Semiosalong on semiootika osakonna tudengite korraldatud seminariõhtute sari (inglise keeles). 2021/2022 sügissemestril oli salongiteemaks "Mythokatalysis". Hooaja viimane kohtumine toimus 9. detsembril hübriidvormis Tartus ja Zoomis. Ettekanded pidasid TÜ professor Jüri Talvet ja TÜ väliseesti külalisprofessor Jaan Valsiner.

 

// Semiosalong is an afterhours semiotic salon organized by the semiotics students of University of Tartu. The topic for 2021/2022 autumn season of the series was "Mythokatalysis". The final  meeting of the season took place on December 9th in hybrid form, in Tartu and in Zoom. The presenters were UT professor Jüri Talvet and UT Estonian expatriate visiting professor Jaan Valsiner.

 

Jüri Talvet, "Tartu 2024 (European Capital City of Culture) and the (Invisible) Roots of Estonian Autochthonous-National Conscience and Culture"

Jaan Valsiner, "How allegorical sign fields set the stage for human dramas"

 

Series description: Mythokatalysis compounds the Greek μῦθος (myth) and κατάλυσις (catalysis). The Greek-French dictionary Le Grand Bailly offers, among other definitions, for the first: “expressed word, discourse”, and for the second: “action of dissolving, to destroy (a government), to end”. The title is inspired by the opening lines of Roland Barthes’ major work on the topic: “mythology can only have an historical foundation, for myth is a type of speech chosen by history: it cannot possibly evolve from the ‘nature’ of things.” Myth has an orthogonal relationship with ideology – ideology ‘naturalizes’ the cultural codes to the point of invisibility, where myth both precedes and undermines culture. Italian fabulist semioticians like Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, and Roberto Calasso, wove images from mythology into synthetic works that simultaneously challenged culture and germinated new myths. The conception of myth in this way is like Janus of the Two Faces, the Roman god of duality, doorways, and transitions. Thus we are interested in both the appropriation of myth in subversive action, as well as the dissolution of myths which have themselves become naturalized. Mythokatalysis articulates contemporary social debates in which myth serves both progressive and reactionary agendas. We invite you to join our series, and to expect topics including colonialism and postcolonialism, politics of identity, symbolic violence, ideology critique, and others.