Semiotics of the Kitchen - Martha Rosler - 1975

From A to Z, Rosler "shows and tells" the ingredients of the housewife's day, giving us a tour that names and mimics the ordinary with movements more samurai than suburban. Rosler's slashing gesture as she forms the letters of the alphabet in the air with a knife and fork, is a rebel gesture, punching through the "system of harnessed subjectivity" from the inside out.

"I was concerned with something like the notion of 'language speaking the subject,' and with the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs that represent a system of food production, a system of harnessed subjectivity." - Martha Rosler

“Non-material use-values are those goods produced within the housework process which have no material basis: affection, sexuality, companionship, “love,” and the like. These goods satisfy the individual’s non-material needs, which are as important for his/her reproduction as is a grilled steak or an ironed shirt….they are use-values for value.” -Leopoldina Fortunati from The Arcane of Reproduction

“To make the process of production and reproduction of labor-power function, other exchanges are also necessary. The most important of these “secondary” exchanges is that between the male worker and capital mediated by the female houseworker. This exchange and relation is required because the female houseworker’s reproduction cannot only consist of the use-values into which the wage can be transformed; it must also include the consumption of use-values which only the husband can and must produce. For although in this relation this housework is paid for by the wage, it must appear not so. Thus “love” enters the discourse, and the relation can be expressed in other non-money terms. Without love, capital would not be able to make this relation function, nor would it be able to isolate the male and female houseworker within the family.” -Leopoldina Fortunati from The Arcane of Reproduction

Icon Indice Symbol

"Peirce thought that “representations” generate further interpretants in one of three possible ways. First, via “a mere community in some quality” (W2 .56). These he calls likenesses, but they are more familiarly known as icons. Second, those “whose relation to their objects consists in a correspondence in fact” (W2 .56) are termed indices. And finally, those “whose relation to their objects is an imputed character” (W2. 56) are called symbols. Put simply, if we come to interpret a sign as standing for its object in virtue of some shared quality, then the sign is an icon. Peirce's early examples of icons are portraits and noted similarities between the letters p and b (W2. 53–4). If on the other hand, our interpretation comes in virtue of some brute, existential fact, causal connections say, then the sign is an index. Early examples include the weathercock, and the relationship between the murderer and his victim (W2. 53–4). And finally, if we generate an interpretant in virtue of some observed general or conventional connection between sign and object, then the sign is a symbol. Early examples include the words “homme” and “man” sharing a reference. (W2. 53–4)." - Peirce's Theory of Signs

Ceci n'est pas une pipe (unless you are a picture)

I am not sure but I think I have had a revelation. Not a divine one. Rather about how to write my thesis. The paragraph is where its at. I need to make clear paragraphs (subject sentence and so on) and if i get enough of them I will have a page and then two and god knows where it will end. Once I get a bunch of pages with paragraphs on them I will move them around until they make sense. This bit could require another revelation.
Anyone who does not already know about it (from 2001), Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler is entirely online and really is a great introduction to the subject. Lots of stuff on visuality, address, methodology and rhetoric. Lovely.

Virtual Text Object 1886

In 1886 Henry Rider Haggard asked his sister-in-law to make a ceramic vessel, break it in half and then fix it together again using metal thongs. He also asked his former school headmaster to translate a passage from English to Ancient Greek. Haggard then inscribed this translated passage onto the vessel his sister-in law had made as well as adding names in Greek, Latin and Middle and Modern English with dates stretching over thousands of years. He then included images of this creation in the opening pages of his next novel.

This object then became the departure point and central referent to the best selling novel She. By today's standards it is a very dated work in many ways, being imperialistic, sexist, racist and anti-Semitic. But it is an important text as it is an early embodiment of several modernist principles. Among these is the ceramic piece, the so called 'Sherd of Amenartas' which manifests as a sort of virtual text object. Information is attached to the object which is central to the narrative of She, and indeed the subsequent volumes Haggard produced using the same resurrected character (such as Wisdoms Daughter from 1922). The object actually existed in real life as a three dimensional narrative construction, unlike in the contemporary text The Picture of Dorian Grey (1881)by Wilde where the decaying picture was a trope and nothing more.

This is an interesting early example of a mixed reality narrative and the presence of a virtual object existing in the diegetic field of the narrative and in a spatial form renders She a very early proto-hypertext.

 The actual 'Sherd of Amenartas' on display in Norwich Castle Museum.