This study begins with a meditation on Michel Foucault's small book on Rene Magritte's painting, Ceci n'est pas une pipe (1926). It then proceeds to a critique of the notion of textuality and the twentieth century obsession with language. This critique evolves from Charles S. Peirce's concept of the sign, certain aspects of oriental thought and contemporary science, works by Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michael Polanyi, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. A broad view of the codependent, interrelative, interactive nature of all signs, verbal and nonverbal alike, and indeed, of ourselves as signs, eventually surfaces, in contrast to postmodern and poststructuralist postures that place undue emphasis on linguistic signs.

Author Biography

The Author: Floyd Merrell has an undergraduate degree in chemistry, and he taught chemistry and physics six years before entering a program in Iberoamerican Studies at the University of New Mexico, where he took a Ph.D. in 1973. Since that date he has been a professor at Purdue University, and has taught in Brazil during the summer months since 1992. He has published books and articles on Latin American literature and culture, literary theory, semiotic theory, and applied semiotics.