DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-056

Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece

rwallden@yahoo.com

Abstract

This paper argues for the constructed character of cinematic semiosis, without negating its specificity. It is framed in the wider epistemological discussion regarding the arbitrary or motivated status of semiosis in general, and of specific semiotic systems in particular. In this context, cinema has been one of the most contested cases, its expression-substance being both complex and heterogeneous, and including a component of moving, photographic image. This paper uses Hjelmslev’s model of stratification of the sign-function (intro­duced in his 1954 essay “La stratification du langage”) as a methodological grid, on which to demarcate the areas of discussion. Hjelmslev’s model is a formalization of Saussure’s epistemological rupture with regard to the definition of the sign, consisting in the radical de-essentialisation of semiosis which results from the funda­mental semiotic arbitrariness. In this model, the traditional questions regarding the relation between the signifier and the signified are analyzed and re-situated into the conceptually distinct but interrelated issues of significa­tion, reference and material support. Therefore, the question of the social constitution or relative naturalness of a semiotic system can be reformulated as concerning, on the one hand, the relation between its content-plane and expression-plane and, on the other, its relation to its exo-semiotic content-substance; while the specificity of extra-linguistic semiotic systems can be reformulated as concerning their expression-substance, and how this affects the previous question. The paper proceeds with a critical investigation of the main groups of arguments against the socially constructed status of cinematic semiosis, and attempts to refute them. These include argu­ments stemming from the concepts of iconicity, indexicality, and the literal indexicality of the photographic image, as well as arguments supporting a derivation of cinematic semiosis from the human cognitive faculties or even the physicality of the human body. The paper concludes with certain observations on the ideological char­acter of the naturalization of the social and its political implications.

Introduction

Following Saussure’s tradition of semiotics, the present essay argues for the constructed character of cinematic semiosis. It is framed in the wider epistemological discussion regarding the arbitrary or motivated status of semiosis in general. The essay begins with a summary of the main onto-epistemological premises composing the definition of the sign at the level of langue. Then, it situates the areas of contestation of the premise of social construction, when cinema is the semiotic system under consideration. It proceeds with a critical presentation of two large groups of arguments against cinematic semiosis’ socially constructed status, and attempts to refute them. On the one hand, it investigates arguments founded on an assumed naturalness of the semiotic system’s relation to referent reality; on the other, arguments founded on the shared human nature of the sign users. Finally, the essay examines the way such arguments become significant in the context of the larger debates over aesthetic realism and the biological foundation of the social and human sciences. It concludes with certain observations on the ideological character of the naturalization of the social and its political implications.

1. The onto-epistemology of semiotic systems in Saussure’s tradition

In Saussure’s tradition of semiotics, the ontological status of the semiotic unit is secondary to semiotic structure. In other words, ontologically, semiotic systems are not composed by signs; they are articulated into signs. Saussure’s famous definition of the sign in Cours de linguistique générale (1916 [1972]) as “double-faced entity” (99) which links “a concept and an acoustic image” (98), is logically the last step of his definition of langue, i.e. of language as a system. Therefore, the present essay starts by reiterating the well-known definitional characteristics of langue, emphasizing their onto-epistemological aspects. The transition from langue to “semiotic system”, i.e. the generalization from “linguistic” to “semiotic”, is legitimized by Saussure’s own prediction of the birth of a new science sémiologie [semiotics], of which “linguistics is but a part” ( 33). The present essay addresses precisely certain difficulties of this generalization, with the intention of arguing for its fundamental validity.

First and foremost, langue is a social construction. This means that langue is different from the sum of the natural abilities of its users – and consequently of the human species in general – which (abilities) make it possible. In Saussure’s words, langue is “a social product of the faculty of langage” (25) and what is “natural to man is […] the faculty of constructing a langue” (26). In other words, what is natural to the human species is the semiotic ability, which is clearly distinct from its products, i.e. the different langues. Furthermore, langue is different from its individual use, i.e. parole [speech], which it makes possible (30–31). This definition is clearly at odds with the presently dominant tendencies of Analytic Philosophy of Language, which dissolve the level of langue between universal logical structures, often ultimately connected to the biology of the human species, and linguistic use. One has to observe that by solely concentrating on the individual, either as carrier of the universal or as an actor in the communication act, what is avoided is a concept of society as structure. Saussure’s definition opposes such a position, postulating clearly that langues are the products of social communities and, therefore dependent on socio-historical conditions.

Secondly, langue is described as an abstract and dynamical structure. The crux here is the conception of structure. The obvious clarification explains that langue is not limited to a semantics, it is not just a dictionary; it includes grammar, syntax, rules of production and use, relations and hierarchies. Then, it is equally important to stress the abstract character of this structure – both in the levels of the signified and the signifier; what Saussure formulates as “psychique [mental]” or existing “dans le cerveau [in the brain]” (32). However, langue is abstract as opposed to being a concrete object; it is by no means an “abstraction”. It is different, and ontologically prior, to its possible actualizations in concrete institutions. Furthermore, although a structure, it is not a static one. As it is made clear, langues change through time by the action of parole. What has led to the common misunderstanding of langue as static is, on the one hand, its relative stability when compared to parole, and on the other, Saussure’s choice of a synchronic point of view. “Synchronicity” is a scientific point of view, not an ontological attribute.

Thirdly, langue is fundamentally arbitrary. While at first glance arbitrariness concerns the link between the signifier and the signified, it proves to have a much more radical meaning. In the first place, the “arbitrary” link is meant as conventionally, i.e. socially, constituted. Saussure’s intention is to oppose it to any idea of naturalness, not to imply that it is freely chosen by the user. In this sense, Saussure places his theory in the long historical debate over the naturalness or conventionality of language. Already in 4^th c. B.C. in Plato’s Cratylus, Hermogenes, following Democritus, argues for a conventional link between names and things. However, intrinsic part of Saussure’s definition of the sign is the notion of differentiality, summarised by the famous dictum: “in langue there are only differences […] without positive terms” (100) and expounded in connection with the concept of “linguistic value” (155-169). What langue does is to articulate the unperceivable and amorphous continua of sound and thought into double-faced formal units. Following Oswald Ducrot, I call this kind of arbitrariness “fundamental”, “to distinguish [it] from the arbitrariness of each isolated sign” (Ducrot & Todorov 1972: 30). Fundamental semiotic arbitrariness is Saussure’s epistemological rupture. It entails that semiotic communities articulate/shape the way they perceive the world through the process of giving it meaning. This move is analogous to Kant’s epistemological revolution; however, it transfers the locus of articulation from the cognitive capacities of the human species in general to the semiotic constructions of particular social groups. Similarly to its philosophical ancestor, it does not deny the independent existence of the world. What it does question is our ability to perceive, know and understand the world independently from our semiotizations.

As the individual sign is no longer constitutive and semiotic systems are not necessarily limited to “natural languages”, Louis Hjelmslev introduces the concept of “sign-function”, i.e. the structure of the constitutive relations of the semiotic phenomenon. In his 1954 essay “La stratification du langage”, he proposes its model.

Hjelmslev analyzed semiotic systems according to a double distinction: (a) between content and expression and (b) between form and substance. From this double division result four strata: content-form, content-substance, expression-form, expression-substance. Form selects substance and it is manifested by it. The substance-strata are ‘semiotically formed’. To speak of the manifestante without implying that it is so formed, Hjelmslev uses the term matière. Each substance-stratum consists of three levels: (1) the level of social, collective perceptions, which belongs to the stratification in the strict sense; and the (2) socio-biological and (3) physical levels, which don’t. Furthermore, as I have argued elsewhere (Walldén 2012a: 58–61), the intersection of the sign-function with the communication circuit causes a certain redoubling of the exo-semiotic substance, because of the differentiation between the sides of production and reception of the message. All the semiotic strata are intelligible constructs. Literal materiality belongs to the exo-semiotic realm. Signification is defined by the insoluble relation between content-form and expression-form, and not by reference to the exo-semiotic.

Table: An extended model of Hjelmslev’s stratification.

In this model, which is a consistent formalization of Saussure’s definition of the sign, the traditional questions regarding the relation between the signifier and the signified are analyzed and re-situated into the conceptually distinct but interrelated issues of signification, reference and material support. Therefore, the question of the social constitution or relative naturalness of a semiotic system can be reformulated as concerning, on the one hand, the relation between its content-plane and expression-plane and, on the other, its relation to its exo-semiotic content-substance; while the specificity of non-linguistic semiotic systems can be reformulated as concerning their expression-substance, and how this affects the previous question.

2. Cinema as a semiotic system

The Saussure-ian tradition of opposing the concept of natural semiosis has found in cinema one of its most contested cases. Cinema seems to combine the greater number of ill-fitting characteristics, as its expression-substance is both complex and heterogeneous, the central component of which consists in moving, photographic image.

The main definitional questions with regard to cinema were already opened by Christian Metz’s inaugural text “Le cinéma: langue ou langage” (1964): (a) whether it is appropriate to study cinema as semiosis and (b) what kind of semiosis it is. The first question is implicitly answered in the affirmative by the very act of a semiotic approach. Then, comes the need to define what is particularly ‘cinematic’ about cinematic semiosis. This means, firstly, the distinction from the other kinds of semioses, which amounts to the question of specificity. Secondly, it means the distinction between what is cinematic as opposed to what is filmic, in other words what belongs to the code of this semiosis and what to the messages/texts it produces. Finally, it also means to distinguish cinema’s elements that belong to the realm of the semiotic from those that don’t, considering that, apart from a signifying mechanism, cinema is also as a social institution, including an economy, a technology and a power structure.

The semiotic identity of cinema, as recognized – but not defined – by its expression-substance, can be situated in four areas. Firstly, it includes images. It shares this characteristic with other semiotic systems, such as painting, all of which are addressed by visual semiotics. Secondly, it shares with photography the specificity of using photographic images. This characteristic was given exceptional importance by André Bazin, who argued that it radically affected cinema’s and photography’s ontological status. In this, cinema differs from animation, as well as from digitally produced films. The present essay, nevertheless, argues against this distinction. Thirdly, cinema uses a succession of static images in order to create the impression of moving image. Moving image is its differentia specifica par excellence. Cinema was born when technology made moving image possible, and even in speaking films this remains its definitional characteristic. Metz considers as specifically cinematic codes the ones pertaining to the moving image, while Umberto Eco identifies the cinematic code with the moving image. Fourthly, cinema since the 1930s, includes auditory elements; it is a complex audio-visual system. As Metz has conceptualized it, cinema’s multiple expression-substance is composed by five elements: moving photographic image, writing, speech, music, noises (1964: 71; 1971: 10, 17–18; [1973] 1977: 112–113). Eco disagrees that this complexity pertains to cinema’s langue level, arguing that it takes place in the discursive level of film. This point is not so important in the present argumentation. Finally, a whole other group of questions arise from the fact of cinema’s multiple, complex and not fixed articulations, which are also beyond the scope of the present essay.

The essay’s working hypothesis is to accept cinema as functioning at the epistemological level of langue. It considers cinema as a signification system, by which is meant what underlies the way that every film produces meaning and which makes this production of meaning possible. It accepts, following Eco, that “semiotic systems do not necessarily have two articulations; [and that] the articulations are not necessarily fixed” ([1976]1979: 231).

A provisional attempt to apply Hjelmslev’s stratification on cinema could propose the following organization: Cinema’s form articulates multiply its semiotic substance, in a way combining Eco’s triple articulation and the articulations of audial elements. Cinema’s expression-form relies on two spatial and one temporal dimensions. Its expression-substance 1 is comprised by the perceptive image of moving light and shadows, as well as sound. Its production-expression-substance 2 includes the processes and conditions of mise-en-scène, shooting, post-production etc. Its reception-expression-substance 2 includes the processes and conditions of reproduction, projection etc. Its expression-substance 3 includes from the light and sound waves to the recording materials.

3. Naturalness as a relation to the referent reality

A common group of arguments about the increased “naturalness” of cinematic semiosis relies on its assumed motivated relation to its referent reality. In order to formulate the terms of the problem, an aspect of Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory can be of use. One of the trichotomies proposed by Peirce classifies signs, according to their relation to the referent object, into: icons (similar to it), indices (causally connected with it) and symbols (arbitrarily linked with it). The two first categories appear to describe a more “natural” connection than Saussure’s tradition would accept. Cinema semiosis has been conceptualized both in terms of iconicity and indexicality.

Before verifying whether cinema’s sign-function is iconic and/or indexical, one has to investigate whether the so-called iconic and indexical signs have indeed a natural relation to their referent. Umberto Eco refutes this fundamental precondition. He considers the icon-index-symbol trichotomy as “untenable”, first and foremost because it “postulates the presence of the referent as a discriminant parameter” ([1976]1979: 178). One must remember that the referent is not really an object but an abstract entity and a cultural convention (66), while – most importantly – signification has nothing to do with the existence of a corresponding object (62). That is why we can tell stories about the gods and lies. Eco proceeds to show the conventional character of the constitution of all the so-called iconic and indexical connections, one of his central arguments being the necessity to learn to recognize them as such.

The concept of iconic sign attributes particular metaphysical properties to the image. Eco investigates several aspects of this concept (viii, 178, 190–217, 231–234). Firstly, image is often considered as a non-analyzable primal entity. This would mean that the frame is the absolute primum in cinema sign-function, as Metz seems to think. However, Eco proceeds to show that image is both analyzable and coded. Inspired by Prieto, he proposes a list of the codes pertaining to image, and their articulations, and then a classification of all codes according to their articulations, including the cinematic triple articulation ([1968]1972: 596–598, 601–603; [1966]1976: 215–217, 225–227; [1976] 1979: 231–234). Secondly, the traditional philosophical definition of image relies on the concept of similarity. This resurfaces in Peirce’s definition of the iconic sign as linked to its object by similarity. Eco begins by problematizing the concept of similarity itself, showing that its definitional relation to the image is circular. He then proceeds to show that the recognition of similarity between images and objects is constituted conventionally. Thirdly, image is sometimes considered as caused by the object, as is the case of an imprint, which leads us to the discussion of the concept of index.

The concept of index is defined through a causal link or a physical connection to the object. Eco’s critique of the concept intersects with many parts of his theory of semiotics ([1976]1979: 115–119, 161–165, 178, 186, 190, 219-224). Firstly, he observes that the signification of the so-called indexical sign does not really depend on its connection to its object, because it exists irrespectively of the existence of its supposed cause. For example, smoke as a sign of fire continues to signify it even if there is no fire at all, and it is caused instead by dry oxygen. The inferred cause is “pure content” (221). Secondly, the very act of inference, i.e. the attribution of causality, relies on a convention. Thirdly, the choice of this particular perceptual unit as a signifier for this particular content-unit, i.e. the constitution of the sign as a sign, is conventional.

In the case of photography and cinema, however, the issue of indexicality appears in its more literal sense. The traces on film made by the physical, mechanical and chemical interaction between light, camera and film are indexical not as signs but as physical objects. They do constitute proof of existence of something; the question is what of. Using Hjelmslev’s extended model, one realizes that this link does not connect the signified (content-form) to its referent (content-substance 3), but the material trace (expression-substance 3) to its material conditions of production (expression-substance 2). Therefore, it does not affect the conventional nature of photographic (and cinematic) semiosis.

4. Universality based on human nature

Another group of arguments supports a certain universality of the systems of signification, as based on the shared nature of the human species. Although by no means limited to the visual semiotic systems, this line of argumentation has found a particularly fertile field there. The turn toward biology has become increasingly dominant since the 1980s. The present essay addresses some aspects of the arguments developed in the frame of the so-called “cognitive film semiotics”, which draw their concepts from the cognitive sciences, pragmatic linguistic theories and Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theories. They develop in clear opposition to the basic epistemological premises of Saussure’s tradition of semiotics. They tend to be more compatible with Peirce’s semiotics, which does not postulate fundamental semiotic arbitrariness, and its subsequent ontological priority of the system over the unit and centrality of the social. Cognitive semiotics is the last step of a shift of research interest from langue to parole/text, to the textual traces of enunciation, to the empirical act of communication, to the mental faculties of cognition and perception of the empirical people who partake to this act.

One should start by confirming that there is an undeniable causal link between our natural faculties and anything that we do, including constructing and using systems of signification. Already in Cours de linguistique générale, it is clearly stated that the ability to create semiotic systems is natural to the human species, while communication takes place between human beings. The significant difference is the locus and nature of this causal link. What we share, according to Saussure, is the semiotic faculty, i.e. the ability to create semiotic systems. What is common between those systems is their constitutive structure, what Hjelmslev calls sign-function, not their exact form. The relation between the human semiotic ability and the different semiotic systems in one of condition of possibility; unlike the relation between each semiotic system and its instantiations, which is a relation of manifestation. Moreover, when Saussure-ian semiotics discusses the human semiotic ability, it does not enter into the discussion of its biological grounding. The grounding without any doubt exists, and it is a fascinating area of research, but it is of a different epistemological order than semiotics. This distinction of epistemological order is crucial not to be crossed lightly; for the same reason that when we fly, we generally prefer a pilot in the cockpit and not a physicist, no matter how excellent the physicist is and despite the fact that flying planes is based on physics.

The other component of this group of arguments is their emphasis on the individual speaker and their dissolving of the social level of signification. From Chomsky’s “competence” and “performance” to Donald Davidson’s “prior” and “passing theory”, there is nothing left between the individual and the act of communication. Theorizing the individual as a bearer, on the one hand, of innate abilities and/or conceptual structures and/or universal conceptions, and on the other, of an unstructured and accidental mass of experiences, leaves no space for the fact that meanings are socially constructed and organized. The emphasis on the speakers has often been explained as an effort to celebrate their freedom, as opposed to the supposed passivity which has been attributed to them by the concept of langue. However, the scientific invisibility of social structures does not entail their disappearance but rather their interiorisation by the investigating subject.

The idea of universal cultural conceptions in the strict sense is easily counter-argued, if not completely refuted, by the findings of the sciences of history and anthropology. An easy example are the different divisions of the color spectrum throughout history and in different societies, fact which opposes the proposition that color terms are cultural universals; while the connotations attributed to them diverge even more widely, problematizing any ideas of an instinctive response to them. A more plausible approach would be the one exemplified by the research of Chomsky on deep structures and universal semes. One can conceive of the existence of some very general and very abstract structures underlying all semiotic systems, other than their constitution as semiotic. Nevertheless, the double danger facing the effort to locate them, is either the unconscious “universalization” of one’s one culture or the “substantiation” of one’s metatheoretical constructions. In the case of cinema, efforts of formulating a cognitive film grammar have led to simplifications, such as the identification of the concept of “grammaticality” with temporal and logical linearity in narration by Dominique Chateau (Buckland 2000:126–130).

A more extreme version of universality arguments grounds signification not in our mental capacities but on the literal physicality of the human body. The paradigmatic case are is the theory by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, who introduce image-based, embodied and inherently meaningful schemata, based on metaphor and metonymy. As Warren Buckland explains, these are considered “inherently meaningful because they gain their meaning from the body’s innate sensory-motor capacities” (40). He then proceeds to present the example of their “container schema”: “The container schema, which structures our fundamental awareness of our bodies, is based on the elements ‘interior’, ‘boundary’ and ‘exterior’. […] Sometimes, theories are understood in terms of a particular container, a building” (42–43). An obvious counter-argument arises here from the undeniable fact that there are cultures – and individuals – who don’t conceptualize either bodies or buildings as containers. When I compare theories to buildings I base the analogy on their attribute of being constructed and structured; and I suspect that this is the underlying metaphor of structuralism too. In any case, what one deals with here are connotations – metaphors and metonymies indeed – which are socially and historically constituted and by no means “inherently meaningful”.

However, the crucial axiom of both subtle and crude embodiment approaches to signification is that the properties of “the fully grown body are shared (uniform and constant)” (42). The first difficulty then is to whose body one refers. The body of a Scandinavian woman or a Pigmy man, a crippled 20-year-old medieval farmer or an athletic 60-year-old Hollywood star? There is no such thing as the typical human body. The process of defining which characteristics to consider typical is entirely social and entails the danger of normalization. Secondly, what such theories should not underestimate is the social conceptualization and construction of the body as such; this complex multi-way interaction between society and nature.

5. The debate over aesthetic realism in film theory

In film theory, cinema’s assumed privileged relation to reality has had different foundations, some of which this text has already investigated. The most naive is the notion of cinema as an unmediated opening to reality, as a “window’ or “mirror” or “slice of reality”. This position is easily refuted by a listing of the technical mediations and creative choices that lead to a film’s construction: from the choice of what to shoot and the manipulation of the pre-filmic elements to the frame and shooting choices, from decoupage and editing to sound-design and mixing. A certain improvement of the previous notion conceives cinema as a neutral recording of an already-coded reality, or – according to Pier Paolo Pasolini – as a secondary writing of the language of reality. This formulation still greatly underestimates the amount of choices and the degree of manipulation this “recording” allows or, rather, necessitates. A third, fourth and fifth lines of argument are based on concepts of iconicity, indexicality and the literal indexicality of photographic technologies, all of which have been addressed previously in this essay. A final line of argument is based on the richness of the sense stimuli cinema provides. The greater the range of sense stimuli an art involves the closer it comes to our experience of reality, the argument goes. It founds cinema’s assumed closeness to realty on a persuasive virtuality.

The last line of argument displaces the discussion from the belief that cinema has a privileged relation to reality to the observation that it gives the impression of having such a relation, and to the subsequent question of why it is so. This is cinema’s famous concept of impression, illusion or effect of reality, which practically means the forgetfulness of the fact that a film is constructed. There are three groups of reasons given for this impression. The first group is inspired by the cognitive sciences, and looks to the constitution of human perceptual apparatus, starting with the phi-phenomenon that allows us to see as continuous movement the rapid succession of static images. The second draws on psychoanalytical concepts and research, and explains the function of identification mechanisms. The third group of reasons relies on internal coherence and previously constituted conventions of representation.

These issues have been entangled in the history of cinema theory with the different aesthetic ideologies regarding realism. In this context, the questions of what cinema is and how it functions have been subordinated to the ones about what is a good film and what kind of films should be made. These were always intertwined with ethical and even political issues. Realisms and counter-realisms are all based on some notion of truthfulness, conceptualized in different ways as verisimilitude, immediacy or sincerity. The complexities of this debate exceed the scope of the present essay (see Walldén 2012b). What is relevant though is the realization that the “naturalization” of construction, the forgetfulness of the existence of the medium, results in mystification.

6. The debate over the biological foundation of social and human sciences

The discussions around the naturalness of cinematic semiosis in particular, and semiosis in general, are framed in a much wider epistemological debate, regarding the biological foundation of social and human sciences. The effort of “modeling” the human and social sciences on the natural ones is as old as modern science itself, since the Enlightenment, considering that in the process of constitution of the sciences as sciences, natural sciences have been the leading and paradigmatic case. However, there has been a wide range of such efforts: from structurally incorporating methodology to borrowing specific concepts. The foundation of a social or human science on human biology has been one of the most common and the least successful ones – one has only to remember Social Darwinism or Freud’s early efforts to ground his findings on literal human anatomy.

The recent rapid progress in brain and genetic sciences, as well as in theoretical physics, has left the human and social sciences with the feeling that they have been left behind. This feeling is partially justified. It is true that 20^th century positive and natural sciences’ findings and hypotheses are yet far from being incorporated into the cultural consensus and everyday lives of our societies. However, one has to realize that the generalization of Newtonian physics into the General Relativity theory does not affect at all the way we build houses; while something much smaller but of a similar epistemological order to building, such as the invention of a new material, does. While the human and social sciences must certainly revise and contemporize the ways they intersect with the positive and natural sciences, it is also useful to question the very validity of such intersections; have they been really essential to their theories, or have they been used as legitimizing devises ultimately inessential to them? Most important is to remember that historically such efforts have been usually unsuccessful. Now that this tendency is once again fashionable, it is useful to address the reasons of this lack of success.

Firstly, quite often they ignore or underestimate historical and anthropological observations. This tendency was presented previously in this essay. Secondly, they often misunderstand the scientific findings they refer to. They may generalize local results, turn scientific hypotheses into axioms, or ignore in other ways the constraints of a specific theory or research. The third and most common problem though, is the way that is enacted the connection between the social science and its assumed-as-grounding natural science. This connection, this passing from one epistemological order to another, is one of the most difficult moves that our sciences have to address. The dangers facing this effort are two: reduction and metaphor. The former is the result of the oversimplification of both sides of the division and the collapsing of the two epistemological orders into one, or their unproblematic immediate link. Examples of such a reduction is the explanation of class structure by evolutional biology or the interpretation of an emotional statement as an advanced form of instinctive stimulus-induced reaction. The danger of metaphoric use consists in a term or a group of terms being detached from the system that defines them and transported over the epistemological divide, in either direction, losing in the process their initial meaning. This is the case when one uses quantum physics’ terms in narratology or argues about the linguistic capacities of genes. What is the common factor in this wide range of fallacies is the naturalization of the social. And the stakes of such a move are very high.

Conclusion

This essay has argued for the social construction of cinematic semiosis in order to support the Saussure-ian approach to semiotics in general; and specifically its epistemological premise of the fundamentally social and constructed status of signification. It has proceeded to frame this discussion into the wider debates over aesthetic realism and the biological foundation of the social sciences, both of which have political implications. Particularly the latter locates a crucial decision that the science of semiotics has to take, which will determine its future development.

As we have seen, one of the leading contemporary tendencies in semiotics is an effort toward “naturalization”. This can be explained to a certain extent by the desire to gain the status of natural sciences, which is perceived as higher. I argue that, although historically understandable, this effort is mis-oriented. On the one hand, it seems to forget that what constitutes an endeavor as scientific are the criteria of scientificity, such as refutability and the ability to predict future results, not an uncritical borrowing and misapplication of other sciences’ theories. The enthusiastic but uncritical endorsement of the natural sciences amounts to an ideology of scientifism, and a subsequent loss of scientificity. On the other hand, it seems to forget that if significations are not conventional, then they are independent from history and, therefore, unchangeable unless by biological evolution. This amounts to the unchangeability of the status quo; a very conservative, even reactionary, world-view. In a single move, semiotics has managed to both lose its critical dimension and eternalize the status quo! Last but not least, one is not allowed to forget that racism is also based on the naturalization of the social.

In conclusion, the naturalization of the social is a definitional characteristic of ideology. In Louis Althusser’s words: “One of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology”(1970). For this reason, as Metz put it in 1978, “ la sémiologie [a une] allergie radicale a l’idée de ‘nature humaine’ [ semiotics has a radical allergy to the idea of ‘human nature’]” (1).

One upon a time, semiotics launched its project as an uncovering and dismantling of ideology. What will its project be for the future?

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