Name Extension

In order to raise awareness of the Society as a transdisciplinary forum for reflection on theories and methods for analyzing cultural phenomena and practices—including among young researchers—the 2009 General Assembly resolved to expand the Society’s existing name as follows:

Swiss Society for Cultural Theory and Semiotics (SGKS)

Association Suisse de Sémiotique et de Théorie de la Culture (ASSC)

Swiss Society for Cultural Theory and Semiotics (SSCS)

The Executive Board believes that the Society’s existing interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary orientation and its participation in current debates on cultural theory should also be reflected in the Society’s name. As demonstrated by the conference themes and presentations of recent years, as well as by the personal research interests of the members, new research perspectives and approaches are being integrated on the basis of semiotic or semiological foundations in order to reflect on cultural phenomena of all kinds. In the analysis of dynamics of meaning and their pragmatic conditions, aspects of materiality, mediality, and space are increasingly coming to the fore; these extend beyond a narrow understanding of the concept of the sign and the notion of text and pose a challenge for semiotics. Yet semiotics also offers a conceptual and methodological foundation for the study of performative processes, historical practices, and techniques in architecture, film, or dance—a foundation that has proven its capacity for constant renewal and expansion. Consequently, researchers today—particularly those from disciplines such as history and art history, which until recently were scarcely influenced by semiotic approaches—are adopting semiotic concepts and driving the development and expansion of existing models. However, they rarely adhere to the term semiotics in a methodological sense anymore, since—at least in the German-speaking world—it continues to be associated with a predominantly linguistic understanding of signs and the supposed orthodoxy of a Grand Theory. With this new name, we wish to express that semiotics, as a diverse and flexible method committed to transparency regarding its own approaches, actively participates in current debates in cultural theory: We situate our shared endeavor within the broad field of cultural theory in order to—including through the intersection of the humanities and social sciences—emphasize reflection on cultures, the concept of culture itself, as well as methodological and historical-theoretical questions, and to bring together analytical and empirical research. By combining the two concepts of semiotics and cultural theory and bringing their intellectual traditions into dialogue, we aim to foster an engagement with a wide variety of cultural productions and discourses.