Political semiotics*

WOLFGANG DRECHSLER

Abstract

The current article is a problem-oriented look at (the image of) political

semiotics from the sphere of the inquiry into the political. It first looks at
the relevant features of the political and semiotics, and then addresses polit-
ical semiotics, both contents-wise and as the two elements relate to each
other. A sketch of how political semiotics exists today follows — first con-
cerning the context of political science, and then as far as the actual output
is concerned, which is then systematically evaluated. The final chapter
presents three thinkers who represent di¤erent paths to possible political
semiotics: Cassirer, Jung, and Uexküll.

Keywords: political semiotics; political science; glottocentricity; ideology;

Johann J. von Uexküll.

I asked Susan to take a look at this, and she

tells me that after Barthes there’s no point
translating this Kant.
— Eco (1994 [1972]: 44)

1. Introduction

When the last attempt at a general survey of political semiotics was made
— namely, Pertti Ahonen’s introductory essay to his edited collection,
Tracing the Semiotic Boundaries of Politics (1993a) — it was possible to
call it, ‘A Copernican revolution in political research,’ without a question
mark (1993b: 16–17). And Charles Lemert, in the same book, could ask,
‘Who . . . could have dreamed of the extent to which virtually every cor-
ner of the human and social sciences would be, today, touched by the
ideas and literature of semiotics?’ (1993: 31).

Semiotica 173–1/4 (2009), 73–97 0037–1998/09/0173–0073

DOI 10.1515/SEMI.2009.003 6 Walter de Gruyter
74 W. Drechsler

If we look at the situation today, the perspective has surely changed, or

at least is very di¤erent: there was no such revolution, and particularly lit-
tle was touched within political science. Political semiotics, as a field and
as regards fashion, institutions, and influence on other areas, in spite of
quite a number of publications in its realm, some very good, has — if
anything — regressed more than progressed. On the one hand, this is not
surprising, since, as Ahonen has pointed out, ‘semiotics and related orien-
tations have given legitimacy for people with intellectual aspirations to
turn from questions of politics, the macro-society and the international
system and its injustices to questions involving subjects, subjectivities,
minds and selves’ (1993b: 5). Bourdieu’s similar criticism of semiotics’
‘apoliticy,’ that it treats ‘the social world as a universe of symbolic ex-
changes and . . . reduce[s] action to an act of communication’ (1991: 7),
is well-known. And indeed, ‘Semiotics, certainly, has for the greater part
of its history been a rather apolitical enterprise’ (MacFarquhar 1994: 61).
On the other hand, there is the vast potential that the semiotic perspective
— or, better, some semiotic perspectives — can bring to the analysis and
understanding of the political, and indeed what could be called the need
of political semiotics for political analysis, more so perhaps in the last de-
cade and in the ones to come than ever; thus, the area is very well worth
investigating.
A dozen years after Ahonen, this essay will therefore attempt to briefly
sketch out where political semiotics stands today, why it stands there, and
how it may, and could, develop. Yet, contrary to Ahonen — with whom I
share both the main sub-field of political inquiry, as well as various insti-
tutional a‰liations over the years — my perspective is that from outside
the semiotic scientific community. ‘Clearly sees, who sees from a distance,
and through a fog, who participates,’ says Lao Tse, but it surely makes
omissions and injustices easier as well. The works discussed and cited are
exemplary, but they do not form an inventory. The current essay there-
fore is a problem-oriented look at (the image of ) political semiotics from
the perspective of inquiry into the political.

2. The political and semiotics

Any essay on political semiotics is right away confronted with the fact
that a definition is di‰cult since both concepts, the political and semiot-
ics, are at best very vague, and that the collocation has likewise no clear
meaning. Because this essay is both empirical-analytical and normative,
i.e., setting out to find out what political semiotics is like and what it
could be, stronger definitions than the ones that are in fact used — and
 Political semiotics 75

none are, really, used — might be misleading. Yet, we need to narrow the
scope somehow, just in order to be able to make any meaningful state-
ment at all.

3. The political

As regards the political, there are, to be sure, many more, and much
clearer, definitions — and we might, in the academic context, just say
that political is anything that concerns political science. We may add,
however, that we have some definitions of politics for semiotics that are
almost exclusively by Ahonen (1987, 1990a, 1990b, 1991b), and they can
be easily followed here as well. Particularly helpful is his 1987 essayistic
piece, ‘Semiotics of politics and political research,’ where Ahonen refers
to the di¤erence between the two (1987: 143), stating that ‘political re-
search tends to be more abstract and conceptual than politics’ (1987:
149) and that what ‘is politics is di¤erent in di¤erent contexts’ (1987:
145).

What politics is must therefore be understood not only as what politics is accord-
ing to any single of the competing views, but politics also consists of the di¤erent
conceptions concerning what politics is as well as / the competition between these
views. (Ahonen 1987: 145–146)

The key point is that ‘Politics has to do with power, but there need be
synthesis of the rationalist view and the view which emphasizes anony-
mous structures, processes, and e¤ects’ (1987: 146). ‘Political research
studies structures, processes and e¤ects of the generation and regenera-
tion of political meanings’ (1987: 149), and it ‘covers the entire generation
and regeneration of meaning in politics and in mixtures between politics
and what is less politics’ (1987: 149–150).
What is crucial here is that the definition of the political becomes
meaningless if it moves away either from power (never mind how em-
bedded or potential) or from institutions — not exclusively, but vitally,
politics is about formalized and legitimized hierarchies in a public context
(but cf. Neumann 2003). This definition will strike many a reader as
forced or even Schmittian (see Schmitt 1991 [1932]), but it is just meant
to describe what is typically political, not to delineate the field. As worth-
while, important, and right as interdisciplinarity and the dissolution of
disciplinary borders and definitions generally is, the purpose of this essay
is to look at the contribution of political semiotics to the specifically po-
litical mode of inquiry, i.e., to the scholarly inquiry into the genuinely
76 W. Drechsler

political. It is therefore heuristically — but also methodologically —

valuable and valid to proceed with a narrow, even ‘traditional’ concept
of politics and political science, because it focuses the argument (which is
never more than a heuristic one, anyway). If, by doing so, we lose too
many concepts of the political that were included in the last decades,
namely, sociological and anthropological ones, and thus also narrow
down the field of political semiotics (factually at the cost of ‘French’
theory, including Greimas), then the price paid might have been too
high, but, once again, the argument — whether one agrees with it or not
— will be clearer for it, and thus, hopefully, more productive both for
those who reject it and those who would agree, let alone for those who
are in doubt.

4. Semiotics

The problem is even greater with the lack of definition of semiotics, due
to what appears to be an incessant dodging of the definition (see, for fear
of infinite regress, Sebeok 1997: 291), and the same is surely true for the
meso-field of sociosemiotics (Randviir 2004: 44–45), to which political se-
miotics belongs. Lotman’s ‘semiotics is a method of the humanities, which
is relevant to various disciplines and which is defined not by the nature of
its object but by the means of analyzing it’ (2000 [1990]: 4) really provides
no answer, and Eco’s suggestion that ‘semiotics is in principle the disci-
pline studying everything which can be used in order to lie’ (1979 [1976]:
7) is as interesting as it is in some sense very political, but it is too general
as well. This way, anything could be semiotic, and so the present essay
would have no focus. If semiotics is really communication in general,
then — as most of political science necessarily involves communication
of some sort — political semiotics becomes its own ‘zero signifier’ (cf.
Randviir 2004: 8–9)
If we go back to the acknowledged foundations of semiotics, we will of
course find Saussure (1916) and/or Peirce (1932) and then, more often
than not, somehow combine the two (cf. Eco 1979 [1976]: 14–16). Of
these, for political semiotics, the Peircian definition of a sign as ‘some-
thing which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capac-
ity’ (1932: 228 — a superfluously exact reference if there ever was one) is
superior, as this is the (even) more social model. In our context, the defi-
nition by Eco that ‘a sign is everything that, on the grounds of previously
established social convention, can be taken as something standing for
something else’ (1979 [1976]: 16) is very productive, but it is too general
still.
 Political semiotics 77

‘In light of such fluidity, the only feature that can be said to di¤erenti-
ate semiotic from other scholarly discourses is the prominence within
it of the concept of the sign’ (Steiner 1989: 47). However, semiotics is
not the study of symbols, so that perhaps we may come up with the
working hypothesis to call semiotics in its clearest form the study of —
s.v.v. — symbolic interaction, and with a focus on structure (not —
indeed, emphatically not — structuralism) and context, rather than on
the symbol in itself. Semiotics necessarily and factually focuses on a sys-
tems approach, i.e., not on the isolated symbol.

Since meaning is grasped first of all as an unanalyzed totality, one has to disentan-
gle the structures of mediation which [l]ead and allow us to justify the superficial
articulations — and eventually, at the very end, the lexical units — of its manifes-
tation. (Landowski 1984: 75)

5. Classification

So much for the political and for semiotics; but for political semiotics, the
question now is, how do the two elements relate with each other in order
to produce a new whole? To answer this, I would suggest the following
di¤erentiation of works that involve both politics and semiotics as they
do exist:

1. political statements by semioticians

2. political work based on semiotics
3. specifically political semiotics (akin to political philosophy, say)
4. semiotic theory that may be used in political analysis

While all four ideal types exist, there are of course mixtures and fusions
(although not many), and normatively — from a science-theoretical as
well as practical standpoint — they are not of the same value. Category
1, for instance, does not really qualify for political semiotics at all. Um-
berto Eco’s often brilliant political pieces (but, see Ahonen 1993b: 7), for
instance, are generally not semiotic; he occasionally uses semiotics for his
analysis, but if he dislikes Berlusconi for all kinds of (right) reasons, this
is not semiotic just because he is a semiotician.
Regarding category 2, Ahonen has said that ‘No new science of ‘‘polit-
ical semiotics’’ will ever truly arise, but the term is best applied to ‘‘polit-
ical science’’ drawing on the semiotic inspiration’ (1993b: 9). This is a
modest concept, but it includes the bulk of what can be called political
semiotics today — applied work by political scientists, more often even
78 W. Drechsler

by philologists, sociologists, and sometimes even anthropologists and psy-

chologists dealing with semiotics. There has been almost nothing in this
realm by the more senior figures of semiotics themselves, and much of
the work by non-political scientists is not genuinely political under the
perspective we use here. (Of course, this does not matter at all as the
works themselves are concerned, but it is important for categorization
and thus for the sub-field.)
Category 3 would be closest to what the concept itself seems to promise
— a genuine semiotic approach to political matters that evolves out of se-
miotic thinking but is necessarily linked to politics, in the sense of politi-
cal philosophy, which after all is not ‘political science drawing on the
philosophical inspiration’ either. We may say already that this is the rar-
est category of them all, and it is sometimes debated whether anything
like that actually even exists. The two obvious exceptions that will be pre-
sented below, one implicit and the other explicit, are in fact by scholars
who are now acknowledged as semioticians, but did not define themselves
this way.
Category 4, which like category 1 is not political semiotics proper but
can become part of it once it is applied or linked to the political, com-
prises such works as the three basic books by the ‘Three Great Men’ of
post-war semiotics (Eco 1979 [1976]; Lotman 2000 [1990]; Sebeok 1999)
— almost completely free of political references or content. (And the pic-
ture does not change very much if we consider anyone from Saussure and
Peirce via Lévi-Strauss, Morris, and Jakobson to today’s Posner, Danesi,
and Deely.) The potential, once again, is clearly there, but to realize it,
another scholarly act is necessary, and that act is political-semiotical, not
the basic work.
This leaves us, basically, with category 2, with which we will concern
ourselves for the following sections, until in ‘Neglected options,’ below,
we will actually meet some protagonists of category 3.

6. Aspects of semiotics

In order to get closer to our aim both of describing political semiotics as

it is and suggest potential further development, it may first be necessary
to deal with some key features of contemporary semiotics outside of its
definition, so as to see how it may fit with today’s (and tomorrow’s) polit-
ical science and political inquiry generally. This chapter is the most out-
siderish one and thus clearly controversial and will — as discussions have
shown — in its findings not be shared by many a semiotician; but I have
found no remedy against that.
 Political semiotics 79

7. Glottocentricity

Probably the biggest divergence between what the general public assumes
semiotics is — inasmuch as it knows anything about it at all and does not
reduce it to ‘killing monks’ — and what it really is, is between symbols,
understood in an everyday manner as visual, and language. This is di¤er-
ent from the di¤erentiation between symbols and symbolic systems as re-
ferred to above. But semiotics today strikes me as largely a linguistic, or
even philological, exercise and comparatively little concerned with signs
and symbols ‘proper’ — as even intellectuals and academics would as-
sume a ‘science of signs’ (Danesi 1999 [1994]: xi) to be. Sebeok is right
when he says that the ‘distinction which is most immediately pertinent
here . . . is the one between non-verbal signs . . . versus verbal signs . . .’;
this is in accord with Locke’s famous modern coining of the concept of
semiotics, in which he ‘does establish two points: first, that ‘‘words,’’ or
the verbal, constitute but one class of signs; but that, second, for humans,
this class is a privileged one’ (Sebeok 1999: 107).
In spite of Sebeok’s brilliant example of a ‘Kremlin watcher, in the
former Soviet Union, [who] observes the proximity of a member of the
politburo to the party secretary on May Day and surmises the member’s
current status’ (1999: 3) for (political) semiotics, the mainstream semioti-
cian will probably hasten to agree with him that ‘‘semiotics is superordi-
nate, that is, subsumes linguistics’’ (1999: 105) or, that ‘linguistics is a
structurally rather than functionally autonomous branch of semiotics,
the rest of which encompasses a wide variety of non-verbal systems of
signification and communication which, in humans, flourish side by side
with the former, related in reciprocity’ (1999: 114–115). Eco, just margin-
ally di¤erent in his semio-theoretical writings, would say here that ‘Semi-
otics aims to study the entire range of sign systems (of which verbal
language is the most important) and the various processes of communica-
tion to which these systems give rise’ (2000 [1990]: ix).
So, one of the most interesting aspects of semiotics as an academic dis-
cipline is that it fell victim — if one wants to see it that way — to the lin-
guistic, indeed glottocentric, propensity that in some sense, and in some
tradition, it was destined to overcome (cf. Zito 1984). One could also
say, of course, that this is what semiotics is, and always was, never mind
the possibility or even desirability of another focus. There are many rea-
sons for this: historical, such as the rise from linguistics (if we consider
Saussure especially); methodological, if semiotics considers, as Eco, ver-
bal language simply as its most interesting part and thus deals with it;
science-sociological, because most semioticians these days work in Mod-
ern Language departments; the now quite outdated — but in some places
80 W. Drechsler

still resilient — fad to declare everything a text, a very semiotic habit

(Randviir 2004: 7, 19–20), and the accompanying use of ‘‘reading’’ sim-
ply in place of ‘interpretation’ generally, etc. And it should be underlined
that, of course, language and texts are in fact what the analysis of human
interaction, and certainly of the political, should be concerned with —
what is implied by the term glottocentricity, however, is an emphasis
that has turned into an almost exclusive focus, at the neglect of other
possibilities. And what seems clear is that the concern with language has
driven out, or at least seriously diminished, the interest in visual signs in
semiotics proper, as well as in political semiotics.

8. Ideology
It may well be debated whether ‘all sign systems are ideological by na-
ture’ (Randviir 2004: 44) because, while they of course are reduced mod-
els of reality, they would only become ideological if one develops a belief
in them because one cannot deal with the complexities of one’s world
(Kaiser 1984: 27–28). There are two aspects of the ideology of semiotics
that are actually not compatible, but they are combined in many a field
regardless: Marxism and postmodernism (including the latter’s various in-
carnations) (Ahonen 1993b: 4). Because both have more to do with atti-
tude, habitus, and historical conditions within the respective Lebenswelt
of ‘Western’ semioticians than with anything else, however, i.e., with the
attitude of protest against a perceived normalcy, both are extremely com-
patible in spite of their mutual exclusivity. Of course, politics is a matter
of context; the head of Marx symbolizes either the regime or the rebels,
according to whether one is in Havana or Coral Gables — or whether
one is Lotman, Sebeok, or Eco. In addition, here, semiotics might be split
regionally — it is probably not wrong to say that ‘in the United States,
semiotics has retained its formal quality, and has been only slightly af-
fected by the postwar Marxism that politicized semiotics in England and
informed Barthes’s Mythologies’ (MacFarquhar 1994: 79).2
Historically, semiotics of this latter kind and structuralism both
emerged in Paris, and at the same time (Eco 2000 [1990]: vii; see ix; Aho-
nen 1993b: 1; Landowski 1984: 70). And the French way of semiotics
links the field very closely to the ’68 movement. That does not mean that
anything in semiotics is Marxist at all, but it slid into an épater le bour-
geois framework following Barthes with his ‘essential enemy (the bour-
geois norm)’ (2000 [1957]: 9; see Lemert 1993: 31; cf. still Ahonen 1987:
152–154), leaving open to doubt how bourgeois (if, then, this is a bad
thing at all, and if almost all semiotic thinkers are not heavily bourgeois
themselves) such an attitude is in the end.3
 Political semiotics 81

Semiotics and related disciplines have continued to attract radical spirits, includ-
ing a minority of Marxists who have relinquished their doctrine but preserved
some of their cherished memories of their revolutionary days through the ultra-
radical nature of such orientations as ‘post-structuralism’ and the likes. (Ahonen
1993b: 5)

Semiotics’ link with structuralism and post-structuralism (Ahonen 1993b:

3) guarantees its existence within the penumbra of postmodernism, al-
though even a friendly definition of postmodernism shows that this
cannot be a hospitable environment for semiotics, which is about commu-
nication and perception but in itself scientistic and built on a 1900s view
of ‘reality’ (which is not ‘wrong,’ it’s just not postmodern). Postmodern-
ism, it should be mentioned, likewise has a reactionary, conservative po-
tential, more extremely apparent today but less so a decade or two ago. If
nothing matters and if there are no values, then economics does not mat-
ter either — the ultimate anti-Marxism, but also anti-development think-
ing; a kind of reverse Whorf-Sapir hypothesis that seems to imply that
if we can change the use of words, reality will follow. (Sometimes this is
the case; for economic matters of genuine concern, it surely falls far too
short.) Therefore, postmodernism, such as it was, and actually all Critical
Theory, strongly enforced the powers that be in that it removed all possi-
bilities to challenge them (cf. Drechsler 1997: 329–331).
But of course, as long as one stays in academe, this does not matter;
attitude does. The ‘semiotician that went to the market’ (MacFarquhar
1994) has long been back, i.e., semiotics is probably one of the most
purely academic, indeed self-focused academic disciplines today. This
means that the result of semiotic research does not have to be policy-
relevant and a ‘reality check’ is missing even more. The act of analysis in
semiotics is by and large su‰cient, nothing follows or has to follow; this
means that certain questions do not even pose themselves, and nothing
becomes relevant except the approval of one’s peers.

9. Political science as a discipline

So, how does political science as the ‘host’ discipline for political semiot-
ics look? First of all, within political science, it is fair to say that most
members of the scientific community cannot even say what semiotics is,
and those who can, are not really familiar with it. It is not a sub-discipline
at all, and the main professional organizations, APSA (American Politi-
cal Science Association), IPSA (International Political Science Associa-
tion), etc., do not have sub-sections on semiotics.
82 W. Drechsler

Political science overall is heavily scientistic today, so there would

potentially be no formal problem with semiotics’ scientism; to the con-
trary. But just a glance at the mainstream handbooks about the ‘state of
the discipline’ (see Goodin and Klingemann 1998 [1996], useful critique
by Schmitter 2002; and Katznelson and Milner 2002) shows both the
scientistic, pseudo-empirical bent and the virtual freedom of anything
semiotic. Perhaps it is the vagueness of the concept, and the abundance
of other possibilities to analyze speech, communication, etc., that is hin-
dering the development of a serious sub-field of political semiotics.
Because, for example, glottocentricity is particularly strong in political
science, the ‘tradition of political science accentuates politics written
down in texts’ (Ahonen 1991a: 225). This has been very nicely analyzed
by Ahonen (1991b: 264–266).

The expansion of the concepts of ‘text’ and ‘discourse’ to politics with a nonverbal
content form is artificial, and there are established methods and techniques for the
analysis of discourse and texts and few to tackle nonverbal politics. The analysis
of the generation of meaning in politics remains, however, deficient if the research
neglects the nonverbal substance as a bearer of politics, although at the present
stage of ignorance the most that can be made are suggestions . . . it remains di‰-
cult to tackle these political, politicized and politicizing substances systematically
from the point of view of the generation of meanings, because the substances are
so numerous and mutually related in such a complicated manner. (Ahonen 1991b:
264, 265)

‘The concentration on the verbal level . . . has led to a neglect of such non-
verbal dimensions as the visual and the auditive aspects of structures, pro-
cesses and their e¤ects’ (Ahonen 1987: 152). So, what we have here is a
shared epistemology that has nonetheless not led to a fusion of research
programs within an ‘inter-disciplinary’ sub-field.

10. The output of political semiotics

At this point, one should take a look at what can be properly termed po-
litical semiotics, i.e., the respective works as they exist today (category 2).
There are not many of them — as Ahonen already said, ‘We have Peirce,
Saussure, Cassirer . . . Sebeok . . . Lotman and Eco, for instance, but we
have too few studies of politics and related topics inspired by only one of
these authors at a time let alone by only one of the many works of each
author’ (1993b: 23). What is interesting as well, once again, is that very
little that can be styled political semiotics does make direct reference
 Political semiotics 83

to ‘classic’ semiotic discourse (i.e., Saussure / Peirce or Eco / Lotman /

Sebeok); references to Barthes and Foucault, of course, much less Lèvi-
Strauss and Greimas, are common.
Apart from the French sociological and anthropological tradition,
there are two main clusters of political semiotics: an early American one,
with a tendency towards symbolics, and a more recent Scandinavian one,
with a tendency towards linguistic analysis. As regards the former, there
have been plenty of post-War (American) political science studies of sym-
bols and politics, from the works by Harold Laswell (an excellent survey
in Dittmer 1997: 559) via Thurman Arnold (1935) to Murray Edelman’s
work (1964, 1971, 1977). All are symbolical, none is semiotic, as there
is little attention to structure and context — but especially in Laswell
(1990 [1931]; Laswell and Leites 1949) we already find the crucial focus
on ‘governing with signs.’
In some sense, the landmark of this kind of political semiotics is Lowell
Dittmer’s 1977 essay, which aims at a synthesized form of political cul-
ture and in order to do so, utilizes semiotics, seeing political symbolism
as the core of political culture specifically (1977: 557, 558, 562, 582). Low-
ell sees symbols — quite correctly — as not entirely dependent on context
(1977: 557), which however places him just out of the semiotic main-
stream. He, too, shuns definition — here of ‘symbol’ (1977: 558). Still,
even though there was little impact, a model of political culture based on
semiotics, based on much Barthes and Lévi-Strauss, has been developed
(1977: 566–581).
The most important contribution to political semiotics of this kind
in recent years has probably been the combination of some semiotics,
identity formation, and classic political science by Ulf Hedetoft, largely
based on his massive, cumulative Danish PhD thesis, ‘Signs of nations
— Studies in the political semiotics of self and other in contemporary
European nationalism’ (1995). The Hedetoft approach has become some-
what paradigmatic (see Hedetoft 1998; also Marks, Wilson, and Ray
2002). Mainstream in focus and not overly concerned with semiotic
theory, Hedetoft’s thesis — or better, chapters 1–4 (1995: 121–148),
based on a Danish essay from 1991 — provides a framework and is,
unusually for a thesis, quite even-handed and balanced regarding several
of the theoretical issues. It semiotically connects political symbolism in
the fields of identity, symbols, and culture (1995: 121) and assesses the
specific nature of symbols in a comprehensive manner (1995: 121–122).
Semi-independence, long use, shifting definability, creation versus reality,
and context-dependency (1995: 122–124) are well-recognized and the
semiotics-specific focus on the system (1995: 122) is well done. Case
studies (such as the ‘wrong sign’ of the European passport [1995: 125–
84 W. Drechsler

127] and the excellent treaty on singing national songs [1995: 140–142])
are equally good. Hedetoft’s main focus is not semiotics, but rather the
EU; that the chapter also serves as a theory paradigm seems almost
unintentional. The result, in any case, is perhaps the best analysis of EU
symbolism.
What is problematic is Hedetoft’s insistence on political symbols — not
symbols of politics, as he defines it (1995: 142) — as loci of resistance
against the government and more of the people; the use of symbolism by
the government he sees as an aberration and cites ‘fascism’ as an excep-
tion: ‘political symbols do not primarily organize emotions for the ‘‘su-
perstructure’’ of politics and state (fascism is here an exception) — often,
indeed, it rallies loyalties against the current encumbents of power for a
variety of reasons’ (1995: 143). This is just performatively stated, not jus-
tified; it is also plain wrong, not only if we look at other totalitarian (Rus-
sian, in various forms) and populist regimes. Perhaps it shows what has
been called ‘the view from the Stockholm suburbs’, i.e., a generally Scan-
dinavian propensity to see the conflict-free situation of a basically happy,
peaceful, just, and wealthy democracy as ‘normalcy’ — and here, we may
not only think of Foucault, but also of Carl Schmitt (1991 [1932]), let
alone remember the state of state and politics on earth during all of his-
tory and even during the times we live in.4
How important the non-verbal in politics is can be seen from Martha
Davis’ brilliant analysis, ‘Presidential body politics: Movement analysis
of debates and press conferences’ (1995). And, indeed, ‘It would seem un-
necessary to make a case for the importance of the subject’ (1995: 207).
Highly interesting here is the di¤erence between intentional and uninten-
tional messages, and the possibility of having both, and di¤erent levels of
interpretation (in the end a hermeneutic aspect, less a semiotic one strictly
speaking).5 However, had Davis’ essay not appeared in the present jour-
nal, one would think the essay to be political psychology; there is no se-
miotic theory whatsoever in it. Still, the importance of such research, and
a fortiori of well-done research like that, becomes very apparent.
Penultimately, there are some other very good single examples of
micro-studies in the semiotic context — for instance of an explicitly sym-
bolical campaign, the Singaporean courtesy campaign — which integrate
linguistic and visual components (Lazar 2003 — though the essay ‘un-
masks’ something that is already explicit). In this study, the softness of
symbolic interaction is emphasized, but Foucault’s criticism of this is re-
membered (2003: 219–220). There is Ahonen’s own political-semiotical
analysis of photography (1991a), exercised through several images of
Finnish President Urho Kekkonen, a very Barthesian example of how
things could be done.
 Political semiotics 85

Other examples are various studies of national symbolics (such as Ar-

vidsson and Blomqvist 1987). Most of them tend not to be semiotic, but
some are, and what perhaps amounts to the most successful example of
this kind of political semiotics, because there is some — if very little —
interaction and a critical debate within the present journal, is ‘vexillol-
ogy,’ the study of — mostly national — flags. A basic essay by Sasha
Weitman (1973) was followed by a critique (Pasch 1975) and a synthesiz-
ing case study of the Third Reich flag (Hill 1982), all interesting and of
particular quality. It is the latter combination that is particularly valid:

Perhaps we cannot be convinced that white is the universal color of purity and
hope or that a star is an emblem of aggression, but if the nation-state that prints
tourist brochures codes these items in such a way, it would seem well to explore
the patterns in these arbitrary assignments as Weitman has done, while subse-
quently doing some historical digging in Pasch’s meticulous manner so as not to
be trapped into naı̈ve conclusions. The most exciting aspect of these two articles is
their introduction of semiotics into the world political scene. (Hill 1982: 135)

Unfortunately, the follow-up to this kind of research seems to be meager.

11. The is and the ought

So, on the one hand, even the scientistic approach of semiotics does not
seem to have captured political science’s attention. On the other hand,
structuralism, post-structuralism, and post-modernism have almost faded
away; hence the decided loss of fashionability (and clearly, this is the
most important criterion for academic success) of the discipline, area, or
field. But what there is is in itself viable: a biotope, an ecological niche
maybe, but it does exist. There is still a very considerable output of semi-
otic and semi-semiotic literature. And as long as there are some academic
appointments, journals, book series, conferences, etc., a field can flourish,
but it becomes dependent on that niche. I would say that political semiot-
ics is now basically functioning within this context, yet it does not have a
larger appeal beyond it. It is very likely that there will always be a su‰-
cient number of semiotics venues, and some milder political science ones,
within which such research can flourish — and there are promising and
even good examples for this type of work, from Hedetoft’s e¤orts via
body language analysis to vexillogy.
And if, as Odo Marquard says, ‘science is what recognized scientists
recognize as science’ (1985: 199), then there is no problem. Thus, semiot-
ics does not really need to rethink its direction, because everything is just
86 W. Drechsler

fine. Yet, there are reasons why it may be said to be a pity that semiotics
has so oriented itself (i.e., only so) and that political semiotics looks the
way it does — if, then, this analysis is correct.
If semiotics is just a kind of linguistics — even claiming universal para-
digmaticity but, in the end, not delivering — then it is not particularly in-
teresting, and all the more so as far as political semiotics is concerned.
The reason is that there are many ways, methods, and disciplines dealing
with linguistic aspects, and many of them may be much more interesting
and important, and fashionable, for political science — from Chomsky
via hermeneutics to the reemerged study of political rhetoric — than
semiotics is these days. What is always interesting is what is not done
otherwise. And linguistic, language, and discourse analysis models are a
dime a dozen. If we agree with the proposition that semiotics covers all
communication, then semiotics pertaining to language is prima facie the
least and not the most interesting one for political semiotics, because too
many other schools and tools can cover that area already.
Second, the potential for political science and related fields, indeed for
any political analysis, is absolutely immense, as our world, by and large,
is moving strongly from verbal to visual interaction — held up only by e-
mail, chat, and SMS. As Hedetoft rightly concedes, ‘‘the life of the citizen
in modern nation-states is pervasively imaginary, su¤used with images on
all levels, to the extent that image and reality interweave and sometimes
fuse: ‘virtual reality’ (1995: 143; cf. Ahonen 1987: 152). As has been said,
the current youth generation (born between 1979 and 1990) is basically
one whose ‘perception of reality is aesthetic’ and which ‘communicates
via symbols, not via concepts, discourses, or programs’ — one of the for-
tes of Pope John Paul II, who ‘emphasized symbolicism’ and ‘could make
himself understood via symbols, even when his voice had become almost
inaudible.’1 We can observe how strongly the truly uphill battles of the
most recent democratic revolutions — in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, or
Kyrgyzstan — depended on images to hold the groups together and sus-
tain the protest.6 So, as important as language and its analysis were, are
and will remain, it is really vital to cover the area — which semiotics, es-
pecially in its form of political semiotics, decidedly has the potential to do
but, by and large and overall, does not.

12. Neglected options

In my opinion, three figures and their approaches are excellent examples

of what specifically political semiotics, i.e., category 3, could be. Two of
the most interesting classics of semiotics, from the era between Saussure /
 Political semiotics 87

Peirce and Eco / Lotman / Sebeok, are also among the most interesting
ones for political semiotics. They are also interesting because neither of
them would have defined himself as a semiotician, and because the two
between them may be said to form the two poles of an ellipse which
covers today’s semiotic attitude: Ernst Cassirer, the humanistic philoso-
pher, and Johann J. v. Uexküll, the theoretical biologist. To this, I would
add C. G. Jung’s theory of the Archetypes, because it refocuses on a spe-
cial kind of symbolic interaction that has been comparatively ignored by
semiotics. The task of this segment, obviously, is not to explicate the po-
litical semiotics based on those three men, but rather to hint at the respec-
tive potential.

13. Ernst Cassirer

What makes Ernst Cassirer interesting for political semiotics is that, be-
cause of his specific kind of Neo-Kantianism, we are likely to find a com-
bination of ethical / moral, and that may mean political, and epistemo-
logical and even aesthetical approaches. And, indeed, in his last great
work, the one that is the most semiotic and that has established his repu-
tation in the field, An Essay on Man (1944), through Cassirer’s emphasis
on symbolic interaction, he develops the possibility to conceive of uto-
pias, which stand here for a general possibility of further human societal
development, on the basis of semiotics (1944: 60–62). ‘It is characteristic
of all the great ethical philosophers that they do not think in terms of
mere actuality’ (1944: 60). We cannot advance if we do not think in uto-
pias. Cassirer’s work on utopias recognizes very well that they are not
meant to be ‘realized’ (1944: 61; see Drechsler 2005: 636). His primary ex-
ample is Plato (Cassirer 1944: 61), whose heuristic utopia, the Politeia, is
indeed a symbolic construct understood in the Cassirer sense (Drechsler
2003: 216–218; 2005: 636). ‘Rousseau’s description of the state of nature
. . . was a symbolic construct designed to portray and to bring into being a
new future for mankind. In the history of civilization the Utopia has al-
ways fulfilled this task’ (Cassirer 1944: 62). As Cassirer points out,

The great mission of the Utopia is to make room for the possible as opposed to a
passive acquiescence in the present actual state of a¤airs. It is symbolic thought
which overcomes the natural inertia of man and endows him with a new ability,
the ability constantly to reshape his human universe. (1944: 62)

In other words, if politics is partially about the ought towards which the
is — in public arrangement — has to be moved, then the ought (which is
88 W. Drechsler

the utopia) can only be conceived as a product of symbolic thinking and

indeed interaction. Cassirer did not fully develop this thought, but pre-
cisely to follow it carefully, in the context of his work, would be the chal-
lenge to this kind of genuine political semiotics.7

14. C. G. Jung

Perhaps the central message of Eco’s first two novels (1980, 1988), his
best and most semiotic ones, is that existing, ‘accidental’ signs are made
into reality by a form of construction, in which they are ‘hijacked’ by peo-
ple who master them. This is an illustration of his statement that

semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is every-
thing which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else. This
something does not have to exist or to actually be somewhere at the moment in
which a sign stands in for it. (Eco 1979 [1976]: 6–7)

Considering the semiotic attention to construction, communication, and

decoding, it is surprising that semiotics generally, and political semiotics
certainly — with the exception of Hedetoft and his followers, who how-
ever do not get to the heart of the matter — have often neglected this phe-
nomenon, i.e., signs that are not meant and emitted but rather taken in
both senses — taken as signs and taken by someone. In extenso, a further
question that would be most interesting to propose in the political con-
text, one that goes against the grain of semiotics and its structural pro-
pensity, but that clearly adds a key dimension to the entire discourse, is
then to ask whether those signs might indeed mean something in spite of
their not being emitted — i.e., that they truly signify something as such
and per se.
Thinking along these lines leads quite directly to Jungian psychology,
especially to the Archetypes. (Not as the only possibility of course, but
this is the most obvious.) It is well-known that Jung was notoriously
imprecise regarding the meaning of Archetypes: the acultural claim to
universality — ‘ubiquitous in space and time’ and ‘a unit in which all in-
dividual souls are identical with each other’ (Jung 1973: 136) — is rather
o¤-putting. One may, however, say that there is no reason to limit the Ar-
chetypes to this understanding. Once we look at Archetypes as generally
valid, but not always and everywhere valid; as culturally conditioned but
not created; then we may get a sense of their importance in the context of
political semiotics. (And, as an aside, because it is also important for
semiotics: any theory becomes stronger if it relinquishes the claim to uni-
 Political semiotics 89

versality, which really is a form of physics envy; if something in the hu-

man realm is just true more often than not, that is quite su‰cient.)
Jung himself, as is well known, used the Archetype method to analyze
politics, most famously, or at least in our context most impressively, per-
haps, in his 1936 essay, ‘Wotan,’ an interpretation of emerging Nazism in
Germany (1964 [1936]: see esp. pars. 389–391, 395). Here, the relativiza-
tion of the context is particularly obvious: ‘When it is quiescent, one is no
more aware of the archetype Wotan than of a latent epilepsy’ (1964
[1936]: par. 391).

It was not in Wotan’s nature to linger on and show signs of old age. He simply
disappeared when the times turned against him, and remained invisible for more
than a thousand years, working anonymously and indirectly. Archetypes are like
riverbeds which dry up when the water deserts them, but which it can find again at
any time. (Jung 1964 [1936]: par. 395)

There have been many Jungian investigations of politics or political fields,

such as in organization theory, and focusing on its usability (see, e.g., Ja-
cobson 1993). But it seems that no connection has been made to (politi-
cal) semiotics. It is obvious, however, that the archetypal quality of sym-
bols and the system they form will be the strongest ways to communicate
politically if mastered; paired with the notion of charisma, they may re-
sult in the most important political qualities for the take-over of any
unit, because if a politician can access the archetypes, through the person
or actively, then he or she should indeed be able to unleash a powerful
potential.

15. Johann J. v. Uexküll

Finally, we arrive at Johann Jakob v. Uexküll, certainly one of the re-

cently most prominent representatives of semiotics and generally ac-
claimed as the father of the ever-expanding field of biosemiotics, placed
into this position largely by Sebeok. He may be the one bridge towards
the sciences — and still away from linguistics — for semiotics; he may
be the one rescue from ‘physics envy’ that even establishes its own biol-
ogy. And Uexküll has actually produced works in all four categories.
However, this also presents some serious problems — though most of
them have not yet become apparent — because within the politically-
correct academic established post-Left, there are certain taboos that can-
not be broken or, if they can be broken, are so only with great di‰culty.
It seems (this has not been researched and discussed well enough either in
Uexküll or in semiotics circles) that Uexküll breaks them.
90 W. Drechsler

Uexküll’s theoretical use for political semiotics is perhaps best realized

in category 4, in the most ‘neutral’ of the Uexküll books, his magnifi-
cent autobiography, Niegeschaute Welten (1936). Here, the famous half-
spheres of Umwelt (politically 1933 [1920]: 39–43), with their much-
investigated parallelism to Lotman’s semiosphere (Lotman 2000 [1990]:
129), might be most promising, although attempts to use his more biolog-
ical works in the sphere of political semiotics are probably more obvious
for many semioticians (cf. only Mandoki 2004: 97). The question, how-
ever, is whether one should approach Uexküll in any political category,
and ironically, the reason is that Uexküll is the main contender for cate-
gory 3, i.e., for a work that really promulgates a political semiotics in the
sense of political philosophy.
This is his Staatsbiologie (1933 [1920]), read best in parallel with the re-
spective segments in his popular work Biologische Briefe an eine Dame
originally from the same year (1920). Here, Uexküll establishes a highly
original, comprehensive model of the state, based on its economic func-
tions, that arises from his concept of Umwelt and his bio-theoretical views
in an integrated way. (Of course, this is not a textual, but a body meta-
phor, and thus non-semiotic to some; see Randviir 2004: 13.) As a result,
he calls for a monarchy as the only way to organize a state (1933 [1920]:
29–30), and actually one that is not linked to a majority of any sort (1933
[1920]: 36, 67; 1920: 105). Moreover, as with all state biologies, the hu-
man person is reduced to qualified animal status, rather than seeing in
the overcoming of that status the specifically human and thus specifically
political. There are iron laws (1920: 104). And if one likens the state to a
body, one almost by necessity will start talking about parasites (1933
[1920]: 71–76).
Closer to contemporary politics (and so category 1), but not entirely,
Uexküll sees the press as a pathology (1933 [1920]: 60–61) and displays
a very aggressive hostility towards the Weimar Republic (1920: 129).
Yet, in the Staatsbiologie, there is only one — of course positive — refer-
ence to Hitler (1933 [1920]: 71), and that one seems rather second-
thought. Additionally, this work is, for its time, not anti-semitic at all
(where such statements would be expected, they are completely missing;
1933 [1920]: 73–76); it was also published in an (Army) press that served
partially as almost an ‘inner emigration’ publisher, the Hamburger Ver-
lagsanstalt.
Still, the Staatsbiologie is perhaps as harsh a model of othering as one
could possibly come up with; one that is all the more severe because it is
not about perception but about reality and necessity. It seems that, with
the — in many ways very deserved — renaissance of Uexküll going on,
some serious investigation in this regard is called for. On the other hand,
 Political semiotics 91

many ‘left’ thinkers have been very ready to forgive Heidegger his Nazi
a‰liations because his thought was so helpful for them; the same is true
for Carl Schmitt, whose anti-democratic views were very productive for
the ‘left’ as well. With Heidegger, even arguments that his Nazism was
not incidental and careerist but central to his thought8 have not really
been able to dislocate him from his position of fascination and interest.
So, Uexküll might just be interesting enough that he, too, will be ‘for-
given.’ This will be easier because — more like Ernst Jünger rather than
Heidegger and also Schmitt — Uexküll was, as it seems, no real Nazi, but
rather a right-wing anti-democrat (cf. Drechsler 2000b: 89–94; Allik and
Drechsler 1999).
Still, this may make easier the adoption of his biological work and even
the Niegeschaute Welten (category 4) for semiotic theory, including polit-
ical semiotics, but it may be doubted whether the specifically political se-
miotics of the Staatsbiologie will ever, or at least any time soon, be taken
up, and all the better. And yet, the Staatsbiologie remains, if I see cor-
rectly, the one systematic monograph in specifically political semiotics
that we do have. A bad example, perhaps, but an example — and thus
proof that such a thing is possible — nonetheless.

16. Coda: The dog in the night-time

Thus, whether Cassirer, Jung, and Uexküll are semiotic thinkers whom
one should follow in their specific line of thinking in political semiotics
remains a completely open question. What they demonstrate is that such
genuine political semiotics is, in fact, possible and has been done. On a
more modest yet still vital level, the political is not understood as some-
thing that can only be understood semiotically, but also, so that political
semiotics becomes an also non-glottocentric mode, among others, of in-
quiry into the political. This may not be necessary for semiotics, nor for
those who practice political semiotics today. But it is, if not necessary,
then certainly highly desirable for political science, or for anyone con-
cerned with political analysis. Political science as it exists, especially in
its glottocentric fixation — which has a good reason, just as it has in se-
miotics, but which is particularly harmful in this very combination —
needs a systematic, scholarly, theoretically rich and all-encompassing
approach to the non-glottocentric aspects of its field. Political semiotics
can accomplish this, as long as semiotics is not too exclusively glottocen-
tric itself.
This is all the more so in the twenty-first century with its visualizing
propensity, but it is true generally. The — arguable — failures of political
92 W. Drechsler

scientists to, yes, understand the success of figures such as Ronald Rea-
gan, or, to take a by now more familiar and impressive example, Evita
Perón (with her multi-layeredness from the historical person, the persona
in history in Argentina, and the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical [Lloyd
Webber 1978], to the latter’s movie version starring Madonna [Parker
1996]), is arguably due to glottocentric analysis which, ironically enough,
clouds access to what these two people wanted, stood for, and actually
achieved in terms of genuine policy, and what ‘the people’ found in her.
Evita is also a perfect example of the mastering of the Archetype (con-
sciously, semi-consciously, unconsciously — no matter) as a way to polit-
ical success that is, importantly, not just show but also the fulfillment of
genuine desires.
Scholarship, in its impetus, may take two forms of promoting its find-
ings: to convince everyone that the result is right, or to o¤er a possible
explanation to those who share the view that there is a problem. As re-
gards political semiotics, it could be claimed that the glottocentricity of
semiotics — if it exists — is actually ‘okay’ or even necessary and inevita-
ble for political semiotics because political science, in spite of all its
attempts at (quasi-) self-mathematization, shares this very feature (cf.
Drechsler 2000a). In addition, all those who do political semiotics today
are, by definition, doing so already, so obviously what they are doing is
right if Marquard is right. And finally, from political science there may
come the claim that all is well and that there are actually no lacunae in
research and understanding due to its glottocentricity — if it exists. But
if one agrees that there is such a deficit as described, and for the reasons
presented, then the argument that a non-glottocentric political semiotics
is potentially the best remedy for it seems, I think, rather credible indeed.

Notes

* I thank Anti Randviir first of all, as it was he who persuaded me to write this essay —
even if he probably did not imagine what shape it would actually take. He also provided
important comments and support throughout the gestation process. Likewise, I would
like to thank Rainer Kattel, Eugenie Samier, and especially Pertti Ahonen, whose work
this continues — if on another level — for their thoughtful and thorough comments,
many of which I incorporated. My research assistant, Benjamin Merkler, could not
have been better, and the work would hardly have been completed in time without
him. I am grateful to Ingbert Edenhofer for his careful reading of the text and many
suggestions for improvement, and to the ETF (Grant 5780) and Tallinn University of
Technology for research support.
1. Mario Kaiser, Ansbert Kneip, and Alexander Smoltzyck, ‘Das Kreuz mit den Deut-
schen,’ Der Spiegel 33, 2005, 136–151.
 Political semiotics 93

2. Epistemologically, what is interesting in our context is the location within science and
scholarship. Ahonen is right in seeing the historical ambiguity of semiotics between sci-
entism and humanistic attitudes, neither doing su‰ciently well to convince the critics. At
one point, semiotics may indeed subjectively have been seen to provide ‘useful weapons
in the struggle both against positivism and Marxism, yet without abandoning a funda-
mentally critical attitude towards culture, society, knowledge, and methods and tech-
niques of knowing and doing’ (Ahonen 1993b: 3; cf. 1991b: 270).
However, from today’s perspective, it is the scientism that strikes one; the search for a
world formula-like explanatory paradigm. Criticism of semiotics as being too soft (Aho-
nen 1993b: 6) is really not heard anymore. Indeed, ‘semioticians . . . have been exposed
to accusations for new kinds of ‘‘scientism’’ ’ (Ahonen 1993b: 8, 22–23) with some rea-
son. Semiotics’ technical aura, its methodological, value-free make-up, all the technical
talk about structures lends itself to that.
The ‘reality connex,’ i.e., the question of whether there is an independent world out-
side of our conceptualization or cognition, does not pose too much of a problem in our
context, because it is elegantly evaded. This has sociological and epistemological rea-
sons. As far as epistemology proper is concerned, the key is Sebeok’s claim that ‘semiot-
ics is not about the ‘‘real’’ world at all, but about complementary or alternative actual
models of it . . . semiotics never reveals what the world is, but circumscribes what we can
know about it; in other words, what a semiotic model depicts is not ‘‘reality’’ as such,
but nature as unveiled by our method of questioning’ (1999 [1994]: 4; see 1997: 291–
292). (Naturally, any perception of the world becomes part of the world — nowhere
more so than in politics.) In Sebeok and others, we then find a focus on studying
‘whether or not reality can exist independently of the signifying codes that human beings
create to represent and think about it’ (Danesi 1999 [1994]: xii). And as Landowski puts
it, ‘the semiotic approach allows us to avoid this metaphysical option: in order to
explain the existence of ‘‘sense,’’ (whatever its content), nothing needs be taken into ac-
count other than the human competence to produce such sense’ (1984: 71, see 72). But if
we look at communication only and not at its object, semiotics of this kind is well-
placed to handle the problem, and if we insist on a reality independent of our perception
of it, we may simply ignore that debate entirely.
3. While semiotics is sometimes credited with displacing the centered white, Europeanized,
heterosexual male (Lemert 1993), by and large, this is still an accurate description of the
average semiotician. Additionally, the Eurocentricity of semiotics becomes particularly
apparent once one realizes that the abundance of ‘non-European’ sign systems (Chinese
and Islamic models come to mind, the latter often Aristotelian in scope, so that there is
even a bridge) has virtually been missing in semiotic discourse until today.
4. In this context, one might also mention a school that focuses on language and linguis-
tics, with a typical attention — derived from various ancestors — on what I would call
‘de-othering,’ i.e., the creation of a framework that complains about a construction of
the ‘other’ and thus tries to relinquish this (e.g., Said 1979). Works of this type are often
counted as political semiotics, although there is extremely little semiotics there, easily
gathered from the list of references. The edited volume by Riggins (1997a) is an excellent
example — this is really critical discourse analysis, concerned with ‘the usefulness of lin-
guistic perspectives and concepts in advancing the study of prejudice and social inequal-
ity in modern multicultural societies’ (Riggins 1997b: 1). But Riggins is not to blame for
the un-semiotic approach; what is wrong is to call this semiotics, which he himself —
and his colleagues in such enterprises — rarely do. Still, there are some excellent exam-
ples on the borderline of heavily textual-linguistic semiotics, such as an essay on other-
ing in Parliamentary speech (Van Dijk 1997) and especially Conklin’s superb study of
94 W. Drechsler

the dominance of the legal discourse in legal matters as a power and defining discourse
(1997).
5. As an example, the one televised debate between the candidates for German Chancellor,
Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel (September 4, 2005), is perfect, because while
Merkel clearly won by argument and Schröder annoyed all but his most loyal
supporters by his macho, paternalist, dismissive rhetoric and body language, a surpris-
ing majority of the audience actually thought that he had won — and so, of course, he
had.
6. Renate Flottau et al., ‘Die Revolutions-GmbH,’ Der Spiegel 46, 2005, 178–199.
7. One might add here another important point that Cassirer can bring to political semiot-
ics, and that is his brilliant, originally Kantian point in which he falsifies the scientistic
view that ‘reality is the same as determinedness,’ and that ‘determinedness only exists in
those sciences which determine events or things in space and time’ (Kautz 1990: 209; see
Cassirer 1939: 59). First, as Cassirer demonstrates in his critique of the ‘first emotivist’
Axel Hägerström — in the very useful paraphrase by Timothy Kautz — ‘determined-
ness is the result of an interaction, or a sum of interactions, which come into existence,
or are kept, in a matrix of judgment. ‘‘Determinedness’’ thus is precisely not a simple
aggregate or a simple, given intuition but rather the result of (symbolic) negotiations
[Vermittlungen]’ (Kautz 1990: 213). And ‘determinedness never derives solely from the
‘‘things’’ in space and time, just because they are in space and time: an apparent objec-
tivity in the imagined placement of every thing in a space-time system of coordinates is
not a su‰cient description of the world because it is precisely the kind of relation that
remains undetermined’ (1990: 214). In other (simplifying) words, things are not deter-
mined in time and space, but at the very least, someone must determine them there —
and, the world being what it is, tell at least some other person that this is so. (Note taken
from Drechsler 2000a: 248–249.)
8. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, ‘Der Holzweggenosse. Völkisch und ragend: Heideggers Nähe
zum Nationalsozialismus,’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 31, 2005.

References

Ahonen, Pertti (1987). Semiotics of politics and political research. Semiotische Berichte 11
(2), 143–157.
Ahonen, Pertti (1990a). Meaning, subject, and reality as semiotic foci of political research.
In Semiotic Web 1989, T. A. Sebeok and J. Umiker-Sebeok (eds.), 399–446. Berlin/New
York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ahonen, Pertti (1990b). Semiotics of politics. In Semiotics in the Individual Sciences, vol. 2,
Walter A. Koch (ed.), 583–618. Bochum: Brockmeyer.
Ahonen, Pertti (1991a). The photographic image: A study of political culture. Semiotica 87
(3/4), 225–238.
Ahonen, Pertti (1991b). Politics and generation of meanings: The contribution of the semiot-
ics of Greimas. In Theoretische und praktische Relevanz der Semiotik, Je¤ Bernard et al.
(eds.), 243–279. Vienna: ISSS.
Ahonen, Pertti (ed.). (1993a). Tracing the Semiotic Boundaries of Politics. Berlin/New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Ahonen, Pertti (1993b). A Copernican revolution in political research: Reflections on the
rainbow of essays in this book. In Tracing the Semiotic Boundaries of Politics, P. Ahonen
(ed.), 1–27. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
 Political semiotics 95

Allik. Jüri and Drechsler, Wolfgang (1999). German holism revisited: Really? A review of
Anne Harrington’s ‘Reenchanted Science.’ Culture and Psychology 5 (2), 239–247.
Arnold, Thurman W. (1935). The Symbols of Government. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Arvidsson, Claes and Blomqvist, Lars Erik (eds.) (1987). Symbols of Power: The Esthetics of
Political Legitimation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Stockholm: Almqvist and
Wiksell International.
Barthes, Roland (2000 [1957]). Mythologies. London: Vintage.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press.
Cassirer, Ernst (1939). Axel Hägerström. Eine Studie zur schwedischen Philosophie der
Gegenwart. Göteborgs Högskolas Ärsskrift 45 (1), 1–120.
Cassirer, Ernst (1944). An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Conklin, William E. (1997). The assimilation of the other within a master discourse. In The
Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse, S. R. Riggins (ed.), 226–248.
Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Danesi, Marcel (1999 [1994]). Introduction: Thomas A. Sebeok and the science of signs. In
Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics by T. A. Sebeok, xi–xviii. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Davis, Martha (1995). Presidential body politics: Movement analysis of debates and press
conferences. Semiotica 106, 205–244.
Dittmer, Lowell (1977). Political culture and political symbolism. World Politics 29 (4),
552–583.
Drechsler, Wolfgang (1997). State socialism and political philosophy. In Essays on Social
Security and Taxation: Gustav von Schmoller and Adolph Wagner Reconsidered, Jürgen
G. Backhaus (ed.), 319–339. Marburg: Metropolis.
Drechsler, Wolfgang (2000a). On the possibility of quantitative-mathematical social science,
chiefly economics: Some preliminary considerations. Journal of Economic Studies 27 (4/5),
246–259.
Drechsler, Wolfgang (2000b). Zu Werner Sombarts Theorie der Soziologie und zu seiner
Biographie. In Werner Sombart (1863–1941): Klassiker der Sozialwissenschaft. Eine
kritische Bestandsaufnahme, Jürgen G. Backhaus (ed.), 83–100. Marburg: Metropolis.
Drechsler, Wolfgang (2003). Plato’s Nomoi as the basis of law and economics. In Plato’s
Laws: From Theory into Practice, Samuel Scolnicov and Luc Brisson (eds.), 215–220. St.
Augustin: Academia.
Drechsler, Wolfgang (2005). Plato. In The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, 2nd ed.,
Jürgen G. Backhaus (ed.), 585–589. Cheltenham/Northampton, MA: Elgar.
Eco, Umberto (1979 [1976]). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press.
Eco, Umberto (1980). Il Nome Della Rosa. Milan: Bompiani.
Eco, Umberto (1988). Il Pendolo di Foucault. Milan: Bompiani.
Eco, Umberto (1994 [1972]). Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, ‘Regretfully, We are
returning your . . .’ readers’ reports. In Misreadings, 33–46, 44–45. London: Picador.
Eco, Umberto (2000 [1990]). Introduction to Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of
Culture by Y. Lotman, vii–xiii. Bloomington/Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
Edelman, Murray J. (1964). The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
Press.
Edelman, Murray J. (1971). Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence.
Chicago: Markham.
96 W. Drechsler

Edelman, Murray J. (1977). Political Language: Words that Succeed and Politics That Fail.
New York: Academic Press.
Goodin, Robert E. and Klingemann, Hans-Dieter (eds.) (1998 [1996]). A New Handbook of
Political Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hedetoft, Ulf (1995). Signs of Nations: Studies in the Political Semiotics of Self and Other in
Contemporary European Nationalism. Aldershot: Dartmouth.
Hedetoft, Ulf (ed.) (1998). Political Symbols, Symbolic Politics: European Identities in Trans-
formation. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Hill, Alette (1982). Hitler’s flag: A case study. Semiotica 38, 127–137.
Jacobson, Karen Hedblom (1993). Organization and the mother archetype: A Jungian
analysis of adult development and self-identity within the organization. Administration
and Society 25 (1), 60–84.
Jung, Carl Gustav (1973). Letter to Stephen Abrams, 21 October 1957. In Briefe 3: 1956–
1961, Aniela Ja¤é with Gerhard Adler (eds.) 135–138. Olten/Freiburg i.Br.: Walter.
Jung, Carl Gustav (1964 [1936]). Wotan. In The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 10,
H. E. Read (ed.), 179–183. New York: Pantheon.
Kaiser, Otto (1984). Ideologie und Glaube. Eine Gefährdung christlichen Glaubens am
alttestamentlichen Beispiel aufgezeigt. Stuttgart: Radius.
Katznelson, Ira and Milner, Helen V. (eds.) (2002). Political Science: The State of the
Discipline. New York: Norton; Washington, DC: APSA.
Kautz, Timothy J. (1990). Ernst Cassirer und die Ethik. Eine Studie zur Philosophie der
symbolischen Formen. Düsseldorf: University of Düsseldorf dissertation.
Landowski, Eric (1984). Semiotics in social science research. Special issue, Liverpool Law
Review, 69–79.
Laswell, Harold D. (1990 [1931]). Politics: Who Gets What When and How? New York:
Peter Smith.
Laswell, Harold D. and Leites, Nathan (eds.) (1949). Language of Politics: Studies in Quan-
titative Semantics. New York: Stewart.
Lazar, Michelle M. (2003). Semiosis, social change, and governance: A critical semiotic
analysis of a national campaign. Social Semiotics 13 (2), 201–221.
Lemert, Charles (1993). Political semiotics and the zero signifier. In Tracing the Semiotic
Boundaries of Politics, P. Ahonen (ed.), 31–41. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Lloyd Webber, Andrew (1978). Evita. London: Prince Edward Theatre.
Lotman, Yuri M. (2000 [1990]). Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture.
Bloomington/Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
MacFarquhar, Larissa (1994). This semiotician went to market. Going oui, oui, oui all the
way to the bank. Lingua Franca September/October, 59–79.
Mandoki, Katya (2004). Power and semiosis. Semiotica 151 (1/4), 97–114.
Marks, Gary, Wilson, Carole J., and Ray, Leonard (2002). National political parties and
European integration. American Journal of Political Science 46 (3), 585–594.
Marquard, Odo (1985). Über die Unvermeidlichkeit der Geisteswissenschaften. In Hoch-
schulautonomie, Privileg und Verpflichtung, Westdeutsche Rektorenkonferenz (ed.), 193–
203. Hildesheim: Lax.
Neumann, Franz (2003). Politik and Politikwissenschaft. In Gesellschaft und Staat. Lexikon
der Politik, 10th ed., W. Drechsler et al. (eds.), 759–760, 761–762. Munich: Vahlen.
Parker, Alan (dir.) (1996). Evita. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video. [DVD]
Pasch, Georges (1975). Drapeaux nationaux. Semiotica 15, 285–295.
Peirce, Charles Sanders (1932). Collected Papers 2: Elements of Logic, Charles Hartshorne
and Paul Weiss (eds.). Harvard, MA: Belknap.
 Political semiotics 97

Randviir, Anti (2004). Mapping the World: Towards a Sociosemiotic Approach to Culture
(¼ Dissertationes Semioticae Universitatis Tartuensis 6). Tartu: Tartu University Press.
Riggins, Stephen Harold (ed.) (1997a). The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in
Discourse. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Riggins, Stephen Harold (1997b). The rhetoric of othering. In The Language and Politics of
Exclusion: Others in Discourse, S. R. Riggins (ed.), 1–30. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Said, Edward W. (1979). Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. New York:
Vintage.
Saussure, Ferdinand de (1916). Cours de linguistique générale. Paris/Lausanne: Payot.
Schmitt, Carl (1991 [1932]). Der Begri¤ des Politischen, 3rd ed. Berlin: Duncker and
Humblot.
Schmitter, Phillipe (2002). Seven (disputable) theses concerning the future of ‘transatlanti-
cised’ or ‘globalised’ political science. European Political Science 1 (2), 23–40.
Sebeok, Thomas A. (1997). What is semiotics, really? Interview with Anti Randviir. Trames
1 (4), 291–305.
Sebeok, Thomas A. (1999 [1994]). Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press.
Steiner, Peter (1989). Semiotics. In International Encyclopedia of Communications, vol. 4,
46–50. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Uexküll, J. von (1920). Biologische Briefe an eine Dame. Berlin: Paetel.
Uexküll, J. von (1933 [1920]). Staatsbiologie. Anatomie — Physiologie — Pathologie des
Staates. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt.
Uexküll, J. von (1936). Niegeschaute Welten. Die Umwelten meiner Freunde. Ein Erinner-
ungsbuch. Berlin: Fischer.
Van Dijk, Teun A. (1997). Political discourse and racism: Describing others in Western par-
liaments. In The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse, S. R. Riggins
(ed.), 31–64. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Weitman, Sasha R. (1973). National flags: A sociological overview. Semiotica 8, 329–367.
Zito, George V. (1984). Systems of Discourse: Structures and Semiotics in the Social
Sciences. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Wolfgang Drechsler (b. 1963) is a Professor and Chair of Governance at Tallinn University
of Technology 3drechsler@sta¤.ttu.ee4. His research interests include public management,
innovation, and political philosophy. His publications include Good and Bad Government
(2001); Friedrich Nietzsche: Economy and Society (co-edited with J. G. Backhaus, 2006);
and ‘The Contrade, the Palio and the Ben Comune: Lessons from Siena’ (2006).