Critical Semiotics: Theory, from Information to Affect [Paperback]

Critical Semioticsprovides long overdue answers to questions at the junction of information, meaning and 'affect'. The affective turn in cultural studies has received much attention: a focus on the pre-individual bodily forces, linked to automatic responses, which augment or diminish the body's capacity to act or engage with others. In a world dominated by information, how do things that seem to have diminished meaning or even no meaning still have so much power to affect us, or to carry on our ability to affect the world?

Linguistics and semiotics have been accused of being adrift from the affective turn and not accounting for these visceral forces beneath or generally other from conscious knowing. In this book, Gary Genosko delivers a detailed refutation, with analyses of specific contributions to critical semiotic approaches to meaning and signification. Peoplewant to understandhow other people are moved and to understand embodied social actions, feelings and passions at the same time as understandinghow this takes place. Semiotics must make the affective turn.

This important contribution to the history of critical theory establishes crucial connections among information theory, semiotics, Marxist critique, and affect theory. By confronting obstacles to signification such as libidinal economies and commodification, Genosko provides a much-needed rereading of theories of signification, demonstrating that semiotics still matters in the age of big data, global consumerism, and visual media. Janell Watson, Professor of French, Virginia Tech, USA

Just like }i~ek in his critique of the Warchowski'sMatrix, Genosko in hisCritical Semioticsrejects the false choice between the material blue pill and the semiotic red pill. However, he does not opt for a thirdlÃK