Choreographies of Landscape. Sally Ann Ness

relation” gains prevalence over the relatively specific trope of “standing for.” Likewise, in his 1902 definition of “Sign” for the same dictionary, Peirce specified that a sign was “anything which determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant becoming in turn a sign, and so on ad infinitum” (CP 2.303). Here the idea of “standing for” has been completely omitted from the definition in favor of the idea of “determining”—which I modify for rhetorical purposes to the idea of “agentively moving into a relationship with.”

26. The editors of The Essential Peirce note that “the conception of a sign as a medium of communication becomes very prominent in Peirce’s 1906 writings” (EP2: 544n22). Colapietro notes that Peirce’s comment quoted above was made in reference to his category of “Thirdness.” However, Colapietro also asserts that the comment could have been made “with equal justice” about semiosis, which is how it is interpreted here, in accordance with the categorial definition that grounds the rhetorical one here employed.

27. In 1902, Peirce defined a Symbol similarly as a Sign whose character “consists precisely in its being a rule” and gave as examples “words, sentences, books, and other conventional signs” (CP 2.292). He elaborated, “A Symbol is a law, or regularity of the indefinite future” (CP 2.293).

28. The manuscript that contains this passage (#517) is titled “New Elements” and is dated to 1904. It is considered by some to be one of the most important statements of Peirce’s later conceptualization of his semeiotic (EP2: 300–24).

29. For an overview of the history of the Yosemite Firefall tradition, see Huell Houser’s documentary California’s Gold with Huell Howser #706:Yosemite Firefall.

30. To view images from the Yosemite in Time project, visit the website: http://www.klettandwolfe.com/2009/10/yosemite-in-time.html. In the technical terminology of Peirce’s semeiotic, the kind of symbolic process created by the photographers was one that entailed both Sumisigns—simple substitutive signs (so that a later retaken image could be recognized as substitutable for an earlier one)—and Dicisigns or quasi-propositions—informational signs (so that a later image could be appreciated as presenting contrasting information to an earlier one). See Frederik Stjernfelt’s investigations of “diagrammatology” for a more detailed discussion of the latter in relation to visual imagery more generally (2007, 2014). If the process of retaking were in actuality to be continued, and if the accumulated imagery were to show predictable patterns of change in the landscape location that was rephotographed (or a clear lack thereof), the continuum could then be said to have a persuasive (rhetorical and rational) character that would be identifiable as that of a Suadisign, or Argument Symbol type. Given the incipient stage of the symbol formation, however, this last character is still vague. The particular orientation of the project’s rephotography, focusing as it did on the duplication of particular instances of renowned photographic performance and particular famous images, would also be characterized in semeiotic terminology as directed toward the creation of Singular Symbols, as each continuum of recurring photography was developed in relation to individual, existent photographs (EP2: 275). Singular symbols may originate, in Peirce’s observations, in “either an image of the idea signified, or a reminiscence of some individual occurrence, person, or thing, connected with its meaning, or is a metaphor” (EP2: 264). The rephotographing project originates in both the images and the occurrences of original photographic performances.

31. With regard to the Symbol’s first correlate or representamen, as well, which Peirce identified as being of the class he termed Legisigns, Peirce wrote, “Every conventional sign is a legisign [but not conversely]” (CP 2.246).

32. While it is unambiguously prominent in Peirce’s later writings, the post-humanist character of Peirce’s concept of the Symbol is not one typically recognized in research on cultural performance. Eduardo Kohn’s study of Runa semeiotics is perhaps the most recent example of a more standard cultural anthropological reading of Peirce’s theory of the symbol (2013). While Kohn identifies the Icon and Index as sign modalities operating in nonhuman environments and bases his own claims to a post-humanist approach to anthropological inquiry on that recognition, he remains humanist in his discussion of the Peircean symbol (2013: 8, 133, 168). The great majority, if not the entirety, of semiotic anthropologists to date have done so as well, at times equating Peirce’s concept of the symbol with that of the Saussurian linguistic sign. This humanist cultural anthropological treatment of Peirce’s symbol concept, which is challenged in this study, recently has begun to receive some critical scrutiny, even within the discipline of anthropology (see, for example, Pandian responding to Kohn, 2014). However, it remains the prevailing interpretation until the present time. In Peirce scholarship, however, Peirce’s claim that semeiotic symbols are not restricted to human sign use is receiving increasing attention. Frederik Stjernfelt’s work Natural Propositions: The Actuality of Peirce’s Doctrine of Dicisigns (2014) is perhaps the most detailed and elaborate example of this interest in articulating the continuity between human and nonhuman/biological symbolic semeiotic processes. For examples of nonhuman symbolic processes, pragmaticistically defined, see Stjernfeldt (2014: 142–61).

      References

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      ———. 2007. “C.S. Peirce’s Rhetorical Turn,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 43(1): 16–52.

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      ———. 1996. Charred Lullabies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton