Contemporary semiotics: crossroad ok knowledge and case study

Abstract

This article starts off by doing a light and arbitrary course by some authors who have been interested in language and the processes of meaning, with the aim of locating the current state of contemporary Semiotics: objects, methods and disciplinary statute. Walking through concepts of Peirce, Barthes, Eco, Verón, Fabbri, Blanco and Landowski, we try to make the different theories dialog and question the status of meaning in them. In this transit also articulate to some points of meetings and dis-meetings with thinkers in the field of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. From such coordinates, it is proposed to think of contemporary Semiotics as a crossroads of knowledge. The questions are oriented towards a pragmatic goal: what are the uses of the findings produced in the field of semiotics? Is it still insisted on trying to organize reality through a macro-theory of codes, where the sign is still valid in its Saussurean version? Or is there an interest in the processes and systems of production of meanings, and even the materiality of the word? In the light of these questions the concepts of discourse, meaning and significance are analyzed, giving value to the emergence of the sense. Under the neologism of the emergent discourse, the analysis of a case is described: the city. The city as the scene of the social bond, the city as a cityscape both producer and product of discursive configurations. Taking contributions from J. L. Nancy and R. Espósito, a series of emerging discourses are scored in the city of Tucumán, Argentina, linked to the matter of security as a defense against the other.