The relationship of the signifier and the signified of political signs: problems and prospects of research

The thesis that the signified does not exist by itself, but is constructed in certain communities, which, in turn, assume a certain nature of sign production and circulation, was not immediately established in the research practice of the XX– XXI centuries. The article traces its formation and development from the studies of the Toronto School through various versions of the history of everyday life and the history of technology to mediology, actor-network theory and other modern strategies.

In parallel, the problematization of the position on the insignificance of the signified in semiotics and other strategies of text research (first of all, hermeneutics and poststructuralism) is shown. Turning to the origins of European culture (and, above all, to Plato's analysis of the name) allows us to sharpen the problem not so much of the signified as of the connection of names; the significance of not only «eidos» (the idea of a thing), but also «usia» (the way of organizing the world).

It shows the strategies and difficulties of implementing this project in modern approaches of taking into account the signified – first of all, the V. Patzel's projects of memocomplexes, U. Eco’s idea of the “code”, as well as B. Latour’s project of «secularization of the political», which showed that the signified «political» in the modern world actually involves five different reproduction networks and, accordingly, five different meanings and practices related to these meanings. It is discussed that each time the historically dimensional relationship of the production / circulation of signs, the language code and the community using signs requires conceptualization already in the dynamic model of sign production (which means simultaneous development of both the sign and the logic of constructing a meaningful world); possible common points and problems of constructing such a model are shown.

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