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Wendt versus Pollock: Toward visual semiotics in the discipline of IR theory
- Source :
- Semiotica
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2020.
-
Abstract
- We focus on a key IR Theory article by Alexander Wendt (1992) and two Jackson Pollock paintings. Our aim is to identify meanings Pollock’s art communicates and reveals for Wendt (1992). It derives from an appeal to visual imagination and a desire for semiotic interpretation of Constructivist view of anarchy. The visual sign is an association such that there is Wendt’s theoretical claim on the one hand and an abstract painting on the other. We do not gaze at Wendt’s claim, we read it. We do not read a painting, look at it. This remark does not imply a one-way relationship. We can argue that a specific painting comes to life in our mind where colored movements are inextricably mixed up when we read the constructivist claim. Both Pollock paintings selected for our sign-making effort confirm the dynamic character of Constructivism and reveal not only three but countlessly many anarchies in international relations. They foment our assessments of abrupt changes of intersubjectivity among states. Cyclicality of dripped paints provides an anchor to fix Wendt’s anarchy conceptualization in these structural-abstract paintings. As to Wendt’s concept of anarchy, it acts as a helper, as a standard, against which interpretations of Pollock’s artwork construct meanings.
- Subjects :
- Blue Poles
050101 languages & linguistics
Linguistics and Language
Literature and Literary Theory
biology
Visual semiotics
05 social sciences
06 humanities and the arts
Constructivism
0603 philosophy, ethics and religion
biology.organism_classification
Language and Linguistics
Pollock
Epistemology
060302 philosophy
Semiotics
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Constructivism (psychological school)
Convergence (relationship)
Sociology
Convergence
International relations theory
sign
Sign
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 16133692 and 00371998
- Volume :
- 2021
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Semiotica
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....ae43b7f6bf765033035c7a4379b62107