Presented by Trent Portigal (Edmonton-based Novelist)

Benveniste considered some words empty signifiers. While these words were part of the system of signs making up a given language, they were only really signs (signifier-signified pairings) when the language was realised as instances of discourse. “I” and “you,” as an example, were set as the person speaking and the intended recipient of the words, respectively. The “you” became the “I” and vice versa in the response. This semantic intersubjectivity was a fundamental, albeit secondary, aspect of language.

It is also an aspect that easily falls apart. Plato raised weaknesses when he differentiated rhetoric from dialogue. Walter Benjamin showed how the “here and now” that characterises instances did not hold in an age of mechanical reproduction. This talk will work through some examples and potential implications of the loss of intersubjective connections.