Ubiquitous Mediation and Critical Interventions

Abstract

From a pragmatist perspective, the inaugural concern of Peirce’s formal theory (mediation? representation? translation?) cannot be separated from the eventual form in which this theory ought to be cast. Moreover, it cannot be severed from the emerging goals of an evolving process of theoretical elaboration. Peirce’s semeiotic culminates in methodeutic. The form in which the theory of signs is most appropriately cast is arguably a reflexive, normative inquiry into the conditions and forms of inquiry. It is, however, possibly something wider – a rhetoric inclusive of more than the discourses and disciplines of the experimental sciences (i.e., a rhetoric inclusive of artistic works no less than practical communication). An account of the most rudimentary and pervasive form of semiosis (grammar in Peirce’s sense being one of the names for this account) must ultimately give way to a nuanced understanding of historical practices such as experimental inquiry, artistic innovation, practical discourse, and possibly much else.