International journal
ISSN 2311-0759 (Online)
ISSN 2311-0740 (Print)


Marxism

Is language a system of signs? (Lenin, Saussure and the theory of hieroglyphics)

This paper strives to pursue two goals at the same time: – how can one get to know in depth the intellectual life of the Soviet Union in the 1930s–50s?

Barthes and Lotman: Ideology vs culture

Despite both being great names in semiotics, Roland Barthes and Juri Lotman have more differences than they share similarities – not only because of their different political and historico-cultural environments, but also because they do not have the same object of study: it is ‘ideology’ for Barthes, and ‘culture’ for Lotman. Thus, there is no intellectual common ground between them, yet comparing them can lead us to a more important question: what is semiotics, and what has structuralism to do with it.

Voloshinov and Vossler: Allies without knowing it

Between both solutions to the crisis of positivism at the beginning of the 20th century, V. N. Voloshinov chose K. Vossler’s idealistic neophilology, entirely rejecting Saussurianism. Voloshinov transposed Vossler’s stylistic individual idealism into sociological concepts: “spirit” becomes “ideology”, “culture” becomes “superstructure”, and “idealistic neophilology” becomes “sociological poetics”. This terminological rearrangement has caused constant misunderstandings in the interpretation of the book “Marxism and the Philosophy of Language”.