AF2 Commentary: "Asemic, Pansemic & Peirce's Triadic Model of the Sign" by Chris Wells

 

"there we shall be in perpetual day" by Chris Wells (January 2018)

Asemic, Pansemic & Peirce’s Triadic Model of the Sign

 

By Chris Wells

1.

The thought of writing this down has been bouncing around in my head for years. I wanted to understand why the term “asemic” does not seem accurate to me. I never felt strongly about the issue because the “asemic” movement has taken on a life of its own. The term does distinguish something recognizable.

I also wanted to explore why the term "pansemic" (also originating with Jim Leftwich) resonates with me although it seems to lack widespread acceptance.

By way of preface, I want to disclose that I am an amateur in poetic theory. I hope my work in this essay expands my personal mastery of concepts discussed below. Ultimately, I hope my ideas and research provide you with new insights.

I have never formally studied semiotics, although I am not entirely a newcomer to it, either. (In fact, the only academic paper I ever published, in addition to a master's thesis, appeared in The Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis.) I would welcome friendly help in refining any of these concepts from whomever would be so willing.

 

2.

 

Asemic writing is a popular practice in 2022. Apparently, it emerged in multiple quarters across the globe, and its popularity has increased sharply in recent decades. The appeal of asemics has been widely described as “democratic.”

 

To be more precise, I would say the asemic spirit is closer to “anarchism” in the best sense of that word: a fully free and open practice and a correspondingly free, open, and decentralized worldwide community of practitioners. No wonder there is a large intersection that connects mail artists, visual poets and asemic writers.

 

But what is asemic writing? What might the word “asemic” mean? Is it the best descriptive term? I have read several authors on the subject, but I will not quote or paraphrase anyone else at this stage. This is a preliminary sketch of my own ideas, especially as the result of encountering Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) as an undergraduate while writing a paper on the Gothic translation of the Bible.

 

My love of historical and textual linguistics as an undergraduate naturally led me to question why the limits of a “text” should be bound to a sequence of words, when there are other symbols and signs all around us. This led me to read Peirce's semiotic theory. (I also read about his metaphysics.)

 

The practice of asemic writing has fascinated me for a long time. I have explored “illegibility” from a poetic-artistic standpoint. Generally, I have never fully embraced the word "asemic.” But neither do I reject it. I would like to discuss what, from my own standpoint grounded in Peirce's triadic semiotic theory, asemic writing is. I do not reject the term “asemic” although it is (technically speaking and arguably) inaccurate, or at least imprecise.

                                      __________________

 

“Unlike semiology, structuralism and post-structuralism, which are grounded in Ferdinand de Saussure's binary distinction between signifier and signified, Peirce's concepts are often triadic….”

                                                                                                      -  Chris Wells

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Here is my brief explanation of Peirce's concepts that are relevant to this discussion: Unlike semiology, structuralism and post-structuralism, which are grounded in Ferdinand de Saussure's binary distinction between signifier (a word, for example) and signified (what the word refers to), Peirce's concepts are often triadic. This was fruitful in his discussion of the process of signification and interpretation, broadly termed semiosis (from Greek sema, sign).

 

In my attempt to briefly explain Peirce's view, I will start with the sign, or representamen. You can imagine this as the more familiar term signifier. This representamen signifies something, an object, which by definition must be something different from itself.

 

Every sign is in some respect an object, even if only a mental, imaginary or purely conceptual one. But a sign is an object that somehow signifies (in one of three ways, discussed below) another object.

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"The third part of [Peirce’s] triad is, from my perspective, the most interesting: the interpretant. Signs involve an interpreter that becomes involved in the process, and it is only by an interpretation that anything becomes a sign at all."

                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                             - Chris Wells

                                   ____________________

"[a] sea" by Chris Wells (Ohio, USA) (December 2021)

The third part of the triad is, from my perspective, the most interesting: the interpretant. Signs involve an interpreter that becomes involved in the process, and it is only by an interpretation that anything becomes a sign at all. Otherwise, it is simply two objects that have no particular relationship to anyone or anything.

3.

 

The interpretant is a resultant interpretation of a sign. Modern Peircean semioticians have gone so far as to say interpretants do not need to be mental, and so there is no need for a consciousness to be present as an interpreter. In this way, they attempt to provide a semiotic theory of the natural world itself. (I do not know much about this area of semiotics, but you can search “physiosemiosis” to learn more if you are interested.)

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“The interpretant itself becomes, in experience, a representamen for other objects, which then results in further interpretants, in a potentially infinite chain of signification.”

            -  Chris Wells

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Asemic vispo by Kristine Snodgrass & De Villo Sloan (2021) (AF2 Archives)

The interpretant itself becomes, in experience, a representamen for other objects, which then results in further interpretants, in a potentially infinite chain of signification.

 

Take an interpretation of a word as an illustrative example: The word has as its object a concept or definition. For example, the word “ball,” when interpreted as a word in English, has as its interpretant the definition of “ball”: a spherical object, perhaps a toy, etc. In the larger context in which it is uttered, it might also refer to a basketball or a tennis ball. And it might be a particular ball in a game I am playing with a friend, or it might be an imaginary ball in a story I am reading or hearing someone tell. It could also be a script that I am supposed to read aloud. In this case, the interpretant of “ball” (a written word) would become “ball” the spoken word according to the conventions of spoken English.

 

You can see how the triadic theory is cyclical, interpretants (e.g. definitions) giving rise to further interpretants (e.g., physical objects). You can also see how interpretants can be very straightforwardly other signs or representamens (a written word that becomes its spoken equivalent).

 

In his characteristic love of triadic thinking (I have seen the word triadomania used to describe it), Peirce also distinguished three types of signs: the index, the icon and the symbol. A sign is an index if it indicates something closely related. A classic example is that smoke indicates fire.

 

A sign is an icon if it shares a likeness to that which it signifies. For example, a photograph of a fire is an icon of a fire. The relationship is so close that if you were to show someone a photograph of a fire and asked them, "What is this?" they would likely say “fire” - that which it represents - instead of saying “a photograph.”

_____________

"A symbol is a sign that takes its meaning from convention. For example, language is made up of symbols. So is mathematics, at least as it is notated."

-  Chris Wells

_____________

 A symbol is a sign that takes its meaning from convention. For example, language is made up of symbols. So is mathematics, at least as it is notated.

 

Obviously, the lines blur here and all build on one another. For example, if I heard a man yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater (to use a cliché example that continues with the theme), the word, "Fire!" is a symbol for the "thing" we call "fire" in English. 

The loudness and perceived emotion behind the man's exclamation may indicate urgency and danger to be avoided. The fact that it sounded like a man's voice shows an iconic relationship to a man. But what if it were a scene in the play itself, and I somehow misinterpreted it as an indication of real danger? Then the iconic signification still exists; the voice was a man's voice. However, indexically, it indicated a fictional scene and not an urgent one. The play itself is made up of an entire network of conventions that contributes symbolic signification in addition to iconic and indexical.

Collab by Chris Wells & De Villo Sloan (September 2017) (AF2 Archives)

4.

 

This has been a long introduction to my own definitions of pansemic and asemic. Asemic implies or suggests several things: That it is not “semic,” there is no sema involved, that it does not participate in signification or semiosis, that it signifies nothing.

 

However, to paraphrase semiotician John Deely, everything, to some extent and in some way, becomes a sign by our mere experience of it. How might this apply to asemic writing? First, we can talk about what is asemic about it.

                         ___________________

“Asemic writing is inherently devoid of a ‘code’ of symbolic relationships. This is what distinguishes it from other forms of writing in any language or other symbolic codes, which include recognizable [conventionally readable] symbols...."

-     Chris Wells

 ___________________

Symbolically, asemic writing is inherently devoid of a “code” of symbolic relationships. This is what distinguishes it from other forms of writing in any language or other symbolic codes, which include recognizable symbols (letters, glyphs, ideograms, etc.) or symbolic relationships (various forms of cursive writing, or a stoplight of red, yellow, and green lights which in other contexts may have other meanings).

 

Writing does not have to be fully readable in a shared, existing language to be symbolic. Writing systems correspond, in so far as they are linguistic and not asemic, to an existing language, sign system or code to ascribe meaning: something set in convention. Asemic writing does not do this; this is what is intentionally excluded insofar as it is asemic.

 

Iconically, asemic writing is writing. One can recognize, without necessarily understanding why, that the asemic piece intentionally mimics the visual appearance of written text, rather than the expressive conventions of abstract painting or drawing. How does this work?

 

An analogy I offer: When I was making music, I stumbled upon a technique where I took spoken voice recordings, lowered the voice volume significantly and applied layers of reverb. This produced what parapsychologists call "the sense of a presence" in my mind: The sound was similar to a human voice speaking, but it was altered enough that the meaning was entirely undiscernible and with only a faint and indeterminate suggestion of emotional expression.

                                                            ____________________

“Asemic writing is ‘illegible’ if by this we mean it is not decodable (i.e., it participates in no symbolic code to carry a ‘message’ in the ordinary sense). Some asemic writers, including myself, create a ‘damaged’ writing.”

-        Chris Wells 

                                                          _____________________

Early asemics by Jim Leftwich (AF2 Archives)

In a similar sense, asemic writing is “illegible” if by this we mean it is not decodable (i.e., it participates in no symbolic code to carry a “message” in the ordinary sense).

 

Some asemic writers, including myself, create a “damaged” writing, just as the human voice in processing it with reverb is “damaged.” But there is a trace or remnant that suggests a presence: the at-one-time presence of a human being or a consciousness that shares similarities to a human mind, in the process of expressing itself.

All forms of asemic writing, from a child’s scrawl, to overwriting/palimpsest techniques, to overstriking with a typewriter, to partial but indeterminate letteral marks made of stencils or by a collage technique, intematerial - produce an incomplete or damaged form of writing that does not belong to a pre-established symbolic code, even if the asemic text alludes – however vaguely – to other shadow texts.

                                             _______________________

“All forms of asemic writing… produce an incomplete or damaged form of writing that does not belong to a pre-established symbolic code, even if the asemic text alludes - however vaguely - to other shadow texts. This is largely done via what we could call iconici, a resemblance, however faint or indeterminate, to writing.”

- Chris Wells

                                            _______________________

Indexically, asemic writing is open and indeterminate. For example, visual poet Cheryl Penn (South Africa) has explored asemics using a process similar in composition and analysis to the famed Rorschach psychological test. Even the simple experience of watching clouds (pareidolia) is changed dramatically through an asemic lens.

Asemic vispo by Cheryl Penn (South Africa) (2019) (AF2 Archives)

In asemics, we can deduce little of a writer’s intention or biography. The viewer joins the process in a collaborative spirit. They provide vital associations from their own experiences to provide an interpretation. Asemic reading alters conventional relations between creation and collective interpretation.

Many have written that they believe they perceive expressive energy or emotion in the asemic text. We may form associations in our minds from the shape and arrangement of writing on the page. This is similar to the way we are (culturally conditioned) to seek meaning, for instance, in the visual syntax of abstract art. 

Iconically, asemic writing invites indexical literary associations just as much as it invites the visual-artistic. Since it can be done at any scale, by anyone who knows how to write (which in this case, does not imply any minimum standard of literacy), the communities around it are naturally decentralized, open, and in my experience welcoming, as are its associated mail art and visual poetry communities.

 

By subtracting the symbolic/linguistic/conventional qualities of ordinary writing and retaining the iconicity of writing, we are left with a practice of writing that is radically indeterminate by its very nature.

Freedom from linguistic constraints and language tradition allow asemic writing to become a genre in the 21^st century that greatly expands global inclusivity and participation.  Asemic reading - a majority community consensus is evident - is indeed, for me, more accurately defined by the word “pansemic” than “asemic.”

-sSs-