On Saturday, 19 appeared in the supplement culture of the Third a note announcing that the Argentine semiologist Eliseo Veron is visiting Chile. It was a note on it Veron enthusiastic and made the following analysis on the relationship between symptomatology and social sciences:
We had aggressive enemies, among sociologists and historians have been punished by the classical theories, but the problem is that many of they are theories of society where there are no means. "What is that instrumental rational actor who makes his decisions as being in the jungle ? That man do not watch television, listen to no radio, no nothing. (...) I believe that the disciplines classical human are in crisis and need to rethink.
is fair to recognize, as noted Veron, that classical social theory, as well as modern and contemporary, have not given to too much media. Yes we must not forget the Frankfurt School, including Habermas and its history of public opinion, empirical research Lazarsfeld and Merton, the sociologist or the time highlight the following topics: John B. Thompson. However, the most striking of the meeting is that reference to 'instrumental rational actor' living 'in the jungle' that brings to mind Thomas Hobbes rather than classical social theory. "Is it to Hobbes (XVII century) who criticizes him Eliseo Veron has not been taken over media?
Veron was invited by the Institute of Image Communication and Chile. Indeed, it is in the schools of journalism where semiotics has been more comfortably installed more recently, especially in the University of Chile and maybe a little less in Portales, which are the two universities that Veron has visited the country. Among the most outstanding teachers in the field are Lorena Antezana, Bernardo Amigo and most picturesque of all, Rafael del Villar .
Del Villar is a Chilean intellectual but, as he passed, suddenly feel like sitting down to smoke a cigarette and a coffee in a bistro to talk at length about structures: is Paris made person. Is low, such as Charles Aznavour, long-haired and gray, but his most distinctive feature is a beret that does not go away and never gives an air of pro-French thinker. I suppose you could compare him with the Black Piñera, but given their academic interests, the place of his graduate studies and ideological affiliations known is fairer and less equated with a mocking French. What is certain is that, as would Erving Goffman noted, Del Villar care enough to stage carefully its role in the theater of social life .
is the author of a well-known academic paper called "The structural methodology proposed by Levi-Strauss in the analysis of myths: appearance and reality ', which proposes an adaptation of structural anthropology to the analysis of texts:" a significant only makes sense for the network of relationships that are inserted from the point of view of the differentiated (sic) established within the system. " Also conducted a semiotic analysis of the complete work (yes, all) of Cortázar.
was, in any case, a school of sociology which first brought semiotics to Chile. Then led by the Jesuit Roger Vekemans, the school of imported PUC to Mattelart , famous representative of the school of 'cultural imperialism', another way in which it has expressed concern sociological by the media. His most famous and probably most cited is "How to Read Donald Duck ', which was published with Ariel Dorfmann, the author of Konfidenz. Recently read the book 'At that time' by Paul Huneeus, I found this remarkable paragraph:
[Mattelart] came as an expert hired by an international body Sueldazo paid a dollar to help the natives to emerge from underdevelopment. UC held a costly investigation with the methodology of semiotics to analyze the underlying attitudes of El Mercurio. After highbrow theories came to discover it is a right-leaning newspaper, which all Chileans knew in advance . After having made such a remarkable discovery, given the theoretical seat of media and journalists enthralled by his theories go, even if no one understands anything he says. (...). In a country of fools, just have a foreign accent to sell ointments.
is absolutely right Eliseo Veron. Semiotics has enjoyed much prestige in the field of literary criticism in the social sciences.
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