Semiotics and decoloniality: A preliminary study between Ju. Lotman and W. Mignolo

Abstract

The goal of the present paper is to reflect upon the possibility for Lotman’s cultural semiotics to contribute to the ongoing discussion on decoloniality. This area of study gathers the ideas elaborated by a tradition of thinkers exploring how colonial relationships engendered by modernity are not limited to the realm of political domination but are seeped into our global culture, mode of production of knowledge and way of conceiving history. Within the Latin American school, we will focus on the works of Argentinian semiotician Walter Mignolo. We will show how Lotman’s multi–perspectivist epistemological approach offers analogies and points of convergence with the approach to decolonial reflection by Mignolo. The goal is not to frame Lotman as a decolonial thinker – he most certainly did not belong in that tradition, nor shared the same theoretical agenda and political goals. The similarities that we will attempt to highlight in the present paper, however, are not the result of a mere coincidence nor of an abstract, metatheoretical convergence of ideas. Rather, they are the result of Lotman’s engagement with the Russian and Soviet critique of Eurocentrism, which led him to reflect upon the need to delink from the promises made in the name of modernity, such as the ideas of progress, development, destiny.In the first part of the paper, we will discuss how Lotman elaborates, through an engagement of Soviet Oriental Studies among others, a multi–perspectivist epistemology. In the second part of the paper, we will discuss how he develops his theoretical approach into a critique of a “universal” and “unilinear” notion of history. Finally, in the third part, we will highlight certain points of convergence between Lotman and Mignolo, hinting at possible future contamina tion between cultural semiotics and the decolonial tradition.