Description

Deleuze and the Sign presents a concise introduction to Deleuze's semiotics. Expounding upon Deleuze's work on Proust, the author reveals a thoroughly developed theory of the sign that is at the heart of Deleuze's ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Beginning with Deleuze's concept of the sign as a "search for truth", the author argues that the sign phenomenon is fundamentally an existential quandary. In turn, our engagement with signs reveals complex effects and affects, alluding to infinite "essences" within them. In the last chapter, the author demonstrates how Deleuze reconciles his existential semiotics with Spinoza's ontology. In this scheme, signs occupy a rather unique place, existing at the threshold between modes and their essences. Searching signs, we merge with these essences so as to infinitely produce the new, in an existential engagement with the very truth and power of substance. Ultimately we discover that Deleuze's semiotics is actually an ethical prescription, wherein he proposes the search of signs as a means of living in accordance with universal truth. Christopher M. Drohan is currently an Assistant Director at the European Graduate School of Media and Communication, Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Drohan is also Chief Editor of "Semiophagy: Journal of Pataphysics and Existential Semiotics", an experimental on-line journal published bi-annually. Recently, he has published several articles on global semiotics, philosophy in graphic novels, and existential phenomenology.