[Linganth] REMINDER: Semiotics of Perspective, lecture by James Costa (6/9)

[Constantine Nakassis]

Dear all,

We are happy to invite you to the second of the Semiotics of Perspective
<https://cscs.uchicago.edu/semiotics-of-perspective/> lectures, by James
Costa, on June 9. Please register here:
https://bit.ly/SemioticsofPerspective. Feel free to share with your social
networks.

*Friday, June 9, 2023 (9am Chicago | 4pm Paris)*
James Costa (Sorbonne Nouvelle)
*From Dangerous to Endangered — A Mere Question of Perspective? Endangering
Dangerous Highlanders in Walter Scott’s *Waverley
Introduced by Constantine Nakassis (University of Chicago), with discussant
comments from Jack Sidnell (University of Toronto)

*Abstract*: The most commonly accepted categories linguists and
anthropologists use for analysis are often also an effect of perspective.
In this lecture, I wish to show that “endangerment”, now often accepted in
our disciplines as fact, was constructed through a perspectival change, one
that took place within the space that R. M. Trouillot called “the savage
slot”. Based on an analysis of Walter Scott’s *Waverley* (1814), I show how
Western perspective on the Savage slot shifted from fear to curiosity, from
seeing those occupying that slot as dangerous to endangered. This shift in
turn allowed for an apparently aperspectival approach to develop in salvage
anthropology and documentary linguistics. Scott performed this work on
Highlanders in a novel that was key to transforming the Highlands and
making them fit for Romanticism in the 19th and 20th centuries. His novel
later served as a model for other such changes of perspective, in
particular Cooper’s (1826) *The Last of the Mohicans* for example.

***
*About the Semiotics of Perspective lectures*: These two lectures are part
of a larger project, Perspective: Vision, Discourse, Ideology, comprising
linguistic anthropologists, sociolinguists, and semioticians in Paris,
Toronto, and Chicago focused on the question of perspective. Perspective
has featured as a central analytic object in fields as diverse as art
history, film studies, and literary studies to the philosophy of science,
phenomenology, feminist criticism, and the anthropology of ethics. It has
also emerged as a key concept within linguistic anthropology and
sociolinguistics to understand the situated, political, and relativistic
nature of discursive action. Thinking across questions vision and
visibility; voicing and translation; and ideology and worlding, this
project — consisting of a year-long reading group (AY 2022–2023); this
lecture series (June 2, 9); and an intensive three-day workshop (June
19–21, 2023) — is devoted to articulating an ethnographically situated
account of the semiotics of perspective in social life. Perspective:
Vision, Discourse, Ideology is supported by the University of Chicago’s
Paris Center, the University of Chicago’s Department of Anthropology, The
Center for the Study of Communication and Society (University of Chicago),
LabEx (Sorbonne Nouvelle), and the University of Toronto’s Department of
Anthropology.

https://cscs.uchicago.edu/semiotics-of-perspective/


--------------------------------
Constantine V. Nakassis
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology,
Faculty Associate, Department of Comparative Human Development,
Resource Faculty, Department of Cinema and Media Studies,
Core Faculty, Committee on International Relations,
Chair, Committee on Southern Asian Studies (COSAS),
The University of Chicago

https://anthropology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/constantine-v-nakassis
http://nakassis.com/constantine
http://chicagotamilforum.uchicago.edu
https://southernasia.uchicago.edu/
<http://chicagotamilforum.uchicago.edu>
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