Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:34:49 -0500 (EST)
From: Howard Hastings <hhasting-AT-osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: PLC: The Agency of the Sign



Hey Deaun (and maybe James too),

Sorry I left you hanging back the Post-colonial thread a few weeks
back.  I was so busy writing papers I didn't have time for any indepth
response on anything.

Now I have a question:

In The Location of Culture, in his chapter on "The Postcolonial and the
Postmodern: the Question of Agency,"   Homi Bhabha argues that "Culture is
translational" because "spatial histories of displacement ... make the
question of how culture signifies,or what is signified by CULTURE, a
rather complex issue."  Further he says

    It becomes crucial to distinguish between the semblance and similitude
    of symbols across diverse cultural experiences--literature, art, music
    ritual, life, death--and the social specificity of each of these
    productions of meaning as they circulate as signs within specific
    contextual locations and social systems of value. (172)

Now I have fallen into a disagreement with one of my professors about this
passage.  It seems to me that Bhabha is here discussing "symbols" in a way
which presumes that they operate as signs--i.e., a symbol is meaningful
because it a kind of sign and, like all signs, comprises a signifier and
a signified. It is the articulation of the sign within a system of signs
which "fixes"this relation between signifier and signified rather than
any natural connection between them.  

Because the relation between signifier and signified is arbitrary, what is
ostensibly the "same" signifier can be articulated with radically
different signifieds in different cultural discourses.  As a result what
appears to be the same sign can have radically different meanings as it
is used

As an example of how this works, I offered the story of an American
balloonist who went to participate in a balloon race in Brazil.  He hired
four local boys to help hold his balloon down in preparation for the
start.  Moments before the race began, he formed his thumb and forefinger
into the "OK" sign and signalled his helpers that everything was ready.
They threw down their lines and walked away.

The "sign" which means "ok" within a specific North American code of 
hand signals, was, when seen by the helpers, rearticulated within their
South American code to produce a sign which said "you're an asshole."

To put this another way, the sign did not simply transfer the ballonist's
intended meaning to his helpers, nor did it fail to function.  It was
"read" as an intent to say "you're an asshole."  In this space between
intended and perceived meaning, the sign is stripped of an intended
meaning, but refuses to remain meaningless.  It is "seen" as meaning
you are an asshole.  In a sense, the sign, in this context, could be
said to have its own agency. I suggested that this, or something like
it, is at the root of that "Agency of the Sign" which is so important to
his concept of "time-lag."

I don't know whether this is too simplistic or not.  I was just trying
to get at a kind of structural feature of the time lag and in part what
makes culture "translational." I wasn't trying to explain the concept in
full.

But my professor says that in the above quoted passage Bhabha is writing
about the importance of distinguishing SYMBOLS, which might appear to be
like, or which might actually be similar across cultures, from signs.

I confess I do not see this at all.  In the context of the essay, I took
his point to be, among other things, that we need to pay close attention
to how meaning changes, is displaced, when the "same" signs move from one
cultural discourse to a different one where they are rearticulted with
different meanings.

Bhabha seems to use the term "symbol" to describe signs which may, in
a given context, accrue a special social significance, as when the raised
fist came to be a symbol of rebellion during the 60s (or before?). 
But wouldn't he argue that a symbol is nevertheless a subspecies of
sign, which still must obey the logic of sign articulation. My example
does not use "symbol" in this sense, but it does seem to me to foreground
the process of "rearticulation" which Bhabha is presenting in this
discussion.

Am I way off on this?

This is addressed not only to Deaun but anyone out there interested in
Bhabha's work.

hh



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