science, it had already been eclipsed by its successor. There are, however, quite potent uses of Greimassian semiotics for political
theory, and compelling reasons to use them. Perhaps a bit embarrassingly, these uses and reasons have already been charted, not by political theorists but by literary theorists deeply concerned with political subjects. While “proper” political theory has largely ignored and neglected Greimas’ ideas, the literary theorist Fredric Jameson and others outside the discipline have already demonstrated the value of this approach in the interpretation of political texts, concepts, and events. Drawing on Greimas’ semiotics, Jameson has demonstrated how these techniques can be deployed for “a historicizing and dialectical criticism.”6 Put differently, Greimas has supplied the semiotic tools to map the conceptual or ideological
horizons of a given narrative or discourse. Jameson has shown how to use the map to go beyond its own limits. In order to make sense of Greimas’ semiotics, it is helpful to understand first
what is meant by “semiotics” or “semiology.” The two terms largely belong to the same endeavor, though semiotics begins with the American logician Charles Sanders Peirce, while the latter term, semiology, is traceable to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Peirce and de Saussure maintained certain disagreements between their two systems, differences that ought to be respected.7 What binds them together is the common aim of developing a science of signs. Peirce envisioned this study of signs bearing an instrumental promise as a “vehicle for a naturalistic account of the mind.”8 For his part, de Saussure advocated on behalf of a “science that studies the life of signs within society.”9 In that regard, and as far as the purposes of this chapter are concerned, there is very little functional difference between “semiotics” and “semiology”: both refer to theories of the sign.10
