Recently the CJEU decision in the case of ‘Ewa Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland Limited’ has raised the issue of the transcultural/trans-territorial signification of hate speech and hate crimes. Taking a cue from this decision and the related semiotic/legal implications, the paper proposes an analysis of the semio/pragmatic conditions for the production of performativity inherent in hate speech across different cultural universes of discourse. Given that web-based digital communication is global—at least, potentially—regardless of any spatial/political compartmentalization, it crosses different semio-cultural circuits. (...) This trans-spatiality implies transcultural crossings that can multiply and even transfigure the semantic implications of the original signifier and the related prognoses of ‘semantic effectiveness.’ Cultural boundaries therefore may function as a kind of ‘horizon of events’ for hate speech and, more inclusively, all linguistic acts and their legal signification/classification. The question then arises regarding whether and to what extent the performativity of hate speech is able to withstand the variation of cultural boundary conditions. Insofar as cultures are universes of experience, the issue to be investigated broadens, and ends up invoking the question of whether or not the production of performativity implicitly presupposes and tacitly epitomizes the semio-pragmatic implications/consequences (or, in Peircean terms, ‘bearings’) coextensive with cultural universes of experience. Were this the case, it would seem to call into question the very possibility of ‘making things only with words,’ or more explicitly, the alleged meaning of ‘linguistic acts.’. (shrink)

In this essay both the facts/values and facticity/normativity divides are considered from the perspective of global semiotics and with specific regard to the relationships between legal meaning and spatial scope of law’s experience. Through an examination of the inner and genetic projective significance of categorization, I will analyze the semantic dynamics of the descriptive parts comprising legal sentences in order to show the intermingling of factual and axiological/teleological categorizations in the unfolding of legal experience. Subsequently, I will emphasize the translational (...) and enactive cognitive disposition underlying the construction of the second premise of the so-called judiciary syllogism and thereby the untenability of the idea that ‘law makes its facts.’ Hence, I will try to bring to the fore the cultural pre-assumptions encapsulated in the positivistic and therefore also formalistic or analytical approaches to legal experience and the loss of their inner consistency when legal experience confronts the phases and major changes of global semiotics. Finally, I will strive to relativize the opposition between the positivist and non-positivistic theories of law in view of an understanding of legal experience focused not only, or at least not primarily, on what ‘law is’ but also on ‘how’ it unwinds through, and _in spite of_, environmental and semantic transformations. (shrink)

Panentheism is a theism with great potential. Whereas pantheism takes God to be equivalent to the world, panentheism entertains as much while still asserting God’s transcendence of the mere world. There is much beauty in this idea that God is both “in the world” and “above” it. But there is also much subtlety and confusion. Panentheism is notoriously tricky to demarcate from the other theisms, and there is plenty of nuance left to be explored. The core problem of panentheism is (...) this—what exactly does it mean for the world to “include God” and for God to “contain the world?” Numerous answers have been given, but it seems there is still something left to be desired. In this paper, we endeavor to give panentheism a firm and rigorous footing. Utilizing basic category theory, we provide a precise answer to the daunting problem of “world inclusion.” In the process, we also offer a new variety of metaphysical grounding, “morphic grounding.”. (shrink)

From Peirce, a sign represents something other than itself, an object, for some third; from Deleuze, a sign can create and erase an object, for some third. He makes this claim in the cinema books, without detailed explication. It is a fleeting reference to the Peircean triad developed in his semiotics; moreover, references to “objects” in Deleuze’s discussions of signs in his other work are often generic. In this essay, I explain what it means in Deleuze’s semiotics for a sign (...) to create and erase its object. My method is to use the perspective of the object in the semiotic triad to compare Deleuze and Peirce’s semiotics. Deleuze’s sign that creates and erases its object marks a clear departure from Peirce’s semiotics. For Deleuze, like Peirce, an acquaintance with the object independent of the action of the sign is necessary for semiotics. Of most significance is that for Peirce, thinking with signs necessarily involves modifying prior knowledge of the object – meaning one’s conception of the object is a version of what was already known; while for Deleuze, thinking with signs can involve producing ideas at a second remove from the object – in turn, creating and erasing new object(s). Ultimately, this essay contributes to research on Deleuze’s cinema books by undertaking a detailed reading of a part of his discussion that has not been analyzed. Furthermore, in producing Deleuze’s concept of a sign that creates and erases its object, this essay reminds us how we think – andcouldthink – with signs, reaffirming the importance of semiotic analysis for discussion about thinking with signs. Finally, this essay contributes to scholarship on Deleuze’s and Peirce’s semiotics. (shrink)