Abstract
This paper provides arguments for and against M.Lotman’s (2002) contention that Y.Lotman’s
seminal concept of semiosphere is of post-modernist (post-structuralist; Posner 2011)
orientation. A comparative reading of the definitional components of the semiosphere, their
hierarchical relationship and their interactions is undertaken against the two principal axes of
space and subjectivity in the light of Kantian transcendental idealism, as inaugural and
authoritative figure of modernity, the Foucauldian discursive turn and the Deleuzian (post)
radical empiricism (sic), as representative authors of the highly versatile post-modernvernacular.
This comparative reading aims at highlighting not only similarities and differences between the
Lotmanian conceptualization of the semiosphere and the concerned modernist and postmodernist
authors, but the construct’s operational relevance in a post-metanarratives cultural
predicament that has been coupled with the so-called spatial turn in cultural studies (Hess-
Luttich 2012).