Professor Göran Sonesson: In the looking-glass, somewhat darkly

Details of Professor Göran Sonesson's Northern Scholars lecture.

Event details

Lecture title: "In the looking-glass, somewhat darkly. On mirrors, photographs, television, and other signs."

Date: 26 April 2007, 5.15pm

Venue: Lecture Theatre, Robson Building, George Square, Edinburgh

Lecture abstract

The mirror as the primordial picture sign is the stuff of legend. There is therefore no small irony to the fact that Umberto Eco, famous for his earlier conventionalist theory of the picture, in his recent book 'Kant and the Platypus' claims that the mirror is no sign, but practically identical to reality.

More importantly, no doubt, in our world, in which mirrors play less of a role than television, Eco goes on to say that the latter must be understood as a chain of mirrors each reflecting the other.

Even to start discussing this question, we need a much more specific notion of sign than is commonly given in semiotics. Prof Sonesson will suggest that Piaget and Husserl have offered some criteria that may be adapted to our purpose.

Taking into account some recent theories of photography, he will show that even icons, being signs, must suppose some sundry variety of rules of transformation. In our world of pseudo-photographs and virtual reality, it is important to understand that not even the mirror (and certainly not television) can function without interpretation.