Durkheim's Two Semiotics

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Theory I

Abstract

The Durkheimian renaissance in Cultural Sociology since the early 1980s has often walked hand in hand with interpretations that stressed Durkheim’s Elementary Forms in neostructuralist terms, as the proponent of a semiotic vision that was very close to the one advocated for by Ferdinand de Saussure. In this paper, I challenge this vision and argue that Durkheim, far from being merely a proto-structuralist, built a central section of the Elementary Forms of Religious Life around a thick description of a second semiotics, grounded in materiality and which can be best understood in triadic terms. The materiality of symbolic relations, and the process of its institution as a symbolic relation, is central to this argument, a fact that cannot be accounted for easily by the synthesis between Durkheim and Saussurism that is typical of contemporary cultural sociology. Through a close reading of Book 2, Chapter 7 of the Elementary Forms, I argue that - in the text - movements and totemic emblems (as the expressive component of a semiotic relation) are best understood as interpretants of a semiosic process, and not as equivalent to Saussure’s signifiers. This leaves room for a more adequate appreciation of the relationship between material objects, indexical and inferential signs, and human agency. In the conclusions, I connect this model of semiosis to contemporary debates in cultural sociology.

Author

• Andrea Cossu, University of Trento