New Book: Becoming Culture – Floyd Merrell

Becoming Culture:  Semiotically Illustrated Through Guadalupe-Tonantzín Coalescence, and Other Latin American Enigmas
by Floyd Merrell.

This book taps into Charles Sanders Peirce’s occasional allusion to a vague, flexible form of ‘logic’. Unfortunately he did not fully develop this idea.  However, his concept of signs and pragmatic philosophy play a chief role in Becoming Culture. It offers an alternative ‘style of logic’ with which to understand cultural processes, their complexities, oddities, and paradoxes. The key phrase is: complementary coalescence. Complementarity emerges from certain aspects of twentieth-century physics—especially Niels Bohr’s ‘Principle of Complementarity’. Coalescence assimilates process philosophy and scientific notions of chaos and complexity. Thus, a sense of process pervades the quest toward an understanding of the strange twists and turns humans never cease encountering within the cultural phenomena they inhabit. In sum, Becoming Culture offers a cultural ‘logic’, illustrated principally through the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe’s blending with the ancient Aztec (Mexica) goddess, Tonantzín, in the hearts, minds, words and actions among some of Mexico’s indigenous people.

BECOMING CULTURE: SEMIOTICALLY ILLUSTRATED THROUGH GUADALUPE-TONANTZIN COALESCENCE, AND OTHER LATIN AMERICAN ENIGMAS by Floyd Merrell is available on the amazon.com page you can call it up by writing ‘becoming culture by floyd merrell’ or just follow the link.  It is a 234 page book, for a modest price of $9.75.

Floyd Merrell: fmerrell@purdue.ed