The Semiotics of X: Chiasmus, Cognition, and Extreme Body Memory 9781474273824, 9781474273862, 9781474273855

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The Semiotics of X

Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics Semiotics has complemented linguistics by expanding its scope beyond the phoneme and the sentence to include texts and discourse, and their rhetorical, performative and ideological functions. It has brought into focus the multimodality of human communication. Advances in Semiotics publishes original works in the field demonstrating robust scholarship, intellectual creativity and clarity of exposition. These works apply semiotic approaches to linguistics and nonverbal productions, social institutions and discourses, embodied cognition and communication, and the new virtual realities that have been ushered in by the Internet. It also is inclusive of publications in relevant domains such as socio-semiotics, evolutionary semiotics, game theory, cultural and literary studies, human–computer interactions and the challenging new dimensions of human networking afforded by social websites. Series Editor: Paul Bouissac is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto (Victoria College), Canada. He is a world-renowned figure in semiotics and a pioneer of circus studies. He runs the SemiotiX Bulletin [www.semioticon.com/semiotix] which has a global readership. Titles in the Series: A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, Fabio Rambelli Computable Bodies, Josh Berson Critical Semiotics, Gary Genosko Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics, Tony Jappy Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation, Domenico Pietropaolo Semiotics of Drink and Drinking, Paul Manning Semiotics of Happiness, Ashley Frawley Semiotics of Religion, Robert Yelle The Language of War Monuments, David Machin and Gill Abousnnouga The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning, Paul Bouissac The Semiotics of Che Guevara, Maria-Carolina Cambre The Semiotics of Emoji, Marcel Danesi The Visual Language of Comics, Neil Cohn

The Semiotics of X Chiasmus, Cognition, and Extreme Body Memory Jamin Pelkey

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2017 Paperback edition first published 2018 Copyright © Jamin Pelkey, 2017 Jamin Pelkey has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover images (L-R, top to bottom) Second Chorus © Collection Christophel / Alamy Stock Photo, Jolly Roger © xiver / Shutterstock, Vitruvian Man © Jakub Krechowicz / Shutterstock, A Shaman’s Mask © Werner Forman / Getty All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pelkey, Jamin R., 1974- author. Title: The Semiotics of X : chiasmus, cognition and extreme body memory / Jamin Pelkey. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, [2017] | Series: Bloomsbury advances in Semiotics; 20 |Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016038823| ISBN 9781474273824 (hb) |ISBN 9781474273855 (epdf) | ISBN9781474273831 (ePub) Subjects: LCSH: Semiotics–Social aspects. | Visual communication–Social aspects. | Nonverbal communication–Social aspects. | Signs and symbols—Social aspects. | Language and culture. | Anthropological linguistics. Classification: LCC P99.4.S62 P35 2017 | DDC 302.2–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038823 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-7382-4 PB: 978-1-3500-8222-9 ePDF: 978-1-4742-7385-5 ePub: 978-1-4742-7383-1 Series: Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

This book is dedicated to Art Blake, Jason Boyd, Paul Moore and Stéphanie Walsh Matthews—my fellow fellows in the Arts Research Collaboratory, Ryerson University, Toronto.

Contents List of Figures List of Tables Preface 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Paleo-Gesture and the Vitruvian Man Spread-Eagle in Sports and Torture Spread-Eagle Brand Marks Through the Hourglass Semiotic Squares and Double-Binds Foot Fingers and Arm Thighs XXX: All Alone in the Solipsistic Crowd XOXOXO: Figure Meets Ground

Notes References Index

viii xii xiii 1 39 63 85 113 139 177 193 226 229 249

List of Figures 1.1 Sentinelese gesture set: Silhouette renderings from three documentary film stills (Man in Search of Man, Vaidya 1974).

2

1.2 Spread-eagle paintings and petroglyphs across the globe.

7

1.3 Cueva de la Serpiente “Serpent Cave” 8-meter rock art mural, Baja California, Mexico (Bradshaw Foundation 2011).

9

1.4 Spread-eagle shaman figures.

10

1.5 “If a dog wore pants” internet meme: Originally posted December 28, 2015.

14

1.6 Two Renaissance-era interpretations of the Vitruvian man: Embodied polarity and proportion according to Marcus Vitruvius Pollio’s de Architectura.

16

1.7 More Renaissance-era interpretations of the Vitruvian man.

16

1.8 Adapted presentations of Johnson’s (1987: 86–87) prototype BALANCE (left) and EQUILIBRIUM (right) schemata.

19

1.9 X-person blend strategies in brand mark advertising.

32

2.1 Excerpt from cover art for The Uncanny X-Men series by Marc Silvestri and Dan Green for Issue 251, “Fever Dream” (November, 1989).

41

2.2 Illustrating the spread-eagle posture in extreme sports.

43

2.3 Illustrating the spread-eagle posture in torture.

45

2.4 Counterpoint and paradox in the historical semantics of English “spread-eagle.”

53

2.5 Structural-semantic and logical relations in the final line of “The Motive for Metaphor.”

57

3.1 Spread-eagle designs in corporate logo for One Laptop Per Child (top) and brand mark logo for the XO Tablet (bottom).

64

List of Figures

ix

3.2 Approaches to patterns: Distinctions from Group Theory and Cultural Symmetry Theory illustrated using footprints.

68

3.3 Sagittal dynamics in spread-eagle logos.

70

3.4 Transverse dynamics in spread-eagle logos.

70

3.5 Crosswise dynamics in spread-eagle logos.

71

3.6 Transverse mediation in spread-eagle logos.

73

3.7 Intertextual mythos in spread-eagle logos.

73

3.8 Brand marks featuring spread-eagle ~ X-mark blends.

74

3.9 Spread-eagle X in “eXtreme” logos.

76

3.10 Proto-X and Vitruvian Man: A logo-reconstruction.

78

3.11 Extreme sports logos.

79

3.12 Jolly Roger Flags.

80

3.13 Contemporary “skull-and-crossbones” figures.

82

4.1 Jolly Roger flags incorporating hourglass imagery.

86

4.2 Jacques Lacan’s 1954 L-Schema (in Lacan 1966, 1977).

89

4.3 The relation of identity and alterity as a “figure of total difference.”

93

4.4 Part II, Stanza 3 of Dylan Thomas’ “Vision and Prayer” mapped onto H.C. Agrippa’s () spread-eagle interpretation the Vitruvian man.

98

4.5 Cover design by Kristin Metho for The End of Money: Juan A. Gaitán (ed.) 2011.

103

4.6 Cover Designs.

105

4.7 Unstable Central Crisis: Two hourglass gestalt designs.

107

4.8 Bhavacakra: The Tibetan Wheel of Life, from Waddell (1895).

110

5.1 Jumping Priest in Kacey Musgrave’s 2013 music video “Follow your Arrow.”

116

5.2 The traditional square of opposition (left) rendered in analytic notation (right).

117

x

List of Figures

5.3 The traditional square of opposition applied to Peirce’s primitive existential graphs (left), rendered in analytic notation (right), following Bernhard (2008: 37–38).

117

5.4 The Greimasean Semiotic Square.

124

5.5 Semiotic square for “subject” and “life.”

125

5.6 Mapping the experience of spread-eagle posture (right) relative to proprioception of the appendages and anatomical planes (left) and Sheets-Johnstone’s linear quality of movement (center).

131

5.7 Laterality and Transversality as the ground of Markedness and Analogy in the semiotic square.

133

5.8 Embodied homology between handedness and ideological gender binaries in English.

134

5.9 Embodied semiotic squares for two sets of lyrics from Musgraves’ 2013 country hit “Follow your Arrow” featuring a leaping spread-eagle priest from the song’s official music video. 137 6.1 Vibram’s FiveFingers® footwear.

139

6.2 Double-scope conceptual blend informing Vibram’s FiveFingers® footwear.

141

6.3 Reframing Wilkins’ (1996: 276) diagram of “Attested semantic changes involving visible parts and visible wholes” as a pattern of inverse multiple-paradigmaticity. 166 6.4 Apollo and Daphne by Antonio del Pollaiolo, c.1475.

168

6.5 Vibram ad for FiveFingers footwear: “Isn’t is weird that people think five-toed shoes look weird?” (Twitter).

174

7.1 Theodore Roosevelt diary entry, February 14, 1884.

182

7.2 Triple threat pirate flag of British Captain Billy “One-Hand” Condent, c.1718. 186 7.3 Logo for the film series xXx, starring Vin Diesel as Xander Cage.

187

8.1 Basic lattice networks featuring figure-ground (X, ◊) oppositions from widely diverse cultures. 193

List of Figures

xi

8.2 Overlapping lattice networks featuring figure-ground blends from widely diverse cultures.

195

8.3 Two Sets of X-pose advertisements with lattice-pose complements.

199

8.4 Illustration of chiasmata in laterally paired chromosomes yielding genetic recombination during meiosis prophase I (Stimolo 2007).

201

8.5 Three spread-eagle lattice logos.

202

8.6 Dos Equis Beer Logo: Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery, Monterrey, Mexico.

204

8.7 Embodied X-O-Rhombus merger in Geoffroy Tory’s Champ Fleury 1529.

222

List of Tables 6.1 Experiential and conceptual paradigms in part–whole extremity categorization across the transverse anatomical plane in English and Hlepho Phowa

153

6.2 Parallels and correlations in extremity categorization across the transverse plane in the Kewa language of Papua New Guinea (adapted from Franklin 1962) 156 6.3 Lexicalized body-part → tree-part mappings in four Phula languages: Inverse parallelism in embodied meronymy across the transverse anatomical plane

169

6.4 Transverse embodied paradigm in Western Apache car part meronymy

170

8.1 A diagrammatic typology of embodied chiasmus

215

Preface What do the evolution of upright posture and the origins of creative analogy have to do with each other? I propose that the two are vitally related. This book documents the first phase of a larger project devoted to testing and refining this basic hypothesis. To do so, it becomes necessary to pay extensive attention to arms and legs—our appendage sets and the relationships that hold between them in movement and memory across our horizontal and vertical midlines. At their most extreme, the relationships that hold between our appendages give rise to new possibilities—prominently including the felt meanings, rhetorical powers and modeling affordances of X. In these pages, I explore the possibility that the X-mark is a figure of extremes and reversals—not primarily because of arbitrary cultural encoding but more basically because of entrenched body memories. These body memories involve our extremities, extended at extreme angles to form an extreme posture—a posture that is approximated across a wide range of experiences, many of which are extreme opposites. The posture in question is known in English as “spreadeagle.” The project functions at multiple levels. My concerns in these pages are just as invested in the details of everyday life as they are in the mandates of the academy. At the level of mundane existence, the project is motivated by a wish to better understand the proliferation of X in cultural contexts and the possibilities of explaining these patterns through ordinary bodily experiences. At an academic level, the project is informed by insights from cognitive linguistics, linguistic anthropology, historical linguistics, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, logic and philosophy, among other disciplines. Ultimately, then, my perspective or approach to the project is best described as “semiotic”—drawing on the work of numerous semioticians and driven by inquiry in a cross-disciplinary, pattern-solving mode. Findings in the book support the possibility that a grammar of common relations might hold between three domains: (1) structured memories of bodily movement, (2) pervasive patterns in human culture and (3) linguistic patterns from competence to performance. The master figure shared between these three domains is identified

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Preface

as “chiasmus”—a figure that both includes and transcends the embodied constraints of X. I owe much gratitude to many people for sustaining the conditions and inspiring the ideas necessary for a project of this scope. First let me say thank you to my partner, Stephanie Jill, and my daughter, Quynh Iris, for their love and inspiration. Next let me thank the many colleagues who have shaped my thinking and encouraged my inquiry. Appreciation goes to my academic Chair, Marco Fiola, and other members of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Ryerson University; to the Dean who hired me, Jean-Paul Boudreau; to the Dean who kept me, Pam Sugiman; and to my fellow fellows in the Ryerson University Arts Research Collaboratory (to whom this book is dedicated)—Art Blake, Jason Boyd, Paul Moore and Stéphanie Walsh Matthews. Stéphanie, in particular, provided many helpful comments on drafting materials and introduced me to the highly relevant writings of French anthropologist Henri Van Lier. Appreciation goes to my colleagues in the International cognitive linguistics Association and the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics for facilitating this research in various ways—Ad Foolen, Michael Kimmel, Göran Sonesson and Jordan Zlatev, in particular. Many colleagues in the Semiotic Society of America have also offered helpful dialogue and encouragement directly related to the project. Let me say thank you in this regard to Prisca Augustyn, Priscilla Borges, Vincent Colapietro, John Coletta, Marcel Danesi, John Deely, Gilad Elbom, Peter Heinze, Richard Lanigan, Chris Morrissey, Frank Nuessel, Geoffrey Owens, David Pfeifer, Farouk Seif, Richard Smith, André De Tienne, Genevieve Vaughan and Donna West. The society of scholars whose influence and support are most strongly present in this book is the Rhetoric Culture Project. My appreciation goes to Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul for their helpful dialogue and pathbreaking insights—and most of all to Ivo Strecker for the visionary, evocative role he has played in establishing the project, forging new connections between rhetoric and culture and encouraging me to join in. Among the many other friends who have shaped my thinking through dialogue related to this project, let me thank Jesse Gates, Stu Talené, Russel Minnick and Matt Rojahn in particular. This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: SSHRC-IDG #430-2015-01226, entitled “Steps to a Grammar of Embodied Symmetry.” I am also grateful to acknowledge funding support from a SSHRC Institutional Grant (SIG), a Faculty of Arts New Initiatives Award (NIA), and travel grants from the

Preface

xv

Faculty of Arts and the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Ryerson University. Among other things, these funds supported collaboration with graduate and undergraduate research assistants. Undergraduate research assistants who contributed to this project include Ali Aird, Sajan Karn, Rami Matloob and Shahnawaz Syed. Graduate research assistants include Sean Murray and Mathew Iantorno. A big thank you, once again, to all. Other students directly involved in the project include Alana Dookheran, Lilianna Fodor, Gabriella Legin, Rebecca Meyer, Alice Porter Prendergast, Leanne Stevens and Lorne Sussman—the semester-long participants in my Arts and Contemporary Studies senior seminar entitled “Symmetry and Asymmetry” (ACS 900, Fall 2014) at Ryerson University—from whom I gained many insights. Let me thank you again for engaging so fully with such novel material. Among the many layers of drafting materials used in the creation of this book, relevant passages from my previously published work on closely related topics played a key role. I gratefully acknowledge permission to rework and republish content from the following publications and publishing houses: 2017. Greimas embodied: How kinesthetic opposition grounds the semiotic square. Semiotica 208(1). De Gruyter. 2016. Analogy reframed: Markedness, body asymmetry and the semiotic animal. The American Journal of Semiotics 32(3). Philosophy Documentation Center. 2016. Symbiotic modelling: Linguistic Anthropology and the promise of chiasmus. Reviews in Anthropology 45(1). 22–50. Taylor & Francis. 2016. Symmetrical reasoning in language and culture: On ritual knots and embodied cognition. In Jordan Zlatev, Piotr Konderak & Göran Sonesson (eds.), Meaning, mind and communication: Studies in cognitive semiotics. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 2016. The end is near: Graphic design through the hourglass. SemiotiX 14(1). Online. Semioticon. 2015. Shoes that fit like a glove: The visceral roots of human cognition. SemiotiX 13(1). Online. Semioticon. 2014. Iconic legisigns and the embodied X. In Jamin Pelkey & Leonard Sbrocchi (eds.), Semiotics 2013: Why semiotics? (Yearbook of the Semiotic Society of America), 303–316. Ottawa: Legas.

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2013. Cognitive chiasmus: Embodied phenomenology in Dylan Thomas. Journal of Literary Semantics 42(1). 79–114. De Gruyter. 2013. Nonlinear process in Peirce: “the end second, the middle third”. In Karen Haworth, Andrea Johnson & Leonard G. Sbrocchi (eds.), Semiotics 2012: Semiotics and the New Media, 77–86. Ottawa: Legas. 2013. Chiastic antisymmetry in language evolution. The American Journal of Semiotics 29(1). 39–68. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to the many individuals directly involved in the publishing process for this volume. A big thank you to all anonymous reviewers for their productive critical commentary; to Bloomsbury Academic Editor of Linguistics and Philosophy, Gurdeep Mattu, for his innovative vision and warm competence; to Assistant Editor of Linguistics and Philosophy, Andrew Wardell, for his kind patience and excellent communication; to Production Editor Giles Herman, for his vital work behind the scenes; to editorial staff Nina O’Reilly, Manikandan Kuppan and others for their kind support during the final stages of preparation. And my crowning gratitude goes to Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics Editor, Paul Bouissac, for cultivating this vibrant series and inviting me to participate.

1

Paleo-Gesture and the Vitruvian Man

A Sentinelese warning Between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, more than 1,000 kilometers from the Indian mainland, there lies a forbidden island. Slightly smaller than Manhattan, but larger than Bermuda, the island is known as “North Sentinel.” The government of India protects this tract of land aggressively, warding off would-be intruders with strict regulations and regular patrols. Densely forested, no signs of human life are detectable offshore, not even wisps of smoke. But North Sentinel is inhabited. Following the devastating tsunami of December 2004, an event that killed thousands elsewhere in the Andaman archipelago, concerns arose for the small island population, estimated to number no more than 150–200. Could they have been wiped out? An Air Force patrol helicopter was sent to check. On arrival, the chopper’s crew were relieved to find the Sentinelese alive and well. Several islanders even ran out on the beach to greet them, firing a volley of arrows from their long bows to ward the aircraft away. Some thirty years prior, a team of filmmakers and anthropologists (accompanied by armed guards) received a similar reception. Entitled Man in Search of Man (1974), their hopeful documentary project was to be the first research expedition to visit the island—the first attempt to film the Sentinelese and observe their way of life. After leaving gifts on the deserted beach, film footage shows the group returning to their boat to wait offshore. What happens next is breath-catching. The events that unfold evoke a primeval pageantry of attraction and repulsion: self-contra-other, other-contra-self—mutually defining pairs. But first, wait: why am I telling this story? Before I continue, let me explain. The story is relevant because of a recurring theme that emerges in the encounter. This theme—or pattern—is the repeated performance of a specific gesture or posture known in English as “spread-eagle.” Arms raised high, legs spread, this radically embodied pattern stands as the central focus of this book.

2

The Semiotics of X

As far as I can tell, little has ever been written on the meaning of spread-eagle posture. This may seem unsurprising: what is there to say? Legs apart! Arms up! The end. At first the notion of writing a whole book on the topic may seem odd at best; but what if the true oddity is, rather, that the topic has never been taken seriously? As I will show in the pages that follow, this neglected gesture or posture may well be traced back to the very core of some of our species’ most conspicuous abilities: resilient survival, analogic modeling systems and the evolution of language among them. It is also an important source of the X-mark, a symbol so ubiquitous in contemporary culture that its neglect in academic discourse beggars belief. My own original interest in this pattern of bodily movement grows out of an earlier (and ongoing) fascination with a presumably linguistic or rhetorical figure known as “chiasmus”; but I will expand on such points later. For now, we return to the year 1973 to rejoin a tense band of anthropologists adrift in the Andaman Sea, just off the shores of North Sentinel, waiting. And so it begins. Out onto the sandy beach—and into the grainy footage of the celluloid—walk nine Sentinelese warriors. They take their places—backs to the jungle, facing the sea—along the shifting margin between sand and surf to stage their offensive. Some begin jumping, up and down, legs spread wide, arms raised above their heads (Figure 1.1, left). Others launch arrows, two and a half meters in length, toward the crowded motorboat. Most shots fall short. Then one finds its target. A crew member is wounded in the leg. The archer celebrates, striking a pose with arms raised high and legs spread (Figure 1.1, middle). When the vessel retreats, the warriors begin leaping and waving—once again, many with legs spread and arms raised high (Figure 1.1, right). According to Raghubir Singh (1975: 66), a National Geographic photographer who was part of the expedition, this final behavior was nothing less than a victory celebration—a dance of joy.

Figure 1.1 Sentinelese gesture set: Silhouette renderings from three documentary film stills (Man in Search of Man, Vaidya 1974). Left: pre-strike face-off; Middle: an arrow strikes its target; Right: the vessel retreats.

Paleo-Gesture and the Vitruvian Man

3

According to genetic evidence, when the first modern humans left Africa some 100,000 years ago, one migration route led into Mainland Southeast Asia, where the population settled for some time. Then at least one group, now known as the Andamanese, migrated to the islands (Thangaraj et al. 2003), where they diversified through the millennia. As a branch of the Andamanese, the Sentinelese appear to have occupied their small ocean-bound home for well over 50,000 years (Reich et al. 2009; Bulbeck 2013). Owing to their extreme isolation, the Sentinelese way of life is thought to preserve many features of early human behavior. This fact, coupled with their own defensive stance toward outsiders, has shrouded them in the mists of the exotic other—often uncritically and unjustly so (see Pandya 2009). To the degree that the Sentinelese are (as many have claimed) a “stone-age tribe,” their use of gesticulation and body posture as communication strategies might also be described as “paleo-gesture.” What might seem remarkable, then, is their ability to communicate intentions and states of mind, not only across the waters at a distance but also across all barriers of language, culture and deep time—a marvel matched only by our ability to interpret such things (whether viewed from the boat or from the screen). Similar questions, framed as conundrums of ante-historical communication, also occurred to the producers of the documentary film cited in Figure 1.1. The English version of the film is narrated by a plaintive character using a formal British accent: “Is this a first step towards understanding a tribe never before seen by outside eyes?” he intones near the beginning of the encounter. As the events unfold, the (unreconstructed) narrator further indulges his list of rhetorical questions: [H]as this experience helped us to understand the nature of primitive man, or of modern man? … These ineffective arrows and spears, do they not convey some message from the past which intellectual man has perhaps forgotten?

Aside from the obvious irony that these “ineffective” arrows and spears were more than enough to shut down the expedition, let me suggest that there is a message from the past embedded in this encounter, but I would simply counter that the message has little to do with weaponry. There is another message, and we do indeed appear to have forgotten its importance. The message is complex, but it is not arcane. Nor is it muffled. It transmits loud and clear across the ages of human evolution, habituated perhaps since Homo erectus and certainly deeply entrenched by the advent of Homo sapiens. Our inability to identify it as Homo sapiens sapiens may stem as much from a lack of conceptual clarity as from ideological blindness—cognitive deficits that may have as much to

4

The Semiotics of X

do with the nearness and ubiquity of the phenomenon as with the curious nature of our modern plight. The plight I am speaking of is our technologically enhanced alienation from the meanings of our own bodily movements and body memories. This alienation is collective, and its consequences are profound (see Berman 1989; Johnson 2007; Sheets-Johnstone 2011; Fuchs 2012). This forgotten “message from the past,” I wish to argue, is the message of a particular gesture, or a class of gestures, a class of gestures that emerges from a specific range of postures. The posture type is realized with arms raised high and legs spread. In prototypical instances arms and legs are at inverse angles relative to each other and to the body’s midlines. The resulting pattern looks much like the shape we now call “X.” This spread-eagle message is extreme, and prone to sudden reversals, as we see in the Sentinelese encounter: now a signal of severest warning, now a symptom of triumphant elation. And as we find in the chapters to follow, it also emerges in other surprising oppositional patterns— now as a show of reverential love, now as a sign of blood curdling terror—now a sign of arrogant bravado, now a sign of humiliating defeat. Such is the sampling of extremes and reversals to be found in the message of the embodied X—the message this book is devoted to pursuing, for the sake of better understanding. But if there is anything I wish to understand more than “X” in this project, it is the nature of human being. Gaining a better understanding of the spread-eagle figure is tantamount to gaining a better understanding of the human heritage and the human predicament. This is my ultimate thesis and motivation. Because of this, the book can be classified as a work of semiotic anthropology; but it is more than an intellectual exercise in cultural pattern finding. I would even claim that the findings and hypotheses presented in the pages that follow have urgent implications that range far beyond this introductory treatment. The purpose of this chapter, however, is simply to attempt to say with clarity what the book is and is not about, leaving most argumentation and analysis for later chapters. A few items need to be stated sooner rather than later. And so, taking cues from the Sentinelese, let me issue fair warning up front as a courtesy—starting by addressing the book’s title components in brief, to better hint at what the text is and is not about. First, a note about “X.” I should clarify up front that the book pays little direct attention to the status of X relative to its most familiar context: the various Greco-Roman alphabets and their numeric and algebraic derivatives. Yes, X is a “letter.” Yes, this letter is pronounced differently in different languages. Yes, x can be used as an algebraic variable or mathematical operator. Yes, we can produce it by crossing lines (or pressing keys). But the X-mark’s associations with print

Paleo-Gesture and the Vitruvian Man

5

literacy and mathematics are surrounded by habits and facts so familiar (and so mediated) that devoting much attention to X at this level is even riskier than my larger project, which is itself fraught with dangerous forays into previously unresearched territory. This is because the former runs the risk of further entrenching and affirming us in the distraction of the familiar rather than introducing further insight or clarification via the discomfort of the strange. My wish, instead, is to show how the assumed, dominant story of X as a letter (or variable or operator) is more of a side-plot relative to the figure’s main narrative—its origins and grounding and its broader context beyond print literacy. Anyone willing to engage the main narrative I am reconstructing in this book is likely to find the old familiar symbol (whether alphabetic or numeric or algebraic) far stranger than it seemed when they first picked up the book. My hope is that the newfound feeling of strangeness toward the figure that comes from seeing it with fresh eyes might also stand to reshape our understanding of it in its more familiar contexts. On the other hand, plenty of attention is devoted in the pages that follow to the underlying significance of the X-figure in diverse domains that inevitably reference the symbol in its more familiar contexts— ranging from everyday uses (from popular culture to corporate brand marks) to technical applications (from philosophy to psychoanalysis) and many others in-between (from mythology to history to poetry). Next, a note about “Semiotics.” A few warning shots are in order here as well. One of my colleagues moaned when I told him the book’s title would be The Semiotics of X; “Maybe you could call it A Natural History of X instead?” he suggested. While it will seem to some that a book about the “semiotics” of anything risks coming across as off-putting or arcane, this does not have to be the case; and in my view it certainly should not be the case. In a separate conversation, another colleague had a different reaction to the title: “That’s sexy!” he said. I would have to agree; but either way, whether sexy or arcane or both, what I am up to (and up against) in this book is unapologetically and inescapably semiotic. This project grows out of an intense interest in coming to better understand what X means and how it means what it means—historiographically and naturally, yes—but also linguistically and logically, semantically and pragmatically, culturally, phenomenologically and practically: in a word?—“semiotically.” The project is semiotic in other ways as well: in its assumption, for instance, that clues might be drawn from any domain to gain a better understanding of the object of inquiry. In this sense, my work as a semiotician is something like that of the investigating detective (as explored in Eco & Sebeok 1983). I duly acknowledge that this mode of approach is both a strength to exploit and

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The Semiotics of X

a weakness to guard against. In the interests of rigor and responsibility, the dilettante detective does well to dialogue with the disciplines. With this in mind, the project also draws on and further develops the work of a wide range of methods, traditions and domains of scholarly inquiry, some of them overtly semiotic themselves. Prominently included are Linguistic Anthropology, cognitive linguistics, Cognitive Semiotics and Rhetoric Culture Theory—approaches which I outline further in the final sections of this chapter. The project is also semiotic in that it is written in dialogue with related work being carried out by numerous other semioticians. Prominently included are contemporary lines of inquiry into the semiotics of gesture (Bouissac 2006), the semiotics of memory (Bouissac 2007), the semiotics of symmetry and opposition (Nöth 1994, 1998; Danesi 2009b), the semiotics of analogy (Deely 2002; Anttila 2003); the semiotics of solipsism (Deely 2012); the semiotics of diagrams (Stjernfelt 2007; Nöth 2008), the semiotics of modeling systems (Sebeok & Danesi 2000a), and the semiotics of language evolution (Shapiro 1991, 2002). Finally, a note is in order regarding my orientation to theories and systems of general semiotic (though this note is offered more as a word of welcome than of warning). In addition to the living luminaries just mentioned, this project draws on the theories, findings and models of a wide variety of semiotic system builders who have stood the test of time. I have tried to resist the pull of dogmatic devotion to any single figurehead. Some chapters are strongly Peircean, one is Lacanian, another Greimasean; in another the Saussurean meets the Sebeokian; but insights from all are needed. In the words of Thomas Broden (2000: 60), “Suspicious of accepted theoretical pigeon holes and averse to desiccating dogmatism, genuine critical exchanges among semiotic projects can foster advances in each approach, and in the overall capabilities of semiotics [in general].” As for the book’s subtitle, Chiasmus, Cognition and Extreme Body Memory, let me just say that the remainder of the chapter is needed to properly introduce these three themes. The first step in this direction takes us further back in time, on a trip around the globe, to survey some of the myriad instances of spreadeagle anthromorphs in archaic folk art.

X-posed figures in archaic folk art Although the phenomenon receives scant attention in the literature—even in local analyses—one of the most common motifs that may be identified in archaic aboriginal rock art around the world is the depiction of the human form

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with arms and legs posed in variations of spread-eagle formation. A sampling of such poses selected from four continents around the world is provided in Figure 1.2. The first of these four figures (Figure 1.2a) is painted onto an earthen ceremonial vessel. The middle two figures (Figure 1.2b–c) are painted onto the rock faces of cave walls. Figure 1.2d is carved into the rock face of a cliff. In archaeology this is known as a “petroglyph.” Rock figure engravings resembling the human form are known as “anthromorph petroglyphs.” Figure 1.2a is an anthromorph but not a petroglyph. It is reproduced from a painting applied to the exterior of an ancient Idian purna ghat—a ceremonial vessel also known as a kalasha. Kalashas have been in use for more than 7,000 years as ritual fertility symbols of the archetypal mother or “cosmic womb.” Plant materials such as mango leaves, betel nut leaves, grains and coconuts are fitted into the opening to represent fertility springing out of the earth, while water in the vessel represents both amniotic fluid and the rainfall that brings life. The spread-eagle figure in this instance represents a human child. Figure 1.2b is from the Baja California peninsula—part of an archaic aboriginal rock art painting located high in the mountains of the Sierra de San Francisco. The original image also features arrow markings and unusual color coding to represent the face (Bradshaw Foundation 2011a). This figure and the next (Figure 1.2c) are both recognizeable as female anthromorphs, though the latter is identified as a human–animal blend, as may be noted in the emu-claw hands. Figure 1.2c is an aboriginal cave painting dating to the upper Paleolithic—part of an extensive series of similar designs near the town of Laura in Queensland, Australia. The human–emu blend and other such mythological creatures are known locally as Quinkan.

Figure 1.2 Spread-eagle paintings and petroglyphs across the globe: (a) India: from an ancient kalasha painting; (b), Baja California, Mexico: from an aboriginal cave painting; (c) Queensland, Australia: aboriginal rock art; (d) Lombardy, Italy: archaic petroglyph.

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The final exemplar (Figure 1.2d) is a rendering of a petroglyph found in the Naquane National Rock Art Park of Val Camonica, Lombardy, Italy. It dates from the fifth to first millennium BCE. To the top-right of the petroglyph, in situ, another spread-eagle figure is etched that looks much like the glyph in Figure 1.2a. Ways of representing spread-eagle posture can vary widely, but it is worth noting that Figure 1.2a belongs to a marked subset that is widespread among spread-eagle anthromorph petroglyphs around the world. It has even earned its own nickname: the “squatter man” phenomenon. In attempting to account for the widespread occurrence of forms in this class, one scientist cites violent eruptions of “plasma phenomena” in space that created long-lasting, intense auroras in this general shape that were then reproduced mimetically by early modern humans in the form of anthromorphic petroglyphs (Peratt 2003). The clearest instances of the “squatter man” phenomenon, however, also include two distinct dots placed midway between arms and legs, on either side of the torso. Such figures also tend to feature genital markings between the legs in keeping with the overall pattern to mirror the head above. These features all have correlates with three-dimensional plasma aurora forms reproduced by Peratt in laboratory settings. Given these differences, we cannot attribute most instances of the spread-eagle figure in rock art to Peratt’s (2003) plasma mimesis hypothesis. Peratt’s thesis may be partially correct, but he also fails to consider that pre-historic humans around the world who set out to reproduce the aurora would not have been engaged in acts of direct mimesis. Archaic rock artists around the world would necessarily have been making sense of such auroras via analogy with their own embodied experience— necessarily mapping back and forth between the form in the sky and the remembered feeling of their own lived body image prior to projecting this body image onto rock faces. In short, their own bodies would have served as both form and meaning in understanding the cataclysmic spectacle. Whatever we make of the “squatter man” enigma, the theme of felt formal projection of embodied patterning is crucial to keep in mind, not only for the representation of spread-eagle petroglyphs and cave paintings but also for many other features and facets of the argument ahead in this book. So the question remains: why were so many early modern humans in such diverse locations motivated to represent the human figure with arms raised and legs parted? The full argument of this book is needed to provide satisfactory answers to this question, but a glimpse of the answer in miniature may be gained by returning to the mountains of Baja California mentioned above. A rock art mural found in one cave on the peninsula hints at the answer. The clues in

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question are hidden away in a remote region, in an ominously named cavern: Cueva de la Serpiente, “The Serpent Cave.” The rock art mural in question (reproduced in Figure 1.3) is eight meters long and features two giant, undulating antler-headed snakes, several animal figures and some five dozen human figures, most of whom are standing arms-raised, legs-parted—spread-eagle. A careful historical and ethnographic reconstruction of the mythic symbolism involved in this mural was recently carried out by Martínez et al. (2012). The authors argue that the painting symbolizes “death and the cyclical renewal of life and the seasons.” But instead of analyzing the anthromorphs in the mural, they focus their analysis on the horned snakes. Citing the widespread presence of binary opposition and duality in Native American worldviews, and drawing on widespread myths of horned serpents in these traditions, the authors suggest that the two giant snakes symbolize blended opposition sets between youth and old age, life and death, and the wet and dry seasons, respectively. Since the geographic situation of the cave is such that it is lit by the sun at equinox, the mural seems to “reflect the marking of a moment, when the dry season ends and new life begins” (2012: 37). It appears, then, that the mural represents not simply life and death, abundance and scarcity, but the transition phase itself: the point of confrontation and reversal between two extremes. The community of humans impacted by this oppositional reversal or crisis transition all respond with arms raised—most also with legs parted. Martínez et al. (2012) refer to this simply as “an ‘orant’ gesture” in passing and devote no further discussion to the matter. This is a conspicuous oversight, made all the more conspicuous by the general neglect of analysis or hypothesis related to this posture class as depicted in traditional folk art around the world. Martínez and colleagues are not alone in coming to the hasty conclusion that spread-eagle petroglyphs are little more than prayerful poses. Archaeologist Emmanuel Anati makes a similar

Figure 1.3 Cueva de la Serpiente “Serpent Cave” eight-meter rock art mural, Baja California, Mexico (Bradshaw Foundation 2011b).

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assumption in passing (1976: 46) and has since been called to task by Sonesson (1994, 2016) for confusing secondary iconicity with primary iconicity—two modalities of resemblance observed to hold between a representamen and its object. In secondary iconicity, a perceived resemblance is motivated only by way of a semiotic detour—that is, via reference to a hidden key or additional system of interpretation—in this case culturally mediated prayer postures. In primary iconicity, by contrast, the perceived resemblance is directly motivated. With this distinction in mind, it would be immediately warranted to assume that anthromorph petroglyphs with legs spread and arms raised represent human beings posing spread-eagle; but it would not be immediately warranted (without further extensive argumentation) to assume that spread-eagle anthromorph petroglyphs represent praying humans. On the other hand, Martínez et al.’s (2012) analysis of the two serpents facing off at equinox—frozen in the very moment of inversion—frames a core thematic element that provides excellent leverage for more adequate analysis of the human forms as well. This theme is thrown into vivid relief in the depiction of shamanic trance states that appear elsewhere in North American aboriginal art. Three examples are listed in Figure 1.4. The spread-eagle anthromorphs to the left and right in Figure 1.4 are drawn from the abundant petroglyphs of the Coso range in the Mojave Desert of Southern California, as described in Grant et al. (1968). Although most petroglyphs in the Coso range are thought to be rooted in traditional cultic rituals related to hunting magic for successful pursuit of desert bighorn sheep (Grant et al. 1968; Garfinkel 2007), these two images are among the possible exceptions. Both appear to represent vision quest experiences of traditional

Figure 1.4 Spread-eagle shaman figures. Left: Coso Range petroglyph of shamanic rebirth, California (Grant et al. 1968); Middle: Inuit shaman mask, Alaska (c. 1860–1880); Right: Coso Range petroglyph composed of entoptic phosphenes from a shamanic trance (Grant et al. 1968).

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shamans. In the image on the right, this is evidenced by geometric patterns known as phosphenes or entoptics that are common features of trance induced states, whether achieved through fasting and sensory deprivation or through the ingestion of hallucinogens (discussed further in Chapter 8). The figure to the left depicts another aspect of the shamanic vision: the experience of a liminal state between life and death in which hidden things or internal things are exposed. This sense is vividly echoed in the central image, a late nineteenth-century Inuit shaman mask from the lower waters of the Kuskokwim River in southwestern Alaska. The original figure is carved from wood to represent a fearsome tunghak spirit—the thumbless, semi-human keepers of animals. The object belongs to a genre of artifacts known as “transformation masks” due to the liminal status they represent: at once shaman and deity—neither alive nor dead—organs and entrails exposed to view. Much like the spread-eagle anthromorphs in Figure 1.3 who are witnessing the very moment of reversal between life and death, the lone shaman individuals in Figure 1.4 are frozen in a state of tension and surprise—suspended between death and life. These three shaman figures share another feature in common—not only with each other but also with the other anthromorphs in Figures 1.1–1.3: upright posture.

Upright posture and the origins of gesture Building on at least one million years of hominid experiments in-and-out of the trees, the long-term resilience of Homo erectus on the ground meant upright posture would go on to transform far more than the default mode of locomotion for later members of the genus Homo. The shift had dramatic evolutionary consequences—from the role it played in the emergence of “Language” in Homo sapiens to the development of our species’ capacity for speech. Many of the most staggering and unintentional physical consequences of walking upright across the savannah also turned out to be extremely dangerous to our species’ survival. Going about the day with one’s torso and head suspended high above the hips makes for a new relationship between the pull of the earth and features of mammalian anatomy that are otherwise fail-safe. Infants began being born prematurely, making them far more vulnerable to prey. The larynx descended into the throat, making it far easier to choke when eating. With four feet planted firmly on the ground these were nonissues. Raising our front paws perpetually into the air made for trouble. In both cases, the earth called us back; and when we refused, gravity meted out its retribution. The full

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story, of course, is far more complicated; but suffice it to say that the unlikelihood of such traits being selected without other profound benefits to the survival of the species is widely accepted as evidence that these traits were instrumental in the development of some of our anomalous super-powers, such as our resonant capacity for speech and our knack for social cohesion. Other adaptations were quite the opposite: not only emphatically positive for our survival but also, in some sense, deliberate. I briefly explore one such instance in this section. To justify the long-term dangers of upright posture there must have also been other, far earlier, payoffs—benefits that made the long-term risks immediately worthwhile. Some of the many possible factors may include socio-sexual behavioral adaptations (Lovejoy 1981), the regulation of body temperature (Wheeler 1991), enhanced food transport (Hewes 1961) and height advantages for feeding (Hunt 1996). Of particular interest for purposes of this study, consider a further possibility—something Roger W. Wescott (1967) once termed “agonistic exhibitionism.” Wescott describes this strategy as “the habit of twolegged threat-display under circumstances in which such display had to be both frequent and impressive” (1967: 69). Add to this the dramatic extension of arms raised high into the air, and the once hunched hominid form becomes dreadfully imposing. This combo becomes a basic but powerful aposematic strategy. Aposematism is the link between a species’ survival and its threat-display strategies. Skunks use scent, puffer fish double in size, other animals use color and sound variations as warning signs. Bears and horses stand on their hind legs and paw the air with their forelegs. All such strategies are interspecific communication devices, which humans are also capable of understanding and producing by various means. But humans are able to perform some such strategies far better than other species. We are, for instance, able to hold the imposing hind leg stance far longer than horses and bears. Balancing upright with legs spread apart while holding one’s arms wide and high above the head makes one’s appearance much taller and larger—much more menacing—a distinct stance of threat toward predators. Doing this for a long time, or as a regular habit, might clear the area of predators for a wide radius, freeing one up (arms, hands and all) for other pursuits. We can be relatively certain that versions of the spread-eagle posture have been in use as a threat-tactic not only by early humans but also by pre-human hominids for more than two million years. The strategy is no less powerful by present day. Although we seldom assume the posture as a warning signal toward leopards and hyenas, it is still one of the most potent tools in our postural repertoire—one that recent studies suggest we don’t use often enough. Cuddy

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et al. (2012) demonstrate that assuming a power-pose posture like spread-eagle for even a brief period of time can produce positive psychological feedback responses. Doing so prior to a high-stakes social evaluation event, for example, can enhance performance during the event—even if the posture is discontinued at start time. In other words, assuming and holding the spread-eagle posture not only makes us look bigger, it also makes us feel and act bigger.1 Recent research also suggests that spread-eagle displays can play a role in sexual selection, since “dominant, open non-verbal displays” are considered by potential mates to be more attractive than closed postures (Vacharkulksemsuk et al. 2016). With these findings and distinctions in mind, it worth considering this strategy not merely as an interspecific communication signal but also as one of the earliest modes of human gesture. The evolutionary freedom of the arms and hands is a pivotal element to consider in developing “an evo-devo theory of gestures” (Bouissac 2006). Upright bipedalism left our arms and hands relatively idle, with “a range of potential movements far exceeding the immediate survival needs” (2006: 198). Of all the uses for which human hands were freed-up, threat displays may not seem like a pragmatically rich foundation to build upon, but evidence presented earlier in this chapter suggests otherwise. Recall the use of this posture as a signal of threat by the North Sentinelese in the encounter discussed above. In the encounter, the posture was used first to threaten but then also to celebrate. This means that the posture came to involve ambiguity— even to the degree of oppositional reversal pragmatically. To the degree that a posture becomes ambiguous, to that degree it becomes context-dependent as a communication device. When this happens, gesture is born. Thus, the performance of spread-eagle may provide a crucial movement for an evo devo theory of gesture to build from. It also provides a perfectly plausible mechanism for doing so. The transition into context-dependence serves to transplant the posture from the wildwood soil of animal behavior into the secret garden of human communication pragmatics. Here successful interaction is constrained by one’s ability to guess intentions. Here pragmatic reflexivity emerges (e.g., me imagining that I’m you imagining that you’re me). Such modes of communication are, however, no less constrained by bodily movement and body memory. Unfortunately, body movement and body memory are so automated for adults that paying sustained attention to them or appreciating the significance of the basic structural distinctions they introduce into our lives can be challenging. To appreciate more of the immediate significance of upright posture’s reconfiguration of human being relative to other mammals, we must

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move beyond the emancipation of arms and hands to something even more fundamental that orients their relationships, an experiential concept that gives them their structural home. This concept’s name is “orthogonality.” Orthogonality describes the relationship between the vertical face of one’s standing body and the (perceptually) horizontal face of the earth. This is a littlediscussed attribute of upright posture, but it stands at the very core of its power and pathos. To better appreciate orthogonality, it may be helpful to reflect on a recent internet meme entitled “If a dog wore pants,” posted by Facebook user “Utopian Raspberry—Modern Oasis Machine” on December 28, 2015, and reproduced in Figure 1.5. This image quickly went viral, and soon the question was put to a vote—later the same day in fact. The decision? Eighty-one percent of survey respondents voted for the version on the right. Of course, the majority decision in this case reveals as much about human bipedal bias (since we typically walk on only two limbs) as it does about the incongruent extension of pants to quadrapeds (since pants typically accommodate only two limbs). Notably, both conundrums hinge on the status of our lower limbs. If the function of pants is in focus, on the other hand, and if this function is extended to dogs, the image on the left would be the natural choice. No wonder, then, that soon afterward a small Canadian company named Muddy Mutts Dog Wear (muddymutts.ca), which happened to be already manufacturing four-legged “pant” suits much like the image on the left, suddenly found themselves with more business than they could handle. What this illustrates for purposes of the discussion at hand is the presence of an organizing principle far more fundamental to upright posture than the

Figure 1.5 “If a dog wore pants” internet meme: Originally posted December 28, 2015.

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alternate specialization of our two sets of limbs. This more fundamental element is the reorganization of our bodies’ anatomical planes relative to the earth. Dogs (and most other four-footed mammals) are typically oriented with their ventral dimension (i.e., their underbellies) facing the ground and their dorsal dimension (i.e., their spines) facing the sky. This is the default mammalian “dorsal-ventral” orientation to the earth which determines that the “cranial-caudal” plane (head and tail) of the species is oriented front-to-back horizontally—roughly parallel to the earth. Upright posture changes all of this. Indeed, it changes everything. According to French anthropologist Henri Van Lier (2003), living in a perpetual state of orthogonal opposition relative to the earth provides us with “a powerful referential frame.” Not only does it reconfigure our ventral-dorsal plane into an anterior-posterior (front-back) plane, it also gives us a new feel for angles and (a)symmetries that would have previously been unintelligible. With upright posture, through time, we have even been able to conceptualize and formalize these new-found relations into abstract representations or simulations, otherwise known as geometry and mathematics. Nowhere is this more vividly illustrated than in the Vitruvian man description and its various visual representations.

The Vitruvian man and X-posed geometry Renaissance-era interpretations of the Vitruvian man, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s well-known depiction (c.1487) and others less famous (see Figures 1.6 and 1.7), are indexical, visual icons of a prose description by the Roman engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio included in his 25 BCE work, de Architectura. In the words of Hon & Goldstein (2008: 117), “If such a man is well drawn, his structure exhibits the proportion of the constituent elements to a fixed module and to the whole structure.” The following excerpt is from an 1826 translation of de Architectura: Symmetry arises from proportion, which the Greeks call ἀναλογία. Proportion is a due adjustment of the size of the different parts to each other and to the whole […] The navel is naturally placed in the centre of the human body, and, if in a man lying with his face upward, and his hands and feet extended, from his navel as the centre, a circle be described, it will touch his fingers and toes. It is not alone by a circle, that the human body is thus circumscribed, as may be seen by placing it within a square. For measuring from the feet to the crown of the head, and then across the arms fully extended, we find the latter measure equal to the former; so that lines at right angles to each other, enclosing the figure,

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Figure 1.6 Two Renaissance-era interpretations of the Vitruvian man: Embodied polarity and proportion according to Marcus Vitruvius Pollio’s de Architectura. Left: Leonardo da Vinci (c.1487); Right: Cesare Cesariano (in Vitruvius Pollio 1521[25BCE]).

Figure 1.7 More Renaissance-era interpretations of the Vitruvian man. Left, by Geoffroy Tory (1529); Right, by H. C. Agrippa (1531).

will form a square. […T]he measures necessarily used in all buildings and other works, are derived from the members of the human body, as the digit, the palm, the foot, the cubit. (Vitruvius Pollio 25BCE[1826]: 78–81)

Although Da Vinci’s famous schematic (c.1487) is often held to be the most realistically modeled renaissance-era interpretation of the Roman engineer’s account, his version does not draw attention to the central axis of the navel or the antipodal nature of the extremities; he also leaves much of the schematic-

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internal geometry implicit. Contrasting his rendering with other interpretations from the same era brings further implications to light. As illustrated in the Figure 1.6 rendering by Cesariano (1521, right) and in the Figure 1.7 renderings by Tory (1529, left) and Agrippa (1531 [1898], left), the X-like chiasm implied in the original description intersects the navel of a figure standing within the circle or square whose arms and legs are extended toward the extremes of the space in a “spread-eagle” pose. As Hon and Goldstein (2008) demonstrate, bilateral (left–right) relations were not conceptually apparent to Vitruvius or to his renaissance interpreters. As a result, what might seem obvious to us as potential left–right mappings are merely background detail for Vitruvius’ Renaissance-era interpreters. Of all the segmenting lines superimposed on the human form in Da Vinci’s famous drawing, no line splits the figure down the middle. Both Cesariano and Tory’s drawings (Figure 1.6, right; Figure 1.7, left, respectively) feature implicit background midlines as part of a larger grid-like structure; but only the intersecting X—mapping right foot to left hand, right hand to left foot—is explicitly superimposed on the human form. In the Agrippa diagram by contrast, segmentation and background grids are dispensed with altogether, but the superimposition of X is emphasized with a double line. Hence when mapping relations between the four quadrants of the vertical X figure from a Vitruvian perspective, analogous body-part relations are in focus— not our own modern preference for left–right oppositions. In other words, supposing the relations were framed in terms of a linear “chiasmus” pattern (A: B:: B′: A′), we should note, moving from top to bottom, that A = hands: B = arms:: B′ = legs: A′ = feet is the focal organizing schema, not left hand/right hand, right foot/ left foot. The opposing poles at the four corners of the X design share an inverse analogous relationship across the waistline (the “transverse anatomical plane”), moving in toward (and out from) the center via arms above and legs below. The diamond or “rhombus” pattern featured in the Agrippa rendering (Figure 1.7, right) introduces a third element that can be useful for considering the diagram in terms of the ontological/phenomenological categories of C. S. Peirce, but this is a possibility we must wait to explore until the final chapter of the book. For now consider a different point of dialogue between Peirce and Vitruvius. Vitruvius’ account quoted above is more immediately concerned with the embodied and proportional nature of human geometry in general. Musing on a similar point, without considering bodily grounding, Charles S. Peirce once noted that Euclidean geometers in considering their axioms “confess that they, as geometers, know not the slightest reason for supposing them to be precisely true. They are expressions of our inborn conception of space, and as such are

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entitled to credit, so far as their truth could have influenced the formation of the mind” (1891, EP1: 296). This observation on human cognition is especially salient for framing the argument of this book relative to the embodied X. It also coincides with Vitruvius’ own perspective on the matter. Vitruvius’ understanding of the foundations of Euclidean geometry is surprisingly contemporary on this point. He even seems to assume an element missing from Peirce’s commentary, namely the radically embodied nature of human experience. We might expect Vitruvius to be influenced by the idealist presuppositions that so often mark classical mathematical accounts, but he does not assume the human body to be Platonically generated by disembodied geometric forms; instead, Vitruvius argues, the experience of one’s own body and its inverse chiastic proportions are the very fountainhead of Euclidean geometry (see McEwen 2004: 157). It is in this way that Vitruvius’ account unwittingly anticipates twentieth-century developments of Kantian-inspired image-schemas (see Johnson 1987; Lakoff & Núñez 2001). The image-schematic basis of embodied human cognition receives its most cogent treatment in Johnson (1987) who, while building on Kantian foundations, argues that Kant assumed mental activity and physical activity to be too discrete. Johnson frames the harmonizing continuity between the two as “imagination”— or “a pervasive structuring activity by means of which we achieve coherent, patterned, unified representations” (1987: 168). If “we humans think in order to act and we act as part of our thinking” (Johnson & Rohrer 2007: 26), repeated, habituated, embodied activity in space forms experiential gestalts that provide source domains for networks of metaphoric projection (see Lakoff & Johnson 1999: 45). We then rely on these gestalts for engaging in successively more complex embodied activities in space. A number of embodied spatial gestalts are implicated in ordinary chiastic experience of embodied correlative symmetry—minimally including the following: BALANCE, EQUILIBRIUM, PART-WHOLE, CENTER-PERIPHERY, MERGING, MATCHING, VERTICALITY, ATTRACTION, FORCE, COUNTERFORCE—some of which have been previously explored in Lissner (2007) as the underlying gestalts of cognitive chiasmus. These gestalts would naturally inform the basic human body image illustrated in various Vitruvian man diagrams. Further inquiry may discover that these image schemas are not only implicated in but the result of various chiastic qualities of our embodied commitments in space. We should ask, in other words, whether or not this collection of experiential gestalts co-emerges ontogenetically with the chiastic macro-schema: the more organic, systematic gestalt. Even if so, this would not

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preclude the more basic component schemas from functioning autonomously, or focally, in a given situation. For now, let me simply draw attention to the relevance of the BALANCE and EQUILIBRIUM schemata within the macro-schema of the embodied X, due to their visual iconic overlap with the Vitruvian diagrams above and due to the detailed attention they receive in Johnson’s (1987) treatment: “In every case, balance involves a symmetrical (or proportional) arrangement of forces around a point or axis. The prototypical [BALANCE] schema can thus be represented by an axis and force vectors” (Johnson 1987: 85). A prototype representation of this schema is reproduced in Figure 1.8 along with Johnson’s EQUILIBRIUM prototype. The structural congruence shared between these representations and the renderings of the Vitruvian chiasm in Figures 1.6 and 1.7 is visually transparent, as are the similarities between Vitruvius Pollio’s ancient exegesis of embodied proportion and Johnson’s descriptions of proportional symmetry and focal axes. As Hon and Goldstein (2008) point out, however, our contemporary assumption that symmetry is a matter of contrasts across the vertical left–right axis did not become possible until the eighteenth century and did not become focal until the nineteenth century. Vitruvius, on the contrary, considered symmetrical relations horizontally—or rather, transversely—in terms of inverse proportions between parts and wholes (see also Darvas 2007). Both senses of symmetry are implicit in embodied relations, and neither should be ignored by theories of embodied cognition. Relevant to both BALANCE and EQUILIBRIUM is the little appreciated fact that our entire embodied structure is implicated in both. We balance, for

Figure 1.8 Adapted presentations of Johnson’s (1987: 86–87) prototype BALANCE (left) and EQUILIBRIUM (right) schemata.

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instance, with our whole bodies—arms, legs, torso, head, buttocks, pelvis, front, back, left, right, shoulders, hips, feet and hands: “balancing is an activity we learn with our bodies and not by grasping a set of rules or concepts” (Johnson 1987: 74). Further evidence that the felt or remembered formal properties of the spreadeagle X figure are alive and active in human cognition show up immediately afterward in Johnson’s review of a phenomenon which Arnheim calls “the hidden structure of a square” (1974: 10). Arnheim illustrates our instinctive psychological projection of embodied balance, equilibrium and symmetry onto blank, two-dimensional squares, showing that such spaces are actively imbued with organizational structures moving from center to periphery (and back again) in patterns that are both crisscrossed and rhomboid (see illustrations in Johnson 1987: 76–79; Arnheim 1974: 13, 15). If the Vitruvian spread-eagle gestalt or X-schema plays a major constitutive role in human cognition and meaning making, further evidence of the chiastic macro-schema would be plentiful—and largely overlooked. This, we would do well to remember, was once the case for the rhetorical trope known as metaphor. As with metaphor, the most surprising sources of evidence for cognitive chiasmus may be hidden in plain view—most opaque where most habituated—in the ordinary embodied relations evidenced by our patterned symbolic activity. In much the same way that primary metaphors such as “affection is warmth” and “happy is up” have come to be recognized as key to the cognitive foundations of conceptual metaphor, the embodied chiasmic macro-schema outlined in this book may come to be seen as an essential aspect of the embodied bedrock of abstract reasoning and imaginative blending activities discussed in Fauconnier and Turner (2002). These connections and many more are explored in the chapters that follow. First it will be important to consider more carefully the origins and status of the term “chiasmus” and the figure’s potential connections with embodied cognition.

Chiasmus and X-posed cognition The chiasmus pattern, also known as the X figure, is often formally rendered A: B:: B′: A′. It can be described as the parallel, or (a)symmetrical, inversion of two or more terms framed as antithetical pairs, being held in something of a mirror image relation in order to suggest relations and processes of unity, tension, reversal and/or exchange. Consider, for instance, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s novel assertion in his October 19, 2015, acceptance

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speech: “ if Canadians are to trust their government, their government needs to trust Canadians.” The reversal in perspective midway places “government” at the center of an active conundrum and also brings to light a proposed relationship of reciprocity or interdependence. Two entities are framed in a relation of “symbiosis,” to use a biological metaphor, or “dependent co-arising,” to use an ancient Buddhist phrase (translated from Pali paṭiccasamuppāda). The term “chiasmus” is a romanization of Greek χιασμός—coined on analogy with the letter chi χ—to represent a diagonal crossing pattern involving opposites in relation. The longest running tradition of chiasmus inquiry is to be found in classical rhetoric studies. The phenomenon is also discussed as ὕστερον πρότερον (hýsteron próteron) — ‘the last first’—in the Homeric tradition (Welch 1981) and παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη (palintropos harmonié) —‘oppositional harmony’— in the fragments of Heraclitus (Miller 2011); but classical rhetoricians came to prefer the term ἀντιμεταβολή (antimetabolé)—‘oppositional change’—beginning in the second or third century BCE and lasting through the nineteenth century, after which time chiasmus re-emerged to replace earlier terms (Nänny 1987: 75; Fahnestock 1999: 128). This replacement established chiasmus’s relation to antimetabole as as one of hypernymy (subsuming the latter in the former) more so than synonymy (Lissner 2007: 60–61). Countless examples of chiastic patterning appear cross-linguistically in ancient texts from early Semitic and Indo-European language families (Welch 1981) to classical Chinese (McLuhan & Nevitt 1972: 6; Lissner 2007: 108–109). Although usually discussed as a clause-level phenomenon, as in Shakespeare’s “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me” (King Richard II: 5.5, 1595), symmetrical reversals are noted to play a role in the structure of texts at every linguistic level, from the phonological and the orthographic to “words, sentences, lines, stanzas, chapters, books” and more (Nänny 1988: 51)—in both ancient and contemporary sources (Welch 1981; Nänny 1988; Norrman 1998; Douglas 2007). Nänny claims that chiasmi in ancient synthetic languages are merely ornamental and mnemonic, only later coming to evolve meaningful semantic functions in more analytic languages such as modern English (1988: 51–52). This claim does not appear to be warranted, as Fahnestock (1999), Heil (2007) and Douglas (2007) and others have demonstrated; but it serves as a reminder that, until recently, most treatments of chiasmus have taken the phenomenon to be merely a figure of decorative flourish or an aid to memory for pre-literate learners. Engel (2009), who stresses the ornamental and mnemonic role of chiasmus in Shakespeare, represents a continuation of these assumptions into the present.

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Fahnestock (1999) illustrates how conceptual meanings such as contradiction, identity, interchangeability, interdependence and reciprocity are inherent in chiasmus, even in scientific prose. Her discussion is revealing; yet she assumes chiasmus must first have been taught (or learned tacitly) as a rhetorical figure in order for science writers to employ it in their prose (see also Stock 1984 in this connection). Other thinkers, however, find chiasmus functioning in nonlinguistic structures and experiences that are unlikely to be traceable to training in rhetorical grammar. At first glance, discussions of chiasmus in post-structuralist criticism seem to move beyond language into the realm of experience more generally. Derrida writes, for instance, of a chiasmus between desire and need (1973: 134); but his presupposition that human thought is ultimately arbitrary dictates that even this relationship must be rooted in self-referential langue—the internal linguistic trap of post-structuralism otherwise known as “logocentrism” and “glottocentrism” (see, e.g., Deely 2009). This is why Derrida draws attention to the problematic duality of chiasmus—stressing its asymmetry of form (Gasché 1999: 274–275). His asymmetrical perspective on chiasmus is itself atypical; but, as we will see below, his preferential focus on dyadic oppositions is not. Merleau-Ponty’s (c.1960 [1968]) perspective on chiasmus is historically the most pivotal. Not only is he the first to explicitly situate linguistic chiasmus within the broader realm of nonlinguistic chiasmic experience, he also shifts the discussion from implied abstract dualities to lived embodied integrities. Moreover, he hopes in his articulation of phenomenological chiasmus to “show that the flesh is an ultimate notion, that it is not the union or compound of two substances, but thinkable by itself ” (c.1960: 140). His discussion of the “reciprocal insertion and intertwining” relationship (c.1960: 138) between embodied experiences, such as visibility and seeing, touching and being touched, highlights a third facet of chiasmic experience—one that is interdependent and emergent. This perspective more than any other sets the stage for an integrative (and constitutive) understanding of cognitive chiasmus. Inquiries into nonlinguistic and extra-linguistic dimensions of chiasmus continue to grow after Merleau-Ponty, including treatments of chiasmus in culture (Strecker & Tyler 2009; Wiseman & Paul 2014), in social interaction (Carter 2010), in media (McLuhan & McLuhan 1988), in psychology (Isar 2005) and in philosophy (Gasché 1999; Toadvine 2012). Such treatments emphasize the surprise of the figure’s sudden reversals, its potential for challenging ageold ideologies (Strecker 2014; Paul 2014; Hariman 2014), the importance of its “underlying reciprocity” (Strecker & Tyler 2009: 22) and its apparent ubiquity:

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“The in-between, that interstitial stuff of which chiastic reality is made, is, as it were, everywhere” (Carter 2010: 6). “Chiasm, then, is no longer a merely ornamental form or psychological device,” says Gasché, “but, rather, reveals itself as an originary form of thought, of dianoia” (1999: 273). Practitioners in the Rhetoric Culture movement (Tyler & Strecker 2009; Strecker 2011; Wiseman & Paul 2014) agree. The figure should be approached not simply as a decorative flourish, nor merely as a symmetrically reversible form, but as a figure of human thought and action—a cross-cultural “creative principle” (Wiseman 2009: 92). Wiseman and Paul’s (2014) volume Chiasmus and Culture is the first booklength publication on chiasmus as a pattern of thought. As Strecker notes, a primary motivation in producing the volume is to continue the work of elevating chiasmus to the status of better-known rhetorical figures and tropes, such as irony and metaphor (2014: 69–70; see Lissner 2007; Pelkey 2013c, for earlier work in this vein). The volume is dedicated to exploring the chiasmus figure as “a deep structure of life experience” (Paul 2014: 42), opening up new vistas for future research, establishing foundational insights for the development of chiasmus studies across the disciplines, and demonstrating the figure’s timeliness and untapped potential. The volume further situates the chiasmus figure in the history of ideas and expands on earlier arguments that chiasmus is useful for both the production and discovery of meaning (Strecker & Tyler 2009: 9), given that it is a pattern both of thought and for thought: “a dialectical tool” (Paul & Wiseman 2014: 3), “a process of change” (2014: 5), a dynamic pattern that is both “diagram and force, system and movement” and a “powerful instrument for opposing dogmatism and time-honoured nonsense”(2014: 5). Among the many benefits of paying closer attention to chiasmus patterning is the promise it shows as a practical dialectic: a tool for dealing with binary contradictions and other oppositions. Researchers in the Rhetoric Culture movement (see Strecker & Tyler 2009; Wiseman & Paul 2014) have made the most progress in this line of inquiry. Chiasmus can be used both to vividly frame the contradiction or rupture between some set of oppositions and simultaneously to bring these differences into dialogue. Furthermore, reflexivity and chiasmus go hand-in-hand. In the words of Paul and Wiseman (2014: 2), “the spirit of chiastic inversion [allows] the questioner to be questioned by his own object of attention.” Multiple scholars in the Rhetoric Culture movement suggest that the ultimate purpose of chiastic modeling is to move beyond mere Hegelian holism, or bland synthesis between thesis and antithesis that threatens to destroy individual uniqueness (see Tyler 2014; Paul 2014: 40–42; Wiseman

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2014: 226). Instead, chiasmus functions simultaneously to both join and split such phenomena (Paul and Wiseman 2014: 11): “to embrace oppositions and transcend contradictions” (Paul 2014: 41). In more complex instances, chiasmus can function as a “tool for analogical transposition” (Wiseman 2014: 233) — useful for problem solving, whether deliberate or unwitting, through modeling problematic or complementary relationships. One such instance is the “doubletwist” chiasmus pattern found in Lévi-Strauss’ (1958) “canonical formula” for the deep structure of myth, “a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction” (1958: 264, cited in Wiseman 2014: 226). Other scholars in the Rhetoric Culture movement draw attention to mundane  uses of chiasmus through history, for coping with and overcoming everything from anxiety to impotence (see, e.g., Hariman 2014: 60, Usher 2014: 152). In this mode, chiasmus patterning corresponds with what Marvin Shaw has entitled “the paradox of intention” (1988). In this mode, chiasmus is also something of a hermeneutic key or prism (Paul and Wiseman 2014: 7, 12), enabling us to identify, perform and better understand reversals in perspective or behavior (see Bollig 2014: 172, Lewis 2014: 188, 199, 212) and better enabling us “to live in harmony” (Paul 2014: 42) with people, ideas and other entities that are “at once diverse and in relationship” (2014: 15). Naturally, approaching chiasmus as a figure of thought or a dialectical tool ranges far beyond traditional treatments of the form as little more than decorative or aphoristic flourish (e.g., “eat to live; don’t live to eat”). Such treatments tend to stop at the level of basic, surface syntax. By contrast, far more attention is devoted by Wiseman and Paul (2014) to modes of chiastic patterning that are much “more subtle” (Bollig 2014: 181): chiasmi operating at conceptual levels heavily reliant on tacit cognition, or “structures that are essentially unconscious” (Wiseman 2014: 225). Discussed as the exploration of “chiasmus phenomena” (Lewis 2014: 188, attrib. to Ivo Strecker) and “chiasmus events” (2014: 211), this mode of chiasmus patterning includes discussions of grammatical chiasmus (Bollig 2014: 169; Usher 2014: 156, 158; Wiseman 2014: 229), thematic chiasmus (Bollig 2014: 163,164, 166), phonetic chiasmus (2014: 163) and ritual chiasmus—in both “oratory” and “ostensive” performances (Lewis 2014). Wiseman’s identification of chiasmus patterns in the generative deep structure of mythology (2014: 220, 223, 224), which are in turn analogous to the Klein group and Quaternion group in mathematics (2014: 236, 238) also factor in here. The contrast with traditional treatments is so dramatic, in fact, that knowing quite how to frame distinctions and relations between differing levels or phases

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of chiasmus patterning remains unclear, especially between between presentday researchers intent on understanding such phenomena. Bollig (2014: 182), for instance, frames the basic distinction as “chiastic thought” versus “chiasmus proper,” suggesting tacitly that surface syntax is the most basic mode of chiasmus. Naturally, from a folk perspective this may make sense, but from a grounding perspective it is problematic. Nevertheless, it highlights the kinds of challenges facing chiasmus studies in the immediate future. Much more discussion and inquiry is needed on grounding models and mechanisms, a point that motivates the production of this volume. Rhetoric Culture studies open up fresh possibilities for understanding the breadth of chiastic phenomena, but they do not substantially develop Merleau-Ponty’s inquiry into radically embodied chiasmus, the roots of chiastic understanding. For this we must turn to the work of Ralf Norrman (1998, 1999), Mark Turner (1991) and Patricia Lissner (2007), each of whom emphasizes a connection between chiasmus and the ordinary embodied experience of parallel bilateral symmetry (i.e., vertical, left-right symmetry). When we notice, for example, “a connection between the visual image of our two hands and the linguistic construction ‘Harvard Yard in April: April in Harvard Yard’” (Turner 1991: 68), we are noticing a “corporeal template for left and right that we simultaneously exhibit and inhabit” (Lissner 2007: 15). Consider the broader implications of this relationship: The metaphoric projection onto contraries of a linear bilateral symmetric scale is an extremely basic tool of human understanding and invention, and it is ineradicably metaphoric. It has a tremendous general scope, but is not a mere formal abstraction. Instead, it is grounded in our embodied understanding of the symmetry of our bodies and our environments. (Turner 1991: 80)

Similarly, Norrman finds that the pan-human desire for symmetry “ultimately originates in the symmetry of the human body” (1999: 62). Both Norrman (e.g., 1999: 64) and Turner (1991: 93), however, treat chiasmus as simply one manifestation of embodied symmetry, limited to linguistic structure. Lissner (2007) calls this latter position into question by highlighting the crossing nature of myriad X-like patterns in human thought and creativity. Chiasmus, in Lissner’s assessment, is not merely a mode of symmetry but a “structure that structures” in its own right (2007: 10), inclusive of further schemas such as balance, centricity, enclosure and crossing. These corporeal schemas (viz., “image schemas,” see Johnson 1987) are habituated, memory-based gestalts patterned after ordinary embodied experience in space. Thus, Lissner is the first to articulate a theory of cognitive chiasmus. She also begins the complex task of

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untangling the many dialectical themes that emerge from chiasmic patterns. She insists, nevertheless, that “chiasmus turns out to be inordinately dichotomous” (2007: 10), a pattern which “divvies up the world into binary states and insists on this binarism” (2007: 443–444). This dyadic perspective is shared by Norrman and Turner relative to embodied symmetry. Norrman reduces symmetrical patterns (including linguistic chiasmus) to “repetition and inversion”—the first implying sameness or “one,” the second implying difference or “two” (1999: 74). Turner identifies symmetry with stasis and argues that “change results from breaking that symmetry” (1991: 81). As I argue elsewhere (see Pelkey 2013a,b, and later in this book), these either-or perspectives, though they are sure to be useful and partially correct, seem to be rooted more in Western habits of abstract thought than in fully lived, spatially embodied experience.

Embodied mind and the nature of meaning Dyadic “Either-or” thinking and its corollary “neither-nor” are mainstays of both classical modern and poststructural approaches to the nature of meaning and interpretation. But do all interpretive acts lead us back into either the truth conditional tautologies of analytic thought or the infinite regresses favored by poststructuralist critiques? Some have argued that meaning rooted in bodily experience not only enables the reconciliation of objectivist reduction and relativist deconstruction but also helps us move beyond both. Early on in the cognitive linguistic revolution, Lakoff and Johnson dubbed this nexus the “experientialist synthesis” (1980: 192–193) in a bid to reconcile reason and imagination and undermine various false dichotomies imposed on Western thought by the objective–subjective split in classical modernism (see also Lakoff & Johnson 1999; Johnson 2007). The movement came to be discussed as “embodied cognition.” Implications and applications of embodied cognition continue to grow, but critical attention to the nature of radically embodied experience remains a priority. Research in enaction theory (Varela et al. 1991; Varela 1997; Stewart et al. 2010; Froese et al. 2013b), cognitive semiotics (Sebeok & Danesi 2000; Ziemke et al. 2007; Zlatev 2007; Stjernfelt 2007) and cognitive semantics (Johnson 1987; Lakoff & Johnson 1999; Hampe 2005; Gibbs 2005b; Steen 2011) has shown that we not only experience our bodies in movement but also project the feeling of our bodies onto other people, things and events (see Amorim et al. 2006;

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Gallagher 2007; Gibbs 2008; Engel et al. 2008; Doyle & Voyer 2013; Zlatev 2014; Chemero 2016 for ongoing empirical confirmation). When we do so with any degree of conceptual awareness, however, we are now  more likely to imagine ourselves, other individuals and phenomena in general as split down the middle rather than harmoniously interrelated. This split is by no means obvious in many traditional societies (see Levinson & Brown 1994; Danziger & Pederson 1998; Danziger 2011). This reversal has broad implications, the most troubling of which are highlighted in the work of neuropsychiatrist and cultural historian, Iain McGilchrist (2009). As a result, with very few exceptions, present applications of embodiment theory to (a) symmetrical patterning stop at the level of bilateral contrasts, ignoring (or sometimes disparaging) other modes of (a)symmetrically embodied experience (see e.g., Turner 1991; Norrman 1999; Humphrey 2004; Ewins 2004). These points are discussed further in the chapters ahead. Reaching a better understanding of the nature of embodied chiasmus will require a more integrated approach. As I discuss further in Chapters 5 and 6, our traditional, implicit awareness of proportional, transverse relationships (which provide analogic grounding) will need to be blended with modern conceptual awareness of left-right relationships (which provide analytic grounding). This is unlikely to happen if we neglect to consider the profoundly important role embodied feeling must play in any given abstract model—a point illustrated by O’Neill (2008) from the perspective of interactive media design, by Sheets-Johnstone (2011) from evolutionary, developmental and kinesthetic perspectives, by Merrell (2010) from topological and semiotic perspectives, by Gibbs (2005a) from the perspective of cognitive science and by Johnson (2007) from the perspective of pragmatist philosophy. All five thinkers draw on the work of French philosopher Maurice MerleauPonty (1945, c.1960), who devoted his life to the problem. By his death in 1961, he had settled on the figure of the intertwining “chiasm” as the best way of coming to terms with the pervasively integrative experiences of embodiment. This he often expressed by using explicitly chiastic patterns in his own linguistic collocations and syntax: “The experience of one’s own body,” as he notes in Phenomenology of Perception, “is opposed to the reflective movement that disentangles the object from the subject and the subject from the object, and that only gives us thought about the body or the body as an idea, and not the experience of the body or the body in reality.” (1945[2012]: 205). Instead, as he would later claim in The Visible and the Invisible, “there is a body of the mind and a mind of the body and a chiasm between them” (c.1960: 259). In Merleau-

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Ponty’s system, then, the age-old subject–object and body–mind dichotomies are both problematized and reconciled. In the words of Renaud Barbaras, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical universe is “a proliferation of chiasms that integrate themselves according to different levels of generality” (2004: 307, qtd. in Toadvine 2012: 339). In Toadvine’s (2012) summary, this proliferation includes “relationships between mind and body, self and world, self and other, fact and idea, silence and speech, imaginary and real, past and present, Being and beings, philosophy and non-philosophy.” Though Merleau-Ponty “concentrates his attention on a few specific cases of chiasmic structure that are key to the goals of his later philosophy” (Toadvine 2012: 339). In his later thought, he came to understand that one’s body, which he had long recognized as a “nexus of living meanings” (1945[2002]: 175), only realizes this meaning through a “reciprocal insertion and intertwining” of sensed and sentient (c.1960[1968]: 138). In other words, the very features of the body that are capable of sensation must, themselves, be simultaneously capable of being sensed. This movement is critical for revising our assumptions about so-called subjective and objective thought. Rather than simply being an object in space or the residence of a conscious subject, the lived body (vs. the lived-in body or the living body) is an irreducible, emergent experience in the same sense that the experience of a good poem cannot be paraphrased. Merleau-Ponty finished his career with a provocative discussion of the significance of various chiastic features that mark basic human experience, such as touching one’s own hand, seeing while being seen or hearing oneself speak (c.1960). As Thomas-Fogiel argues, these are not arbitrary relations but “an identity within opposition, a crossing that institutes the very elements it puts in relation,” ultimately implementing “a new logic: that of the sensible” (2014: 111–112). Although Merleau-Ponty never treated chiasmus at the level of bodily posture or gesture, as I am doing in this book, I consider this project to be an extension of his own—a further level of embodied chiasmic generality not previously considered. And like Merleau-Ponty, my wish is to present these findings as an antidote to ongoing tendencies (now even among researchers of embodied cognition) to abstract away from the body in discussions of embodiment—to the degree that it becomes once again little more than an epiphenomenon of consciousness. In a recent critical essay entitled “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” Gallagher (2015) draws attention to this problem: the disembodiment of embodied cognition. Others, such as Violi, have framed similar critiques against “embodiment without the body” (2008: 55), insisting that embodiment thinkers

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must not be content with bodily accounts that are merely simulated by the brain or accounts that merely frame the body as a material object or animated corpse. A further problematic abstraction away from the body in cognitive science that is also recognized by both Gallagher and Violi involves the neglect of lived corporeal feeling that is inextricable from embodied experience. As Gallagher argues, “affect is deeply embodied” (2014: 16). Violi agrees: “affect and emotion are in the body from the very beginning, in all our sensations and perceptions, which are always permeated by an affective emotional tone” (Violi 2008: 70). Further versions of this defense are found in Johnson’s applications of American pragmatism (2007) and in Freeman’s (2009) applications of Langer’s (1953) “forms of feeling” that approximate Merleau-Ponty’s own concept of “corporeal schema.” Violi argues, however, that a corporeal schema “is not only the general kinaesthetic experience we have of our body, but it is also the spatial dimension that is occupied by the body” (2008: 70). Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (2011a) takes this critique even further, arguing that discussions of embodiment that neglect kinesthetic and proprioceptive movement in space are little more than a “lexical bandaid” covering “a more than 350 year-old wound inflicted by the Cartesian split of mind and body” (2011a: 453). Sheets-Johnstone argues that recognizing “sensory-kinetic” bodies and not merely sensorimotor bodies is crucial for grasping the “tactile-kinesthetic invariants [that] ground our basic species-specific human repertoire of movement possibilities and undergird our affective social understandings” (2011a: 471). Since movement determines neural motor development in utero and beyond (2011b: 118), Sheets-Johnstone is justified in speaking of a “primal animateness,” proclaiming, “In the beginning is movement” (2011a: 119). Accordingly, she argues that it is not enough to talk about body schemas, and certainly not enough to talk about neural embodiment. Rather, in Sheets-Johntone’s view, we must move the conversation into the realm of actual movement, and the “imaginative consciousness of movement” (2011b: 122). As for phenomenology, if we wish to approach “the things themselves,” we must attend to the phenomenon of selfmovement which, according to Sheets-Johnstone, is “the thing itself ” (2012a: 62)—the thing “in and through which the perceptible world and acting subject come to be constituted, which is to say movement in and through which we make sense of both the world and ourselves” (2011a: 119). As Thomas Fuchs (2012) goes on to clarify, the best way to theorize accounts of embodied movement is to move the discussion into accounts of “body memory.” Sheets-Johnstone agrees, adding that the “focal attention on kinesthetic memory

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constitutes precisely a holistic rather than divisionary enterprise” (2012a: 47). Given the indispensable role of memory for the development of a robust general semiotic (see Bouissac 2007), this is a crucial nexus, one that will be further developed in the chapters ahead. Sheets-Johnstone’s perspectives on linear patterning in body movement and the ways these patterns are organized through memory provide key support for the argument to come: In becoming aware of the linear design of our bodies, we are actually synthesising separate joint angularities. Joint angularity, a product of muscular tensions, supports the imagined line. The angle of any joint may be considered kinaesthetically, but the distance between joints cannot; it can only be imagined, and imagined kinetically in the form of a drawn line. (Sheets-Johnstone 2011b: 116)

Our own “species-specific kinetic lines” define our most salient body memories; and “our own natural history as Homo sapiens sapiens, [involves] a particular species of morphologies-in-motion that moves bipedally” (2011b: 125–126). Because of these realities, our body memories of upright posture in general, and upright spread-eagle posture in particular, may be expected to organize the experience and interpretation of our world in pervasive ways, ranging from philosophy to mathematics, from mythology to marketing.

X-posed figures in contemporary folk art Marshall McLuhan once mused that the advertisement is “the centre of folk art in our time” (1970: v). If archaic folk art survives in stone marks, contemporary folk art thrives in brandmarks. As we saw above, paying attention to thematic elements that hold between traditional folk art representations around the world can shed light on human culture and cognition in the remote past, all of which holds relevance for better understanding our present condition. Conversely, paying attention to brandmarks and advertisements as modes of contemporary folk art can provide insight into cognitive and cultural relations in the present, all of which has relevance for better understanding the significance of our Paleolithic origins. Analyzed in the aggregate, across time and space, patterns of comparison and contrast between these two eras of folk art may be useful for discovering complex projections of the human psyche in general—prominently including the networks of meaning that draw on felt body movements and structurally condensed body-memories. In brief, identifying semiotic themes in brandmarks and advertising can serve as a mode of empirical data collection,

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providing clues that lead to better understandings of cognitive and cultural dimensions of the human experience. This will be especially true to the degree that the ads (or petroglyphs) under consideration are drawn from a variety of domains and diverse geographies. As discussed above, the pattern of interest in this book is the Vitruvian spread-eagle figure and its relationships with X—along with the meanings and implications of these relations. As shown above, the figure surfaces often enough in archaic folk art; but does it also show up in the present? It does indeed—and quite a lot—from diverse geographies, in a variety of domains. When the stylized posture emerges in contemporary folk art, it is often associated, whether explicitly or implicitly, with the symbol X. These points are treated more thoroughly in Chapter 3. In the meantime, as a taste of things to come, and in order to better illustrate and validate the claims above, Figure 1.9 presents four miniature case studies, drawn from diverse contexts for comparative discussion. The Japanese Pokémon X logo represents a role-playing adventure videogame released by Nintendo in 2013. In this instance, the X symbol itself is not intended to represent the Roman numeral X (i.e., as the tenth installment in the series); instead the name is a dual reference to one of the game’s main characters (or “species” in Pokémon parlance), and to its complementary counterpart, Pokémon Y, which was released simultaneously. Although the four jagged lines in each arm of the upper crux correspond with the antlers of a mythical creature “Xerneas” introduced in the game, for initiates and noninitiates alike these jagged lines are equally suggestive of fingers or claws scraping ominously in toward the midline—in which case the lower crux becomes a pair of legs. The Play Exchange logo is the face of an initiative by the Canadian government to encourage the development of programs that promote healthy, active lifestyles. The program solicits proposals for funding ideas. The winning proposal is voted in by the Canadian public for an investment award of one million dollars. In this case, the stylized spread-eagle figure is itself symbolic of exchange since the figure is composed against a ground of four overlapping talk bubbles, themselves symbolizing ideas “from all corners.” The OXI logo is the face of the “no” vote position on economic austerity during the Greece bailout referendum debate (Oxi being the Greek word for “no”). The vote was held on July 5, 2015; and the “no” vote was successful, much to the chagrin of countries elsewhere in the European Union. In this case, the simple addition of a dot to suggest a face above the upper crux is all that is necessary to turn the X explicitly spread-eagle.

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Figure 1.9 X-person blend strategies in brand mark advertising. Clockwise from top: Pokémon X logo (Japan); The Play Exchange logo (Canada), Greek Bailout Referendum vote OXI “no” logo (Greece); P90X home fitness advertisement (USA).

Finally, the P90X ad, a product title that stands for “Power 90 Extreme,” is the face of a rigorous exercise and diet regimen with the stated goal of gaining peak fitness within ninety days. In this case, the spread-eagle figure is not part of the logo but assumes the posture as an echo of X in the product name. The bodybuilder’s extreme posture is doubly congruent with the Xtreme regimen underlying the product.

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In all four cases there is a sense in which X—and spread-eagle—represent something extreme: extreme otherness (Pokémon X), extreme possibility (The Play Exchange), extreme austerity (OXI), extreme exercise (P90X). Both the Pokémon X brandmark and the OXI logo feature explicit blends between orthographic X and the spread-eagle posture. In the P90X ad and the Play Exchange logo, on the other hand, spread-eagle representations are involved in implicit blends with X marks in their respective brand names. This set of four brandmarks represents human modeling activity in four cultures and three languages (Japan, Canada, Greece and the US); it represents three domains (roleplay video games, physical fitness and politics); and it represents the interests of four diverse parties and their consumers or constituents (the Nintendo corporation, the Canadian government, the Greek populace, and the Beachbody corporation). Are these anthropomorphizations of an alphabetic figure? Are they bodily projections onto an abstract form? Are both interpretations warranted? Neither? Something else? To make broad generalizations solely on the basis of this limited dataset would be hasty, but as we will see in chapters to come, the ubiquitous use of X as a marketing strategy may be best explained by its associations with Xtremes and Xchanges (i.e., extreme reversals). These associations, in turn, are best understood with reference to felt and remembered patterns of bodily movement—the performance of extremes by the extreme extension of our bodily extremities—best typified in spread-eagle posture. But now that the background is in place, how will the argument unfold? To round out this chapter and move into the main argument of the book, a preview of things to come will be helpful.

Argument summary My fundamental motivation in writing this book is to provide more substantial foundations for further exploration of the X-figure and its derivative structures in order to reach a better understanding of the grammar of embodied (a) symmetry and the nature of human being. This means that the book is being written as an early phase of a longer-term project on the embodied grammar of intertwining patterns. As such it is written primarily in an exploratory key, not in order to provide the definitive treatment of the topic. As discussed above, the book features inquiry in a semiotic mode using insights from cognitive linguistics, historical linguistics and linguistic anthropology to search for clues in phenomenology, art, poetry, psychoanalysis, history, philosophy, popular

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culture, material culture and languages around the world. As introduced above, the object of inquiry is spread-eagle posture—the embodied X. This distinction which should prove to shed new light on the otherwise familiar alphabetic/ mathematic symbol and many related patterns besides. The Semiotics of X is written for a scholarly audience with interests in embodied meaning, but this is certainly not intended as an exclusive target. Others will hopefully find insight in these pages as well. For one thing, the themes introduced above are necessarily integrated with other traditions—philosophy, psychology and embodied phenomenology in particular. Since The Semiotics of X draws on a wide array of evidence to make its case, the book may find further appeal for readers with interests ranging from marketing, visual design, and pop culture to history, archaeology and material culture. My approach to semiotics in the book is deliberately ecumenical and international in scope. The argument and findings in this book have substantial implications for cognitive linguistics, an approach to language and cognition which originated in North America and has spread around the world over the past thirty-five years. Many leading scholars in this movement whose work is directly discussed in the book are still based in the United States: for example, Mark Turner, Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Johnson and George Lakoff. Other American thinkers such as Charles S. Peirce, Roman Jakobson, Douglas Hofstadter and Morris Berman are also featured in the book, as are Canadian thinkers such as Marshall McLuhan and Charles Taylor. The book features an iconic poem by American poet Wallace Stevens, along with many applications to American popular culture, from the P90X workout routine (addressed above) to Marvel Comic’s X-Men series, and numerous examples from contemporary marketing and graphic design. Data from American aboriginal languages such as Inuit, Apache and Dene are also analyzed in the book. The book also makes substantial contributions to cognitive semiotics and Rhetoric Culture Theory, two contemporary circles of scholarship that have primarily grown out of Scandinavia (especially Denmark and Sweden) and Germany, respectively. In addition to these connections, the book draws on the work of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, French-Lithuanian semiotician Algirdas Julien Greimas, German linguist Bernd Heine, Swiss psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, German sociologist Georg Simmel and German linguist Cornelia Müller, among many others. Literary examples are drawn from diverse international sources from Greek mythology, the English dramatist Shakespeare and the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas to the Chinese sage Laozi. Case studies are drawn from material cultures

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around the world, including the Scottish national flag, the Italian shoe company Vibram®, prehistoric cave art from South Africa to Australia, the Japanese series Pokemon (noted above) and various international rituals of sport and torture. Language data analyzed in the book are also global in scope, including data from my own fieldwork on the Ngwi languages of China. In the next chapter, I discuss the spread-eagle posture in further detail, moving from its uses in Marvel’s modern mythic series The Uncanny X-Men to its uses in extreme sports and ritual torture. The paradoxes and reversals inherent in the posture are made explicit with reference to the thought of Marshall McLuhan. I then discuss everyday uses of spread-eagle as a pragmatic gesture in order to reinforce these insights and provide further illustrations. These discoveries, combined with a historical study of the English term “spreadeagle,” illuminate a famous line from Wallace Stevens (“the vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X”), revealing the paradoxes and reversals of X that underlie its lived meanings. This sets up a discussion of X as a gestalt pattern related to movement, memory and trauma, drawing on insights from embodied cognitive science and process semiotics. The full argument of the chapter is then summarized using the Scottish saltire flag, also known as “Saint Andrew’s Cross,” to illustrate how X commonly functions as an embodied projection. In Chapter 3, we explore a rich source of further evidence for understanding the X-figure as an embodied projection: the realm of brand marks and advertising. A wide variety of products, companies and events incorporate the X-figure as part of their brand identity and marketing strategy. Many of these, in turn, also draw explicit attention to the human spread-eagle motif implicit in the design by including a face above the crux of the upper appendages. A typology of such strategies is proposed, and a cluster of thematic associations shared between product types emerges, suggesting that the projected X-posture in advertising commands attention via the suggestion of agony, climax, or peak experience. The ideal target audience is intended to participate in an instant (and ephemeral) crisis, subconsciously suspended for a moment between bliss and torture. Torture takes over when the X-posture is sustained for any period of time, but what happens when the figure becomes frozen or habituated? In Chapter 4, we explore a further projection of the embodied X: the hourglass pattern, a version of the X-schema representing torture as a way of life. As an archetypal symbol, the hourglass evokes mortality and impending death, living with the end in sight, someone whose time is coming, or has already come. Relationships between the stylized hourglass figure and the embodied X are traced through the work of

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Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and analyses of contemporary graphic design examples, to reveal associations with prolonged crisis, tragedy, impermanence, instability and precarity. The chapter argues that the hourglass pattern is itself the projection of a tortured psyche (one who feels the end is near) rooted in gestalt experiences of the embodied X. These insights are tested and refined at the end of the chapter by cross-cultural examples from India and Tibet. A tortured psyche is not only a phenomenological problem but a logical problem, a reality that is also implicit in the X-posture, whether projected or lived. Chapter 5 traces the history and development of the logical square of opposition from Aristotle to the semiotic square of Greimas and beyond, to argue that the logical relations modeled in these diagrams are in fact embodied relations from which we derive basic structural awareness of opposition and contrast. Treated in isolation, however, these relations present us with false dichotomies, impossible decisions and double-binds, varieties of psychological torture in which “fair is foul and foul is fair.” Moving beyond left-right oppositions, which are frequently absent from the conceptual systems of traditional cultures, we find that if the semiotic square is embodied, the diagram mapping also suggests additional relationships across the waistline (above and below the transverse anatomical plane). These relations move beyond mere contrast and difference, being focused instead on interactions and reversals between parts and wholes, otherwise known as analogy. One set of part–whole relations shared across the waistline emerges between the upper and lower appendages. These relations are the focus of Chapter 6. From the arm–leg reversals inherent in Vibram’s FiveFingers shoes to curious compounds such as Phowa “arm-thigh”; from universal trends in semantic shift to the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo, we find that arm–leg relations are not merely semantic but analogic and dialogic, part of our shared human experience. When we project the embodied X onto the world around us, something more than an experience of difference or contrast takes place: something Roman Jakobson discusses as markedness (marked oppositions being subordinate, unmarked being dominant, relative to some end), thus opening up more functional, complementary relations and paving the way for broader analogies between parts and wholes. Applied to theories of analogy and problems in cognitive linguistics, these findings suggest that transverse part–whole relationships inherent in the human X-posture may provide a more adequate account of the origins of conceptual blending and the nature of embodied meronymy (the semantic mapping of

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body-part terms onto objects in material culture). If proprioceptive opposition is the source of these cognitive abilities, as the chapter argues, the chiasmus (X) figure must be recognized as an embodied diagram and given its due alongside metaphor. In fact, the scope of both figures ranges far beyond literature and rhetoric. The argument is framed in dialogue (and debate) with the work of Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Turner, Bernd Heine, Douglas Hofstadter and others. In the process a number of outstanding questions are answered, illustrating the cognitive potency of the X-figure. In reviewing the book’s argument up to this point, Chapter 7 finds that three principal layers of self-experience emerge in paying attention to the embodied X: (1) the experience of polarized extremes, (2) the experience of sudden reversals, and (3) the experience of paradoxic integration. But examining self-experience in a vacuum is itself paradoxical since, contrary to assumptions of solipsism, no coherent sense of self is possible in utter isolation. The lone figure of the X-man is examined in light of the history of modernity and experiences of alienation. Relationships between X-man, solipsism and epistemology (the philosophical theory of knowledge) are explored. This dialogue is carried out with reference to contemporary social and conceptual problems, drawing on the work of thinkers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Georg Simmel and Charles Taylor. If no individual truly exists in isolation, illusions to the contrary should be shattered; but what, then, becomes of the lonely X? When X-figures are placed side-by-side, diamond-like “rhombus” shapes emerge between them as their necessary ground, producing a third space: the space of the in-between. This is the focus of Chapter 8. Treating this basic composite design as an embodied projection, we find new leverage for better understanding a range of patterns, from the earliest known example of human symbolic representation created some 70,000 years ago to hand-made folk art around the world. Examples from contemporary graphic design are explored to suggest that this composite form functions implicitly as an idealized sign of individuals in contact and community in context. A new typology of embodied chiasmus is proposed, building on the work of Anthony Paul (2014); and an earlier dialogue between Wallace Stevens, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Charles S. Peirce is resumed in closing to argue that human communication works best not when one “X-person” collapses into, or absorbs, others but when the third space shared between “X-people” actually merges with them. Visually this results in a pattern popularly known as “argyle.” But in order to understand the semiotics of Argyle, we must first understand the semiotics of X.

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Spread-Eagle in Sports and Torture

The X-Pose and The X-Men Now a blockbuster franchise flush with sequels and prequels, The X-Men saga began with less fanfare as a minor comic book serial, struggling unsuccessfully against the likes of The Amazing Spider Man and The Incredible Hulk (Mangum 2009). Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the early 1960s, the story went on to detail the travails of a loosely affiliated, socially maladjusted gang of super mutants. Though it was destined to become “the best-selling comic series in American history” (Housel & Wisnewski 2009: 1), the title did not mushroom into broad recognition until the 1980s. Some have even argued that the ebb and flow of the series actually syncs up with the anxieties and exhilarations of the Cold War era in ways that are no mere coincidence (Reynolds 1992: 84–95; cf. Roy 2001: 135–140). It may also be no mere coincidence that the X-figure standing at the core of the series’ identity now typifies the generation who grew to become its endorsing audience: “Generation X”. Such matters call for treatments of their own; for the time being, though, it will be best to focus on something more fundamental, and more overlooked, something that should underlie any exploration of the meanings of “X”: namely, the figure’s origins and grounding—its source in living, breathing, moving experience. As introduced in Chapter 1, when a lone individual stands upright and stretches out her limbs toward the four extremes of an imaginary square, her body image forms an X schema, a posture not only vividly realized in peak modes of athletic performance and ritual torture but also featured in more mundane experiences of kinesthesia (felt body movements) and proprioception (felt body locations). This is the “X-pose” posture. Whether or not this is also a primary source of “X” itself—one of the central arguments of this book—it just so happens that there are at least several “uncanny” connections between doing the X-pose and being The X-Men.

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During the Cold War era, but particularly between 1963 and 1985, the X-pose posture is frequently used to depict heroic action poses in cover art for The Uncanny X-Men series (UXM Vol. 1, 1963–2011).1 Curiously, between 1985 and 1989, X-poses are abruptly discontinued on cover art for a period of four years. Then, cotemporaneous with the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, the new issue’s cover features a striking image, partially reproduced in Figure 2.1, depicting the Canadian lone wolf character “Wolverine” suspended between life and death, explicitly crucified on (and fused with) a torture stake in the shape of a three-dimensional X. The social symbolism and archetypal meanings inherent in this representation, along with the ways these map onto the storyline of series, are tales for other times and places. For now, simply consider the blended image in Figure 2.1 as a segue: a vivid exemplar (Iconic Sinsign) of a more general type (Iconic Legisign), functioning as stubborn evidence (Dicent Indexical Legisign) for any search to discover embodied grounding for the X figure: its basis in the human Umwelt of lived, felt corporeal experience. The question is this: Can a common, experiential source be identified that underlies all human perception and interpretation of solitary patterns in the shape of “X”? Evidence presented in this chapter, and throughout the book, suggests that the answer is yes; but we dare not assume our conclusion. To test this answer, this chapter brings the most traumatic and climactic instances of “spread-eagle” experience into focus, those occurring in extreme sports and ritual torture, to discover that the spread-eagle posture is implicated in peak experiences of bliss and terror. Multiple perspectives are needed in order to begin understanding this paradox and to begin appreciating the neglected (but important) roles that it plays in human cognition, a task that continues beyond this chapter. In what follows, I apply an observation on extremes and reversals from Marshall McLuhan. This opens up closer analyses of the spread-eagle gesture used in everyday life, along with the colorful history of the term “spreadeagle” itself. The same dynamic reversals that emerge from these analyses are tersely expressed in a riveting line from Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Motive for Metaphor,” posted in the heading of this chapter. One question this line introduces is pivotal for developing the argument of the book: How do we responsibly make the leap from spread-eagle, the grandiose body posture of danger and climax, to the X-figure itself? The “vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.” To bridge this gap, the chapter turns to findings in cognitive semiotics, blending insights from cognitive linguistics (e.g., Johnson 1987; Zlatev 2007), embodied phenomenology (e.g., Merleau-Ponty c.1960; Sheets-Johnstone 2011) and Peircean semiotics (e.g., Peirce 1903: EP2; Stjernfelt 2007). In short,

Spread-Eagle in Sports and Torture

Figure 2.1 Excerpt from cover art for The Uncanny X-Men series by Marc Silvestri and Dan Green for Issue 251, “Fever Dream” (November 1989).

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the connecting claim is this: bodily memories of spread-eagle movement, both lived and imagined, are important experiential sources that naturally settle into a condensed, living model or “gestalt.”2 This internalized model can then be used for understanding more abstract patterns of thought and action in diverse domains—from politics to ethnology to advertising to logic. More immediately, though, and more pertinent to the book’s early argument, the internalized spread-eagle model is prominently involved in the creation and interpretation of X-shaped patterns in general. To demonstrate the strength of this account, and to illustrate these dynamics at work in a compact example, the chapter closes with a cognitive semiotic analysis of the Scottish saltire: a blue and white flag known as “St. Andrew’s Cross.” First a number of surprising links between suffering, celebration, movement and memory need to be clarified; and so we now turn our attention to uses of the spread-eagle posture in ritual torture and extreme sports.

Spread-eagle in sports and torture An Olympic athlete “snatch lifts” a barbell double the weight of his own body, hoists the load above his head, locks his arms into place and steadily rises to his feet (Figure 2.2a). A professional cheerleader is ejected into the air in a “basket ride” stunt; she rapidly splits her arms and legs into an inverse V-formation at the peak of the toss and then again retracts them just before collapsing prone into the arms of her teammates (Figure 2.2b). An upright aerial freestyle skier lifts off from a four-meter launch pad with a leap, extending her arms and legs at 45 degree angles from her torso to soar for seconds through the air in suspended formation before tucking in again to land against the snowy slope 20 meters below (Figure 2.2c). In each of these instances the spread-eagle posture is performed, and in each case the posture coincides with a performance peak. Numerous other examples of the posture can be identified across a wide range of sporting events, including moves from gymnastics to basketball, from swimming to dance, occurring both incidentally and in formations that have become institutionalized. Of all sports, though, perhaps the one most closely associated with the term “spread eagle” is figure skating (Figure 2.2d). Often as the dramatic prelude to an axel jump, or at the climax of a routine, a skater transitions into a circular trajectory by leaning against his center of gravity, either forward or backward with heels facing inward, toes pointed outward and arms spread wide above his head, mirroring his outstretched legs below as he slices an arc into the ice.

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Figure 2.2 Illustrating the spread-eagle posture in extreme sports: (a) Olympic snatch lifting, (b) cheerleading basket ride toss, (c) upright aerial freestyle skiing, (d) figure skating, (e) contemporary ballet, (f) skydiving freefall in the stable position.

The spread-eagle jump is a staple in contemporary ballet (Figure 2.2e), and the posture is also realized to varying degrees in the performance of classical moves such as adagio, grand jeté, arabesque penchée and attitude derriée, often as the climax of the sequence. Edging along the sheer face of a granite cliff, a rock climber frequently finds herself spread-eagle as well, searching the extreme reaches of her limbs for adequate toeholds and fingerholds to support her weight and maintain balance as she inches upward. Still higher above terra firma, spread-eagle formation is usually practiced in skydiving, since the posture, known as the “stable position” (Figure 2.2f ), keeps a skydiver from spiraling out of control in free fall while plummeting toward the earth at 190 kmph. In sharp contrast to the instances discussed above, the skydiver’s body faces the earth, instead of being oriented perpendicular to its face, until at last the parachute opens—at which point a further, more perpendicular spread eagle posture is often performed. Similarly, in freestyle motocross, at the apex of a long jump, a rider performing the classic “superman” stunt grips his handlebars as the seat of his dirtbike slides out from under him and he sails

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through the air suspended for a moment above the earth, spreading his legs behind him. When a stunt rider releases the handlebars in this position, in a motocross move known as “Rock Solid,” he briefly mimics the stable position of the skydiver. Other stunts involving spread-eagle postures in freestyle motocross include the “Hart Attack,” the “Nothing” and the “Kiss of Death.” Consider the elements of experience the posture shares in common across the spectrum of sporting events. Intertwined with the position itself, at least five elements of experience are shared between realizations of the posture across events: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

extreme exposure of bodily topology a performance peak or climax a fleeting suspense of animation and gravity a severe risk of catastrophe a solitary individual voluntarily acting as the central object of mass spectacle.

The blend of these elements is inseparable from the emotional, proprioceptive and kinesthetic feelings that accompany the action. The resulting form-feeling composite, including a strange mixture of exhilaration and fear, is experienced immediately by the performing athlete and vicariously by the breathless audience. Spread-eagle posture is also realized in numerous modes of torture or punishment, past and present. Consider the nineteenth-century maritime practice of lashing wayward sailors spread-eagle to the mast rigging high above the deck (Figure 2.3a). In the first century, St. Andrew is said to have been tortured to death by suspension on a quincuncial cross (Figure 2.3b). By present day we may point to torture and interrogation practices of numerous oppressive regimes, including the controversial practice of “stop and frisk” policing, currently being executed in New York City (Figure 2.3c), a frightening mixture of physical torment and racial profiling. Butler (2011) was perhaps the first to make the case that the stop-and-frisk program is not merely an inconvenience for those targeted but outright torture, both physical and psychological. Situating it within a broader historical context of spread-eagle torture provides even more damning evidence. Many further variations can be noted. Delving back into the annals of history, we find the endless variations of the torture rack. Protestant martyr Anne Ayscough (b.1520) was tortured, spread-eagle, on a tension rack in the tower of London before being burned at the stake in 1546. Insubordinate Australian

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Figure 2.3 Illustrating the spread-eagle posture in torture: (a) nineteenth-century maritime punishment, (b) the crucifixion of St. Andrew, after Claudio Coello (1642– 1693), (c) twenty-first-century stop-and-frisk program in New York City, (d) Natchez ritual torture method for enemy captives, after LePage Du Pratz (1695–1775), (e) skin flaying herald of the “House of Bolton” in contemporary Game of Thrones mythology, (f) eternal punishment of Prometheus in classical Greek mythology, after Jan Fabre (1958–).

soldiers serving in Egypt during the First World War were tied spread-eagle to cart wheels as a form of field punishment (Stanley 2010). At sea, rebellious sailors were also stripped shirtless and flogged on deck with a cat o’ nine tails, well into the nineteenth century—hands and ankles lashed spread-eagle to a wooden grating. In legends of the Wild West, some Native American tribes are said to have tied their prisoners spread-eagle, facing the sky, using wet rawhide straps to bind wrists and ankles to a quadrant of wooden stakes, thereby stretching the prisoner’s limbs further apart as the leather dried in the sun. A documented Natchez variation on this theme involved elevating a captive perpendicular to the ground, lashed spread-eagle to a rectangular wooden frame (Figure 2.3d) for fiery torment using torches made of cane (Hudson 1976).

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Even more severe practices of “drawing-and-quartering” in medieval Europe called for offending parties to be tied between four horses and pulled apart limbsfrom-torso in an inverse V-pattern. Reformation and Colonial-era practices of “pressing,” also known as peine forte et dure, involved an offender, tied spreadeagle, being loaded with weights on chest and abdomen to force either a plea or death by crushing, whichever came first. In popular culture, the George R. R. Martin fantasy series Game of Thrones identifies the notorious “House of Bolton” with a brand of spread-eagle skin flaying, a practice depicted in the heraldry of the house and pitilessly enforced on a character named “Theon Greyjoy” who is lashed, spread-eagle, to inverse diagonal wooden cross-beams as payment for his treachery. This usage of spreadeagle in contemporary mythology echoes instances of the posture in classical mythology, such as the endless punishment of Prometheus (Figure 2.3f ) and the dread bed of Procrustes. As a punishment for introducing fire to mortals, the former was chained at the wrists and ankles to a cliff where his entrails were eaten daily by Zeus, in the form of an eagle, only to regenerate overnight due to his immortality. As for the latter, Procrustes’ bed was designed so that anyone too short to fit its iron frame would be stretched, spread-eagle, to death.3 Once again, entangled with the posture itself, at least five elements are shared across the spectrum of spread-eagle torture: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

extreme exposure of bodily topology the climax of a crisis or confrontation a prolonged suspense of animation a severe risk of catastrophe a solitary individual involuntarily placed at the center of mass spectacle

These elements differ only slightly from the exhilarating sporting postures summarized above. All that truly differs, in fact, are the status of agency and the passage of time. Toggling these two oppositional poles (the temporal and the agentive) turns exhilarating performance into horrifying crisis. In other words, if a prepared subject voluntarily performs the X-figure for a period of fleeting suspense, the effects are likely to be bliss and joy; but if an unprepared subject is involuntarily subjected to perform the X-figure for a prolonged period of suspense, the effects are likely to be terror and agony. In both extreme sports and ritual torture, nonetheless, the posture produces certain identical effects. In both we find extreme exposure and peak exertion; both involve the suspension of movement; both involve heightened vulnerability to injury or death; and both involve a solitary individual at the center of mass

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spectacle, whether virtual or actual. In short the two are extreme opposites: so extremely opposite, in fact, that they are nearly identical. It is important in this connection to note that the spread-eagle posture is also present in explicit reversals between—or deliberately blended experiences of— torment and bliss. This can be observed in specific practices of BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Submission, Masochism), in which someone aroused by experiences of domination or abuse is compelled to submit to bondage around the wrists and ankles, tied to the four corners of a bedframe, or lashed vertically to an actual diagonal crossbeam, for erotic stimulation, mixing violence with sex.

Extremes, reversals and spread-eagle posture Whether we contrast the experience of spread-eagle posture between sports and torture or consider its blended uses in BDSM, we find that it is implicated in extremes and reversals. The same may be said of the X-figure or “chiasmus” pattern introduced in Chapter 1 (see also Pelkey 2013a,b). In the Western tradition this latter point is taken up by no one more seriously than Marshall McLuhan: “Every process pushed far enough tends to reverse or flip suddenly. This is the chiasmus pattern” (McLuhan & Nevitt 1972: 5–6). By detailing troves of examples throughout his career (see esp. McLuhan & McLuhan 1988), McLuhan illustrates that the process of reversing extremes is commonly found not only in culture but also in nature. What he does not explicitly recognize in his work on the figure is something we cannot afford to overlook at this point in our own exploration: the meaning of movement. Embodied movement provides the human person with her most immediate experience of nature—nature naturing—an experience of the natural world from the outside in and the inside out.4 For the sake of a more organic human dialogue, something McLuhan himself worked toward, we must consider the possibility, and benefits, of grounding the chiasmus figure (or process) in universal experiences of human embodied movement. The full argument of this book will need to be considered before judging the degree to which the chiasmus figure can or should be related to spread-eagle posture. For now, whatever its relationship to chiasmus may be, it is important to note that spread-eagle is extreme in a very visceral sense that makes its reversals intelligible. This is helpful because it removes the discussion of reversals from the mists of theoretical abstraction that often cloak treatments of dialectics, paradox and chiasmus into the daylight of felt movement—

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universal human experiences of kinesthesia and proprioception. To better focus on this point, compare the spread-eagle posture with its own extreme opposite: the fetal position. In the fetal position, a person’s limbs, face and groin are all pulled in to the body’s midpoint, with back arched outward, all together forming a kind of lumpy sphere. This posture allows for maximum concealment of body topology, thereby minimizing both threat and visibility. Spread-eagle, by contrast, ensures that the maximum amount of body surface is visible, or vulnerable, by extending upper and lower limbs at extreme inverse angles, both relative to each other and to the body’s vertical and horizontal midlines. In so doing, the posture not only exposes areas of arm and leg topology that are normally concealed (i.e., the inner thighs and arm pits), but simultaneously exposes face, groin and torso to visibility and threat by minimizing their potential for protection by arms, legs, hands and feet. If the fetal position typifies self-protection, then the spread-eagle posture typifies vulnerability. And if experiences of extreme vulnerability function part and parcel with spread-eagle posture, they may play a key role in its reversals. Actually, it requires little reflection to recall ways in which personal experiences of vulnerability, whether emotionally or physically conceived, can be both exhilarating and terrifying. In fact, vulnerability is likely to tend toward the latter to the degree that it is forced (the agentive toggle discussed above) and prolonged (the temporal toggle). The visceral roots of spread-eagle’s extreme reversals grow deeper still, into the soil of early childhood. During early stages of human development, as Humphrey (2004) draws to our attention, infants around the world tend to be soothed by swaddling. Since fine-motor control takes many years to develop, the soothing effects of swaddling can be attributed to minimizing the discomfort of spastic, asymmetrical movements of arms and legs the infant experiences when she is unbound. Forcing an infant’s limbs to the midline by swaddling provides an experience of stasis or symmetry that is more congruent with the child’s innate experience of balanced feedback from the central nervous system, visual and vestibular (inner-ear) modes of balance in particular. The spread-eagle posture, by contrast, involves a kind of self-controlled assertion of symmetry away from the body’s midline. As such, it is necessarily an index of sensory-motor and developmental maturity, which entails independence from a care-giver. To assume this posture as an agent, then, is ipso facto to demonstrate one’s ability to control her limbs to an extreme degree without the assistance of another. When someone is forced to assume this

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posture and sustain it, the experience reverses from personal triumph to personal humiliation. In other words, the basic embodied reversals of experience between exhilaration and agony discussed above are due to the inherently unstable nature of the spread-eagle posture. Extreme vulnerability and extreme independence are easily exploited, resulting in blurred boundaries between sports and torture, torment and ecstasy. The spread-eagle posture in athletic performance is extreme in an exhilarating sense. The spread-eagle posture in ritual torture is extreme in a horrifying sense. BDSM blends of torment and bliss, exhilaration and horror, which also employ the spread-eagle posture, are extreme in a grotesque sense. But all are extreme in a profoundly experiential sense. Performance of the spread-eagle posture necessarily entails maximum assertion of independence from developmental caregivers and maximum exposure of body topology to visibility (and thereby threat). If these experiences are forced or prolonged, the felt extremes reverse: from exhilaration to agony, from triumph to humiliation. The extremes and reversals of sports, torture and BDSM are important to note not simply because they are strange or spectacular, but because we all participate in them; if not first hand, then by proxy, in acts of imagination, and neural-motor memory processes,5 a point to which we will return at the end of the chapter. First, it is important to realize that such reversals also emerge in everyday coordination of movement that also happen to result in spread-eagle posture. Consider, for instance, cases in which spread-eagle is used as a gesture. Here, too, opposing meanings emerge, both within and between communication activities.

Extremes, reversals and spread-eagle gesture Before continuing, it will be helpful to entertain a brief thought experiment involving four scenarios. First, imagine using your own body to signal that a certain entry is forbidden or a certain route is off-limits to oncoming traffic. Now think of yourself leaping out from a hiding place to startle someone. Next, imagine jumping up to celebrate a sudden victory. Finally, think of extending an enthusiastic welcome from a distance to greet a friend who has just arrived. Each of these four situations commonly involves the spontaneous formation of a spread-eagle posture—not as a self-conscious solo performance but as a kind of body language, or gesture: an act of nonlinguistic communication, an expression of attitude and intent. Naturally, a range of other gestures might also

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be used in such instances, particularly across cultures; so the focal observation here is not that the spread-eagle stance might sometimes be used in one or another of these cases, but rather that spread-eagle can be used in all such cases. More importantly, this holds true in spite of the fact that the messages being communicated in the first two instances (forbidding passage or giving a scare) would seem to be worlds apart from the second two instances (celebrating a victory or welcoming a friend). In other words, when it comes to the illocutionary pragmatics of these situations (i.e., the intended meaning of the one who assumes the spread-eagle stance), we might well expect that the intention to express warm celebration or heartfelt welcome would be so different from the intention to express chilly refusal or the cold-hearted intention to scare someone senseless, that the gestures used in these circumstances would never correspond. But this is not the case. Once again, then, when it comes to the spread-eagle posture, we find that polaropposites share common ground, or better: mutual embodied grounding—in ways that defy our expectations. But the layers of paradox implicit in spreadeagle gestures do not stop here. Consider the reversals of affect and perspective that necessarily occur between the first person (i.e., yourself gesturing spread-eagle) in these situations and the second, your interlocutor—the one toward whom the act of communication is directed. Again, we find in each case that the same signal is interpreted with opposing meanings; felt meanings become reversed or mirrored in ways that are internal to, and necessary for, the full communication act itself. Think about it. The person who is being denied entry has an opposing goal relative to the spread-eagle guardian of the path or entrance. This is the perlocution of the act: it is assumed that the response of the interlocutor will be diametrically opposed to the one who uses the gesture. Naturally, someone who has a spatial goal wishes to continue along a certain path or enter a certain space in order to reach that goal—contrary, in this case, to the wishes of their interlocutor. Now compare the felt oppositions in this scenario with those shared between contrasting participants in the celebration of sudden victory. Since the triumph of one person or group requires the defeat of another, the spread-eagle gesture of the one celebrating will likely be perceived as an act of negation, signifying the denial of victory, from the perspective of the defeated person or group. Thus, even opposing spread-eagle gestures can come to seem identical relative to a reversal in perspective in the communication act itself. Does this hold true in all instances? Certainly not. In the two remaining cases of spread-eagle gesture discussed above, it does not work to claim that the

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spread-eagle agents (i.e. the welcoming host or the fear mongering prankster) are diametrically opposed to their audience in terms of intention or affect. On the contrary, both are seeking to inspire particular qualities of feeling in their interlocutors that should be enhanced through the grand postures they assume, as if each is encouraging the other party to imagine themselves taking this position as well; and, as often happens in such cases, the response to the gesture spontaneously erupts into a mirrored version of the original, even in the physical response of the interlocutor. In other words, a person who is suddenly scared senseless by a spread-eagle terror leaping out from a blind corner will often do more than internalize the fearsome proportions of the posture; she may also spontaneously assume some version of the posture herself. Similarly, a person who is being welcomed from afar by a spread-eagle host is prone not only to imagine the grandness of celebration implied by the gesture but also to physically mirror the gesture back to the friend. Thus, the spread-eagle gesture has at least two pragmatic functions: prompted congruence (whether of cold terror or warm welcome) and asserted negation (whether directly through denial or indirectly through celebration). The first function involves complementary opposition: an intention to bring about matching affective states. The second involves contradictory opposition: an intention to highlight contrasting states of affairs. In summary, from the sports arena to the torture rack, from the realm of kinky sex to the realm of ordinary body language, the spread-eagle posture is implicated in extreme oppositions and surprising reversals. It may come as no surprise, then, that the historic saga of the term “spread-eagle” is itself a tale of extreme reversals.

The historical development of “Spread-Eagle” The British literary critic and essayist G. K. Chesterton once mused (1920: 1) that “Every word we use comes to us coloured from all its adventures in history, every phase of which has made at least a faint alteration.” The obscure history of a word or phrase remains implicit in its present: hibernating soundly just below the surface, dimly suggesting its presence to consciousness through shifting polysemy. This can be noticed in the nuanced uses of a given term in different speech acts, through subtle connotations that emerge in comparisons or combinations with other words, and through the many ways these dynamics vary between regions and situations. Written records provide further helpful evidence, particularly

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when catalogued and studied by philologists, lexicographers and other historians of language. One of the most accessible ways to gain a sense for the semantic and pragmatic history of an English word is still the Oxford English Dictionary (OED, Simpson & Weiner 1989). Unless otherwise stated, factual references in this section are based on philological research and references published in the OED. In what follows we briefly consider the most general trends in the history of the English construction “spread-eagle” to draw attention to ways in which the embodied diagram serving as the ground (or “object”) of the lexical sign comes to determine the diagrammatization, or linguistic “self-organization” of the term’s semiotic development through time. Although the semantic history of the English term “spread-eagle” is certainly not the same as the history of the human spread-eagle posture (as Chapter 1 demonstrates), paying attention to the semantic and pragmatic development of the term through history provides further evidence that the posture itself is experientially extreme and prone to dramatic reversals: the primary argument of this chapter. The first published instance of the English term in question is rendered “spread egle” by John Foxe in his Actes & Monumentes (1570: 409), in reference to an embossed eagle design with wings spread and legs outstretched, featured on a series of leather coins commissioned by a Roman emperor. This usage maintains currency into the present as the primary sense of the term, according to most lexicographers, although, the implicit imperial reference has largely shifted in the meantime from a Roman totemic herald to a patriotic emblem more strongly associated with the great seal of the United States.6 In an early eighteenth-century etymological dictionary (Bailey 1731),7 the term’s singular reference to the image of the regal eagle used in political and military heraldry (and its offshoot signage) is transparent in the author’s historical explanation that this is “the natural posture of the bird, when it faces the sun to recover its vigour.” In fact, more than 200 years pass before we find published evidence of “spread-eagle” being mapped directly onto the human body image. The source in question (Grose 1785) is a dictionary of the “Vulgar Tongue,” however, so it stands to reason that colloquial usage in this sense would have antedated the dictionary’s publication. The definition reads as follows: “a soldier tied to the halberts in order to be whipped, his attitude bearing some likeness to that figure, as painted on signs.” Thus, the torture posture was selected as the first explicit semantic mapping of English “spread-eagle” onto the human figure. Although a century or more had elapsed by the time of the first semantic/ pragmatic mapping, the next came much more quickly. In the vernacular, perhaps, this could well have happened within a few decades. By 1824, at the

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latest, the innovation appears in print as a reference not to a maritime posture of torture, but to an athletic posture on ice (Mitford 1824), a move still celebrated in figure-skating, as mentioned above. The paradoxical double-usage of the term, then, was well-established by the middle of the nineteenth century; and as we have seen above, this same double-edged usage continues into the present. As Figure 2.4 illustrates, further semantic innovations rapidly followed, serving to intensify and entrench the term’s polar extremes. Taking a bird’s-eye view of the situation, two general extensions emerge during the middle four decades of the nineteenth century: the first evokes wild arrogance, the second utter humiliation. The former was introduced as early as 1839 in the Morning Post, in a snide reference to someone elevated “with a spread eagle title” to a position of high honor. The North American Review provides a richer example: It pleases our English critics to charge upon American writers in the mass […] what has come to be designated as “the spread-eagle style”—a compound of exaggeration, effrontery, bombast, and extravagance, mixed metaphors, platitudes, defiant threats thrown at the world, and irreverent appeals thrown at the Supreme Being. (NAR 1858: 453–454)

This extension of “spread-eagle” occurred between 1830 and 1860. Its polar response, or antithesis, emerged between 1860 and 1890, usually in reference to the disastrous defeat of a field of competitors in a sporting event. This usage

Figure 2.4 Counterpoint and paradox in the historical semantics of English “spread-eagle.”

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tended to transform the original noun into a causative verb: that is, to “spreadeagle” one’s opponents, clearly resulting in the undergoer’s loss of agency, accompanied by vivid overtones of the humiliating torture posture described above. Verbal derivation is not required for this sense to be implied, however, as a line from a correspondent of Sir John Skelton (1871: 149) makes clear. His friend issues the following complaint: “I suppose I shall as usual be made a spread-eagle by the Saturday [Review].” In summary, the historical development of English “spread-eagle” involves embodied mapping onto an inverse posture of outstretched extremities realized in two diametrically opposed event states (sporting climax and excruciating torture); this is followed in-turn by two analogical extensions to diametrically opposed states of affairs (grandiose arrogance and crushing humiliation). The latter of these two developments further clarifies the status of the former since its qualitative connotations suggest that the earlier posture-based mappings of “spread-eagle” involved more than mere visual iconicity. Emotional and psychological iconicity8 were also involved, as was the process mentioned above, a process that drives language evolution in general: diagrammatization. Diagrammatization is a systematic, call-and-response mode of causation by which speakers and speaker populations unwittingly model the possible future of a complex language system by drawing on analogies within the language and with other sources to make the usage of a word or phrase, or some other linguistic construction, more efficient in a social communication setting and more fitting relative to the overall system (see Shapiro 1991, 2002; Pelkey 2013c). In this case, the polarized and polarizing nature of the underlying embodied analogies introduced above serve to determine the developmental course of “spread-eagle” semantics.9 Consider this point carefully in light of the four innovations discussed above. Historically, English speakers selected the excruciating torture posture for the first embodied mapping of the term; but it was only a matter of time before a second mapping, the exultant sporting posture, appeared in common speech to complement its opposite. Once accomplished, this second mapping effectively filled a gap in the system, making for a tighter overall fit between conceptual organization and implicit experience. Since both bliss and horror are latent in the posture itself, for reasons discussed above, this response grew naturally out of the moving, breathing source material. Later, when spreadeagle semantics were analogically extended to similar circumstances, the chronology of the process took place as an inversion of the original embodied

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mapping. The blissful, victorious sense was extended first to connote all manner of bombast and gloating; then, within a few decades, the mortified, defeated sense, its complementary opposite, was also extended to connote all manner of unmitigated trouncing! In short, just as the physical posture itself requires that the four extremities be outstretched at inverse angles, extreme instances of the posture are prone to reversals between polarities: from vitality to deadliness, from arrogance to obliteration. The same can be said for the X figure. Wallace Stevens draws our attention to this pivotal point in the closing line of one of his most gripping poems.

The “vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X” Steven’s poem “The Motive for Metaphor” (1947)10 juxtaposes the comfort of self-forgetful imagination with the harshness of self-absorbed certainty: You like it under the trees in autumn, Because everything is half dead. The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves And repeats words without meaning. In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon— The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of things that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be, Desiring the exhilarations of changes: The motive for metaphor, shrinking from The weight of primary noon, The A B C of being, The ruddy temper, the hammer Of red and blue, the hard sound— Steel against intimation—the sharp flash, The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.

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As Denis Donoghue notes (2013: 549), the abrupt finale is uncharacteristic of Stevens, who is usually “reluctant to concede that a poem has to end.” This may make it all the more surprising that he deliberately drives the poem to a sudden collision where “four adjectives hit a wall in ‘X’” (2013: 550). A broader interpretation of Steven’s poem is resumed at the end of this chapter, and then again in Chapters 7 and 8, to better draw on findings that emerge in the intervening argument; for now, simply consider the four adjectives: “vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant” and their relationship to X. Not only do they describe the harshness and extreme self-absorption of their referent, they also share internal structural relationships that are congruent with X. First note the two adjectives at the periphery of the construction (A and A′), which share positive, or “ameliorative,” connotations. These contrast with the two adjectives at the center of the construction (B and B′) that share negative or “pejorative” connotations: vital

:

arrogant

:

fatal

:

dominant

A

:

B

:

B′

:

A′

This is a phrase-level instance of chiasmus functioning at the interface of lexical semantics (patterns of word meaning) and syntax (patterns of phrase structure). Next notice a further construction embedded in the first: vitalfatal and arrogant-dominant, two pairs in oppositional relation that form an inversion of their own. The first features oppositional antonymy (since vital=life and fatal=death); the second features oppositional synonymy (since arrogant=despicable and dominant=admirable). vital

:

arrogant

:

fatal

:

dominant

C

:

D

:

C

:

D′

Any lingering doubt about the veracity or intentionality of this embedded parallelism is cleared away by noting that both pairs are not only related oppositionally but also via sound-symbolic iconicities, syllable structure and rhyme scheme prominently included. To represent all of these relationships simultaneously, a two-dimensional diagram is required, one that captures oppositions, inversions and parallelisms alike. Perhaps the best way to accomplish this is the rendering provided in Figure 2.5, a diagram that belongs

Spread-Eagle in Sports and Torture vital A

A' dominant

C

C'

D'

D

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fatal B'

B arrogant

Figure 2.5 Structural-semantic and logical relations in the final line of “The Motive for Metaphor.”

to a general class, commonly known as the logical square of opposition or “semiotic square”. As Chapter 5 will demonstrate, the X at the core of the diagram is no coincidence. Nor is it a coincidence that Steven’s jarring vision of X matches up so well with the dynamics of spread-eagle posture discussed above. From peak performance to deadly torture, from masochist torment to sexual bliss, from sudden victory to humiliating defeat, from forbidden entry to grandiose welcome, from vital dominance to fatal arrogance: the extremes and reversals of X are the extremes and reversals of spread-eagle. Even the most general historical developments of the term itself testify to this in a slow-growth call-and-response diagrammatization spanning some 300 years. A core argument of this book is that these congruencies are due to deeply embodied patterns of movement and memory. Some might counter, though, that the lexicalized analogy “spread-eagle” would seem to contradict this. Someone might even wonder if the term’s reference to a nonhuman animal implies that English speakers have somehow derived the human X-posture from a heraldic eagle; but this would be a hasty conclusion. In fact, the analogy must go full circle to work at all, whether we are thinking of the original coinage or our reanalysis of the original analogy—an act that Müller (2008) describes as “waking up” the “sleeping metaphor.” Even to wake the sleeping “spread-eagle” metaphor, we must first project the feeling of our own posture onto the totem prior to remapping the totem onto our own imagined posture; and even when the latter is accomplished, in a kind of double vision or conceptual blend (Fauconnier and Turner 2002), the experience nearest to our own emerges not from the static bird but from the dynamic repository of dimly remembered movements, prominently including repetitive, vivid and traumatic movements—that which Thomas Fuchs (e.g., 2000, 2012) has aptly identified as “body memory.”

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Memory, movement and trauma The vivid spread-eagle postures and gestures described above are not the only ways that X-like dynamics are experienced in embodied movement,11 but they are arguably the most vivid and the most global. The posture in question requires a unified movement of the entire appendage system toward contradictory and complementary extremes. But this does not mean that the spread-eagle posture is limited to extreme circumstances and dramatic body language. Ordinary acts of exercise, such as cartwheels, jumping jacks, tree climbing, playing on a jungle gym, or taking a running jump off a wooden dock into a lake, also commonly involve lived experience of spread-eagle movement, as do activities even more mundane. Think of stringing up holiday lights along the low-hanging eaves of a house, hanging clothes up to dry on a clothesline, measuring the length of curtain rod above your head, fastening the upper edge of a tall poster to the wall, holding up a large lettered signboard to advertise an event. Why, then, the focus on extraordinary instances of spread-eagle in extreme sports and ritual torture or instances in dramatic gestures that gloat and terrorize? Other questions should also arise. After all, the shared posture that unifies these movements is clear enough, but how do we make the leap from body movements to X-marks on a wall or a billboard or a piece of cloth or the printed page? In other words, how do the widely diverse, and often opposing, experiences discussed above come together to imbue these more abstract experiences (of symbols shaped like “X”) with the hidden meanings of embodied experience? After all, in spite of all that has been said above, when we catch sight of Google’s “Project X” or the “X Games” or “X Men” or “Generation X”, aren’t these X’s still simply repetitions of the same random letter of the alphabet? What do they have to do with spread-eagle? Isn’t this just an arbitrary coincidence or a forced comparison? Even if not, what bridges the gap? What could possibly pull experiences of “spread-eagle” into such uniform concert that their composite feeling could be regularly projected onto lifeless patterns in the shape of X? These are all questions for cognitive semiotics, an approach to human understanding that assumes the study of human cognition must not, or cannot, be separated from more rigorous pursuits of a pervasive logic of meaning.12 Many now recognize that both semiotics (following esp. Charles S. Peirce 1866–1913 and Jakob von Uexküll 1920) and cognitive science (following esp. Varela et al. 1991; Lakoff & Johnson 1999) must be integrated with embodied phenomenology: the philosophy of feeling. Since embodied movement is the source of all feeling, and since all thinking is informed by feeling (Johnson 2007),

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experiences and memories of movement shape all dimensions of human thought and meaning making, from the most concrete textures to the most abstract concepts (Johnson 1987; Sheets-Johnstone 2011; Koch et al. 2012). These body memories are composites (or subconscious habits)13 formed out of the repetition of ordinary experiences of movement such as balancing, pushing, pulling, walking, falling, getting full, entering and exiting, consuming and voiding. As mentioned above, jarring or traumatic instances of any such experiences provide core reinforcement (Fuchs 2012). Though the current literature is biased toward the injurious and painful, the heightened psychological significance that is ascribed to trauma should also be ascribed ecstatic experiences. Semiotic logic, in turn, provides a way of integrating these individual gestalt experiences within a richer system of sign activity oriented more adequately toward trans-human processes which underlie the emergence of body memories. Semiotics draws our attention to the pervasive roles of abduction (guessing), iconicity (resemblances) and analogy (guessing at systematic resemblances), for instance, that necessarily enable such experiences to be grouped together in the first place. Furthermore, at the tacit level of cognition a composite habit (such as the vague experience-based sense that the activity of walking involves elements of falling and balancing, featuring the lower limbs, as distinct from pulling or pushing, which feature the upper limbs) can be identified as an Iconic Legisign or a diagram14 type. This is not merely a synonym for other technical terms like “gestalt” however, since the semiotic terminology situates the relation within a more comprehensive and organic web of other layered relations. An Iconic Legisign, for example, “requires each instance of it to embody a definite quality which renders it fit to call up in the mind the idea of a like Object” (Peirce 1903, EP 2: 294) since these are signs of tacit experience that have scope over individual replicas (Iconic Sinsigns).15 In other words, each type is based on tokens (see Stjernfelt 2007: 25–27). For starters, each type of movement is based on innumerable tokens, or instances of movement. These are hidden signs of experience that work together to inform more explicit modes of cognition. The hidden layers can be noticed by paying attention to clues in speech and other patterned behavior—that is, common frames of reference (Dicent Indexical Legisigns) and various levels of symbolic activity. In short, repeated movements of a particular type are built up through force of repetition and habit into a generalized body memory. This subconscious composite memory is reinforced in crucial ways by traumatic and ecstatic instances since such experiences make the memory more salient or significant.

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Internalized body memories such as these are then available to be applied to more abstract domains of thought and feeling and are even projected onto visual space to organize space and create symbolic patterns. Since the spreadeagle posture necessarily involves us in extreme experiences of vulnerability and independence, and since these experiences commonly reverse between the traumatic and the ecstatic, body memories of the posture—both experienced and imagined—combine to create a robust pattern that can be projected onto more stable, abstracted domains of use. The remainder of this book is devoted to critically strengthening this assertion. This will be done by working out the implications of insights presented above, and by fortifying these insights through layers of examples, the examples themselves serving to provide further critical insight. It will be helpful to examine one such example to round out this chapter: a common X design that might seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with extremes and reversals, embodied cognition or spread-eagle posture—were it not for the evidence presented above.

Body memory and the flag of Scotland Consider, in this connection, the flag of Scotland: a white “saltire” pattern against a sky blue background. The saltire pattern, consisting of an X-mark framed by a square or rectangle, is commonly used in heraldry and miscellaneous signage, but also as a brand mark in corporate logos and in many other domains (such as the construction of exterior walls). The Scottish saltire in particular is also known as “St. Andrew’s Cross,” as are many other saltire flags in use elsewhere, from the state of Alabama to the Russian Navy. Here we focus on Scotland to keep the example manageable. At first the title may seem merely descriptive; after all, the venerable Andrew is Scotland’s patron saint; and since the national flag features a saltire “cross,” this could simply be construed as the Scottish saint’s personal saltire. Fair enough, but a full analysis cannot stop here. Recall the shape of the cross on which, according to oral tradition, St. Andrew is said to have died (Figure 2.3b). In fact, the structure is part of a long lineage of ritual torture devices specifically designed to exploit the extreme vulnerabilities of human spread-eagle posture. The X cross turns what might otherwise be a brief ecstatic experience of independence and suspension into an extended episode of agony. Although no image of St. Andrews actually appears on the Scottish saltire, the embodied posture of his torture is projected onto the flag as a vivid body

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memory rooted in our own corporeal experiences. Prominent among these experiences, as discussed above, is the assertion of independence. Those who know about the history of Scotland will, no doubt, draw instant connections here, especially given a recent high-profile vote on the issue; but the saltire on the Scottish flag is only secondarily about the independence of Scotland from other countries, such as England. At a more basic level, the saltire’s X is rooted in deep body memories of early childhood development. As discussed above, assertion of independence is the necessary corollary of gaining the ability to control the movement of our four limbs simultaneously, toward extreme angles relative to each other and away from the body midline, the static axis of swaddled infant comfort. With these things in mind, and since every national flag is in some sense a patriotic emblem, the Scottish flag becomes a paradoxical blend of national pride, asserted independence and solitary suffering. The felt meanings of vulnerability and self-sufficiency that necessarily lie at the core of the spread-eagle gestalt are projected onto such patterns instantly and effortlessly. For most people, and in most circumstances, this occurs subconsciously and seems to leave no trace. For citizens of Scotland, and anyone else paying attention to the more basic meanings of the symbol, the potential for waking up such sleeping metaphors (Müller 2008) is increased. This is enabled by the more explicit, narrative-based analogy being drawn in the alternative title for the flag: “St. Andrew’s Cross,” an analogy that blends our tacit experience of the subconscious embodied X with the imagined experience of ritual torture targeting a venerated personality— the individual who represents traditional Scottish identity. Once we become aware that bodily movements are basic to our perception and understanding of the world, we are prepared to consider ways that body memories like the extreme spread-eagle posture function to organize our experience. Since spread-eagle is vividly reinforced by experiences of both ecstasy and trauma, it has much potential to be useful for more abstract ends. Condensed projections of the posture such as we find in a saltire banner still tend to go unnoticed until we draw attention to them using explicit personification: that is, names such as “St. Andrew’s cross” or, as we find in the wide array of brand marks discussed in the next chapter, stylized embellishments, such as the addition of a face to the upper crux. These wake-up strategies, in turn, help us re-think the X-figure itself, not as an arbitrary symbol that is primarily alphabetic (as explored in Roy 2001), nor as an archetypal symbol that is primarily mytho-symbolic (as explored in Danesi 2009a). Instead, we must consider the possibility that the X-figure is primarily

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embodied, or felt, via a specific sub-type of remembered movements and their contradictory, complementary meanings. For one thing, this might indicate that the Wallace Stevens poem considered above does not end so abruptly after all. Contrary to Donoghue’s claim (2013: 549), the poem may even be devoid of closure altogether. If the “vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X” is not an abrupt ending but a sudden pivot, X sends the reader back to the first line for identity, where we find: “You.” After all, if the argument of this book is correct, not only is X “You,” but you are X.

3

Spread-Eagle Brand Marks

Spot marks the X How closely related are the X-mark and the X-pose? And what is the nature of their relationship? Questions like these can be better understood, and better answered, by exploring the blended uses of spread-eagle and X in corporate branding strategies around the world. The “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) brand illustrates this principle nicely. “One Laptop Per Child” is an ambitious venture launched by the MIT Media Lab in 2005. The group designs, produces and delivers millions of portable personal computers for under-privileged children around the world—but not without help from spread-eagle X. The education-tech initiative names their rugged, open-source machines “XO” (the XO Tablet and the XO Laptop). And here lies the crux. Between the brand mark design representing the organization and the brand mark design representing its respective product line, a congruent, understated strategy is apparent—a strategy that exploits identity, ambiguity and polyfunctionality. As Figure 3.1 makes clear, the visual symbolic icon in which these features converge is none other than spread-eagle X. In the OLPC corporate logo design (Figure 3.1, top), the visual rhematic symbol mapping to “child” is a minimalist spread-eagle figure. Here the X-mark remains implicit—as part of the whole. This spread-eagle figure is selected for duplication in the product line (Figure 3.1, bottom); but here the reading of the first character is not “child,” the character is read as “X” instead. The product is an XO Tablet, not a “child O” Tablet—in spite of the fact that the upper logo is to be read “one laptop per child,” not “one laptop per X”. In the lower logo, the dot above the upper crux is backgrounded for the body to be read as X. Even so, the two figures themselves are identical. This duplicate, blended usage demonstrates the centrality of the spread-eagle figure to the movement’s specific brand identity. It also emphasizes the figure’s potential for polysemy and polyfunctionality in branding strategies and beyond.

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Figure 3.1 Spread-eagle designs in corporate logo for One Laptop Per Child (top) and brand mark logo for the XO Tablet (bottom).

As I discuss further below, there is a strong correlation between the use of spread-eagle figures in branding and the representation of at-risk demographics and risky activities. Also of note, once again, is the fact that OLPC uses the spread-eagle figure to represent the solitary individual in brand marks for both its corporate logo and its product line. This visual, rhetorical assertion and reassertion is congruent with the group’s organizational ethos, which dictates a priori that each child targeted by the movement should be provided with their own personal computer—in contradistinction to a shared or communal device. Indeed, the medium is the message; and, as Chapter 7 will make clear, this conspicuous re-enforcement of Anglo-American cultural values—namely, the mythos of the autonomous individual—is fittingly represented by a solitary spread-eagle figure. This point, however, lies beyond the scope of this chapter. The scope of this chapter is more concerned with the status of the figure across a wide range of brand marks, both visually and thematically. As I describe further in the next section, the empirical evidence discussed in the chapter is drawn from an original database dedicated to the collection and curation of spreadeagle logo tokens. At the time of writing, the database consists of 200 exemplars drawn from twenty-one countries around the world. More than three-fourths

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(76 percent) of the figures in the database denote the head using a single opaque dot or spot. So it is safe to say that while “X marks the spot” when hunting buried treasure, for uncovering its embodied origins, spot marks the X. If X is strictly a Greco-Roman letter or archetypal symbol, adding a mark between the inverse “V” diagonals in the upper crux would serve as little more than a visual pun. The act of “adding a face” would be gross anthropomorphization: the appropriation of an erstwhile arbitrary form by our bodily weltanschauung— or seizing for the flesh an abstracted archetype drawn from the collective social unconscious. But if perceptual patterns in the shape of X are themselves rooted in remembered structures of bodily movement and their affective associations, mere anthropomorphization would be an inadequate account. Empirical evidence drawn from brand marks and advertising provides further grounds for considering the X-mark to be derivative of a gestalt embodied template based in proprioceptive memory, rather than being primarily a rhematic symbol rooted in habits of literacy. Following a brief overview of research methods, operational definitions and theoretical background, I provide a summary of preliminary visual and thematic content analyses, drawing on a comparative database of 200 spreadeagle brand marks and corporate logos. A basic typology of X-posed brand marks is identified, and logos are found to cluster under four thematic types, all involving extreme or risky experiences that are prone to reverse suddenly. This suggests that the projected X-posture in advertising commands attention by triggering body memories of performance peak or impending crisis rooted in proprioception. Brands and advertisements are widely used as empirical testing grounds for hypothesis generation and theoretical generalization on everything from consumer practice to human psychology. But using brand marks to test theoretical claims regarding the fundamental nature of human understanding is necessarily a multimodal task—one that calls for a semiotic approach. To ask what a particular brand mark means (for human cognition), and how it means what it means, is necessarily to ask about its significant relationships with everything else—the patterned relations it shares with related brand marks in particular. With this in mind, it is worth noting that McLuhan’s proclamations on advertising, introduced in Chapter 1, apply equally well to what is today discussed as corporate branding. In the age of the internet, the folk art of “brand image” creation is now truly global. Branding becomes “a meeting place of all the arts and all the skills and all the media” that characterize the contemporary milieu

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(McLuhan 1970: v). As Paul Manning (2010) points out, however, a semiotic approach to brands and branding does well to establish at the outset what “the purpose or object of the semiotics of brand” might be. Manning outlines two broad choices for a semiotic approach to brands: (1) the exploration of “objects within the economy” or (2) the exploration of “objects that can be interrogated to reveal the folk ontologies and semiotic ideologies latent in economic categories” (2010: 46). This chapter takes the latter of these two approaches, but not at the expense of brand materiality. Discourse on the semiotics of branding at the second level mentioned above have tended so heavily toward the “dematerialization of brand” that brands are approached as little more than “a kind of globalized interdiscursivity, an indexical icon of the virtual nature of the global capitalist economy itself, which is often compared with virtual worlds on the internet” (Manning 2010: 35). As this chapter demonstrates, paying attention to the embodied dimensions of brand marks can go a long way toward resituating the semiotics of brand not only in the material but also in the corporeal. By resituating the exploration of “brand essence” in the experiential dynamics of bodily movement, with a focus on spread-eagle brand marks, this chapter works not only against the “dematerialization” of branding but also against its disembodiment. Just as bodily dynamics are ultimately local and immediate, most brands have only local presence, being largely unknown outside immediate circles. Prior to the advent of the internet, such targets were largely off limits. But now brand researchers are granted global access to local brands. The tendency to focus on high-profile brands to the exclusion of the obscure determines that “the properties of the most successful iconic brands are treated as being characteristic of the phenomenon as a whole” (2010: 34). This inevitably skews results and inhibits robust generalizations. With this principle in mind, this chapter also serves as a corrective to contemporary semiotics of brand research in that it democratizes the discussion, granting equal status to brand marks both major and minor, successful and unsuccessful, global and local—drawing on the aggregate to establish conclusions.

Data parameters for content analysis The data considered in this chapter are part of a growing, original database of spread-eagle logo figures collected personally from 2011 to 2014 and then,

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from 2015 to 2016, with the help of my research team. The current database consists of more than 200 exemplars drawn from personal observation, Google text searches and Google image searches. Two key operational criteria must be met for a logo to qualify for inclusion in the database, one functional and the other structural. These two criteria are summarized in the following list. 1. Functional Criterion. The logo must be in use or have been in use historically as either a corporate brand mark or product brand mark, by a functioning, registered organization, whether for-profit or not-for-profit. 2. Structural Criterion. The logo must include one, and only one, spread-eagle human form, with identifiable head, arm and leg representations, such that arms are raised and legs parted at obtuse angles relative to the sagittal midline of the torso. The functional criterion serves two key purposes. First, it limits the field by excluding the potentially endless generation of clip art and concept designs available on the web. Second, it ensures that the logo is situated within its own semiosphere—a deliberate, purposeful context that lends itself to interpretation and association, but also to mimicry and comparison. The structural criteria, on the other hand, serves the overarching purpose of ensuring that the token itself is meaningful for comparison. The broader research project is being carried out with plans for expansion to other bodily patterns, but each unique pattern type will be assigned to its own sub-database for comparative purposes. As suggested above, data collection proceeds according to three cyclical layers. Chance observations, image searches and keyword searches. Google image-based searches are carried out using logos discovered through chance observation. Keyword searches, such as “happiness logo” or “pain logo,” are carried out in Google image search using domains suggested by earlier imagesearch results. All searches are documented using layered metadata. Collected exemplars that pass operational criteria are labeled with a unique identifier and added to the master pool. Each exemplar is then provided with metadata listings in the database, inclusive of information such as URLs, country of origin, accompanying slogans and executive summary text. Then each exemplar is analyzed according to visual, textual, morphological and symmetrical variables settled on by cyclical processes of open-coding involving multiple team members. The current visual coding database for spread-eagle logos includes fifteen dimensions of contrast. Seven of these coding variables are related to body (a)symmetry and the anatomical planes.

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Finite designs and symmetry analysis For several decades, Dorothy K. Washburn and Donald W. Crowe have led the fields of archaeology and sociocultural anthropology in the visual symmetric analysis of cultural patterns (Washburn & Crowe 1988, 2004; Washburn 2004). Their basic model relies on a mathematical approach to symmetry known as “Group Theory”—now the standard approach across the sciences. Group theory presupposes an orientation to “the plane,” whether horizontally or vertically perceived, relative to the viewer. Symmetry operations in the plane are assumed to organize around a central bilateral axis of contrast. Across this axis, isomorphic relations are established according to a minimal set of generative transformations, prominently including reflection, rotation, translation and glide reflection, as illustrated in Figure 3.2. Washburn & Crowe adapt these concepts to the study of material culture by drawing attention to patterned distinctions in “finite designs” and, more particularly, “plane patterns” (see again Figure 3.2) that are produced on pottery, cloth, basket weave and other modalities of material culture. Their discoveries have proven useful for tracing cultural contacts, dating artifacts and establishing a range of graded typologies, among many other applications. Until recently, no application of “plane pattern analysis” (1988) had been applied to the study of corporate brand marks. The first to do so are Jamie Marsden and Briony Thomas (2013), who apply the method to the comparative analysis of corporate brand marks used to identify “the top 100 global financial brands” (2013: 65). They note that “the potential of symmetry as an unambiguous and

Figure 3.2 Approaches to patterns: Distinctions from Group Theory and Cultural Symmetry Theory illustrated using footprints.

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reliable communicative device, within the field of brand identity design, appears to be a relatively unexplored domain” (2013: 62). Their findings support their observation that the “prevalence of symmetry within modern brand identity design seems to indicate that symmetry continues to be intuitively used as one of a combination of graphical elements to convey meaning across multicultural audiences” (2013: 63). My application of plane pattern analysis to spread-eagle brand marks builds on these studies, opening fresh territory in the process: the realm of directly embodied experience. Applied to bodily diagrams, cultural symmetry analysis helps establish a set of three basic logo types: (1) sagittal, (2) transverse and (3) crosswise. This basic morpho-typology is exemplified in a diverse array of prototypes ranging from the USA Gymnastics logo to the brand mark for the Burning Man.

A basic morpho-typology The Burning Man festival takes place every year from late August to early September in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Thousands of “burners” converge for the occasion on a semi circular wilderness encampment in the vast expanse of a dry lakebed to create, recreate and celebrate. The event culminates in the conflagration of a towering effigy known as “The Man” against the nighttime sky. This effigy is a spread-eagle figure—a figure whose stylized likeness is represented in the event’s own iconic symbol: the Burning Man logo, rendered here in Figure 3.3a. While the Burning Man event may originally have anticorporate motives, its logo construction follows conventions that are notable in many other spreadeagle brand marks. The Burning Man logo falls within a subtype of spread-eagle logos organized relative to the sagittal plane. Also in keeping with the primary distinction in plane pattern analysis, logos in this class feature bilateral division, and bilateral symmetries are focal. Of the 200 cross-category exemplars in the current database, 32 percent feature some form of overt bilateral symmetry. Of this number, the vast majority (89 percent) render the effect by reflection across the sagittal midline. The remainder do so by rotation. This ratio is roughly represented in Figure 3.3, in which items (a), (b) and (d) qualify as bilaterally symmetric by reflection. Figure 3.3c, by contrast, is marginally bilaterally symmetric but only by limb rotation. The first three logos in Figure 3.3 are also visibly split down the vertical midline—the sagittal axis. The same is true of at least 16 percent of the exemplars

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Figure 3.3 Sagittal dynamics in spread-eagle logos: (a) Burning Man logo (Nevada, United States); (b) Carefirst Rehab logo (Indiana, United States); (c) Credit Counselling Society logo (British Columbia, Canada); (d) Boco Health logo (Tennessee, United States).

in the current database. Of this number, more than half (57 percent) also feature bilateral symmetry. Figure 3.3d is clearly arranged according to bilateral, sagittal dynamics; but, this particular logo is bilaterally symmetric not only by reflection but also by rotation. Analyzed another way, one might even note that the figure is also reflective across the horizontal axis. In other words, this exemplar features “dihedral symmetry” (as clarified in Figure 3.2). Of the logos across categories in the current database, a full 19 percent feature dihedral symmetry; but not all dihedrally symmetric exemplars are organized relative to sagittal dynamics. Figure 3.4d is clearly organized around a different midline: the horizontal axis, or “transverse” plane, introduced in Chapter 1. This logo’s primary axis of reflection is the waistline; and the same may be said of other spread-eagle brand marks in this class, as the other brand marks in Figure 3.4 illustrate. Figures 3.4a–c show no signs of reflection across the transverse axis, but the first two

Figure 3.4 Transverse dynamics in spread-eagle logos: (a) Georgia Chiropractic Association logo (Georgia, United States); (b) Jump4Joy logo (Netherlands); (c) Workout Loft logo (New York, United States); (d) Sojo logo (Ontario, Canada).

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brand marks are designed with rotationally symmetric proportions—Figure 3.4a more explicitly than Figure 3.4b. Since the latter represents a “jumping fitness” method using a trampoline platform, it is possible that the upper-limb dimensions are resized to suggest elevated perspective relative to the viewer. The bodybuilder in Figure 3.4c is quite the opposite; here the upper limbs are enlarged, with contours indexing musculature, much more pronounced than the lower limbs. In spite of the clear division along the waistline, this brand mark can only be described as bilaterally symmetric; and yet it is clear that the most salient dynamics in the image rely on contrasts that are organized across the transverse plane. Similarly, returning to Figure 3.4d, if we ignore the minor dissymmetries introduced by the internal shading and texture in the design, it is clear this figure should be classified as dihedral symmetric. Only, once again, contrary to the assumptions of Group Theory (and thereby the cultural symmetry theory of plane pattern analysis), the horizontal or “transverse” orientation to the plane is clearly the most salient organizing element of this design. Naturally, these observations apply here and below with the assumption that the four limbs are the focal features of the analysis. Hence the first two classes of morpho-typology around which spread-eagle brand marks are designed can be best explained with reference to the anatomical planes introduced in Chapter 1—planes which emerge uniquely in human experience due to the orthogonal reorganization of our relationship to the earth precipitated by the slow assumption of upright posture. A third basic class of spread-eagle brand marks cuts across both the sagittal and the transverse axes, though it may still be organized by either, or both. Patterns in this class share far more visual iconicity with the X-mark, as can be noted in Figure 3.5.

Figure 3.5 Crosswise dynamics in spread-eagle logos: (a) Cingular Wireless logo (2000–2008: United States); (b) People Power logo (United States); (c) USA Gymnastics logo (United States); (d) Greco logo (Canada).

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These spread-eagle brand marks are selected based on their prototypical representation of the wide array of crosswise design strategies featured among exemplars in the current database. Figure 3.5a represents a group of logos designed with square, rectangular or trapezoidal torsos featuring concave margins and pinched or flared ends. Like the old Cingular Wireless logo pictured here (Cingular is now absorbed by AT&T), limb relations of brand marks in this subclass are often dihedrally symmetric. Most crossmark tokens in the database are either asymmetric (as illustrated in Figures 3.5b and d) or bilateral symmetric (as illustrated in Figure 3.5c). As the final exemplar in this set illustrates, not all spread-eagle logos are figures relative to a ground, in some cases the spreadeagle brand mark is offset by an enclosure that forces a figure-ground reversal. Naturally, then, there are many other typological profiles that can be identified as organizing principles for the exemplars in the current database. The three classes above are among the most salient, not only in the database itself but also for better understanding the object of study at hand. Structuralsymmetric patterns are only part of the story, however; so it will be helpful to highlight further salient features shared between brand marks in the database as well—first by offering an expanded morpho-typology with overtly thematic, experiential elements—and then by exploring overt interplay between the X-mark and the X-pose in database brand marks.

An expanded morpho-typology Extreme pain and extreme pleasure: according to the respective graphic designers of the brand marks in Figures 3.6a, b, both call for spread-eagle brand marks. Inflammatory bowel disease is represented in the former figure with a stylized intestinal pile. Massage therapy is represented in the latter with a stylized intestinal spiral.1 Both designs interrupt the transverse midline to mediate spread-eagle limbs. In both designs the limbs can be classified as plane symmetric, the former by rotation (adjusting for scale), the latter by reflection and/or rotation. Although this is a minor design class in the current database, its message is major since it throws into bold relief the ambiguous reversible power inherent in spread-eagle posture: from happiness to horror, from pain to pleasure. Figure 3.6c is a further member of this class, only here the midsection ties together the symmetrical limb sets with a solid bold stripe suggesting fortitude or confidence. Although this claim may not be apparent on its own, the design element is clarified in comparison with the other two logos in this class. In short,

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Figure 3.6 Transverse mediation in spread-eagle logos: (a) Crohn’s and Colitis Canada logo (Canada); (b) The Great American Backrub logo (Canada); (c) Wyatt Hilts Electric logo (Canada).

interruption of the midline to signify affect, emotion and sensation in a spreadeagle figure is a powerful mode of embodied visual rhetoric. How do we know? We feel it in our guts. Figure 3.6c also belongs to a further identifiable design class in the current database. Zeus-like, the Wyatt Hilts Electric brand mark wields a lightning bold overhead, poised to hurl—and yet unfazed, unaffected. The design class in question is based far more clearly in thematic and intertextual dynamics than structurally symmetric dynamics. The figures involved are in some sense mythic, and are usually accompanied by props or additional design elements that serve to qualify context and constrain interpretation. Three further exemplars are provided in Figure 3.7. The first (Figure 3.7a) is a more prototypical exemplar in this class. The company name itself, “Atlassian,” provides a decidedly unsubtle intertextual reference to the mythic hero depicted in the corporate logo. The business venture firm in Sydney, Australia, does well to capitalize on the notoriety of Atlas, and Atlas does well to

Figure 3.7 Intertextual mythos in spread-eagle logos: (a) Atlassian logo (Australia); (b) Cigna logo (United States); (c) Avid logo (United States).

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shoulder the extreme weight of the world spread-eagle (at least until he shrugs). Similarly, the Cigna health and dental insurance brand mark in Figure 3.7b is a mythic blend of spread-eagle human and tree (with joyful leaf-toss polysemy contributing to an additional layer of meaningful affect). Whether or not an intertextual reference is intended with the myth of Apollo and Daphne (discussed further in Chapter 6), the blend itself has mythos and it surfaces frequently in the database, as a design element of 6 percent (n=12) of the logos in the current database. Along with the Burning Man logo and others not pictured, the spreadeagle figure in 3.7c is a modern mythic prototype; but whereas The Man in the desert is tortured at the stake with death by fire, the graduate leaps to celebrate for an ephemeral instant—a fleeting rite of happy passage—tossing cap into thin air.

Textual interplay Another frequent feature found in the spread-eagle brand mark database brings the discussion back around to questions regarding the relationship between X-mark and X-pose. As Figure 3.8 illustrates, the two are often one.

Figure 3.8 Brand marks featuring spread-eagle ~ X-mark blends: (a) Linx logo (2010–2014: Wyoming, United States); (b) ChromaX logo (United States); (c) engergypleX logo (British Columbia, Canada); (d) StratX logo (Paris, France); (e) RX Robots logo (Alberta, Canada); (f) TopX logo (2010–2013: Groningen, Netherlands).

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This observation alone is important; so before moving on, note that blended usage between the two can apply across a wide spectrum of brand marks representing a diverse array of enterprises based in four different countries. From transportation cooperatives to pharmaceuticals (3.8a,b), from family fitness to physical therapy (3.8c,e), from competitive marketing to competitive information and communications tech (3.8d,f), brand mark design strategies share a common affinity for (or tacit recognition of) spread-eagle X conflation. Next note the wide variety of ways in which X may be conscripted for spread-eagle service—strategies that come together in the aggregate to form a gradient phono-morphemic cline (as arranged in Figure 3.8a–f ), ranging from phonological frame to citation homophony, from morphological clipping to lexicalized performance and then to phrase-level citation utterance. In “Linx” the utterance is phonemic only. “ChromaX” ends with [æks], approximating the citation utterance of [ɛks]; and the latter is the pronunciation of all four remaining tokens. In 3.8b,c the linguistic value of X is still phonological; however, unlike “Linx,” these two instances are homophonous with alphabetic X in citation form. In 3.8d,e, the linguistic value of X is morphological—in the former case, “StratX,” by way of a word-formation process known as “clipping” and in the latter case, “RX,” via the lexicalized alphabetism of Latin radix, “to take; to prescribe.” Not until Figure 3.8f do we find a strict instance of X in a phrase-level construction. Visually and thematically, a range of meanings emerge from these exemplars. LinX was a transportation cooperative servicing the area in and around Yellowstone National Park from 2010 to 2014. So in Figure 3.8a spread-eagle X is used to connote convergence and connection for otherwise isolated figures. In Figures 3.8b,e, spread-eagle X connotes medically oriented crisis and the potential for its reversal. Figures 3.8d,f exploit the power-pose affordances of spread-eagle X, discussed in Chapter 1 as “aposematic” threat displays and discussed in Chapter 2 as the “arrogant, dominant” aspects of spread-eagle posture. While the Figure 3.8 exemplars all surface at the end of the construction, other instances of X-mark/X-pose blending in the database occur at the beginning of constructions, as illustrated in Figure 3.9. To date, all such instances converge on the term “extreme”; and all such references are to various modes of extreme sports—from extreme martial arts fighting, to extreme cheerleading competitions, to extreme physical training regimens. It is important to recall in this connection the numerous ways in which spread-eagle posture has already been identified in the preceding chapters as a common performance element across a wide range of extreme experiences—

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Figure 3.9 Spread-eagle X in “eXtreme” logos. Clockwise from top-left: Xtreme Combat Productions logo (Corpus Christi, Texas); Cheer Extreme Allstars logo (Kernersville, North Carolina); Extreme PT logo (2010–2011: Victoria, Australia).

performances that are not only exhilarating and high-risk but prone to sudden reversal. Extremes, reversals and interchanges are pervasive themes that characterize the vast majority of organizations, events and products that select spread-eagle posture as a focal point for brand identity. Thematic groupings may include health and illness, wealth and gambling, championship and training, individuality and isolation—but in all cases, a threat (of risk or pain or loneliness) is held in tension with a reverse possibility (of triumph or release or connection). This may be reflected in the representation of at-risk demographics, for instance. Consider Boco Health (Figure 3.3d), a rehab clinic in Memphis, Tennessee, or Carefirst rehab in Sellersburg, Indiana (Figure 3.3b). Consider the Sojo social entrepreneurship training hub for youth and by youth (Figure 3.4d) or the Avid commitment to enhance student achievement for traditionally underrepresented populations (Figure 3.7c). The tension described above may also be represented in the raw admission of pain. It is not only RX Robots who provide a “prescription for pain relief ” (Figure 3.8e); chiropractors do the same. In fact, the single-most represented profession or industry in the current spread-eagle brand mark database is chiropractic, with 30 percent (n=60) of all spread-eagle brand marks in the database representing chiropractic clinics. The promise of the chiropractor is the swift reversal of unbearable pain, not infrequently through the application of procedures that

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are themselves painful: extreme treatment for extreme relief from extreme pain. While the widespread selection of spread-eagle brand marks is sure to be partly due to mimesis between clinics, given the dynamics mapped out above, such decisions cannot be viewed as merely arbitrary.

Reconstructing proto X Affinities between X and spread-eagle can hardly be chalked up to coincidence; but returning to the question with which the chapter began, to what degree is the affinity merely a playful gesture? To what degree are the brand marks discussed above merely rhematic symbols with pun-like face marks added above the upper crux to anthropomorphize X as an iconic legisign of “spread-eagle” posture? Perhaps a better question would be, what are the fundamental origins of X? Whatever else it may be, this question is necessarily historical, and insofar as history is wrapped up in continuous processes, it is also evolutionary. In historical linguistics it is axiomatic that, with few exceptions, forms featuring more advanced, systematic levels of complexity are indicative of ancestral forms, or the signal of such forms across time. Hence, Old English wyrtyeard (herb + place) is ancestral to “orchard” and Old English hlāfweard (loaf + warden) to “lord.” The same principle can be applied across a range of exercises to help settle the question of the fundamental nature of X in relation to spread-eagle posture. Consider two here: the first involving four brand marks related to Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and the second involving four brand marks used by “extreme sports” venues. The circle-X or “XO” figures in Figure 3.10 become more and more systematically differentiated along a graded cline. Each figure is drawn from a distinctive source, in use as representations of various brand identities: a theatre company, a mythic gang of super mutants, a celebration of anthropology and two chiropractic clinics, respectively. Placed in this order as data collected from disparate locations, a reconstructed proto-form suggests itself according to the cline. But to ask which came first is to do more than ask which is systematically more complex (the historical linguistic perspective). To ask which came first is to ask which moved first. In the words of SheetsJohnstone (2011a: 347), “In the beginning was—and is—movement. In fact, in the beginning is always animate form.” The Vitruvian Man representation does not move, but that which it represents is our sole source of movement and meaning.

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Figure 3.10 Proto-X and Vitruvian Man: A logo-reconstruction. Left-to-right from top: Circle X Theatre Company logo (Los Angeles, California); X-Men logo (Marvel Comics); World Anthropology Day logo (American Anthropology Association); ChiroChicago Chiropractic logo (Chicago, Illinois); Results Chiropractic and Rehabilitation (Kansas City, Kansas); The Vitruvian Man (Leonardo da Vinci).

Beyond the primal fact of movement that can be used to quickly decide questions of origin like the facetious chicken-egg conundrum posed at the beginning of this chapter, it is helpful to ask about the current status of X, given our social construction of literate reality. How deeply buried, how far out of reach from our conscious awareness, is the vital, kinesthetic affinity shared between X and spread-eagle? Once again, brand marks drawn from disparate sources yet converging on a common theme may provide helpful insight. As we find in the “extreme sports” logos listed in Figure 3.11, the representation of a putatively identical object results in a number of revealing similarities and differences. In all four cases, and many others besides (e.g. X-Games), X is highlighted or foregrounded. In the upper two cases, spread-eagle dynamics are left implicit; in the lower two cases, spread-eagle dynamics are made explicit. Once again, to reconstruct the primal form we must press beyond systematic complexity to originary movement, or the strongest suggestion of movement. It should be noted, in this connection, that because of the primacy of movement, projecting the extreme posture onto an organization’s brand identity

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Figure 3.11 Extreme sports logos: (a) extremesport.tv web video blog logo (Switzerland); (b) X-Treme sports television channel logo (Canada, 2001–2008); (c) extreme sports equipment supply (Kuwait), (d) Extreme Sports channel logo (Amsterdam).

also serves as a strategy for commanding attention in an age in which attention has itself become a rare commodity. This is accomplished by triggering body memories of performance peak and the inevitable impending crises they precipitate, rooted in proprioception. In this connection, Figure 3.11d represents a particularly dramatic class of spread-eagle crisis drawn in-part from the early modern era. Clues to these intermediate historical origins are provided in the relative proportions of the X-mark limbs compared to the novel /e/-mark head. These proportions match the part-whole dimensions of the Jolly Roger.

The Jolly Roger Dread symbol of doom on the high seas—the Jolly Roger ensign is an instance of the X-pose logo that predates our era of aggressive market capitalism by more than 200 years. Much like the majority of brand marks analyzed above, the skulland-crossbones design also features a stylized X-figure with detached head, serving as a trademark or emblem (Figure 3.12). The selection and use of this

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Figure 3.12 Jolly Roger Flags. Left: Captain Edward England (c.1717); Center: Anonymous ensign, St. Augustine, Florida (c.1850); Right: Calico Jack (c.1718).

image, though it may seem to have nothing to do with sales and marketing, is nonetheless analogous with the act we now identify as “branding” (cf. Rawsthorne 2011). As a symbol of death on the horizon, the Jolly Roger created a kind of “brand identity” for early modern pirates—one whose “executive summary” (to further extend the anachronism) might read as follows: Ruthlessly intent on imminent bodily harm or death barring absolute surrender—followed, regardless, by forcible loss of dignity and property. Not a positive PR strategy. While it is true that famous pirates tended to have short careers, we know from the mythos of history and folklore alike that their basic branding strategy was a success. No less attention-grabbing than its contemporary X-posed counterparts, the purpose of the early modern Jolly Roger motif might otherwise seem to be at odds with the motives of marketing that underly the proliferation of commercial spread-eagle logos discussed earlier in the chapter. After all, the evocation of horror and dread—much less threats of imminent death—are unlikely to be among the stated goals of advertising copywriters and marketing creatives. But there are indeed strong correlations between traditional pirate branding and contemporary corporate branding. Both, for instance, are out to maximize profit and efficiency while minimizing cost and labor (Rawsthorne 2011). Both are often in league with national governments in ways that can be deeply problematic (Burgess 2009; D’Costa 2014). Both wish to command the full attention of their target audience—not merely as a fleeting distraction, but often to remind of some precarious situation. But, just as the brand mark patterns analyzed earlier in the chapter do not originate with contemporary graphic designers, the Jolly Roger symbol did not originate with pirates. The skull-and-crossbones motif dates back at least to medieval times as a memento mori (reminder of mortality) in sculptures and bas relief carvings, affixed to graveyard entrances and tombstones from Spain to Scotland and beyond. The figure’s natural associations with death, along

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with its potency for commanding attention and invoking reflection, were both well-in-place by the age of the pirates. More importantly, as I argue throughout this book, all such X-posed figures (whether brand marks, Jolly Roger ensigns, memento mori sculptures or other types) are apparently rooted in a far more primal embodied gestalt: proprioceptive and kinesthesthetic body memories of spread-eagle posture. Variations on the skull-and-crossbones theme still proliferate today, though the pragmatics of the pattern have been adapted and extended into new domains, such as hazard signage, nuclear military heraldry and heavy metal music branding (Figure 3.13, top and middle). In much the same way that Calico Jack opted to replace arm-and-leg bones (traditionally either humerus or femur) with crossed cutlasses in his own banner (Figure 3.12, right), the crosswise pair in contemporary extensions is often replaced by tools or weapons relevant to the exclusive group, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles and assault rifles (Figure 3.13, middle). Less commonly, skull heads may be replaced with tools of the trade or an image from another domain that serves as a light-hearted satire of the original source. This we find in The Pirate Bay logo (Figure 3.13, bottom right), which substitutes a cassette tape silhouette for the archetypal skull, and the Def Con logo, which substitutes the generic smiley face. The Pirate Bay skull-exchange is more than a visual-iconic pun. It functions as a symbolic proxy for the argument that digital piracy is no more of a threat to the digital entertainment industry today than mixtapes were to its analogue counterpart in the 1980s–1990s. In addition to reversing the polarity of the original source from grim to fun, this strategy effectively satirizes and undermines the shadowy associations attached to the term “piracy”—poking fun at, or “appropriating,” the hysteria that surrounds digital piracy. To further guide the imagination toward this interpretation, the bone joint curvatures in what remains of the original memento mori are enlarged to cartoonish proportions. This is also true of the Def Con logo’s crossbones, though Def Con uses irony more so than satire to cast its ethos. The logo mixes the (otherwise) quintessentially heavy memento mori bones with the quintessentially light smiley face. The resulting blend clearly communicates that the group of computer hackers who relate under the banner do not take themselves too seriously. It also means that the skull and crossbones gestalt has come full circle—from a figure of terror and doom to a figure of glib celebration. Further variations on the symbol in contemporary culture can be found as insignia for exclusive clubs ranging from fraternities and secret societies to rugby teams and outlaw biker gangs. Naturally, much more could be written on

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Figure 3.13 Contemporary “skull-and-crossbones” figures. Row-by-row from Top: Bilingual hazard sign (India); Toxic hazard warning sign; Middle: US Air Force 400th Strategic Missile Squadron insignia (1986–2005); Iron Maiden album cover art for “A Matter of Life and Death” (2006); Bottom: The Pirate Bay Logo; Def Con hacking conference logo.

the “diagrammatization” (see Chapter 2) of this particular symbol system and its implications. In drawing such comparisons and charting the many innovations, paradigms and networks implicit in their development, however, something else easily escapes our attention. According to evidence presented throughout this

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book, the common ground shared by all images in this class runs deeper than early modern buccaneer exploits or medieval graveside practices. What grounds these images far more deeply (and far more universally) is the diagrammatic mapping of spread-eagle posture, with its felt body memories of extremes and reversals. More to the point of this book’s focal figure, then, whether we are discussing emblems derivative of the Jolly Roger and other sets of X-posed marketing logos explored in this chapter, all serve to encapsulate a felt or remembered moment of crisis—evoking primal dialectics of survival: life and death, flight or fight; the chance of success, the risk of failure. In short, all such marketing strategies call to mind the very crisis of existence. Action must be taken. A decision must be made. Few wish to linger long in the face of such dilemmas. This point recalls a theme introduced in Chapter 2, namely that torture takes over when the spread-eagle posture is forcibly sustained or frozen. If such crises are prolonged or habituated, one’s existence becomes a living trauma— suspended hourly, or daily, between life and death. The next chapter builds on these points to explore a further projection of the embodied X: the hourglass gestalt (⧖).

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Through the Hourglass

Representing crisis Following a scathing naval battle with French pirate Emmanuel Wynne at the turn of the eighteenth century, British captain John Cranby became the first known person to describe a Jolly Roger flag in print. He recounted seeing “a sable ensigne with cross bones, a death’s head and an hour glass” (qtd. in Earle 2006: 154). Images from the first part of this description would go on to become the default symbol of piracy in the collective imagination of the Western world; but the hourglass figure was also a common design element in early Jolly Roger banners, often blended with skull-and-crossbones imagery, as Figure  4.1 illustrates. As an archetypal symbol, the hourglass evokes mortality and impending death, living with the end in sight, someone whose time is coming, or has already come. To evoke this sense from a distance, pirates themselves often mixed the hourglass figure with various depictions of skeletal memento mori in their Jolly Roger flag designs. The hourglass was in wide circulation as a timekeeping technology in the early modern world. Because of this, targeted passengers and crew need not speak English, Welsh, French, or whatever pirate tongue might be in use on deck below the mainsail, to recognize the intensified threat implied by the symbol unfurling from the mast. Discussed at the end of the previous chapter as an efficient pirate tactic for maximizing profit and minimizing loss, the evocation of crisis or imminent doom implicit in skeletal memento mori was intensified or compounded by adding the dimension of time—limited time: limited time for decision—life or death, flight or fight—“every second counts.” But is there something else about the hourglass shape that informs this feeling? Why is the hourglass shaped the way it is? Is there a deeper congruence between the X-pattern of cross-bones and the X-gestalt of the hourglass, or is the resemblance merely coincidental?

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Figure 4.1 Jolly Roger flags incorporating hourglass imagery. Clockwise from topleft: Emmanuel Wynne, France (c.1700); Walter Kennedy, Britain (c.1718); Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, Britain (c.1716); Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts, Wales (c.1719).

To discuss this figure as an “hourglass” is convenient, but it can pose a certain distraction. If the figure is a specific manifestation of X, part of the grammar of X, so to speak, as I argue in this book, we may easily be distracted from the careful consideration of this possibility due to our conceptual familiarity and cultural associations with the namesake technological artifact. If the “hourglass” figure is primarily embodied, and if we wish to understand the nature of embodied structural dynamics, we cannot not let its historical, institutionalized meaning stand in as a proxy or explanation for its grounded origins. Evidence presented in this chapter suggests that the hourglass is indeed a manifestation of the X-schema representing despair: torture as a way of life—the experience of identity and alterity locked in an intensified or seemingly permanent state of crisis. Psychologically this can be realized as the inability to grow past impossible contradictions or move beyond the confines of imponderable paradoxes. Often such problems are due to hidden traps of language and culture that fossilize ideologically into polarized dichotomies. In many such cases, as I argue later in the chapter, the petrifying message might be summarized thus: You are a self defined by an other; but the Other is off-limits, lest you cease to be a Self.

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This daunting, oscillating chiasmus functions as a vicious cycle or deceptive echo chamber with no apparent escape route for resolution or creative solution. It belongs to a chiasmus type identified by Anthony Paul (2014) as “mirrorchiasmus.” Paul associates this phase of the figure with “mental blockage, stasis or paralysis” (2014: 23). To further develop and refine Paul’s project, I propose a terminological revision for classifying chiasmus tokens discovered to function in this semiotic mode. In what follows, my general thesis is that this phase of the figure might be better classified as an “hourglass” pattern (⧖). While still maintaining an element of Paul’s original intent (due to the double-mirror “dihedral” symmetry of the shape), this refined position is necessary in order to further a mandate of this book project, introduced in Chapter 1: to establish an outline for an embodied grammar of chiastic types. In the end, the suitability of this proposal must be judged from the weight and validity of the argument that follows. The argument unfolds by drawing attention to multimodal evidence ranging from mythic symbolism and concrete poetry to psychiatry and philosophy, tracing relationships between the stylized hourglass figure and the embodied X through the work of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, dialectic thought patterns in Hegel and Heidegger, a heuristic diagram from French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and the Bhavacakra figure from Tibetan Buddhism. These insights are further tested and illustrated via visual and textual content analyses of six case studies drawn from contemporary graphic design. The patterns and dynamics that emerge suggest a deep congruence between three phenomena: (1) the hourglass figure; (2) human experiences of intense or protracted crisis (including trauma, tragedy, instability, precarity and psychic ruptures) and (3) linguistic chiasmus in an oscillating mode. The chapter argues that the hourglass pattern is itself the projection of a tortured psyche (one who feels the end is near), rooted in gestalt experiences of the embodied X. To frame the problem differently, if the hourglass shape is a gestalt projection of spread-eagle posture, a case this chapter supports, our reference to the posture (or to some similar upright human silhouette) as an “hourglass figure” inevitably invites a feedback fallacy, much like we noted to be true of “spreadeagle” usage in Chapter 2. Terms like “hourglass formation” and “spread-eagle stance” are handy reference points but can easily distract from the proprioceptive primacy of the posture itself—a posture which does not rely on mimicry (or even awareness) of eagle ensigns and hourglass artifacts for performance or explanation. The posture itself is pre-linguistic—or better, the linguistic terms are post-kinetic (Sheets-Johnstone 2011: 438). The terms are coined on analogy

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with something far more familiar: the coordinated performance of inverse symmetrical body angles shared between the four limbs relative to each other and to the anatomical planes—an extreme structure of human movement and body memory, rooted in the accretion of corporeal experience and imagination since early childhood. It will be helpful to keep this in mind in approaching the remainder of the chapter. Use of the term “hourglass” for the sake of convenience can easily obscure the more basic grounding of the form as an embodied gestalt, derivative of spread-eagle posture (the central problem of this book). To outline further evidence for this possibility, and to better refine the hypothesis, we turn to insights from five fields: psychiatry, phenomenology, philosophy, graphic design and mythology, beginning with French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his self-defining alter-ego Freud.

Freud and Lacan through the hourglass To better understand the fundamental meanings of the hourglass gestalt, including its potential status as an embodied diagram linked with experiences of crisis, it is helpful to consider the role the figure might play in organizing the human psyche. It is, after all, from the seas of the subconscious that crises of the self emerge unbidden and unwelcome, flying their banners of doom: neurosis and psychosis, paranoia and phobia, anxiety and despair, obsession, compulsion and depression. Remarkably, a heuristic model of the troubled psyche composed in this very form emerges from the field of psychiatry. The hourglass-shaped hypothesis in question is known as “Schema L” or the “L-Schema,” a diagram proposed by Jacques Lacan in the mid-1950s to serve as a guide for re-thinking the relationship between the self-satisfied conscious ego and the unsatisfied desires of the unconscious Subject. The model plays an important role in “structuralizing” Freudian psychoanalysis (Johnston 2014). Lacan mixes elements of Freudian theory with assumptions drawn from structuralist anthropology and structuralist linguistics (esp. Claude Lévi-Strauss and Ferdinand de Saussure, respectively). The original L-Schema is reproduced in Figure 4.2 with English labels and synonyms added for clarification. Freud’s depiction of the unconscious “id” is now infamous: that repressed and seething psychic chaos ready to erupt into primal displays of violence. Lacan calls this aspect of Freudian theory into question by distinguishing between a given individual’s unconscious S (Figure 4.2, top-left) and its fraught relationships

Through the Hourglass

(Es) S

ego reflection of other one’s perceived image one’s face to the world

(moi) a

a ´utre

other projection of ego “object-cause of desire” virtual/specular image

A utre

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c ns co in

re l at io n

im ag

in a

ire

Subject Freudian id Subject’s unconscious place of neurosis place of psychosis

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Figure 4.2 Jacques Lacan’s 1954 L-Schema (in Lacan 1966, 1978).

with the collective Unconscious A (bottom-right), arguing that the latter—also known as “the Big Other”—is actually quite tidy. Based on social constructions of reality that are linguistically determined, Big Other “A” is structured and logical—regulated through-and-through. From Lacan’s perspective, then, crises of the unconscious at the individual level stem from two key problems: (1) the Subject’s preoccupation with “little other” a´ (top-right); and (2) the Subject’s inability to gain direct access to Big Other A. The former is a problem because, little-other a’ is an elusive illusion, never ultimately capable of satisfying the Subject’s cravings. The second problem (the communication barrier) is a issue because of the former (!), but also because the answers the Subject is actually seeking are locked up in elaborately coded symbolic meanings of Big Other A—the “treasure trove of signifiers” (1966[2006]: 682). But what keeps the troubled Subject from accessing this linguistic treasure trove? A and S are unable to relate with ease because their line of communication is perpetually scrambled, making access between the two backward and ambiguous. This happens due to crossing another line of communication that is by contrast quite strong. Framed technically, the two lines are in an inverse antisymmetric relation. Meanwhile, discourse between a and a’ (ego and other) carries on unimpeded since the two are mirror-image constructions of each other—ego constantly projecting its self-image and assumptions with confidence onto others and having this image reflected back with little change. This creates “imaginary” relations in the socio-cultural world that are both convenient and harmful since the terms of their relations are unmoored and self-referential— grounded in little more than themselves—ultimately serving only to entrench a false (and fragile) sense of confidence, in one’s own persona. This may include

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ideologies of all stripes: one’s own beliefs, theories, abilities, actions, reactions, tastes, perceptions and understanding of the world. The ego goes comfortably unquestioned until the Subject’s desires are unmet. This, in turn, calls attention to the existence of an unconscious Self beyond the ego. Desires frequently go unfulfilled, but the subsequent line of questioning in search of underlying reasons is impeded. Meanwhile, ego must go about the business of projecting and reflecting: “Life must go on.” To understand its predicament, the unconscious self or “Subject” needs clean access to the symbol system that underlies the self (the Big Other), but this remains largely inaccessible, except via inverted communications that are often contradictory (see Vanier 2014). Should the unconscious subject ever gain a clean line of access to the collective unconscious through psychoanalysis, or by some other means, the ultimate objects of its desire would be exposed as illusory. But since the Subject is grounded in desire, this would serve to erode its very existence, an act that Lacan refers to in some contexts as “symbolic castration.” Over time, this might even call into question the reliability of the ego’s selfabsorbed, self-confident imagination. And this might well lead to a dissolution of the old order, what Bateson has termed “Learning III.” These patterns can be summarized by a written chiasmus construction introduced in the first section of this chapter: You are a self defined by an other; but the Other is off-limits, lest you cease to be a Self. In one sense, then, the psychic system mapped out by Lacan’s L-Schema is a self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating cycle, a closed loop, immune from falsification. Simultaneously, in a contradictory sense, it is filled with perpetual uncertainty, inversion and frustration. Lacan’s choice of /L/ (instead of /X/ or /χ/) to name the schema is rooted in Greek L, lambda /λ/ as an iconic index. Notably, the λ figure corresponds with exactly half of the full diagram, leaving the other half implicit. The overall system the L-schema brings into awareness is exposed as transitory and precarious—half affirmation, half negation—thesis and antithesis in oscillation. In this sense, Lacan’s schema is also dialogic. But dialogic phenomena range far beyond psychoanalysis. Does this model have implications beyond the troubled human psyche? Could it be that Lacan’s selection of the hourglass figure to represent crises of the self is actually grounded in dialectic structures that are domain-general? In other words, in using this model fruitfully for his own ends, does Lacan tap into a more general dialectic structure that applies across disciplines? These are important questions, but they lead us beyond the territory of psychoanalysis proper into philosophy—the philosophy of Hegel and Heidegger in particular.

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Hegel and Heiddeger through the hourglass Plus-Minus, Subject-Object, Identity-Alterity, Thesis-Antithesis: these are among the most celebrated offspring of Western dialectic’s Either-Or impulse— our analytic drive to cleave reality into pairs. The mediating “third” terms this generates are Neither-Nor and Both-And—the former intent on negating universal claims, the latter intent on the reunion of differentiated pairs. EitherOr thinking has produced such specular (and spectacular) behemoths as Rationalism and Empiricism, Nativism and Behaviorism. Neither-nor thinking has produced Stoicism, Nihilism and Poststructuralism. Both-And thinking has produced Existentialism and Phenomenology. As the history of Western thought demonstrates, such systems and system-builders continue to oscillate—locked in motion through the ages between point and counterpoint, assertion and counter-assertion, negation, affirmation and synthesis. Trying to imagine how such diverse strands and movements could fit together into a single model (much less be generated by that model) might seem like a tall order. And it would be, apart from the hourglass schematic. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is credited with returning dialectic to the forefront of Western thought, but Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) is best known for adapting and systematizing Kantian dialectic to form the centerpiece of his system. In Hegelian dialectic (adapted for discussion using Fichte’s well-known terminology), thesis and antithesis are united in synthesis. This synthesis becomes, in turn, a new type of thesis available for synthesis with a new antithesis and so on, from microcosm to macrocosm—into ever higher modes of synthesis—until all differences are overcome. And then, voila! Everything is One: Uno. Monad. Absolute Mind (Hegel 1807; Wheat 2012). Hegel grants that differences may be preserved in principle, but only in a buried sense—something he calls aufhebung, a German term that resists straightforward English translation. Aufhebung involves obliterating something by distilling its essence—suspending it, packing it up, removing it in order to preserve it. Picture a furled fiddlehead fern that has withdrawn all of its tendril sets into a bundle against a solitary stalk. Each individual frond and all individual frond composites ultimately clasped tight and snug into a clustered totality. All differences are neutralized. For Hegel this even includes the neutralization of difference between mediating terms “neither/nor” and “both/and.” As one might expect, this sanitized, empyrean account failed to impress many theorists who came after—even thinkers who were, nonetheless, intent on theorizing dialectic. One such thinker is Martin Heidegger (1889–1976).

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Heidegger (1969) proposes to “re-orient the relationship between identity and difference by focusing on the joining and separating acts that establish the unity of the third, and the dominance of identity over difference” (Tyler 2014: 118). In Heidegger’s account, the act of synthesis does not result in a static totality that swallows up otherness, resulting in no distinction between both/ and and neither/nor positions. Instead, dialectic remains dynamic by an infinite oscillation between thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Only in this way, Heidegger argues, can we avoid Hegel’s error of erasing or swallowing up negation, otherness and difference. In order to best model the relations implicit in this movement, a “figure of total difference” is needed in which “the moment of joining is also the moment of separation” (2014: 119–120). Tyler (2014) proposes that the best way to model this movement while preserving all relations of difference, negation and identity is by the construction of a “figure of total difference” featuring oppositions and contrasts between four principle slots, tied together with inverse symmetrical lines (Figure 4.3), a figure Tyler identifies as “chiasmus (X)” (2014: 120), enabling union and separation to co-exist. Hegel’s model of synthesis is fractal-like but fixed and static. Heidegger’s more dynamic model features “infinite oscillation between self and other” (Tyler 2014: 120), solving the problem of inertia posed by Hegel’s aufhebung principle. But Heidegger’s dialectic fails to model any escape route—leaving no way to move beyond the ingrown, twisted cycle it generates, forever looping and reversing back into itself. It provides no modality for the emergence of development or growth, no outlet for creative solutions: It is only a ceaseless back-and-forth motion that changes nothing and goes nowhere, like an endless irresolvable irony that situates difference within the identity of a fixed and bounded regime of repetitive motion … it is, after all, only a story of being that tells us nothing of becoming. (Tyler 2014: 120)

Neither account of dialectic accommodates the creative impulse needed to move the system beyond itself: Hegel is locked in place; Heidegger is locked in motion. Neither goes anywhere. Notably, though, Heidegger’s system of dialectic shares much in common with the situation of the troubled psyche mapped out in the Lacanian L-Schema discussed above, not only in terms of shape-based congruence but also in terms of internal dynamics. Both diagrams model the infinite perpetuation of self-reinforcing, self-referential relationships between contrasting pairs that are locked in cycles of opposition and identity, negation and difference. Let me suggest that both are also inherently unstable.

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difference

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− (+)

(−)

−

difference

d

ne ith e

difference

an

difference

r

th

bo

no r

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(+)

+

Figure 4.3 The relation of identity and alterity as a “figure of total difference”: Diagram of Heidegger’s solution to Hegelian dialectic, adapted from Tyler (2014: 119).

In spite of the respective illusions of self-sufficiency implied by these two hourglass models, I propose that both structures undermine their own longterm sustainability. At a glance both models imply infinite oscillation; and yet both are impermanent—perhaps on the verge of collapse, perhaps imminently so. Both are locked in a dynamic state of crisis due to a lack of outlets and inlets for creative growth. Since neither allows for the performance of, or engagement with, new possibilities that lie beyond their own closed and twisted selfreferential loops, the dynamic structures involved must either ossify or collapse. Lacan’s more fully developed perspective on the L-Schema makes this point diagrammatically in ways that are both explicit and implicit. The point is made implicitly by the missing lines in the schema’s namesake reference (Greek L lambda /λ/) and is made explicitly by the schema’s own dotted lines (Figure 4.2), which indicate fraught relationships—perpetually inverted messages and perpetually unsatisfied desires. In considering such possibilities, we are in line with diagrammatic thinking in general: mapping systematic resemblances between sets—attending to and guessing at “relations between relations” (Kockelman 2011). But what does this accomplish? What does it mean in the end? Does this exercise really tell us anything about the deep structure of the troubled human psyche? Does it help us identify or diagnose the underlying dialectics of some specific system? Or is this excursion merely an academic exercise in analogic pattern finding? If the exercise has real-world implications, would it mean that the problems of psychoanalysis and philosophy are integrally related? More broadly, given the thesis of this chapter and its relation to the thesis of the book, do such relationships suggest a vital link between human body memory and the organization of cultural and

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philosophical systems? To answer these questions (or rather to scrutinize the answer I have already laid bare in Chapter 1) with any degree of satisfaction, let me suggest, once again, that the full context of the evidence and argumentation presented throughout this book is needed. To take the next step in this direction, it is helpful to consider the hourglass as a diagrammatic structure in relation to the status of diagrammatic thinking more carefully.

Hourglass as diagram To ask about the ultimate nature (or ontological status) of the hourglass gestalt as a diagram is to ask three interrelated questions—one of a more general order and two of a more specific order. The more general question has to do with the status of diagrams themselves. The two more specific questions are about (1) the origins and grounding of the hourglass diagram in particular and (2) its ontological status when applied to any given problem or case. The origin/grounding question is the focus of the next chapter (Chapter 5). The general status of diagrams and their application are the two questions in focus here, with special interest in the hourglass pattern as a specific instance applied to specific cases. What, in short, is the ontological status of Lacan’s Schema L in terms of its relationship to the troubled psyche? What is the ontological status of Tyler’s diagram of “total difference” based on Heidegger’s theory of dialectic? Are such applications merely heuristic—like Wittgenstein’s ladder metaphor in the Tractatus (1921)—a disposable thought experiment that teaches us to look past illusions? Or do the organized congruences they lay bare actually map onto the “real” in some way? In asking about the real we are not asking about “the things themselves” (which would lead to the trap of essentialism) but, rather, about the relations themselves—the real structure of the memory–endemic relations (Bouissac 2007) of the troubled psyche, or the real structural relations of a dialectic system. This position would entail a kind of fallible realism, the alternative (a la Wittgenstein’s ladder) would be a nominalist position. To be sure, when Lacan first introduced Schema L in the mid-1950s, he identified its ontology as a nominalist chimera, saying that it is “simply a way of fixing our ideas, called for by an infirmity in our discursive faculty” (Lacan 1978: 284, qtd. in Leader 2000: 173). But just as Wittgenstein’s disposable ladder metaphor came to be identified as a chimera of its own by the later Wittgenstein, Lacan moves away from his nominalist position as he continues to develop his diagrammatic experiments:

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Later on, as Lacan moved from algebraic ideas to topologies and knot theory, he would come to see the diagram as something closer to the real, not as a representation of a structure but as the structure itself, understood in the sense of a set of relations of invariance. In this sense, he is perhaps closer to the Peircean ideas of formalisation not as a metaphor or evocative image but as part of the very object of study itself, real in embodying the relations themselves with the inscriptions of the diagram. (Leader 2000: 284)

According to Peirce, a diagram is an “icon of intelligible relations” (1906: CP4.531). This may include familiar schematics such as tree models, highway maps, algebraic formulas and the vast array of patterned relations from nature to culture, including modeling systems, schemas, gestalts and linguistic constructions (Stjernfelt 2000, 2007; Nöth 2008). Peirce describes diagrammatic reasoning, in turn, as an organic process of adopting a specific diagram or schematic as a kind of intelligible hypothesis to facilitate inquiry, based on the diagram’s perceived suitability for expressing systematic resemblance or congruence with some general idea, or object of inquiry; then testing the interrelated parts of the hypothesis to generate a more general idea, whether this might lead to refining the diagram itself or to applying it to further instances in other domains (1906[1976]: NEM 4; 1903: EP2). In short, “we construct an icon of our hypothetical state of things and proceed to observe it. This observation leads us to suspect that something is true” (1903, EP2: 212), which we then proceed to apply and test further. With this in mind, it is relevant to note that Lacan, prior to developing his Schema L, was not only strongly influenced by structuralist theories of anthropology and linguistics but also by close associations with cybernetic theorists. Leader (2000) cites two hourglass diagrams from these schools of thought—a kinship diagram from Lévi-Strauss and a diagram of symbolic communication from Shannon and Weaver—as potential conscious sources of inspiration for Lacan’s model. This would illustrate Lacan’s own process of applying and testing the general diagram’s suitability in a new domain, thereby extending the general reach of the diagram’s applicability, while at the same time demonstrating its relevance and modifying it for diagrammatic effectiveness in the new domain. Other instances of hourglass/X schemas being applied fruitfully to the analysis of cultural and linguistic phenomena are plentiful, as can be observed in RadcliffeBrown (1931), McConvell (1985), Pelkey (2013b), and Enfield (2014) and elsewhere. The next chapter in this book is devoted to a discussion of an hourglass/X diagram that functions as an organizing principle in logic (the square of opposition)

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and semantics (the semiotic square). From anthropology to cybernetics to psychoanalysis to logic to linguistics—if any general insight can be asserted with confidence in light of this wide array of applications, it is this: the hourglass/X schema lends itself well to modeling relations of difference, identity and opposition across the human life world. This, conversely, should lead us to suspect that there is something fundamental about the human lifeworld, or something shared across it that lends itself to being modeled using hourglass/X diagrams. In emphasizing this point, my primary agenda is not to argue that specific idiosyncrasies of this or that theory are necessarily intrinsic to the spreadeagle hourglass gestalt (i.e., once again, body memories of spread-eagle posture framed as gestalt projections); although this may be shown to have merit to the degree that the model is rigorously tested and broadly applied. My priority in this chapter and the next is, rather, to point to the presence of a deep structure that underlies such theorists’ tacit, unconscious reasons for choosing this specific pattern to express their hypotheses, to guide their experiments and to frame their general theories. This is important since it gives us reason to suspect that the data in question might itself be organized, or output, against the same ground that grounds the model being used to analyze it. This is an important possibility to explore since it would enable the argument to move beyond the clutches of nominalist traps into the wider (and wilder) realm of fallible realism. To explore further the possibility of a common ground that organizes both the data of human experience and the models we construct to analyze it, I find it useful to turn to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, a theorist of the human experience who also makes use of the hourglass/X diagram. Thomas’ perspective may cast fresh light on the issue since his imagination is far more viscerally aware, and phenomenologically active, than any theorist of the diagram discussed in the chapter thus far.

The hourglass in Dylan Thomas One of the most visually recognizable poems in the modern English canon is Dylan Thomas’ “Vision and Prayer.” Written in 1944 and published in 1945, the twelve formal stanzas composing the poem’s two movements are printed one-stanza-perpage and typeset in strict margin templates of six diamond patterns followed by six hourglass gestalts (reproduced in miniature for further discussion in Chapter 8, Figure 8.5). Typologically, this is known as a “concrete poem”; but what, if anything do the shapes mean? The hourglass gestalts are of primary interest here. Bauer

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(2003: 167) puts to rest standard speculation that Thomas’ X-shaped designs in Part II of the poem simply represent a stock gesture toward the hourglass of time or a glib shout-out to Herbert’s “Easter Wings.” The only (meager) references to time and wings are found in Part I of the poem, which is itself composed of diamonds or rhombus shapes, and the patterns in Herbert’s own concrete poem, although visually similar, actually trail and taper toward the wingtips’ iconic indices. The shape-class in Part II of the poem are also discussed variably as inverted pyramids and inverted half-diamonds in the literature. Thomas’ long-running fascination with X-shaped geometries and triangles is a more plausible explanation, as Bauer (2003) outlines in detail.; but readers and critics who consider the shapes only in geometric and alphabetic terms are missing important interpretive leverage that can be gained from recognizing Thomas’ own deliberately embodied approach— an approach that certainly informs his selection and encoding of this patterned gestalt, or so I will argue here (see also Pelkey 2013). Once again, it is all too easy to rest content with orthographic and archetypal explanations of X patterns; but my proposal is that Thomas’ fascination with X is less directly concerned with X as a letter, or an abstracted shape, or even a mythical, symbolic archetype, and more directly oriented toward felt geometries and patterned relations of lived bodily experience. In short, to better grasp the implications of these iconic patterns, we do well to explore them on Thomas’ own terms. The poet was only nineteen when he wrote the following to a close friend: All thoughts and actions emanate from the body. Therefore the descriptions of a thought or action—however abstruse it may be—can be beaten home by bringing it onto a physical level. Every idea, intuitive or intellectual, can be imaged and translated in terms of the body, its flesh, skin, blood, sinews, veins, glands, organs, cells or senses. Through my small, bonebound island I have learnt all I know, experienced all, and sensed all. All I write is inseparable from the island. As much as possible, therefore, I employ the scenery of the island to describe the scenery of my thoughts, the earthquakes of the body to describe the earthquakes of the heart. (1933[1985]: 39)

The intertwining movements and meanings implicit in this brief passage are more complex than the simple reversals and oppositional contrasts that are the focus of this book. The key point of relevance in quoting this passage, for now is simply to draw attention to the prescience of Thomas’ assumption, from his youth, that first-person bodily experience is the best (and only) way of having a world. It was Merleau-Ponty who famously framed this in an aphorism: “The body is our general medium for having a world” (1945[2002]: 169). Yet not only did

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Dylan Thomas prefigure Merleau-Ponty’s thought on this point by more than a decade, “Vision and Prayer,” Thomas’ iconic poem of embodied human meaning, was published the same year as Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception. With these connections in mind, it may seem all the more fitting that one of the two most basic organizing structures in this poem on the profundity of human embodiment emerges as a chiasmic blend of body and world (see Pelkey 2013). As Bauer was first to suggest (2003: 174), picking up on Thomas’ own thought patterns, we may naturally map any one of the twelve stanzas onto various Vitruvian man images from the Renaissance era, such as the H. C. Agrippa figure introduced in Chapter 1. Contrary to Bauer’s claim, however, these figures are not “letter bodies”; rather, as the full argument of this book suggests, the letter X these shapes evoke is itself a projected gestalt or body memory. One such sample mapping is provided in Figure 4.4, using Stanza 3 from Part II of

Figure 4.4 Part II, Stanza 3 of Dylan Thomas’ “Vision and Prayer” mapped onto H.C. Agrippa’s (1531 [1898]) spread-eagle interpretation the Vitruvian man.

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the poem. The status of the diamond plus hourglass blend in the figure is a topic reserved for Chapter 8. Notice for now, how the stanza in question achieves congruence between its dominant themes and movements and the two halves of the embodied X figure. Though there are exceptions (due to complex networks of meaning shared with elements elsewhere in the poem), in this stanza we find a clear signal. In the upper inverted triangle, we are met with a “moan for his hands to hoist them/To the shrine of his world’s wound”; while in the lower half we observe the “beating dust be blown/Down to the river rooting plain”: Up is contrasted with down, over with under, hoisting with falling, hands with roots—all of which require antipodal body memories and inverse, correlative bodily modeling to comprehend. The pattern emerges in further detail when we recall that coordinated relationships between both the right and the left hand is required for hoisting; and that, in complementary fashion, the plurality of roots in the lower half of the stanza (root-branching being visually implicit in the tributary system of a mountain river) not only takes us to the “foot” of the mountain but is itself an analogical counterpart for hands (hands: branches:: feet: roots), a point discussed further in Chapter 6. Thus, the upper and lower halves of the shape are not only in inverse relationship geometrically but also in terms of bodily movement and body memory. To further unpack the embodied meaning of Thomas’ hourglass X-stanzas in the poem, it is helpful to contrast them with their counterparts in the first half of the poem—the diamond stanzas. This comparison is considered further from the perspective of shape relations and plane-pattern analysis in Chapters 7 and 8. For now, consider their contrasts and complementarity in terms of thematic content. In Part II, the mood can be summarized as a kind of earthbound rebellion against ecstatic vision or spiritual awakening, a glad welcome of death and sleep, over-exhausted by attention and awareness—though the final six stanzas culminate in a blinding, irrepressible vision. Conversely, the first six stanzas feature excruciating attention toward and blinding awareness of the Other, the poet given over completely to spiritual ecstasy and penance. But these stanzas culminate in the sudden death of the poet under the violent force of the revelation. Also, as I show in an earlier cognitive poetic analysis of the work (Pelkey 2013), Part I is primarily occupied with blended relationships between womb and mouth while Part II of the poem is primarily concerned with blended relationships between body and earth. Likewise, in Part I, the dominant movement is out of and away from the womb/mouth while in Part II the

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dominant movement is a return to the womb/body, moving into the earth/mouth. Conceived in terms of directional arrows, the perceptual movement suggested by the two iconic sets of shapes in the two halves of the poem is out from the center (delivery out of the womb and flight away from the mouth) in Part I and in toward the center (returning back to the womb with eventual surrendering to the mouth) in Part II. Thus, Thomas also provides us with visceral kinesthetic reference points through time and space for the chiastic (inverse, simultaneous) mappings between embodied source domains and embodied target domains. Thomas’ iconic poem on human embodiment can sustain many further layers of analysis; but, for now,to better understand the hourglass stanzas in particular, consider the themes above in light of the poet himself. Anyone acquainted with Thomas’ life and work will have registered the apparent paradox, or outright duplicity, suggested by his authorship of the poem. Its central themes are overtly devotional (Hardy 2000: 38); and, yet, he is often characterized as a dissolute alcoholic (see e.g., Lycett 2003). Some of his less sympathetic critics, such as Holbrook (1972), have dismissed the poet as a “schizoid individual’, calling into question not only the validity of any insight gained from his poetry but also his ability to function as an “autonomous human.” Holbrook asks, “Was Thomas a rogue and mad? Or was he a genius and a saint?” (1972: 64). Certainly, no one was more aware of this struggle than the poet himself, who once famously remarked, “I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory […] and my effort is their self-expression” (1938[1985]: 297). Of “Vision and Prayer” specifically, Holbrook goes so far as to claim, “The poem is itself an act of schizoid suicide” (1972: 185). A more complex interpretation of the poem is warranted, in this case, by taking a more complex approach to the poet. First of all, it is unlikely that Thomas was simply engaged in self-expression. From his youth, he registered a wish to rend a veil between the known and the unknown: “I do not want to express only what other people have felt,” he wrote, “I want to rip something away and show what they have never seen” (1933[1985]: 25). As for his idiosyncratic style, Thomas defended himself against critics who assumed he wrote out of nervous angst or free association with no sense of direction or restraint. He described his creative process as “rigorous compression” and spoke of his verse as being “hewn” like wood instead of flowing like water (1938[1985]: 298). He also attempted to explain his appreciation for challenging poetry: “I like things that are difficult to write and difficult to understand; I like ‘redeeming the contraries’ with secretive images; I like contradicting my

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images, saying two things at once in one word, four in two words and one in six” (1935[1985]: 182). Thus, identifying intentionally hidden and multi layered networks of blended and analogical meaning is helpful, if not indispensable, for appreciating Thomas’ poetry. These lines also highlight his appreciation for interpretive dialectics, or, in his own words, “redeeming the contraries,” a function of chiasmus in general. As an avowedly dialectic thinker, then, Thomas is intent on the exploration, affirmation and reconciliation of opposites. In “Vision and Prayer” in particular we find him mediating such polarities as birth and death, waking and sleeping, rising and falling, returning and fleeing, finding and losing, pain and bliss. Thomas invites readers to follow him into paradox upon paradox of lived, corporeal understanding, through feelings of embodied movement in space. Though primarily represented via visual-iconic means in “Vision and Prayer,” Thomas’ fascination with crossing patterns surfaces in many of his other poems as well. In, “I see the boys of summer” (1953a[1971]: 1–3), for instance, he ends with the line, “O see the poles are kissing as they cross.” Based on related references throughout the poem, Shibles (1995: 116–118) goes on to suggest that one pole represents birth while the other represents death, pointing out incidentally that the act of kissing in the full context of the poem represents both the union that enables birth and the crucifixion that delivers death. Thus, among other things, in Thomas’ imagination the X of the body evokes primal oppositions—extremes as polarized as bliss and torture, birth and death—the two poles always kissing as they cross in the human body at the center of dark within and light without, the center of visual-iconic geometric patterns that represent both the womb-mouth and body-earth. This cluster of clues points to a general conclusion regarding Thomas’ use of hourglass stanzas in the second half of the poem. First, the pattern can clearly be identified as an embodied mapping. Second, this mapping is itself a structural expression of dialectic tensions. Third, this embodied diagram functions to express a state of psychic crisis.At a general level, setting aside the rich natural and phenomenological metaphors and blends featured across the poem, the hourglass patterns are used as a formal constraint or conceit (i.e. “diagram”) to help communicate opposition, negation and defiance, while simultaneously invoking sexual union, forgetting, sleep and death. Unwilling to yield to the absolute Other that constitutes the poem’s collective unconscious, the poet’s “prayer” in Part II is far from devotional. It is, rather, deprecatory: a litany of despair, a disavowal of hope, a pleading for death, a despairing of life—only to be forcefully ungulfed by “the blinding/One” at the “prayer’s end.” To distill two

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macro-themes into a single phrase, we might say that this half of the poem is crisis incarnate.

The hourglass in graphic design As we have seen to be true of the hourglass diagram across multiple domains, in spite of its apparent symmetrical arrangement as a dynamic structure of “absolute difference,” and in spite of its apparent potential for infinite oscillation in principle, the structure itself is precarious. This is as much due to the unsustainable force of its self-referentiality as to its lack of creative possibility— its inability to develop or grow beyond itself. At any point it may begin to dissolve, separate or give way. At its axis, the center cannot hold. The cluster of paradoxes that ensues from bringing opposite identities into relation—either/or, neither/nor, both/and—implies tension, torture or total collapse. In this section these dynamics are illustrated through brief visual and textual content analyses of three graphic design case studies, involving five book covers and a movie poster. The first case study comes from a collaborative project entitled The End of Money. Figure 4.5 presents the cover design for an edited collection produced as a companion volume for the group’s multimodal exhibition: a white hourglass design against a black background, the bottom-left corner of the diagram dissolving into nothingness, all headed by a simple phrase in the upper left which restates the exhibition theme in capitals: “the end of money.” Organized by an international group of artists and hosted by the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, the exhibition lasted from May 22 to August 7, 2011. According to the event announcement, the exhibition “reflects upon the fears, hopes, and expectations associated with the end of money and its ominous consequence: the dissolution of an absolute standard of value” (TEM 2011). Thus the exhibition and its companion volume promote reflection on the consequences and possibilities of the dissolution of an absolute, dynamic and ultimately self-referential system. The event announcement continues by delivering an explicit prose-level chiasmus: “What limits does the economy impose on our collective imagination, and how is the collective imagination responsible for the current economy?” (TEM 2011). Three points should be noted here that illustrate features of the argument above, further validating them in the process. First, the system in question (i.e., “money” or “the economy”) enforces strict limits on creative possibility. Second,

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Figure 4.5 Cover design by Kristin Metho for The End of Money: Juan A. Gaitán (ed.) 2011. Rotterdam: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.

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these strict limits are part of the self-referentiality of the system, both enslaving and thriving on the curtailed imaginations of those who perpetuate it. Third, the prose-level chiasmus used to complement or reinforce this sense syntactically is congruent with the rest—economy: imagination:: imagination: economy. Once again, the semantics and pragmatics of the construction are best identified with Paul’s (2014) “mirror chiasmus”. Much akin to Shakespeare’s “fair is foul and foul is fair,” the problem identified is “a trap—mental, moral and existential” (2009: 110). The statement evokes a vicious cycle of despair that further entrenches itself with each cycle, driving its guilty subjects deeper and deeper into its clutches until they lose all hope of escape. In the volume itself, we find many similar meditations. I mention one more here to further illustrate and solidify the argument. The example comes from a prose poem by Pierre Bismuth, listed early in the companion volume (2011: 13): The abolition of money as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

Once again, the structure in question, which is manifest by an hourglass design on the volume cover (Figure 4.5), is identified as a self-perpetuating, collective illusion restricting possibility and sapping happiness. Once again, a sentencelevel “mirror” chiasmus is employed to express the underlying sense of futility the structure engenders. There is a way out, but it would require the dissolution of the system itself. This position is rendered visually at the bottom-left corner of the schematic (corresponding with the position of the self-secure ego in Lacan’s Figure 4.2 L-Schema). These connections illustrate the diagrammatic continuity shared between hourglass diagrams in multiple domains, from psychoanalysis to philosophy to graphic design. The use of “mirror chiasmus” to express the problem syntactically extends the generality of the chiasmus figure into the domain of syntax, providing further evidence for Paul’s (2014) “mirror chiasmus” distinction in the process. In short, a rich network of congruent relations emerges between the diagram token on the cover design, the visual diagram type it represents, the syntactic diagrams that elaborate the problem in question, and the problem itself. The next design case study in question considers a comparative analysis of two book covers—both incorporating hourglass gestalts that have been interrupted, or severed, at their center (Figure 4.6). In both cases, the paradoxic place of uniting and dividing, identified in Figure 4.3 above, has given way—like figures

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Figure 4.6 Cover Designs. Left: Tom Flanagan’s Persona Non Grata: The Death of Free Speech in the Internet Age (2014). Right: Paul Gilding’s The Great Disruption: Why Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World (2012).

snapped in two at the waist. Both designs serve to represent crisis situations, and both foretell the imminent death or doom of some erstwhile absolute system that had been taken for granted or deemed deterministic. In each case, both the crisis and doomed institution in question are made explicit in the title: Persona non grata: The Death of Free Speech in the Internet Age (at left) and The Great Disruption: Why Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World (at right). In both cases, a line of text replaces the would-be place of merging and crossing, the diagram’s dialectical intersection that served to hold the system together. In the first instance, the title serves this role—in the second instance, the author’s name: “Paul Gilding.” But the first title also refers to the book’s author, who became an instant pariah or “persona non grata” over the internet following ill-considered remarks he made at a public event. In both cases, then, the author of the text in question is framed as a catalyst or inciting force for alarm whose suffering or vision foretells the demise of an old order: in the first case freedom of speech, in the second case competitive consumption.

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In neither case is the author actually the direct cause of the crisis in question. The direct causes of the two crises are framed rather in two respective triangle partitions left behind by each “disruption.” In the first case, the lower half of the would-be hourglass frames the actual cause: that is, the advent of the internet age. In the second case, the upper (elongated) half of the diagram frames the culprit: that is, the catastrophe of global warming. The contrast between the two is important to note. The Gilding cover on the left reinforces the hopefulness of the situation both in written form (“the birth of a new world”) and by framing the consequences of the collapse in the upper triangle. The first, by contrast, reinforces the grimness of the collapse in question (“death of free speech”) by offering no hope and framing the problem in the lower triangle. As we all know implicitly from early childhood experience—and as we all should know conceptually, thanks to the findings of cognitive semantics (Grady 2005; Lakoff & Johnson 1980)—happy is up and sadness is down. Other conceptual metaphors and signifying networks are also active in the two cover designs (such as the road/triangle blend, the dust/cloud interaction and the asymmetrical proportions of the hourglass in the Gilding cover), but these must wait for future analyses. For now we turn to a further (and final) comparative set of visual designs that incorporate the hourglass gestalt. This set also calls attention to the unstable center of the gestalt, but in a much different way. The set of graphic designs in Figure 4.7 consists of a book cover for a newly published edition of C. G. Jung’s 1912 lectures on the theory of psychoanalysis (left) and a movie poster for the film 127 Hours, starring James Franco (right). In both cases, the hourglass gestalt is held in a foreground-background tension such that the pattern alternates in-and-out of focus between the hourglass gestalt and its ground, resulting in ocular figure-ground reversals. In the left-hand image this occurs between the black hourglass design and images of Freud and Jung. On the right this occurs between the hourglass-shaped outline of the sky and the jutting faces of inverse canyon walls. In both cases, we also find a circle (or circular shape) at the center. In the Jung cover the circle obscures the kissing or crossing juncture entirely and features the term “contra”: Freud and Jung at loggerheads. Two colleagues at odds, theory, truth and reputation on the line. The text and image work in tandem to reinforce the sense of stalemate across both horizontal and vertical axes. And yet, as we know, the two psychoanalysts are mutually defining pairs. Without Freud in particular there would be no Jung; and yet, following these lectures, the two found it necessary to part company. In essence, then, the circle obscuring the dynamic juncture at the center of the figure is a sign of things to come. The center will not hold.

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Figure 4.7 Unstable Central Crisis: Two hourglass gestalt designs. Right: cover graphics for Jung Contra Freud: The 1912 New York Lectures on the Theory of Psychoanalysis by C. G. Jung, Princeton University Press (2011). Left: Movie Poster for 127 Hours, starring James Franco, Everest Entertainment (Boyle 2010).

In the Franco poster, the object at the center is a precariously wedged boulder. Diagrammatically, this works as a hyperbolic reference to a grain of sand by accessing our perception and understanding of the background hourglass shape as a cultural archetype of crisis and mortality—especially with reference to limited time. Naturally, if the boulder is a grain of sand in an hourglass, the human figure perched precariously above it is the next to go—a drop that would mean certain death. This interpretation is reinforced by the tag line under the title: “every second counts.” Be this as it may, I wish to suggest that what makes this image so powerful, or what makes the composition so dramatic, lies far deeper in the human experience than our cultural knowledge of the partwhole relationships and archetypal meanings that inform our understanding of hourglasses artifacts. My thesis is that we map our own body memories of outstretched limbs onto the full face of the image—along the spread-eagle outline of the sky in the Franco poster, or along the inverse angles of the black gestalt in the Jung cover—to feel the pertinent crisis in our very bones. The respective blockages at the center

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of these two images suggests that the posture must be frozen: no momentary reconciliation of limbs with “both/and”; no momentary relaxation of effort with “neither/nor”—only contradiction, negation and difference separated at extreme angles. The longer the posture is frozen, the more discomfort shades into torture. One false move and the whole posture/structure collapses, perhaps beyond recovery. To make sense of either of the two designs in Figure 4.7, body memory is apparently at work, helping us feel the end is near. The center will not hold.

The end is near So far in this chapter all argumentation, evidence and illustration involving the hourglass gestalt have been drawn from Western cultural contexts. Does the figure have relevance for organizing thought and behavior beyond these contexts? The experience of upright posture and the felt movements involved in exploring the limits of our outstretched limbs relative to each other and to our bodies’ midlines are features of the human experience that are necessarily shared across cultures. Because of this we might reasonably expect that similarly inverted geometric gestalts and their distinctive features would be made visually explicit in cross-cultural artifacts or didactic schematics as manifestations of the modeling power of spread-eagle posture. In Tyler’s (2014) discussion outlined above, regarding chiastic diagrams that hold between Hegel and Heidegger, he recommends a two-dimensional hourglass schematic of “absolute difference” as the best way to diagram Heidegger’s dialectic—a figure of seemingly infinite oscillation between extremes. In this same discussion he muses that the diagram is “a figure that also symbolizes Siva’s drum and the dance of time in the cyclic rhythms of cosmic construction and deconstruction” (2014: 120). In the Hindu tradition, the deity Lord Shiva plays the Damaru, an “hourglass” shaped drum, in order to enact both creation and destruction, the two being locked in a never-ending cycle that is found at both microcosmic and macrocosmic scales. As for the drum itself, the upper half is male, and the lower half is female. When they unite in the middle this represents procreation. When they depart for the extremities, this represents destruction. Thus, the Damaru drum stands as a clear example of an “hourglass-shaped” artifact (and the hourglass as a Damaru shaped artifact) from material culture coming to be diagrammatically imbued with dynamic, embodied structural relations in a non-Western context. This

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example and many more await further elaboration; but before closing the chapter with a further example, it will be helpful to note the following features shared in common between Damaru mythology and the wide variety of hourglass gestalts explored in the previous chapter. Inverted image: an X-based geometric gestalt Dialectic relations: oriented to identity, contrast, difference and negation Cyclical dynamics: evoking an infinitely cycling process (at least in principle) Closed structure: evoking a deterministic system (with no means of development) Catastrophic end: oriented to crisis and mortality, including impending doom

Of all non-Western examples that might be cited as diagrammatically indicative of these structural dialectics, perhaps the most vivid and elaborate comes to us from the didactic imagery of Tibetan Buddhism’s Bhavacakra schematic (Figure 4.8). Also known as “The Wheel of Life,” the Bhavacakra depicts the pathos of Samsara: the endless cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth. As a visual heuristic for internalizing Buddhist doctrine, the Bhavacakra schematic provides a comprehensive strategy to aid in pondering various intersections between daily life and cosmology related to time, conduct, character, perception and understanding—but especially related to the misery and suffering of human existence. Although the dominant gestalt is clearly a circular design, the circle, or wheel, is composed not so much of pie-shaped segments set between spokes as it is composed of hourglass schematics—three distinct hourglass sets in total. Much as we find in the two Figure 4.7 designs in the previous section, a central circle (in this case an axis) blocks the intersection of lines, forcing stalemate-style crises of reflection and decision. These points are more clearly established by paying attention to the distinctive nature of the oppositional pairs involved. The first hourglass set falls along the vertical axis of the figure, centered at 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock respectively. In this set, the upper half can be loosely translated “heaven”—the realm of the gods, a status of re-birth said to be full of beauty and pleasure. Its contrastive pair directly below can be loosely translated “hell”—the realm of torment, a status of ceaseless terror and agony. The second set to note is the basic realm of humans (centered at 10 o’clock) with its oppositional counterpart, the realm of animals (centered at 4 o’clock). The third set juxtaposes the realm of “proud titans” with the realm of “hungry ghosts” (centered at 2 o’clock and 8 o’clock respectively). To be reborn into any of

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Figure 4.8 Bhavacakra: The Tibetan Wheel of Life, from Waddell (1895).

the states below the horizontal axis is less desirable than being reborn into any of the states above. The first hourglass pair is arguably the most salient of the three sets, establishing the default orientation for the gestalt. This is true for two key reasons: First it is thematically the most extreme and polarizing set. To be reborn into the realm of the gods who spend their days filled with ecstasy and feasting is, according to Buddhist doctrine, the next best thing to enlightenment (though the two are as far away from each other as the moon is from Buddha’s finger). To be reborn into the realm of ceaseless terror and torment on the other hand is, quite naturally, the least desirable.

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The second reason has to do with the elephant in the room. Or is it a monster? It would be hard not to notice. In fact, the entire figure is oriented against, or organized around, the ground of this frightful being—a being who locks you in its gaze. This creature is known as the monster of impermanence or Yama, “Lord of Death.” Thus, we find that the figure corresponds across each of the five categories mapped out above as diagrammatic characteristics of the hourglass/X gestalt: Inverted image. In this case, a complex of three hourglass/X gestalts Dialectic relations. Each gestalt features oppositions between upper and lower halves Cyclical dynamics. The mythic Samsara—infinite cycle of rebirth Closed structure. Locked into perpetual rebirth, barring enlightenment Catastrophic end. Immersed in suffering, death, impermanence, impending doom

Far more could be said about the dialectic interplay between the various categories and concepts embedded in the Bhavacakra diagram, but this would lead the discussion too far afield. Before moving on, however, it will be helpful to return our attention to Yama the fearsome. If you can pry your eyes away from the creature’s hypnotic gaze, let me draw your attention to the placement of the monster’s hands and feet. Now, let me suggest that the inclusion of these details, and their placement in the painting, are nontrivial to the full meaning of the composition. In fact, they are crucially helpful for recognizing and understanding the embodied status of the wheel diagram itself and its hourglass components. The monster helps us see that what is on our left as observers of the Bhavacakra is actually on its right, and what is on our right is on its left. As a result, the internal logic of the diagram makes more sense if we identify ourselves with the perspective of the beast. Since the end of this chapter is now very near indeed, the point of this brief aside, and its veracity, will have to become clearer in the next. There we turn to discussions of spread eagle posture’s relationships with logic, psychic breakthrough and open celebration of the banal.

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Semiotic Squares and Double-Binds

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t Open celebration of the banal is not solely the delight of the anthropologist. In some respects, it might even be identified as a way of life for vast subsections of the human social order. Nowhere is this more apparent than among North American Country Music artists and their devoted fans. As the old joke goes, when you play a country song in reverse, you get your wife back, your truck back and your dog back. The familiar and the strange can trade places in the intense observation of a music video from Nashville, Tennessee, just as surely as they can in an ethnography of ritual role reversal from Papua New Guinea (e.g., Bateson 1958). Reading between the multimodal lines and peering behind the stereotypes that mark this music can reveal rich, untapped sources of data for better understanding cultural and cognitive modeling. In 2014, the Grammy Award for Best Country Album went to singersongwriter Kacey Musgraves for her 2013 collection entitled Same Trailer Different Park. Track 3 of the album is a hit song entitled “Follow your Arrow,” a reference to self-orientation or authentic self-discovery in spite of what others may or may not think. The song “garnered attention for its references [to] smoking weed and gay romance” (CMT 2014), both of which break bold new ground in country music thematically; but the song’s core themes are more basic. These can be summed up as (1) the psychological stress of living under ideological double-binds, (2) the jolt of identifying them, and (3) the joy of breaking free from them; or as Musgraves puts it: “You’re damned if you do/And you’re damned if you don’t/So you might as well just do/Whatever you want.” As this chapter will argue, Musgrave’s deliberately clichéd meditation maps onto the X-posture in ways that help further explain and extend many of the experiential paradoxes identified in this book’s argument so far. In the process we also identify an important source of origin, or grounding, for one of the most cherished models in all of Structuralism: the “Semiotic Square.”

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A tortured psyche, splayed spread-eagle, tied to the rack of some confounding dilemma: As shown in previous chapters, this problem clearly has psychological and phenomenological dimensions. I have also suggested that the problem has logical dimensions. But does it? If so, how? Aside from the quasi-logic of mere contradiction (x vs. not x), how might it qualify as a fundamental logical problem? Or consider another question that may be more apt: What if this problem is entangled with the very source of fundamental logic? In order to propose answers for such questions, we must move beyond the realm of “bipolar” conflict into the domain of “quadratic” opposition—expanding our discussion from di-lemmas to tetra-lemmas. What we discover in the process sheds light on poorly understood corners of some of our most uniquely human capabilities. First, though, it will be helpful to immerse ourselves still further in the mundane—multimodally. The official music video for Musgrave’s “Follow your Arrow” was released near the end of 2013. It features scenes shot off-the-beaten-track in desert regions of the southwestern United States, foregrounding a preponderance of arrow images, most of which are painted on signs to advertise local establishments, such as a motel and a church. Accordingly, the lyrics oscillate between problems of piety and sobriety, on one hand, and problems of body-image and promiscuity on the other: “If you save yourself for marriage/You’re a bore/If you don’t save yourself for marriage/You’re a whore-ible person”; and a few stanzas later: “If you don’t go to church/You’ll go to hell/If you’re the first one/On the front row/ You’re self-righteous/Son of a—”. Such problems are known in psychology as “double-binds” (following Bateson et al. 1956). Bateson argues that these situations, in which “no matter what a person does, he ‘can’t win’” (1956: 251), if intensified and prolonged, can lead a person to “become a clown, a poet, a schizophrenic, or some combination of these” (1969 [1972]: 272). Double-bind theory will be introduced further below. For now, suffice it to say that it is far from a relic of mid-twentiethcentury cognitive anthropology. Since its first formulation, double-bind theory has been applied in fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, group sociology, historical criticism, literary criticism, cultural criticism and animal training; and it continues to generate insight into social and intrapersonal communication processes (Gibney 2006). In this chapter, I argue that the structure of the double-bind is actually a tetralemma, something we find evidenced in the four-clause movements marking each of the two examples from Musgrave’s song just cited. Likewise, identifying and puzzling through a double-bind can be accomplished by mapping such

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problems onto a quadratic structure: one of the most basic templates of modern structural Semiotics, an adaptation of the ancient logical square of opposition for semiotic analysis, made possible by Algirdas Julien Greimas (1917–1992). Given the broader context of this book, it may come as no surprise that the X at the center of the square (see Figures 5.2 and 5.3) is identified in this chapter with the spread-eagle posture—and that the semiotic square is identified as an embodied structure. What may come as a surprise, however, is that this movement seems strangely foreshadowed in Kacey Musgrave’s country music video. For a fleeting moment in the very middle of the song track, behold: a leaping, spread-eagle priest! This instance of the embodied X (isolated and reproduced in Figure  5.1) comes into focus once again near the end of the chapter. Whether or not Musgraves or her producers make such connections deliberately, the use of “arrow” imagery in her song and video, and the use of arrows in the semiotic square, overlap in ways that are no mere coincidence. Indeed, Greimas’ commentators (e.g., Jameson 1987; Broden 2000; Corso 2014) continue to draw attention to the square’s salient ability to bring into awareness various kinds of “conceptual blockage or paralysis” (Jameson 1987: xvi), highlighting ways in which cultural ideologies curtail imagination and oppress open inquiry, usually without our conscious realization. In the words of Broden (2000: 33), “Greimas emphasizes formal constraints that are ultimately ideological, rhetorical, and cognitive that tend to close off the free play of textual meanings and to draw interpretations back to recurrent concerns.” As Jameson goes on to note, however, this very awakening motivates a parallel activity: puzzling through the arguments of a given square to find one’s way “out of the old or given—into which one is locked—somehow desperately to generate … breakthrough” (1987: xvii). Interestingly, in the context of Musgrave’s song, the Priest’s spread-eagle jump comes not only at the middle of the soundtrack but also at a point of psychic breakthrough, just as the upbeat chorus cycles into a new round of triumph. If prolonged and stripped of agency, the spread-eagle posture moves from celebration to torture, as discussed in Chapter 2. As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, torture becomes a way of life when hidden ideologies frame a subject against a backdrop of impossible contradictions. Actually puzzling through these contradictions can foster experiences of celebratory breakthrough. To identify more carefully the specific mechanisms of the bodily diagram, then, it is necessary to move beyond gestalt representations of the embodied X to more deliberate observations of its vertical, lateral and transverse dialectics—moving

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Figure 5.1 Jumping Priest in Kacey Musgrave’s 2013 music video “Follow your Arrow.”

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from right to left and from left to right, above and below the midline. As a prelude, it will be helpful to consider briefly the development of the oppositional square in the history of Western thought, in order to mine its conceptual twists and turns for clues.

The ultimate origins of the semiotic square The traditional square of opposition (Figure 5.2) emerged from attempts to diagram a cluster of logical relations that hold between a basic set of four oppositional propositions first formulated by Aristotle in De Interpretatione (c.330 BCE, see Parsons 2008). Of the various efforts to adopt the square both as a heuristic and as a hermeneutic tool, the innovations of Greimas (Figure  5.3) have been the most successful. This assessment is attested in the Contrary Relation All S are P

No S are P Subaltern Relation

Subaltern Relation

Contradictory Relations

∀x(Sx → ¬Px)

∀x(Sx → Px)

x(Sx

Px)

x(Sx

¬Px)

Some S are not P

Some S are P Subcontrary Relation

Figure 5.2 The traditional square of opposition (left) rendered in analytic notation (right). S P

S P ¬ x(Sx ¬Px)

x(Sx Px) S P

S P

There exists an S which is P

There exists an S that is not P

¬ x(Sx Px)

x(Sx

¬Px)

Figure 5.3 The traditional square of opposition applied to Peirce’s primitive existential graphs (left), rendered in analytic notation (right), following Bernhard (2008: 37–38).

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sheer range of literary, visual and multimedia texts and genres to which his socalled “semiotic square” has been insightfully applied (see reviews in Broden 2000, Bonfiglioli 2008, Corso 2014). On Greimas’ own account, however, the potency of the square rests not in its usefulness or accomplishments but in its a priori status. Greimas asserts (with little argumentation or explanation) that the semiotic square is a “deep structure” inherent in human culture and cognition. On this account any success it may enjoy as a tool is due to its position as a given—its embedded, generative nature—that which enables it to “define the fundamental mode of existence of an individual or of a society, and subsequently the conditions of existence of semiotic objects” (Greimas & Rastier 1968: 48). The claim is clear enough, but is it true? Is Greimas correct? If so, how? How and where is this oppositional template situated in the human psyche, and what are the neurophysiological inputs or correlates that inform its minimalist mechanics? Is it some kind of species-specific neuro-developmental aberration? Is it a dimly remembered Platonic form? Do we search for it as an elusive legend in specific brain regions or genetic sequences, as Chomskyans have done for decades to no avail in their quest for the elusive Language Acquisition Device? In short, what is the semiotic square, where does it come from, and how does it work? Such questions have received little attention in the literature. The implicit response has been, instead, simply to take the great master’s word for it and get on with the analysis. In reaction against this impulse, but with great interest in the veracity and implications of the claim itself, I focus this chapter on the origins and grounding of the basic image and relations of the square to propose that the diagram is in fact radically embodied. Here is the thesis of this chapter in a nutshell: I argue that the semiotic square, as a generative template, is necessarily a developmental given of human tacit cognition, proceeding from salient features of human evolution. Prominently involved are the experience of upright posture and the distinctive reorganization of proprioception and kinesthesia this posture enables, relative to (and corequisite with) limb specialization and the marked functional reconfiguration of the anatomical planes. More specifically, the new experiential template that results is realized in terms of basic oppositional sets of kinesthetic relationships that come to be shared between our hands, arms, feet and legs as we coordinate their motion through space and time. Among other evidence, I argue this position with reference to recent developments in the phenomenology of movement (Sheets-Johnstone 2011a,b, 2012b; Pelkey 2014), recent re-assessments of logical opposition (Nöth 1998; Martinek 2007; Beziau & Payette 2008), recent scholarship in (post)Greimasian semiotics (Broden 2000; Corso 2014) and

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prescient insights from Greimas himself (esp. 1968 [1987], 1984). The argument of the paper is illustrated through visual and textual content analyses of Kacey Musgrave’s popular music video introduced above, to highlight the role cultural ideology plays in the semiotic square and to show how this feature of human cognition also finds its ultimate origins in the marked symmetries of embodied movement. It is no secret that the semiotic square provides a visual, geometric manifestation of logical semantic relationships. With this in mind, as Corso (2014) argues, the virtual absence of discussion in the literature on the visual spectacle of the square is itself conspicuous. It should also be no secret that the human experience of visual geometry is tied to our own specific embodiment (Pelkey 2013a, 2014; Walsh Matthews & Pelkey 2015); but this is an insight that is itself relatively neglected in the literature. We cannot assume from this situation, however, that Greimas and his early interpreters were entirely unaware of the possibility of such connections. Jameson (1987: xv), for instance, comes close to identifying one aspect of the square’s embodied origins in noting that “the placement of terms” in the square, relative to each other, is akin to “mathematical equations … or the lobes of the brain, or right and left hand.” Greimas might seem to come even closer to an embodied account in his observation that our “rectilineal” categories “such as upper/lower or left/right” serve to “carve up the framed surface by marking out its axes and/or by establishing the borders of its various sections … mapping out the possible trajectories that the various aspects of the reading will follow” (1984: 638–639). Indeed, he might even seem to be explicitly stating the otherwise novel thesis I am proposing in this chapter in making the following observation: Since the human body as signifier, is treated as a configuration, it is normal to expect that its mobility will be considered as mainly creating positional gaps and that this polarization of movements will end up in the parallel categorization of contents. (Greimas 1968 [1987]: 33)

In neither case, however, was Greimas making direct connections with the semiotic square. His discussions of embodied meaning in these cases are focused instead on gestural communication (1968 [1987], 1984: 645–646) and the topological aspects of textual and visual interpretation (1984), without reference to the semiotic square itself. He even asserts that it is futile or trivial to inquire into the potential universal origins of natural analogical mappings such as “upper: lower: euphoria: dysphoria,” claiming that identification of the principle itself is all that counts, “not the nature of the invested contents” (1984:

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646). This claim, at least, is at odds with the findings and goals of cognitive semantics, a research program which has found, on the contrary, that primary metaphors such as happy is up, sad is down are crucial for understanding the role of embodied relations in human cognition. After all, these relations go on to condition and determine our abstract cultural “knowledge,” in ways that are sometimes superficial, deceptive or unjust—and at other times in ways that are profound, wholesome and fortifying, opening up new avenues of inquiry and insight. Both strains of understanding provide crucial insight into the core question of anthropology: what does it mean to be human? Thus far, however, cognitive linguists, and embodied cognitive scientists in general, have not risen to the challenge of embodied movement (much less the full implications of habitual movement in the form or frame of upright posture). In spite of “the fundamental fact that kinaesthesia and proprioception are [the] inextinguishable phylogenetic and ontogenetic correlates” of animate life (Sheets-Johnstone 2012a: 47), Maxine Sheets-Johnstone argues that kinesthesia and proprioception are conspicuously absent “much less noticed to be missing in neurophenomenological and enactive approaches” (2011a: 471). She identifies kinesthesia as “our sense of self-movement” (2011b: 118), something fundamentally different from the usual talk of motor control and motor skills that tend to emerge in discussions of embodiment among cognitive scientists. In fact, she argues, such mechanistic, neurological accounts are actually quite “distant from our real-life, real-time kinaesthetic experience of movement. Indeed, we no more experience nerve firings than we do our brains!” (2011a: 118). It is at this juncture that a radically embodied reinterpretation of Greimas stands to be so fruitful. As I argue below, the semiotic square, far from being a static diagram, is an active projection or manifestation of “our real-life, real-time kinaesthetic experience of movement” (2011b: 118). Put differently, the X at the center of the square is the “embodied X” (Pelkey 2014), a waking manifestation (or sleeping artifact)1 of spread-eagle posture. As we will find, however, it is not merely the case that the embodied X helps us make better sense of the semiotic square. The semiotic square also helps us make better sense of the embodied X.

Verticality and privileged universals The traditional square of opposition functions as a diagrammatic organization of Aristotle’s four categorical propositions: (1) “All S are P,” (2) “No S are P,” (3) “Some S are P” and (4) “Some S are not P.” If we consider, for instance, the

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famous substitution of “Swans” for “S” and “White” for “P,” the various claims to swan classification that result are at odds with each other in striking ways and are complementary with each other in subtle ways, all together suggesting a particular kind of organization. The basic features of the traditional diagram are reproduced in Figure 5.2 using both standard and analytic notation. It is important to note that the so-called “universal propositions” —those which admit no exceptions—are consistently placed at the top of the diagram, with the “universal affirmative” listed first and the “universal negative” listed second. This nontrivial organization requires what is known in cognitive linguistics as the VERTICALITY schema (see Johnson 1987): a gestalt embodied memory motivating placement of the “particular” propositions below the universal, relative to the upright posture of the human body. This becomes conceptualized and lexicalized in traditional terminology surrounding the square as “subaltern” and “subcontrary” relations. Considered in terms of their relative truth values, it is also worth noting the implications or meanings of various relations: The contrary relation … means that these propositions cannot both be true but can both be false. The subcontrary relation … means that [these propositions] cannot both be false but may both be true. The contradictory relation … means that one of them is true if and only if the other is false. The subaltern relation … means that if [the upper proposition is true, the lower] is true. (Bernhard 2008: 31)

One cause for a loss of interest in the square of opposition among logicians after the nineteenth century is the rise of analytic logic (Bernhard 2008). Subaltern relations seem merely redundant in analytic notations; subcontrary relations are suspect because they allow for ambiguity or paradox; indeed, only contradictory relations are considered to be valid in the analytic approach. A universal claim like “all swans are white” can be true if and only if its particular contradiction “some swans are not white” is false, thus further entrenching what is widely known as the principle of “excluded middle” and forging a further manifestation of the X-figure’s salience to modern thought (Figure 5.2, right). The implications of this loss of interest are worth considering in terms of spatial relations. Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (2006) argue that there are three primary spatial dimensions in visual texts: left/right, top/bottom and center/margin. In the traditional semiotic square, the center is eviscerated in favor of an exclusive focus on the extremities, or margins. Instead top/bottom and left/right relations become more pronounced. In the analytic turn, relations involving the lower half of the diagram are deemed to be insignificant, except

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insofar as the truth value of an upper universal proposition might be validated by the falsehood its inverse subordinate. Thus the upper half of the diagram comes to be ensconced with a privileged, or “unmarked,” focus. Bernhard argues that the analytic dismissal of noncontradictory relations as invalid or irrelevant is misguided (2008: 31–32). Other diagrammatic systems of logical notation reveal further complexity. One such system that affirms the distinctive status of complex relations involving subaltern propositions emerges in the Peircean existential graphs, as Bernhard (2008: 37–39) demonstrates in a discussion adapted for presentation in the Figure 5.3 schematic. The application of the traditional square of opposition to Peirce’s existential graphs (1903: CP 4.418–4.458) is of interest because Peirce intended his system to represent “the fundamental operations of reasoning” (Bernhard 2008: 39), a goal closely aligned with Greimas’ own stated position on the semiotic square.2 When translated back into analytic notation (Figure 5.3, right), we find that Peirce’s reformulation of Aristotle’s four propositions does not function at the level of absolute positive universals. Instead, Peirce suggests that we think in terms of negated generals or hypothetical types, while the particular propositions proposed by Aristotle are replaced by positive individuals or tokens. This mode of thinking is fallibilist or tentative and does not pretend to aspire to pure thought or universal knowledge. As such, we also find that it reinstates or reaffirms the full set of diagrammatic relations dismissed by the analytic tradition while simultaneously breaking free from institutionalized constraints—and in many ways turning the analytic system on its head. Note, in particular, that the unmarked propositions in Peircean notation occur across the lower half of the diagram, in spite of the fact that their analytic translation is identical with the standard analytic notations of subaltern propositions. The prospect that four basic positional slots, or “propositions,” arranged in contrastive sets may serve to inform human conceptual cognition is not a matter of interest solely to philosophers and logicians. Linguists such as Michael Israel (2011) and Heny Klein (1998) have discovered basic grammatical phenomena, such as adverbials of degree, across world languages that also self-organize according to this oppositional scheme. Israel (2011) argues, for instance, that the logical square of opposition is useful for explaining polarity-sensitivity patterns that hold between exaggeration (“emphatics”) and understatement (“attenuators”) cross-linguistically, resulting in a taxonomy of four positional slots. In English this accounts for the existence of ordinary terms like “awfully” and “sorta,” and the relations between them. The English emphatic “awfully” stands in a contrary relation to negative emphatics like “not at all,” both of which

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stand in subaltern and inverse contradictory relation to terms like “not all that” and “sorta.” The latter two slots stand, in turn, to each other in a subcontrary relation as attenuators. The irreducible status of each slot in such oppositional sets is evident in their relative sensitivity to negation. Grammatically speaking, “negative polarity items … cannot occur in affirmative clauses, and positive polarity items … cannot occur in negatives” (2011: i). One can say, for example, “Bob isn’t the least bit concerned about his hair,” but not “*Bob is the least bit concerned about his hair.” Contrastively, one may say “Sally’s condition is rather serious” but not “*Sally’s condition isn’t rather serious.” Such discoveries provide further grounds for reassessing the status of the diagram itself. In short, the square of opposition appears to be more than a convenient grid for keeping track of distinctions and relations, more than a handy heuristic for guessing new information according to analogical slots of a symmetrical template. It may well be that Greimas is on to something in his insistence that the diagram be admitted as a “fundamental mode of existence” underlying culture and inquiry. But if this is so, the square’s own grounding in human experience must be shown to be more complex than an embodied X-gestalt considered merely as a simplistic array of diagonal bars. This is a start, to be sure, but it leaves us in the same position as the analytic tradition. With little more than mere contradiction to offer (e.g., “the upper half is not the lower half and the lower is not the upper”), the diagram seems merely obvious and loses its interest. But recalling, the curious focus—or privilege—granted to upper “universal” slots in the diagram, even this relation must be seen as more complex. Insofar as the square of opposition is a mapping or manifestation of upright posture, the verticality schema itself becomes more strangely out of balance, favoring the upper over the lower.

Laterality and conceptual ideology Greimas’ adaptation of the classical square of opposition to semiotic analysis extends the structure’s relevance beyond the exclusive domains of propositional and grammatical logic, introducing a number of enhancements or clarifications in the process. The resulting schematic, as mentioned above, is claimed to represent the most primitive structure of cultural signification at both individual and social levels. In addition, Greimas’ semiotic square is said to achieve congruence between theory and praxis. According to Schleifer, “the two levels of Greimas’s square both separate and bring together—they superimpose—

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the oppositions between fact and method, semantics and syntax” (2000: 113). Although applications of the semiotic square are almost exclusively geared toward cultural phenomena such as lexical, visual and literary analyses, Greimas himself remarks in passing on the extra-disciplinary compatibility of the structure with the Klein group in mathematics and the Piaget group in psychology (1984: 49–50). Given the transdisciplinary nature of these claims, and their potential potency, it is curious indeed that so little attention has been paid to their validity and grounding. Consider the basic generative template for the semiotic square, listed in Figure 5.4 (adapted from Greimas 1984: 49 and elsewhere). One Greimasean expansion of the classical square is the introduction of “semes” or “sememes” as the focus of the template, thus ushering the structure into the domain of human meaning making. This cannot be taken to indicate that the structure itself is merely semantic, only that it is valid for, and congruent with, semantic organization. A further expansion of the classical square is the central figure S, described as a “complex term”—that which results, supposedly a posteriori (Bonfiglioli 2008: 109), from the contrary relations under consideration. This stands in contrast to a “Nueter” or “Neutral” Term which emerges from the lower contradictory relations. Thus, the Neuter Term is not simply a negation of the Complex Term. Rather, it is a bleaching or neutralizing of the term’s vibrancy and vividness (or dogmatism and self-sufficient presumption). The upper half of the diagram is active/agent and the lower is passive/patient. This axis of contrast is not the most salient for Greimas, however. In fact, as Corso notes (2014: 72), in his own renderings Greimas omits lines of correlation connecting upper and lower halves of the diagram. Whereas the classical square brings contradictory relations into focus (as discussed above), the semiotic square draws our attention to oppositional relations. This is most vividly noted in the organizing role of the first term (s1) relative to its opposite (s2). Consider polarizing English terms like “subject vs. object” and “life” Complex Term S2

Positive Deixis

S1

Negative Deixis

S1

S2

Neuter Term S

OPPOSITION

Relation between Contraries CONTRADICTION

Relation between Contradictories CORRELATION

Figure 5.4 The Greimasean Semiotic Square.

Relation of Implication

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subject I

non-object self

Living

Social Being object it

Nonsocial Being

125

non-subject other

life alive

not-death undead, zombie

death dead

Not Living

not-life non-living, extinct

Figure 5.5 Semiotic square for “subject” and “life.”

vs. “death” and their respective corollary terms (see Figure 5.5). Given Greimas’ appreciation of Lévi-Strauss (see Corso 2014: 73) this is no surprise; but given the fundamental role opposition plays in the evolution of phenomena ranging from human thought and culture to information structure and the material universe (see Nöth 1994, 1998; Danesi 2009b), the importance of this focus cannot be overstated. More critically, Greimas’ development of the classical template in this regard draws attention to the privileged or dominant status of the first term (s1) relative to its operative contrasts (see Jameson 1987: xv). The s1 term becomes the asymmetrical anchor of an otherwise symmetrical template according to the preconditioned sociosemiotic relations of a given culture. As discussed above, contradictory relations rely on the embodied verticality schema. Oppositional relations, in turn, rely on an embodied schema that has received little attention in the literature. Svetlana Martinek (2007) refers to this conceptually neglected body memory as the “RIGHT and LEFT” schema. I propose instead that the schema should be discussed as LATERALITY due to the salient functional specialization or antisymmetry the schema involves, and due to its relevance beyond human and animal realities. Laterality, also known as “chirality” or “handedness,” is found throughout the natural world (Riehl 2010), from the helical trajectories of vines and bacteria to the specialization of brain hemispheres and crab claws, with a general predisposition for right over left (Hegstrom & Kondepudi 1990). In this case, what is true of the natural world is also true of the cultural. Not only is right-handedness or “dextrality” the most common manual expression of lateralization in cultures around the world, but the right-hand side is most often associated with features such as strength, honor, dignity, normality and morality as opposed to the relative recessiveness or suspiciousness of the left (see also Porac & Coren 1981: 107–108). Consider Latin dexter (right) vs. sinister (left). In Hebrew ‫“ ןיִמָי‬right” implies strength and honor vs. ‫לאֹמְׂש‬ “left” which is associated with weakness and misfortune. Russian право “right”

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is cognate with Proto-Indo European *prō-vos “good, honest, decent” while лева “left” is cognate with a proto-term that appears to mean “curved, bent, twisted” (Martinek 2007: 194). Terms for “lame,” “limp,” “awkward” and “askew” in many Tibeto-Burman languages are cognate with Proto-Tibeto-Burman *b(w)ay “left” (Matisoff 2003)—relative to *g-(y/r)a “right” whose reflexes are semantically unmarked. In the Maya language of Central America, the right hand, and the right-hand side, signify “pure, powerful, or superordinate” while the left signifies “weaker, lame, or subordinate” (Palka 2002: 419). The same holds true in both classical and contemporary Maya. Indeed, there are few exceptions to this tendency worldwide; and the socio-cognitive principle appears to be stable across millennia. Latin etymology aside, then, it is worth noting that associations between the “sinister” and the left hand side have not disappeared in contemporary English. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the title of Wes Craven’s 1972 horror film Last House on the Left. For all the details that may differ between the grisly original and the film’s 2009 remake, the title remains unchanged. The preferential bias for right over left has complex causes and consequences (see McGilchrist 2009; Riehl 2010; Bienfait & Beek 2014). Perhaps the most basic and pervasive consequence for human cognition is the embodied source domain it supplies for generating our more abstract notions of markedness. The primary analogy can be stated plainly: UNMARKED IS RIGHT, MARKED IS LEFT. The use of all caps, once again, is a cognitive semantic device; but it should be noted that the immensely important experiential constraints and affordances of this feature of embodied cognition are not widely recognized (much less institutionalized) in cognitive linguistics. This is a curious and conspicuous gap. If markedness is a theoretical and cultural phenomenon rooted in our lived experience of lateralization—especially the experience of our right- and left-hand/arm movement in lateralized opposition—this possibility should be recognized and researched widely by theorists of embodied cognition. In light of these insights the situation of the primary term (s1) in the semiotic square might seem surprising. It might seem counterintuitive that the unmarked “righthand” sememe is consistently placed in the upper-left corner of the square. But this would be a superficial analysis. When facing an interlocutor squarely, we recognize that the right side of the other is adjacent to our left and that their left is adjacent to our right (in keeping with related findings on “altercentric participation” from Bråten 2007). In much the same way, the right eye is oriented toward the left visual field while the left eye is oriented toward the right. Even in two-dimensional cultural abstractions such as a coat-of-arms we recognize

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this to hold true. The “dexter” (right hand) side in two-dimensional heraldry is understood to refer to the left-hand side relative to the viewer.3 To the degree that a two-dimensional mapping functions as a manifestation or analogical mapping of the human body image, I would propose that this reflexive chiasmus is more likely to hold true. These considerations aside, the best evidence that the primary term (s1) corresponds with the “right hand” of the diagram is its consistently unmarked, privileged status, a status that governs all other terms in the diagram. But, much like their social counterparts, cultural terms invested with power and privilege are not inherently good or innocent. On the contrary, as Iain McGilchrist (2009) demonstrates at length, LeftBrain+Right-Hand dynamics have a close relationship with aspects of cognition that are related to decontextualization, efficiency and control; and while such phenomena are not corrupt in themselves, they are easily corruptible. Left unchecked by Right-Brain+Left-Hand dynamics, the myth of the ascendant “right” easily spills over into harmful ideology: presumption, fragmentation and reckless automation. In short, in spite of being the presumed locus of meaning, the unquestioned ascendancy of the s1 term can drive a given system into helplessness or meaninglessness. Given that the semiotic square has long been recognized as a tool for identifying and dealing with ideological binds in cultural texts and contexts, these connections are especially fecund. Nevertheless, I will put them aside for now and pick them up again later. First it will be helpful to sketch a more full account of the diagram’s embodied grounding.

Transversality and the kinesthetic X So far I have shown that the square of opposition is grounded in two “schemas” or gestalt memories of body movement: VERTICALITY (upper-lower) and LATERALITY (right-left). Neither aspect of the square would make sense without lived bodily experiences and body memories that inform these abstractions and their imputed values across cultures. It is worth recalling that VERTICALITY, interacting with the frozen X or hourglass gestalt, is the ground of Contradiction (i.e., the upper is not the lower) while LATERALITY is the ground of Opposition (i.e., right over left) against an otherwise symmetrical frame. Here I propose that a third embodied model grounds relations of Correlation in the semiotic square: TRANSVERSALITY, a neglected concept that requires a brief review of the three anatomical planes of the human body image: (1) coronal, (2) sagittal, and (3) transverse.

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The transverse plane intersects the human body image at the waistline, tacitly juxtaposing experience of the upper body with the lower, and thereby blending our experience of laterality with our experience of verticality. Plainly put, transversality integrates our experience of both right and left limbs, both above and below the waistline. This fact may seem basic, and it is; but it is also nontrivial and has implications for embodied theorizing that have been neglected for too long. Before proceeding, though, it is important to underscore the distinction between transversality and verticality and to better orient the discussion to the other two anatomical planes. The human experience of verticality is primarily enabled by our enhanced experience of the coronal or “frontal” plane, more commonly (if only tacitly) known via our binary distinction between “front vs. back.” As discussed in Chapter 1, experience of the coronal plane is enhanced for Homo sapiens due to our species-specific mode of bipedalism, or upright posture. In the words of Henri Van Lier, “While other animals are radiolarian or caudal-rostral, Homo is transverse, and thus frontal-dorsal stricto sensu, conferring a front not only to himself but to everything coming in front of him” (2003: 4). This evolutionary coup d’état not only sets our default perspective in an orthogonal relationship to the world around us—bringing into play the VERTICALITY schema—but also frees up our hands for more specialized tasks, enabling more pronounced and complex modes of LATERALITY. Since lateralization also applies below the waistline, we identify one final anatomical plane: the sagittal, tacitly separating left from right down the middle length of our body image. Both the coronal/ vertical and the sagittal/lateral are integrated in TRANSVERSALITY. With these facts in mind, Van Lier appears to be correct in referring to the human species as the “transverse primate” (2003). Transversality becomes the most fully suggestive or integrative account of the evolutionary advantages (and consequences) of upright posture, serving to highlight the dominant experience of the frontal half of the coronal plane and, in turn, the lateralization of the sagittal. Van Lier (2003: 2) further clarifies this position with reference to the human production and experience of angles. In referring to the human species as “an angularizing and transversalizing primate” (2003: 2), he marks out relationships between movement and geometry that underlie all modes of human matching and mapping, enabling and informing all acts of diagrammatization in anthroposemiosis, large and small, including the semiotic square of opposition. Recognizing the angularizing, transversalizing human experience of four limbs, mediated by an upright torso—all being coordinated by three intersecting planes—serves to expand our understanding of the embodied X beyond the frozen

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vertical figure of the hourglass discussed above. We are now better prepared to consider the form as an active figure “experienced as a linear pattern created by movement” (Sheets-Johnstone 2011b: 116). Sheets-Johnstone’s insights into the phenomenology of movement are particularly relevant here. Consider first her argument that our ability to think relies on the movement of our whole body to find or create spatial regularities. She observes that “it is erroneous to think that movement simply takes place in space” since, “On the contrary, we formally create space in the process of moving” (2011a: 124). Furthermore, since “the body moves as an integrated whole”, “short of this fundamental kinetic integrity, we could hardly discover regularities” (2011a: 125); thus, “in both a phylogenetic and ontogenetic sense, thinking is fundamentally modelled on the body” (2011a: 309) Suspicious of the modern “pointillist conception of movement” (2012a: 64) that gives rise to theories of “body image” and “body schema,” Sheets-Johnstone warns that such ideas “emanate … from a bias of Western thought that anchors reality in the spatiality of things to the exclusion of their temporality, i.e., their impermanence, their flow, their temporal dynamics” (2012a: 64). Instead, she proposes the term “kinetic melody” (see e.g., Sheets-Johnstone 2012a, drawing on Luria 1973). Kinetic melodies are “integral kinaesthetic structures,” familiar bodily dynamics tailored to particular situations that call for the re-enactment of one or more coordinated series of remembered movements such as signing one’s name or walking along an icy sidewalk. The cognitive sedimentations in question differ from the pointillist theories she critiques primarily in that they are dynamic and open instead of being static and fixed. Sheets-Johnstone identifies the interaction of four cardinal elements or fundamental qualities of felt movement underlying all kinetic melodies, two of which are temporal and two spatial (2011a: 123): 1) Tensional: felt temporal effort 2) Projectional: felt temporal force and energy 3) Linear: felt spatial paths and contours 4) Areal-Amplitudinal: felt spatial expansion and contraction

Of these four qualities, the third is the most relevant for grounding the semiotic square in the dynamics of spread-eagle posture. In short, our “tactile-kinaesthetic awareness” serves to “ground our imaginative consciousness of movement in the form of body lines. They provide the backbone of our awareness of the linear designs created by our moving bodies” (Sheets-Johnstone 2011b: 116). SheetsJohnstone argues that linear dynamics can be understood as both “linear design

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and linear pattern,” clarifying that “linear design specifies how, in the course of moving, body parts and the moving body as a whole are curved, straight, twisted, and horizontally, diagonally or vertically aligned or any combination thereof,” while “Linear pattern describes the trajectory or trajectories that a living body creates in moving” (2011b: 115). In becoming aware of the linear design of our bodies, we are actually synthesising separate joint angularities. Joint angularity, a product of muscular tensions, supports the imagined line. The angle of any joint may be considered kinaesthetically, but the distance between joints cannot; it can only be imagined, and imagined kinetically in the form of a drawn line. […] There is, in other words, no continuous set of receptors to follow the skeletal outline of the body, either at rest or as it moves. The outline may be followed only by an imaginative representation in the form of a line or constellation of lines. (2011b: 116)

Because of this “imaginative consciousness of movement” (2011b: 122), awareness and memory of our bodily postures are visualized only as an artefact of kinetic imagination. “In short, when it is a question of our own movement, we have an imaginative consciousness of the linear designs of our bodies. Indeed, we are virtually always on the inside of our own movement. We are kinaesthetically but not visually aware of our moving bodies” (Sheets-Johnstone 2011b: 116). Applied to the embodied X, this helps us further appreciate the complex dynamics that underlie the posture (see Figure 5.6): three anatomical planes mediate the proprioception of four limbs that are themselves actively related via a combination of kinesthetic perception and imagination across both the transverse and sagittal planes. Applied to the semiotic square, these insights suggest the important role not only of felt movement in the structure but also of kinetic analogy or “imagination.” Lest it pose a distraction, it is worth noting at this juncture that the embodied X is framed by something geometrically much closer to a rectangle than a square. While the spread-eagle posture can be forced into a square the pose is less natural or likely; more importantly, Corso (2014), following Jameson (1972), stresses that the semiotic “square” is itself a misnomer, arguing that “semiotic rectangle” is more accurate. Even so, can discussion of what would appear to be a static geometric structure (whether square or rectangle) be reconciled with the flowing dynamics of embodied movement Sheets-Johnstone describes? In other words, is there a place for stillness in embodied movement? According to Sheets-Johnstone, there is: “Our whole body is engaged in moving, sometimes engaged by simply being still” (2011a: 125). She lists preparation to swing a bat in baseball or waiting to

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Figure 5.6 Mapping the experience of spread-eagle posture (right) relative to proprioception of the appendages and anatomical planes (left) and Sheets-Johnstone’s linear quality of movement (center).

speak in a conversation as examples. In other cases, movement and stillness are coordinated simultaneously between different body parts, as when we attempt to thread a needle or sing an aria, perform surgery or simply read a book (2011a: 125). As for the visual nature of the square, she notes in passing that when it comes to “mirrors and third-person perspectives, our postures and postural awareness” can indeed be thought of as visual phenomena (2011b: 116), but only secondarily, as manifestations or projections of phenomena that are primarily related to kinesthetic imagination.

Symmetry, asymmetry, extremity An integrated, transverse understanding of the X-posture reveals that spreadeagle performance and projection require not only the felt movement of arms and legs into a new organized, created space complete with angles and memories but also the imagined iconic relationships that hold between them. With this in mind, it is worth exploring the possibility that vivid body memories of transversality may be among the single-most important bodily sources of what we call “analogy.” Analogy requires both part–whole metonymic relations and resemblance-based metaphorical relations, the former can be described as embodied reason, the latter as embodied imagination. This point is explored further in the next chapter, in a discussion of arm–leg relationships as “primary blends”—a grounding mechanism for the generation of creative analogies. This

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possibility, along with the stubbornly marked/unmarked relations of laterality, are why we must not make the mistake of approaching bodily designs and patterns such as the semiotic square as mere symmetrical frames. To the degree that our experience of vertical relations can be considered in isolation (by focusing on the front-facing coronal plane, relative to the salient orthogonal contrast afforded by upright posture), we come closest to an experience of simple (dyadic) symmetry. As discussed above, here we find the embodied feeling of analytic contradiction to be most pronounced: the upper is not the lower, the lower is not the upper; arms are not legs, legs are not arms. But the geometric space they describe are mirror symmetric across the horizontal axis, marking out an hourglass pattern. This felt illusion of symmetry overlaps with the suspicions of analytic philosophers that the square of opposition might simply be invalid beyond a few basic tautologies. It also overlaps with suspicions among semioticians that the semiotic square might simply be a static, dyadic construction. Indeed, neither option would allow for the dynamic growth of signs (i.e., “semiosis” or, to reframe the point, “dynamic body memory”). Winfried Nöth (1994, 1998) argues that symmetry is involved in semiosis only via “sequences of symmetry break and the emergence of new patterns of symmetry” (1998: 47). In other words, mere symmetry is not meaningful. This is why the perfectly symmetrical hourglass pattern of frozen vertical relations or infinite oscillation discussed in the previous chapter is, on its own, closed off to creative possibility. This is also why neither right-left bilaterality nor upperlower transversality can ultimately be thought of as truly mirror-symmetric—a point discussed more thoroughly in the next chapter. Only by recognizing relationships of markedness and analogy (the former especially salient in laterality, the latter in transversality) do we come to recognize the semiotic square as a dynamic space directly modelled after embodied semiosis. These patterns are mapped on to the square in Figure 5.7. The partly imagined, partly perceived relational patterns that hold between hands and arms above the transverse plane, and feet and legs below it, are proposed as visceral surrogates of analogy that also give us our more abstract senses of implication and correlation. These modes of experience are simultaneously implicated in lateralization, a visceral surrogate of markedness, giving us our sense that the two members of a given binary pair are, conceptually and culturally speaking, anything but equal. As Jameson makes clear, filling out the oppositional template requires careful consideration to the placement of terms: [A]bove all, the very order in which those terms are arranged; … makes a fundamental difference, in other words, whether the founding binary is

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Figure 5.7 Laterality and Transversality as the ground of Markedness and Analogy in the semiotic square. Marked relations are listed in bold.

ordered as white versus black, or as black versus white. The square is in that sense not symmetrical but “temporal” or positional, and the placement of the terms (obviously this initial formulation will already imply something like dominant/subordinate, center/margin, self/other), like that of mathematical equations (or the lobes of the brain, or right and left hand), is not indifferent but actively determinant in astonishing ways (that very astonishment playing its own part in the unexpected lessons we find ourselves learning in this process). (1987: xv)

Little does Jameson expect that his analogy with the right and left hand may actually be no analogy at all, or rather one crucial feature of embodied cognition that grounds all analogy. Failure to recognize these points can contribute to the ideological binds they weave in our subconscious.

Double-binds and ideological breakthrough It is well known that ideology and presupposition go hand in hand. To assume the legitimacy of any given binary pair is usually to presuppose one member of the pair to be unmarked, having normal or privileged status. In Western ideologies, this leads to the presumptive ascendancy of “white” over “black” and “male” over “female” that inform the loathsome, hidden architecture of racism and sexism. Recognizing that these profoundly simplistic, and often harmful, binaries are rooted in the mechanics of lateralization may go a long way toward calling them into question. And calling the deep structures of a cultural narrative

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into question is one of the most enduring and valuable functions of the semiotic square. Consider the homologies between handedness and gender that emerge from the two embodied diagrams in Figure 5.8. It is no mistake that Masculinity— culturally and ideologically associated with strength—is in turn mapped on to the right hand—a key source domain for our very concept of strength—while marked femininity corresponds with the weaker left hand. Right vs. left footedness is also implicated. The marked status of the left foot relative to the right is encoded in familiar idioms like “have two left feet” (clumsy) vs. “get off on the right foot” (stable); but when mapped on to socially constructed gender binaries we find a surprising reversal: the effeminate male becomes doubly marked and the butch female less overtly marked. Naturally, the reversal is more unsettling than satisfying—calling into question the presupposed categories with which it is related above the waistline. Whatever else these dynamics may mean, at this level of development, for anyone other than the most privileged, the square looks more like a trap than an escape from cultural norms. At this level of development, the embodied structure corresponds with Anthony Paul’s (2014) “mirror-chiasmus,” best typified in tokens such as Shakespeare’s infamous line: “fair is foul and foul is fair” (Macbeth 1.1). This type of chiasmus Paul finds to be “characteristically associated with mental blockage, stasis or paralysis” (2014: 23). Likewise, as Greimas scholars from Jameson (1987) to Broden (2000) to Corso (2014) insist, the semiotic square represents

Figure 5.8 Embodied homology between handedness and ideological gender binaries in English.

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ideological closures that inform the deep structure of a given cultural text or social system: [The semiotic square] constitutes a virtual map of conceptual closure, or better still, of the closure of ideology itself, that is, as a mechanism, which, while seeming to generate a rich variety of possible concepts and positions, remains in fact locked into some initial aporia or double bind that it cannot transform from the inside by its own means. (1987: xv)

It is useful to recall in this connection, however, that one of the most conspicuous features of a true double-bind is its very hiddenness, the fact that those who are bound within it do not yet recognize it as bondage (Laing 1967, 1969). Recall Laing’s enduring formulation of the rules of a socially enforced double-bind (adapted below from 1969: 41): Rule A: Don’t [or else …!] Rule A.1: Rule A doesn’t exist Rule A.2: Do not discuss the existence or nonexistence of Rules A, A.1 or A.2.

Adding “or else...!” to Rule A in this formulation draws attention to the tacit consequences bound up in a double-bind. In any given case, the hidden threat might be implicitly normative rather than prohibitive (e.g., be normal or else...); additionally, the consequences of failing to navigate the treacherous ideologies of a given bind usually involve the threatened withdrawal of vital support (i.e., I’ll love you if and only if...). As Jameson puts it, ideologies “are all in one way or another buried narratives” (Jameson 1987: xiii). What the semiotic square provides is a tool for unburying them, for calling into question Rules A.1 and A.2 so that we can peer directly into the uncomfortable abyss of Rule A. Given the entrenched nature of doublebinds and our often deep investment in cultural ideologies, such exercises are unlikely to be pleasant or enjoyable—inducing Paul’s 2009, 2014 feeling of “mental blockage, stasis, and paralysis”. My argument is that we will be more successful in undertaking this activity (and moving through it) to the degree that we are able to root the features of the square in aspects of our embodied experience. To illustrate, consider excerpts from the lyrics of a closely associated country song mentioned in the Introduction: “Follow your Arrow” (Musgraves et al. 2013): 1) If you save yourself for marriage/You’re a bore/If you don’t save yourself for marriage/You’re a whore-ible person 2) If you don’t go to church/You’ll go to hell/If you’re the first one/On the front row/You’re self-righteous/Son of a—

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These two excerpts are mapped onto their own respective (embodied) semiotic squares in Figure 5.9, in terms of both their deep structure and surface structure. Recall, that the jumping spread-eagle priest (pictured in the Figure 5.9 diagrams for effect) is featured in the video in the very middle of the soundtrack. Recall also that the song’s message moving into the first chorus pivots on a dual cliché: “You’re damned if you do/And you’re damned if you don’t/So you might as well just do/Whatever you want.” Similarly, moving into the second chorus: “Can’t win for losing/You’ll just disappoint ‘em/Just ‘cause you can’t beat ‘em/Don’t mean you should join ‘em.” In both cases, we find clear references to the psychosocial process of identifying and working through ideological double-binds. Note that neither of the two s1 terms listed in Figure 5.9 are mentioned directly in the surface structure of the song. They emerge, rather, from digging into the implicature, charting the other terms and asking about the most privileged or normative concept (or Idealized Cognitive Model) at stake: in the first case “virginity,” in the second “going to church.” In neither case does the flow of the narrative map on to the movement anticipated in the deep structure (s‒1, s2, ‒s1, s‒2), but in the first excerpt the artist opens the stanza by making a reference via circumlocution to the privileged term. She then stays within the confines of the four basic slots of the template, ensuring that in each case there is a surface construction that maps directly onto the deep structure. This strategy intensifies awareness of the socially constructed cognitive trap. In the second excerpt, the artist’s approach to the narrative or Idealized Cognitive Model becomes more complex. The first term (s1) is mentioned third, the third term (s‒1) is mentioned first and the fourth term is mentioned not at all. Instead she opts to leave the fourth term implicit (but resonantly present in the deep structure) in favor of an explicit reference to the complex term: “self-righteousness.” The effect here is more hopeful, providing an intimation of breakthrough. Jameson, in this connection, underscores “the peculiar nature of the fourth term, the negation of the negation: ‒s2”: This must be (when the operation is successful) the place of novelty and of paradoxical emergence: It is always the most critical position and the one that remains open or empty for the longest time, for its identification completes the process and in that sense constitutes the most creative act of the construction. … the place of the great leap, the great deduction, the intuition that falls from the ceiling, or from heaven. (1987: xvi)

If the X-posture is a primary source of the semiotic square, what might it be about the right foot-leg that would make it a potent positional source of irony, relative to the other three cardinal positions of the embodied template? One possibility is that the right leg is tacitly experienced as both marked and

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Figure 5.9 Embodied semiotic squares for two sets of lyrics from Musgraves’ 2013 country hit “Follow your Arrow” featuring a leaping spread-eagle priest from the song’s official music video.

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unmarked: marked for being below the transverse plane, unmarked for being on the right side of sagittal plane. By avoiding all reference to the fourth term in the surface structure, the artist leaves the position open—potentially triggering a latent possibility in the subconscious of her double-bound audience. What if those who do not go to church are in less danger of becoming self-righteous? On these grounds at least, they might be less endangered by the age-old scare-tactic in question. In this case, puzzling through the embodied square can lead the puzzler from a perplexing conclusion in the (unmarked, manipulative) upper half of the diagram back to its logical corollaries in the analogous lower half. What one may then find hidden in the deep structure is not only irony but a proverbial “get out of jail free” card. The artist’s direct reference to the complex term, that which emerges from s1 and ‒s 1, moves the discussion beyond the scope of the current chapter. Suffice it to say, though, that breaking the spell of the tortured X may be facilitated by bringing together opposing extremes—a point picked up again in the final chapter of this book. The primary concern of this chapter has been embodied extremities held in relationships of antithetical symmetry, in a bid to disclose the radical source of a hypothesized generative template, widely known as the semiotic square: an “elementary structure of meaning” (Greimas & Rastier 1968: 88) said to inform human culture and cognition. I have argued that the square emerges developmentally through movement and memory in an interdependent relationship with the dynamics of upright posture and our ensuing commitments in actively created space. This happens via vertical, lateral and transverse relations, providing the raw material for two of our most characteristic anthroposemiotic devices: (lateral) markedness and (transverse) analogy. The possibility that these two cognitive features (not to mention the logical foundations they generate) actually originate in human memories of bodily movement and proprioception stands to revolutionize our understanding of both markedness and analogy—and their interrelationships. Such possibilities also provide further support and development of Paul Bouissac’s thesis that Semiotics should be approached as a “science of memory” (2007). These points are further illustrated and developed in the next chapter by drawing attention to the primacy of appendage relations—across the waistline and across languages— and the salience they might hold for the discovery of a previously missing link in contemporary cognitive linguistics: primary blends.

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Foot Fingers and Arm Thighs Shoes that fit like a glove Marked by a row of five individual toe sheaths designed to replace the singular “toe” of each shoe, Vibram’s FiveFingers® footwear is instantly recognizable (Figure 6.1). Over the course of a single decade following its launch in 2005, the brand generated a saga all its own—morphing from the sudden paragon of a fitness revolution into the sudden target of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit (McDougall 2009; McCue 2014). The trend has also taken its licks from the fashionistas: loathed by GQ as “creepy and ugly,” lambasted by Gawker as a tyrannical force that “must be stopped immediately” and lampooned on Deadspin as the “favorite toe-shoe of vegan restaurant servers and 55-year-old men with ponytails” (Moylan 2011; Gugala 2014; Tang 2014). In spite of such hullabaloo (and because of it), sales flourish and enthusiasts gush, praising the shoe for being “the next best thing to going barefoot” and for

Figure 6.1 Vibram’s FiveFingers® footwear.

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“letting your feet do the job they did for your genetic ancestors” (see reviews on Amazon.com). In this chapter, I take the shoes down a road less traveled, to move the book’s argument into fresh territory. The embodied semiotics of FiveFingers footwear shares important features with many similar arm-leg and foot-hand patterns cross-culturally. Paying attention to the imaginative blends these patterns afford across the waistline (our “transverse anatomical plane”) may better enable us to account for the human ability to model possible worlds using opposition, markedness and analogy in new modes—a set of skills constitutive of an ability otherwise known as “Language.” The patterns in question involve inverse syncretic relations between the embedded part–whole relationships of our extremities—arms and legs, hands and feet and their constituents—allowing us to expand the discussion of spread-eagle posture discussed in earlier chapters into the development of cognitive-affective tools. Bodily memories best typified in the spread-eagle X-pose contribute to our awareness of inverse part–whole relationships in ways that serve to make us both conceptually and kinesthetically aware of complex modes of markedness and analogy, producing primary exemplars of what Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (2002) refer to as “double-scope conceptual blending.” According to Fauconnier & Turner (hereafter F&T, 2002), Conceptual Blending is pervasive in human thinking and meaning making. Blends function as memory-based networks of compressed relationships formed and shared between clusters of patterned experience called “frames” or “mental spaces.” F&T (2002: 119–135) identify four types of blending networks: (1) simplex, (2) mirror, (3) single-scope and (4) double-scope (listed in order of increasing sophistication). I discuss each of these network types further below; but doublescope networks are of particular interest since, as F&T argue, they grow out of types 1–3—each of which, in turn, slowly developed over the course of human evolution (2002: 171–187; 2008). As such, double-scope blends are said to have emerged late in human evolution and are thought to underlie the singularity known as the human language faculty. One of the most oft-cited examples of a double-scope network is the Computer Desktop blend (F&T 2002: 131; Birdsell 2014: 80). Our now-familiar computer “desktops” are the direct result of our ability to imaginatively integrate certain accessories of an office workspace frame or schema with certain features (and constraints) of a digital screen, resulting in new, previously unconsidered functional possibilities. The newly integrated frame or “blend space” is a fluid, selective analogy enabling us to construe novel relationships onscreen such as the placement of a trashcan alongside files and file folders.

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Double-scope integration can also lead to further syncretic analogies. Such blends are reversible and often involve reversals. If one’s screen is a desktop with a trashcan, one’s trashcan might be relocated to the desktop. This is a possibility that has in some places actually become institutional policy. In 2005, when I was beginning my PhD at La Trobe University, in Melbourne, Australia, the university determined (in an effort to cut waste on campus) that large trashcans should be removed from office spaces and replaced by miniature bins for personal use and personal disposal—one for each desktop. This is creative analogy at work. As Figure 6.2 illustrates, Vibram’s FiveFingers shoes are also an example of a double-scope network. This network involves the imaginative blending of two frames that feature bodily extremities and their coverings: a hand-finger-glove frame (input space 1) and a foot-toe-shoe frame (input space 2). Certain features of each input space are selected in the blend space: the relatively hard soles and stiff uppers of input space 2 are blended with the individuated finger-slots of the gloves in input space 1. More importantly, the fingers of input space 1 are

Figure 6.2 Double-scope conceptual blend informing Vibram’s FiveFingers® footwear.

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blended with the feet of input space 2. As a consequence, this blend requires the cross-domain mapping of fingers being placed inside shoes. It also inevitably calls to mind its inverse mapping: the insertion of toes into the finger-ports of gloves! Such thought experiments result in the novel suggestion that shoes can function as gloves by enveloping each individual digit autonomously—an imaginative blend that has now become physical reality. Though at first the point may seem merely obvious, there is something special about the FiveFingers double-scope network that warrants careful attention. Dealing directly, as it does, with fingers and toes, hands and feet, shoes and gloves, the FiveFingers blend is radically embodied. While most theories and constructions in the cognitive linguistics continuum lay claim to “embodiment” broadly conceived, certain levels are more directly or immediately engaged with bodily experience than others. Primary metaphors are more immediately embodied than conceptual metaphors (compare, e.g., “a cold decision” with “a costly decision”). Overtly image-schematic constructions are more directly embodied than their grammaticalized counterparts (compare e.g., “going to Seattle” with “going to sneeze”). Such distinctions are important because of the grounding and continuity they provide between the corporeal and the abstract. Thus far, no comparable level of corporeal grounding has been identified for conceptual blending theory. This problem is the focus of this chapter. The FiveFingers integration network provides evidence of an embodied cognitive activity that I will refer to as “primary blending” across the transverse anatomical plane. Our ability to imagine our hands as feet, and our feet as hands, might go down as a mere curiosity if the FiveFingers blend were an isolated instance of this pattern. But that is not the case. In fact, the blend is only a single token of an embedded type that belongs to a broader cross-linguistic paradigm set so robust that it might reasonably be identified as a universal feature of human tacit cognition. This is the core thesis of this chapter. As for my argument in support of this thesis, I rely primarily on evidence drawn from linguistic anthropology and historical-comparative linguistics. First it will be necessary to orient the discussion in the cognitive linguistics literature and related pathways with a special focus on embodied cognition.

Conceptual integration embodied? Embodied cognition theory is endangered—or so some theorists caution, issuing warnings of a powerful historical undercurrent that threatens to drown

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recent advances in the depths of formal abstraction. To be sure, the old Cartesian paradigm is weighty. Its conceptual and ideological milieu is also saturated with familiar ideas, scripts and schemas that have a kind of collective “common sense” about them: culturally sanctioned mind-as-machine metaphors; widespread assumptions that the mind is the brain; normative pressure to dismiss feelings as chemical events; presuppositions that cognition can be modeled by mirrorrepresentations in which the world is simply given instead of interpreted; the reduction of movement to motor synapses; and the reduction of persons to neural networks. In all such cases, the body becomes, once again, little more than an epiphenomenon of consciousness. As discussed in Chapter 1, Shaun Gallagher indicts this undertow as “the invasion of the body snatchers” (2015). Violi identifies it as a fatal movement toward “embodiment without the body” (2008: 5). Sheets-Johnstone suggests that it exposes the embodiment enterprise itself as little more than a “lexical bandaid” covering a centuries-old suppurating wound: the Cartesian lesion separating mind and matter (2011a: 453). Mark Johnson, by comparison, is more sanguine. Though he is himself no advocate of the ideologies cited above, he still insists that discourse and inquiry into the neural dimension of embodiment should occupy as much as a full third of the movement’s attention. After all, he affirms, “without a brain, there is no meaning.” But for Johnson there is much more. He goes on to stress two other necessary dimensions: “Without a living, acting body—no meaning. And without organism-environment interaction—no meaning” (2007: 175). This chapter makes a further contribution to the middle premise of this triad: the meaning of our lived bodies (not living or lived-in, but experienced live, through movement and interaction in space). If current priorities are shifting toward the “neurocomputational modeling” dimension of embodiment (Rohrer 2007: 355), causing embodiment theorists to be more attentive to brain simulations and neural-motor mechanics than actual bodily feeling, kinesthesia and proprioception, work in this latter direction is crucial. It is not necessarily crucial for the refutation of neural embodiment, but rather for counterbalancing and complementing advances in cognitive neuroscience. On the other hand, as Sheets-Johnstone (2011a) points out, movement is developmentally prior to neural organization. Because of this, kinesthesia, proprioception and the affect they entail are organizing principles around which other dimensions of mind and meaning develop. With this in mind, the phenomenology of movement should be granted something of an ongoing theoretical and empirical priority—regardless of current trends and trending currents in academic fashion. Accordingly, we

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would be ill-advised to neglect the dynamics of movement, and the patterned relations they afford for human cognition, when developing embodied accounts of language and culture. And yet this is precisely the current tendency in the development of cognitive models and their application. Conceptual blending theory is prominently implicated in this neglect. But this is not the case for all levels of theory-building in the cognitive linguistics enterprise. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, for some theoretical mainstays of cognitive linguistics, great care has already been taken to discover ways in which our capacities for relatively abstract modeling are grounded in more basic modeling templates or “input spaces” that are themselves directly rooted in bodily movement and body memory. Conceptual metaphor, for instance, is grounded in primary metaphor. Both phenomena are largely unidirectional or “asymmetric” mappings; but, while conceptual metaphors like life is a journey are culturally conditioned, primary metaphors like important is big are inherited from the constraints and affordances of bodily experience in early childhood development. As such, primary metaphors are developmentally given and more likely to be universal features of human cognition. Imagine a crying infant being gently hoisted from her crib day after day. Each time she is held close to her affectionate caregiver. Each time she feels the warmth of the caregiver’s body. Each time she stops crying. Slowly, over time, at least two primary metaphors emerge from this and similar interaction: happy is up and affection is warmth. The unwitting affective mapping onto two target domains, happiness and affection, are drawn from two radically sensorykinesthetic and proprioceptive source domains—up and warmth, respectively. These mappings, along with many other primary metaphors serve to create a basic cognitive template for more abstract conceptual metaphors to draw on (cf. Grady 2005: 1608–1609). Conceptual metaphors also map asymmetrical relationships, although they are much more abstract—relationships such as time is money (don’t waste it) or argument is war (a strategic position that can be defended). These same asymmetric cognitive mappings are brought into the conceptual blending fold by F&T (2002: 127) as “single-scope integration networks”—one of four phases of conceptual integration, as mentioned above. It is then incidental to the theory of conceptual blending that one of its recognized phases is theoretically (and experientially) endowed with embodied grounding in primary metaphor. No comparable grounding layer exists in the literature to date for the three other phases of conceptual blending F&T identify. This theoretical gap is especially problematic in view of the privileged position granted to double-

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scope conceptual blending in the theory. Double-scope networks are held to be responsible for a distinctively human singularity: the emergence of language (F&T 2002: 171–187; 2008). Indeed, it may even be impossible to make a case for the emergence of conceptual metaphor out of its primary metaphor template without the prior emergence of double-scope integration. As Croft & Cruse (2004: 207–208) note, these latter, more fluid blending activities are necessarily implicated in the early (novel) stages of metaphor formation, “eventually to disappear altogether, as a metaphor becomes established.” F&T concur that only through double-scope blending does innovation occur, “which is unique to cognitively modern human beings” (2002: 299). My claim that primary grounding mechanisms are lacking in theories of conceptual blending should not be read as a suggestion that discussions of embodiment are absent altogether in the conceptual blending literature. F&T address the topic of embodiment implicitly, at least, by noting that blends involve compression or conversion of complex dynamics to “human scale” (2002: 322– 324), due to our preference for dealing with “natural and comfortable ranges” (2002: 322) when confronted with ideas or relationships that are too complex to fathom. F&T also discuss “material anchors” or “cultural products” such as money, books and watches that inform our double-scope concepts of “buying, telling time and reading,” respectively (2002: 215). Even treated together, the use of “material anchors at human scale” (2002: 216) provides a degree of embodied grounding than can be described as “oblique” or secondary at best—certainly not primary. Primary grounding by contrast would be experientially engaged with lived dynamics of kinesthesia and proprioception. Building on F&T’s concept of “human scale” compression, Slingerland (2005) discusses “somatic marking” as a motivating factor behind the production of complex conceptual blends. Somatic marking identifies a dimension of conceptual blending that would appear to be more immediately embodied. Slingerland describes the motivating factor in question as the processes of finding out how to feel about a particular issue or idea. In the blend “That surgeon is a butcher,” for instance, there is not only a conceptual integration of various butcher features with certain features of a surgeon, there is also a normative dimension making appeals to felt value judgments. If the blend is successful, the interlocutor may be dissuaded from scheduling a surgery with this particular physician, for instance. This helps better explain why we seek to use blends to achieve “human scale.” In short, the point has more to do with the persuasive rhetoric of conceptual blending than its bodily grounding. In other words, although this insight demonstrates the relevance of blending for

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embodied feeling, it does nothing to demonstrate the origins of conceptual blending in embodied feeling—that is, felt bodily action and its memory-based organization. Grady (2005) takes the topic a step further by identifying primary metaphors as a unique input class for the formation of conceptual blends. Indeed, as described above, this helps explain the bodily origins of single-scope integration networks; but it is not necessarily a comprehensive account, and it does nothing to account for the bodily origins of double-scope blends. In relation to doublescope blending, Grady’s (2005) contribution simply serves to expand our knowledge of the range of source material available for input spaces. Elsewhere, Scott Liddell’s (1998) treatment of “grounded blends” may appear to be a promising approach to the topic at hand; but his definition of the term shifts attention away from first-person experiential embodiment to the interplay between one’s abstracted imagination and one’s immediately surrounding context. This is typified in the “suspension of disbelief ” we experience in a wellproduced stage play for example. The actors and set become an input space useful for blending with a second imaginative “mental” space of one’s own that is integrated into a seamless blend space until the event is interrupted by applause (or by an actor forgetting his lines). Notably, F&T identify Liddell’s “grounded” input space as an instance of what they would come to call “material anchors,” the obliquely embodied term discussed above. Once again, then, Liddell’s distinction is a useful advancement of blending theory (see further applications in Dudis 2004), but it does little or nothing to address the question of the bodily origins of conceptual blending—much less the origins of double-scope networks. All of these distinctions provide helpful insight into the nature of conceptual blending. But if this is the extent of conceptual blending’s bodily grounding, especially in relation to double-scope integration networks, we are left holding the bag. At present all discussion of embodied double-scope blending assumes the prior presence of a unique ability, the origins of which have not yet been accounted for in primary embodied terms. F&T (2002, 2008) assure us that double-scope conceptual blending evolved out of simpler forms once the human mind “reached a critical level of blending capacity” (2002: 187). But how? What critical level? What constituted the tipping point? How was this capacity reached? Was there a “mental leap”? Did a new Platonic form or Cartesian algorithm emerge unbidden from the ghostly ether of disembodied mind? It would make for an exciting story. Anyone looking for more than an exciting story might do better to ask a different question. Consider the following: What are the primary experiential

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sources of double-scope blending? What body-based networks would be unique enough to be exclusively typified in the experience of anatomically modern humans, basic enough for common understanding across the population, and yet experientially rich enough to foster the new class of fluid, analogic cognition F&T propose? In short, is there a more radically grounded explanation for the emergence of the cognitive templates required for double-scope integration networks? I propose that there is; but the solution, partial or not, is sure to seem impossibly simple. Plainly put, the solution I propose is nothing less than arms and legs. Arms, legs and their part–whole relationships are at least one primary embodied source that should be taken seriously as an answer to the enigma of the double-scope singularity. There is at least a substantial (i.e., plausible, elegant and data-empirical) possibility that the human double-scope “singularity” may owe its emergence to the evolution of upright posture and the inherited consequences this affords. Bipedalism gave rise to a slow reconfiguration of the old mammalian anatomical planes that organize our experience relative to the earth. This was discussed in Chapters 1 and 5 as “orthogonality.” Along with this came the slow reconfiguration of fore-paw, hind-paw relations into arm-leg specialization. This was followed by matching and mapping activities of arm-leg parts and their part-whole relations. By the time these parts and their relations came to be assigned speech labels, the matching and mapping were already formalized experientially. The formalization process played an important role in the creation of a new kind of cognitive template for a new kind of cognitive modeling. This too may seem like just another story. It is a less dramatic story too, and it may seem to be lacking in dignity. But there are two reasons I prefer this story as an explanation over its more dignified or thrilling (spooky) alternatives: first, because it strikes me as a more plausible hypothesis; second, because of the cross-linguistic evidence supporting the hypothesis. In short, the story is in the data. And better yet, the data is at our fingertips: we don’t have to stand on our tiptoes to reach it.

Body parts disembodied? Toetips are toe-parts, and toes are foot-parts—at least as long as we are speaking English. In English it is also safe to say that toes are to feet as fingers are to hands. Both are “digits” at the ends of our “appendages.” But to ask whether

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or not such relations hold true cross-linguistically is to ask a question with a surprisingly tangled answer. Even so, the question must be asked if we wish to explore the semiotics of arm-leg relations with ideological clarity. My task in this section, then, is to present (if not untangle) the answer and its broader context by summarizing the state-of-the art in “body partonomy” research—the study of part–whole relationships between body parts and their cultural and linguistic extensions in world languages. Recent years have witnessed a flourish of studies exploring body-part taxonomies and body-part mappings in languages around the world—including their potential for fostering a better understanding of the fundamental nature of language, culture and cognition. Prominently included are three book-length collections devoted to the topic, all of which draw on more than a century of work by earlier scholars in the field. These are Enfield et al. (eds., 2006a) Parts of the Body: Cross-Linguistic Categorisation, Maalej and Yu (eds., 2011) Embodiment Via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures, and Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk (eds., 2014a) The Body in Language: Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment. The latter two volumes emerge from broader questions in the cognitive linguistics tradition, especially in their focus on the human body “as the donor domain for conceptual transfers to a wide range of target domains” (Brenzinger & Kraska-Szlenk 2014b: 3). More specifically, these two collections develop pathways forged by Bernd Heine (1997) in his modern classic Cognitive Foundations of Grammar. The first volume, led by N. J. Enfield, aims to cast doubt not only on the cognitive approach but also on a diametrically opposed paradigm established by Anna Wierzbicka, known as “Natural Semantic Metalanguage” (NSM). True to form, Wierzbicka responds in close succession (2007) with a thoroughgoing rebuttal of Enfield. In sum, a variety of general conclusions emerge from recent body-part studies, and their respondents—some of which are distinctly at odds with each other. The major disagreements are rooted in theoretical predispositions (and philosophical presuppositions) that ultimately center on the question of human cognitive universals and their cultural-linguistic manifestations (or lack thereof). These can be summarized in three positions regarding the status of the human body: 1. Conceptual body: There are true cross-linguistic universals that inform body-part taxonomies and body-part mappings across cultures. These are semantic primitives—innate concepts shared across all cultures (Wierzbicka 2007).

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2. Physical body: There are no true cross-linguistic universals that inform body-part taxonomies or body-part mappings across cultures—a conclusion based on lacking evidence to the contrary in concrete vocabulary (Enfield et al., eds. 2006a). 3. Experiential body: There are clear universal tendencies evident in linguistic constructions through time and space that point to a mutually shared bodily experience across cultures, including general body partonomy (Heine 1997). Notably, the first two approaches to body partonomy represent opposing poles in the entrenched classical–modern split between mind and matter respectively: nativist rationalism (Wierzbicka) and behaviorist empiricism (Enfield). The two are mutually defining pairs that will not be reconciled. Each engages in deliberate debate with the presuppositions of the other without registering the possibility of a third position in which subject and object are intertwined (as proposed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others: see discussion in Chapter 1). Since this basic presuppositional binary is so influential, it will be helpful to consider it more carefully before proceeding with a discussion of arms and legs and their part– whole relationships in a mode more closely aligned with cognitive linguistics. For Enfield et al., human bodies are corpse-like: “physical entities with parts” (2006b: 146). Enfield and colleagues recognize that “the body is a physical universal and all languages have terms referring to its parts” (2006b: 137); but, since these part–whole relationships do not precisely correspond in “concrete vocabulary of the body” across cultures, Enfield and colleagues conclude that “there are fewer points of convergence across language communities … than previously imagined” (2006b: 146). Some languages of Australia and Papua New Guinea, for instance, make no distinction between “body” and “person” or “hands” and “arms”; other languages have no word for “head,” others no word for “eye,” others none for “body”—or even “part.” Such gaps are said to call into question the validity of any conclusions based on the assumption of part–whole relationships shared by all humans (cf. Enfield 2006b: 199). For Wierzbicka, by contrast, human bodies are abstracted mental states: “the body is, almost certainly, a conceptual, rather than ‘physical’, universal” (2007: 15, emphasis in the original). She casts doubt on the reliability of claims made by Enfield and colleagues that certain cultures fail to distinguish parts from wholes. The key problem, Wierzbicka argues, is that insufficient attention is being paid to the nature of nuanced and gradient polysemy in the languages researched. She asserts that Enfield and colleagues are attempting to “practice ‘cognitive anthropology’ in a theoretical vacuum and have no methodology for

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distinguishing genuine and spurious polysemy” (2006b: 17). She further asserts that this neglect results in uncritically exoticizing non-Western languages. Her solution to these problems, quite simply, is for everyone to learn to apply her own trademark approach: “systematic semantic analysis in the NSM framework” (2007: 18). NSM is a system in which a minimal set of 60–70 innate concepts accounts for all human meaning construal. In short, both Enfield et al. (eds., 2006a) and Wierzbicka (2007) propose disembodied approaches to the embodiment of body parts. The cognitive linguistic approach (CL), by contrast, differs fundamentally from either of these two dualist positions—foregoing mind/matter and nativism/behaviorism binaries by shifting attention to lived bodily experience and its fluid schematic organization. This is not to say that CL is in complete disagreement with either Wierzbicka or Enfield. CL can agree heartily with Wierzbicka’s conclusion, for instance, that “the basic model of the human being is something that we all share” (2006: 18) without validating the premises she offers in support of this conclusion (i.e., the existence of innate concepts). CL can also accept the conclusion of linguistic relativity implied by the apparent variation Enfield and colleagues describe. But this does not necessitate agreement with the assumption that human experiential universals (and the explanatory grounds they supply for language, culture and cognition) are invalidated by lexical gaps. Instead of insisting on the discovery of strict universals in body-part taxonomy and their extensions across languages, CL allows for category gradience or continuity (following Lakoff 1987, cf. Johnson 2007) and pans out to acknowledge universal linguistic tendencies across time and space (following Heine 1997, cf. Bybee 2007). According to Bernd Heine, CL assumes the presence of another kind of universal that is at least implied by observing linguistic tendencies across cultures. For Heine, “the major patterns of human conceptualization are universal in nature” since the “human species, irrespective of whether it is located in Siberia or the Khalahari Desert, has essentially the same pool of options for conceptualization” (1997: 14). This is an extension of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) “experientialist synthesis” introduced in Chapter 1. Accordingly, anthropological linguists following Heine’s approach are able to identify general tendencies that coalesce into universal embodied patterns. Brenzinger & Kraska-Szlenk affirm, for instance, that “The human body in an upright position provides structural templates for expressing spatial regions in all languages of the world” (2014b: 3). These spatial regions are then lexicalized or grammaticalized further to represent temporal relations. However, speakers

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of different languages may construe such relations in ways that are markedly different. In Chinese, for instance, 前qián “front” is used to refer to the past while 后hòu “back” is used to refer to the future (compare 前年qián nián “year before last” with 后年hòu nián “year after next”). Naturally, English speakers also use front and back for temporal mapping but assume, in contrast with Chinese, that the future is ahead while the past is at one’s back (compare “Your best years are still in front of you” with “I’m glad that’s behind us”). Even so, competing historical evidence suggests that English spatio-temporal organization was at some point closer to Chinese! This can be noted in comparing the bound roots found in the lexicalized adverbials “before” (‘fore’ ~ front → past) and “after” (“aft” ~ back → future). In short, the cognitive linguistic approach to embodiment, body partonymy and body-part extension is integrative and experiential. The approach affirms principles of universal human cognition and linguistic relativity. Finally, the CL approach is not only descriptive and comparative but also historical. Practitioners expect that category gradience, functional typology and social communication dynamics will vary in some ways and correspond in others across speaker populations through time and space. These features of the approach are helpful to bear in mind when considering relationships between arms and legs—their parts, partitions and part–whole relations—across cultures.

Primary blends in arm–leg syncretism Toes-and-fingers, hands-and-feet, ankles-and-wrists, elbows-and-knees: arm/leg joints and partition sets are curiously parallel—marked at once by salient resemblances and obvious differences. Something about our two sets of extremities and their respective parts invites comparison and contrast. This principle is evident across languages. We not only see matching sets and categorize our observations, we also feel the contrasting paradigms in our bones—radically embodied experiential patterns that we coordinate in concert through an array of daily movements that are widely distinct functionally— being involved in specialized tasks above and below the waistline. The partitions, parts and patterns that we feel and find and name between our limb sets across the transverse plane are far from perfect matches, especially across cultures; but lock-step “isomorphism” is not the point when it comes to creative analogy— much less when considering a candidate for the primary ground of creative analogy. And that is my primary concern in this chapter.

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To think of arms in terms of legs—and legs in terms of arms—is hardly a mechanical exercise. The curious parallels that are evident in the part–whole relationship sets shared between arms and legs correspond in ways that are less precise and hierarchical than syncretic and functional—both within and between languages. Matisoff (1978) discusses this type of parallel categorization as “intrafield semantic association.” Intrafield associations shared by human extremities across the waistline consistently emerge as robust experiential paradigms cross-linguistically. These dynamic structures are prime candidates to consider in seeking to account for the missing link identified above. They are a plausible way to explain the origins of double-scope integration via primary blending. The embodied cognitive paradigms, or body memory templates these experiential structures generate would naturally lend themselves to further blend creation. These possibilities can also help explain the ontology of similar theories of creative analogy proposed elsewhere (see e.g., Hofstadter & Sander 2013; Silverman 2015). And yet the importance of parallels and paradigms in arm-leg partonomy is something that comparative body-part studies have yet to recognize, much less embrace. To better illustrate the dynamics in question, consider Table 6.1. This dataset juxtaposes English arm-leg partonomy with that of Helpho Phowa, an aboriginal language of southeastern Yunnan Province, China (Tibeto-Burman > Burmic > Ngwi), first classified with preliminary descriptions in Pelkey (2011a,b). Both English and Hlepho maintain robust sets of congruent intrafield associations between appendage pairs across the waistline. Language internally, these systematic congruences can be described as matching paradigm sets. On the other hand, neither set is entirely free from aberrant constructions; and crosslinguistic comparison between the two languages suggests widely divergent construals of bodily taxonomy in the domain of appendage relations. Whereas the English dataset features two internal pairs of congruent hierarchies neatly divided at the wrist above and the ankle below, the Hlepho dataset features no true hierarchy at all. The Hlepho model is far more “egalitarian” than its English counterpart. In fact, Hlepho lɛ̄ and ʦhɿ̀ can be legitimately glossed “upper limb” and “lower limb,” respectively. Not only is this confirmed by local consultants, it is also demonstrable in the data itself, which exhibits a high degree of iconicity in morphological construction. With only one exception below the waist (see tɬhâphɛ̄ “thigh”), and no exceptions above, each construction in these matching paradigms is headed by the root lexeme for the transverse field in question (lɛ̄ or ʦhɿ̀). Both lɛ̄ and ʦhɿ̀ are demonstrably polysemous, however; and the general region most typically associated with

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Table 6.1 Experiential and conceptual paradigms in part-whole extremity categorization across the transverse anatomical plane in English and Hlepho Phowa English

Hlepho Phowa

upper limb

lower limb

upper limb

lower limb

arm

:

leg

lɛ̄vɯ̀

upper arm

:

thigh

-

elbow

:

knee

lɛ̄n̂

forearm

:

shin/calf

-

wrist

:

ankle

hand

:

foot

lɛ̄ʦɿ̀ lɛ̄

:

palm

:

sole

lɛ̄fâ

:

finger

:

toe

lɛ̄ʦɯ̄zâ

:

ʦhɿ̀thə̄ ʦhɿ̀ʣo

fingernail

:

toenail

lɛ̄sə̂

:

ʦhɿ̀sə̂

: :

ʦhɿ̀vɯ̀ tɬhâphɛ̄ ʦhɿ̀sɛ̂pɛ̄zâ -

:

ʦhɿ̀ʦɿ̀ ʦhɿ̀

each term corresponds roughly with English “hand” and “foot” respectively. In sum, then, the English intrafield paradigm shows category-congruence in terms of “multiple-recursion”—notably featuring embedded relationships at four removes. The Hlepho system, by contrast, shows congruence in terms of radial categorization relative to a central prototype (a la Lakoff 1987)—with all parts in each of the two fields being governed by a single exemplar. Aside from this level of organization, which is the most general pattern in play, there are plenty of correspondences between the two languages at other levels, including congruent lexical constructions and indices of shared experience. Speakers of both languages identify identical physiological joints, for example, and (to a lesser degree) similar partitions between these joints. At the morphological level, both use similar compound constructions for “fingernail” and “toenail” (though sə̂ can also mean “claw” in Hlepho). A full partition from shoulder to wrist can also be identified in both languages (i.e., English arm/leg, Hlepho lɛ̄vɯ̀/ʦhɿ̀vɯ̀). The Hlepho morpheme vɯ̀ “bone” helps explain the lack of differentiation between upper and lower leg–arm divisions (with the exception of “thigh”) in the language. Both upper and lower limbs in Hlepho can be described as a single continuous “bone” (cf. ɛ̄-vɯ̀ “stem; stalk”) that is interrupted in each instance by a single joint at the lɛ̄n̂ “elbow” above and the ʦhɿ̀sɛ̂pɛ̄zâ “knee” below. Lest we miss the larger point, though, let me assert that what is truly remarkable from a comparative perspective is not so much the presence or

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absence of precise mappings between the two languages but the fact that both languages (and world languages in general) feature conspicuous interfield classificatory complementarities between arms and legs across the waistline. My proposed term for this phenomenon is “arm–leg syncretism”. The phrase “classificatory complementarities” is coined by British Anthropologist Roy Ellen (1977: 367). Until now, Ellen has come closest to capturing the profound (and profoundly neglected) status of intrafield body-part networks organized by the anatomical planes of upright posture (as described in Chapters 1 and 5). Ellen demonstrates the importance of considering the role body-part classification schemes play cross-culturally in the development of symbol systems drawn from bodily analogies. Such symbol systems function in the context of more abstract structural relations that must be interpreted against a bodily experiential ground to adequately understand the meanings of cultural rituals, architecture, customs, kinship systems and other dimensions of social construction. He proposes that such bodily semiotic networks provide further validation and further development of structuralist anthropology, with special reference to the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1962) and Victor Turner (1966). He also issues a cogent complaint that is still relevant today: “There has been a tendency to stress the function of individual [body] parts rather than the relationships between them, either anatomically or functionally” (1977: 364). Little has changed in the intervening decades. Old habits die hard, but integrated bodily paradigms persist (whether or not they are recognized). In a clarion discussion of “the parallelism of extremities”— one that is, again, as fresh and untapped today as it was in 1977—Ellen notes that in languages around the world “there is generally a recognition of similarity between the upper and lower parts of the body, reflected in identifiable structural and terminological correspondences between upper and lower limbs” (1977: 349). He goes on to argue that “relationships between parts are often more important than individual features” (1977: 367). If so, we cannot afford to overlook these relations—neither in cognitive anthropology nor in cognitive linguistics; but this is precisely what has happened in both disciplines. In a quest to discover—or discredit—universal patterns of hierarchy and partition in body-part systems, researchers have neglected to identify and theorize systemic parallels across the waistline. Narrow searches for universal taxonomies and isomorphic mappings between languages distract attention from a strong universal signal of an altogether alternative type: the syncretic experiential paradigms indexed by arm-leg partonomy. For a specific example of these dynamics, consider Savosavo, a Papuan language of the Solomon Islands.

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In researching the partonomy and taxonomy of the body in Savosavo, Claudia Wegener finds it “difficult to structure the body part terminology hierarchically, because there is no linguistic evidence for part-whole relations between body parts” (2006: 344). This analysis, in turn, is used to support Enfield et al.’s (2006b) claim that body partonomy does little to establish the embodied cognitive approach to grammar and meaning; instead, as discussed above, the apparent gaps are used as evidence that “there are fewer points of convergence across language communities [in these regards] than previously imagined” (2006b: 146). Revisiting Wegener’s Savosavo data, however, reveals numerous terminological and structural correspondences that are shared system-internally between upper and lower limbs. Terminologically, there are synthetic lexemes for “digits” (ririkina) and “nails” (kelekelemuzi). Structurally, the language lexicalizes terms for both “knee” (tuturinga) and “elbow” (bulikaku); and, similar to the Hlepho pattern introduced in Table 6.1, the Savosavo terms for both “leg” (nato) and “arm” (kakau) “are semantically general in that they cover the whole extent of the limb, including hands, feet, fingers and toes” (2006: 348). Taken together, these six lexemes map onto eight specific arm-leg locations and partitions—forming a primary blend complete with three syncretic, experiential mappings across the transverse plane. In short, there is an unmistakable paradigm-of-paradigms in Savosavo arm-leg partonomy. The fact that Wegner neglects this transverse pattern and its implications is not so much a discredit to her own analysis as it is further symptomatic of a far more general situation of neglect described above. From the perspective of an English mother-tongue speaker, the undifferentiated arm-hand and leg-foot continua featured in languages like Hlepho and Savosavo may seem unusual; but this feature is actually commonplace elsewhere in the world. Witkowski & Brown (1985) find the general pattern to be predominant in equatorial regions, where they discuss cultural and environmental reasons for understanding why “limb parts are less salient and limb polysemy is more common” (1985: 207). The feature is also common across entire language families, such as Bantu and Burmic, whose speakers extend far beyond equatorial zones. This is not to suggest, however, that typologically unusual patterns do not exist elsewhere. Drawing on years of study in Kewa, a language spoken in the southern highlands of Papua New Guinea, Karl Franklin (1963) describes a number of partonomic mappings between upper and lower extremities that are unusual from a typological-comparative perspective. Given the discussion above, it comes as no surprise that Kewa speakers consider “arm” (kíi) to map onto “leg” (aa) or “forearm” (pígípígí) to map

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onto “calf ” (roaape); but, as can be noted in Table 6.2, many other transverse mappings in the language are far from common. The Kewa lexeme rǔmu “knee,” for instance, functions as the inverse parallel of pasaa “shoulder”—a fact that is further supported by a complementary correspondence between átóraa “arm pit” and kólóbo “space behind the knee.” A marked non-correspondence between komaa “upper arm” and pálaa “thigh” is also notable. Neither partition is considered by Kewa speakers to have a match across waistline. Furthermore, Kewa speakers maintain a unique array of synthetic classifications in the handfoot domain, with particularly fine-grained attention being paid to gradient correspondences between the “heel-and-ankle” domain below the waist and its correlative pairings in the “elbow” domain above. Kewa features no fewer than six lexemes that qualify as “synthetic partonyms” for classifying transverse relations between arms and legs. These are shaded gray in Table 6.2. This evidence adds substantially to the richness of the primary blend. Contrary to ongoing trends in body partonomy that find arm–leg syncretism either unremarkable (due to earlier priorities) or theoretically damning (due to nonuniversal correspondences), the thesis I am exploring in this chapter Table 6.2 Parallels and correlations in extremity categorization across the transverse plane in the Kewa language of Papua New Guinea (adapted from Franklin 1962) Lower Limb

Upper Limb

aa

“leg; foot”

:

“arm; hand”

Kíi

pálaa

“thigh”

–

–

rǔmu

“knee”

kólóbo

“behind knee”

:

“shoulder”

Pasaa

:

“arm pit”

átóraa

–

–

“upper arm”

komaa

roaape

“calf ”

:

“forearm”

pígípígí

kíbu

“shin”

:

kéréop

“wrist”

kákálo

“ankle joint”

káláló

“lower forearm”

noe

–

–

:

“elbow joint”

kákálo

“ankle bone”

:

“elbow bone”

káláló

kínyálú

“heel”

:

“elbow”

kínyálú

wáraa

“sole”

:

“palm”

wáraa

kilikili

“toe”

:

“finger”

kilikili

kídípaa

“toenail”

:

“fingernail”

kídípaa

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embraces such evidence and places it center-stage. The phenomenon is a prime (though by no means exclusive) candidate for a more grounded explanation of the evolution of creative analogy. Any search for the “mechanisms” that ground for double-scope integration in embodied cognitive experience might naturally expect to find richly variegated instances of primary double-scope blending at work in experiential source itself. The primary process would work in ways that naturally fostered the discovery and generation of both similarity and difference in patterned, functional sets. This principle would hold true not only within the primary candidate domain in question but also between mappings across cultures. In other words, any primary source robust enough to generate bodymemory templates or “scaffolding” for the more general creative analogic ability in question (i.e., “double-scope conceptual integration”) would itself naturally function in a congruent mode. My basic term for the primary blending candidate considered in this chapter is arm–leg syncretism. Framed negatively, my basic proposal is that without arm–leg syncretism (and related phenomena), doublescope integration may never have evolved.

Toe-counts and finger-tracks Further evidence of the cognitive indispensability of arm–leg syncretism can be drawn from cognitive linguistic research on the origins of numeral systems. Although many hold mathematics and numerals to be the ultimate example of arbitrariness or pure abstraction, Bernd Heine (1997) begs to differ. Numeral systems are ultimately motivated and iconic since “in seeking terms for numerals, speakers across the world tend to rely on their bodily extremities for linguistic expression” (Heine 2014: 25). Heine asserts that “the body-part model” is ubiquitous in the creation of numeral systems (Heine 1997: 21), just as it is in other domains of grammatical construction. The body-part model Heine reconstructs, however, favors a “top-down” orientation. Although this reconstruction cannot account for the evolution of creative analogy, it certainly makes sense as an account of the origins of counting. Independent empirical studies continue to demonstrate the indispensable role fingers play in the foundations of mathematics (Penner-Wilger et al. 2007; Berteletti & Booth 2015). In addition to the cognitive insights such findings provide, they also serve to discredit long-entrenched biases against the use of finger-counting in mathematical education. This principle is echoed and explained with reference to the lexical residue of an experiential principle

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whose origins lie at the core of the embodied foundations of mathematics. In Zulu, isithupha “thumb” and isikhombisa “index finger” double as the numerals “6” and “7”, respectively (Doke 1927: 326; Heine 2014: 24); the Kewa term for “four” kíi is polysemous with “arm; hand” or “hand bones” (Franklin 1963: 63); but beyond individual numbers, the most common basic body parts for organizing numeral sets among world languages are hands and feet. In a recent survey of counting systems in 196 world languages, Bernard Comrie (2011) determines that 63 percent are either “decimal” systems, based on the number 10, or “quinary” systems, based on the number 5. This fact points to the profound importance of fingers and hands in establishing mathematical concepts. Another 21 percent of world languages are either based on the number 20 (“vigesimal”) or some hybrid of 20 and 10. This latter fact points to the intrafield relations of hands and feet. A single “hand” is the most common source of the numeral “5”; and the most common source for “10” is “two-hands.” Beyond 10 it is most common for numeral systems to move on to foot-based derivations, up to “20”—at which point the most common lexical source is either “hands and feet” or “wholeperson” (Stampe 1976: 596; Heine 1997: 21). In the Api language of Vanuatu, for instance, “5” is derived from luna “hand” and lua luna “two hands” is used for the numeral “10” (Dantzig 1940: 25; Heine 1997: 21). In Mamvu, a Nilo-Saharan language of central Africa, the word for “10” is derived from a phrase meaning “all hands,” while “11” is derived from a construction meaning “the foot seizes one.” Once the feet have seized nine—resulting in the numeral “19”—the next numeral is derived from a construction meaning “one whole person,” that is, “20” (Vorbichler 1965: 94–96; Heine 1997: 20). Since fingers are unmarked for dexterity relative to toes, and since fingers are also unmarked for ease of viewing, they are naturally more suited to counting and a more salient testing ground for launching numeral systems. Heine makes little of such dynamics, opting rather to identify finger-counting as a key token of a more general type: his “top-down” principle governing bodily organization (and grammatical constructs based on such systems). This, it should be noted, is itself a rather top-down approach to theory building. Heine assumes that since the upper half of the body is “more differentiated and more salient for perceptual and communicative purposes,” all intrafield mapping must proceed “from upper to lower parts of the human body—that is the lower half tends to be conceptualized in terms of the upper half ” (1997: 134). In short this hypothesized asymmetrical mapping is also assumed to be exclusively

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unidirectional—that is, from upper parts, locations and functions to lower parts, locations and functions. In seeking to identify embodied sources of conceptual blending, then, it is worth noting that, although this might help account for single-scope conceptual integration, it would seriously restrict possibilities for identifying bodily sources for double-scope integration networks across the transverse plane. Approached as a universal tendency relevant to the specific domains and relations Heine selects for discussion, his observations may be valid; but extended to other relations and domains, the tendency itself breaks down. In support of this critique, I wish to suggest that Heine’s bid to generalize the proposition in question to the status of a restrictive universal neglects six important points: 1. The conspicuous proliferation of piecemeal evidence to the contrary. 2. Synthetic classifications of body partonomy across the transverse plane. 3. Other parallels in intrafield categorization across the waistline that cannot be reduced to a top-down model. 4. Integrative patterns of intrafield semantic shift (e.g., ambidirectional and unified shifts). 5. Unified interfield mappings of transverse embodied paradigms to material and organic culture. 6. The functional (vs. anatomical) nature of transverse markedness. Points 4–6 are explored further in the next three sections. Point 3 is explored in the previous section. Points 1 and 2 are alluded to above, but it will be helpful to expand on both a bit more here before moving on. Regarding the first point, Heine himself spends several pages (see esp. 1997: 134–136) attempting to swat away a swarm of counterexamples that contradict his supposed universal claim of top-down unidirectionality in bodypart mapping. First he dismisses German Handschuh (“hand shoe”) “glove” by saying that gloves are not body parts themselves but merely a covering and that protecting the feet is more common than protecting the hands. Then he dismisses Hausa “knee of arm” by suggesting that this is better analyzed as a shift from back to front since elbows face backward while knees face frontward (1997: 135). He dismisses the many world languages in which there is genuine synthetic polysemy between “fingers” and “toes” by doing little more than hoping no language will ever be found in which the polysemous term originally meant “toe” instead of “finger.” This final phenomenon is the focus of my second critique in the list above. The point is illustrated in the previous section with numerous examples. It is

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widespread and is by no means restricted to fingers and toes as evidence cited in the previous section from Hlepho to Kewa to Savosavo to English bears witness. Considering English alone—in addition to the synthetic term “digits” (which, to Heine’s credit, genuinely originates with fingers)—we find “nails,” “limbs” and “appendages” as clear examples of arm–leg syncretism. In the former three cases, at least, the top-down claim is simply a moot point. Something else is “afoot”; and it might be “handy” not to be bound “hand-and-foot” by a theory that prohibits its recognition. Such prohibitions tend be quite costly in the long run. In this case they might even cost “an arm-and-a-leg.” In other words, the mappings are ambidirectional and simultaneous—certainly not topdown and unidirectional. Similarly, we might explore synthetic morphological constructions like “pinkie toe” and “pinkie finger,” which have corollaries in many other languages as “child toe” and “child finger” relative to a “mother toe” and “mother finger” (see Matisoff 1992; Wilkins 1996; Heine 1997: 132; Pelkey 2013c). These items fly in the face of a strict top-down ideology. Aside from the fact that such an agenda misses the larger point of structural relationships that hold between upper and lower extremities, and misunderstands the functional status of markedness across the transverse plane, counterexamples will continue to surface that demonstrate the lower extremities’ potency to serve as source domain for corresponding body parts above the waistline. In the Phola language of south-central Yunnan Province (Tibeto-Burman < Burmic < Ngwi, Pelkey 2011a,b), the lexicalized construction for “arm” (segmented from shoulder to wrist)’ is a compound of lɑ̄ “hand/arm,” ɣɯ̀ “bone” and pɔ̄ “thigh”: lɑ̄ɣɯ̀pɔ̄ lɑ̄ hand.arm

+ɣɯ̀ +bone

+pɔ̄ +thigh

“arm” (shoulder to wrist)

The final morpheme in this construction is clearly cognate with Proto-Ngwi etymon #121B *(ʃ)-boŋ² “thigh” (Bradley 1979: 304). Unfortunately for Heine, this mapping cannot (and should not) be explained away. The direction of the mapping is bottom-up. Consider, as another example, also the Dene Sųłiné word for “fingerprint(s)” dene-lá-ké (Rice 2014: 90). Dene Sųłiné is an Athabaskan language spoken

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by Chipewyan aboriginals of northwestern Canada. The term in question is glossed, “person-hand-foot”: deneláké dene- lá- ké person- hand- foot “fingerprints”

This lexicalization strategy only makes sense by recognizing that ké foot has been extended in the language to denote “footprints.” Thus, the lexicalization involves an intrafield primary blend of hand/finger prints and toe/foot prints. It may be true enough that the mapping is unidirectional; but it is certainly not “top-down.” In fact, as Sally Rice’s earlier work on the language demonstrates, the lower half of the body is unmarked as a source domain for upper-body references, and even basic motion verbs are organized relative to the transverse plane (Rice 2002). These examples are offered not as a comprehensive survey, but as a reminder that an incessant stream of counterexamples will continue to be found by anyone willing to look—counterexamples that beset Heine’s universal claim relative to the transverse plane. In short, it may well be the case that Heine (1997) is so intent on establishing “what appears to be a universal strategy to conceptualize the lower half of the body in terms of the upper half ” (1997: 47) as a unidirectional top-down mapping that he ignores the broader picture of paradigmatic relations. Among other things, these relations shift in concert through time and reveal themselves as ambidirectional mappings in everything from German gloves and Hausa elbows to the pinkie children of Sino-Tibetan and the footprinted fingertips of Dene Sųłiné. Even the FiveFingers blend discussed in the introduction is problematic for Heine’s top-down unidirectional assertion. Yes, it is true enough that toes are fingers in the blend; but fingers are also toes. As David Wilkins establishes in his landmark historical linguistic project exploring universal trends of semantic shift in body-part terms, these overlooked principles can also be readily observed in ambidirectional semantic shifts across the transverse plane. Wilkins consults extensive comparative data from seven major language families: Austronesian, Bantu, Dravidian, Indo-European, Papuan, Tibeto-Burman and various Native American languages. One of his discoveries is a systematic, syncretic

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relationship between the “upper” and “lower” appendages and their analogous membership. He finds, in language families around the world, that it is commonplace to find a word that once meant “toenail” having shifted to mean “fingernail” and vice versa. Furthermore, upper and lower appendages show directly analogous patterns of metonymic semantic shift from part to whole such that words which once meant “palm” may gradually shift to mean “hand” and, likewise below the waist, words that once meant “heel” may gradually shift to mean “foot.” Although Wilkins’ study is much cited, the reflexive embodied paradigms implicit in his analysis have received very little attention in the literature. The next section seeks to correct this situation.

Limb-from-limb: Semantic shifts One core argument of this book is that the inverse specialization of our human extremities—organized relative to the transverse plane and framed most vividly in spread-eagle formation—may hold untapped potential for developing a more robust evo devo account of human cognition. Some of the most compelling evidence for reevaluating the importance of our extremities in this regard emerges from the field of historical and comparative linguistics. As mentioned in Chapter 2, all words are informed by networks of relations whose origins we can re-trace to discover the idiosyncrasies of their adventures through time. It is the etymologist’s job to reconstruct these adventure stories. Polysemy, synonymy and semantic shift are among the most familiar side-plots. Sometimes history repeats itself, making for stories that are remarkably similar across languages and language families. When this happens historical linguists refer to the change as a “natural tendency.” Diachronic research on natural tendencies of semantic shift reveals that arms and legs, hands and feet (and the internal part-whole relationships they entail) not only share implicit, analogous sets or paradigms but also tend to subsist and shift in lexical concert through time and across languages, via layered mappings that are directly parallel—unified, blended, inversely (a)symmetrical and multiply paradigmatic. But these remarkable bodily diagrams shared crossculturally across the transverse plane receive scant attention in the literature. Even sources that present the most compelling evidence for their salience do so without registering broader implications. This is an oversight the present section works to correct.

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As described above, Wilkins’ (1996) project on natural tendencies of semantic shift in body-part terms identifies both ambidirectional and unidirectional semantic shifts that provide evidence of transverse mapping between upper and lower limb metonymy across language families. Here I consider each in turn beginning with ambidirectional semantic shifts across the transverse plane, something Wilkins identifies as one of five natural tendencies in body-part oriented semantic shifts across language families. In his own words, “Where the waist provides a midline, it is a natural tendency for terms referring to parts of the upper body to shift to refer to parts of the lower body and vice versa (e.g., ‘elbow’ ⇔ ‘knee’; ‘uvula’→ ‘clitoris’; ‘anus’ → ‘mouth’)” (1996: 273–274). His findings suggest, notably, that the primary blending principle in question is not exclusive to arm-leg networks. It also extends to face-groin analogies. Indeed, the face-groin domain provides another potential experiential space for primary blending. This is an important point that has also received little attention (cf. Paul 1973; Matisoff 1978); unfortunately, it opens questions so large that they warrant a research project of its own. For now we have further “legwork” to do on the topic at “hand”. As mentioned above, Wilkins, following Matisoff (1978), discusses these semantic shifts as “intrafield metonymic changes.” This is a groundbreaking insight, but given the patterns that emerge between semantic fields in the data, this narrow focus needs to be expanded. What Wilkins and many others working in this vein overlook is the existence of profound category paradigmaticity that exists between intrafield sets. This is understandable. Historical linguists are typically more concerned with distinguishing between innovations that are useful for subgrouping language relationships genetically and diachronically and those that are not. The former are discussed as “non-natural changes,” the latter as “natural changes.” Since natural changes are not useful for subgrouping, their explanation becomes fodder for other disciplines—such as psycholinguistics and dialectology. In other words, the discipline-specific focus on discovering the naturalness and nonnaturalness of person-part semantic shifts has led to the neglect of other important patterns inherent in the data. Wilkins’ proposes a seventy-five-item wordlist “centered on the most commonly attested semantic changes within the domain of person-parts” across language families (1996: 283–284). No fewer than nine of these terms participate in semantic shifts that actually belong to higher-order sets. These higherorder sets involve tacit relationships shared between the extremities in inverse patterns relative to the waistline. The superordinate pattern in question has not, to my knowledge, been indentified (much less explained) in the literature to-

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date. The nine terms in question are involved in three ambidirectional shifts as summarized in the following list: 1. 2a. 2b. 3a. 3b.

“elbow” ⇔ “knee” “claw” → “fingernail” “claw” → “toenail” “calf/shin” → “thigh” “forearm” → “upper arm”

Set 1 provides the clearest example of an intra-field, ambidirectional shift across the waistline. It is common, in other words, for the word glossed “knee” in a given language to have shifted from a more archaic term that was originally glossed “elbow.” The inverse is also true: it is common for the word glossed “elbow” in a given language to have shifted from a more archaic term that was originally glossed “knee.” This pattern on its own is interesting enough; it suggests a kind of embodied chiasmus at work diachronically and cross-linguistically. It also suggests a very basic instance of primary embodied blending. Thinking of elbows as knees and knees as elbows involves proprioceptive and kinesthetic body memories that come to be blended conceptually through processes of semantic extension, polysemy and shift. Considered in relation to the other two sets in this list, Set 1 is the most prototypical instance of ambidirectional shift across the transverse plane. Set 2 is also ambidirectional but only via an external mapping. Whereas the elbow– knee blend pattern is an intrafield mapping, the fingernail–toenail blend is an interfield mapping. It is also interspecific. Nonhuman animal claws are a common source for both toenail and fingernail lexemes cross-linguistically. In the Phupa language of China (Mengzi County, Yunnan), for instance, sə³³ means “[animal] claw”; and the Phupa terms for “fingernail” and “toenail” are la55sə³³ (hand/arm + claw) and ʨʰi²¹sə³³ (foot/leg + claw), respectively. This is not merely evidence for a natural semantic extension, however. It is also evidence of our capacity and tendency to think of fingernails as toenails and toenails as fingernails via reference to a third. In other words, it gives us evidence for identifying basic modes of primary blending. As discussed above, conceptual blends are classified by Fauconnier & Turner (2002) along a continuum of complexity ranging respectively from simplex and mirror networks to single-scope and double-scope networks. Applying these categories, the blend in Set 1 above can be analyzed as a “mirror network.” Even though both are pointy joints, elbows and knees are quite different. The former are small and open forward (toward the anterior half of the coronal plane) while the latter are larger and open backward (toward the posterior

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half of the coronal plane). But the two pointy joints share a common frame: in addition to both being pointy joints, both are also located midway along their respective limbs. Because of this, and due to the cross-linguistic naturalness of the ambidirectional shift, they qualify as an instance of primary grounding for more abstract mirror networks. The blend in Set 2, in turn, can be analyzed as two “single-scope networks” (involving source-target mappings between claws and nails) lexicalizing as a unified “mirror network” (in which fingernails and toenails come to be perceptually and conceptually organized according to a common frame). The blend in Set 3 is more complex. It involves an ambidirectional shift only in a relatively oblique sense. This sense, however, is perhaps the most crucial to grasp since understanding its significance is key for unlocking one of the most radically embodied paradigms of nested bodily paradigms. This network of networks informs (and reveals) our capacity for what I am referring to in this chapter as “primary blending,” only it amps up this capacity to a more advanced level: that of the double-scope network. Double-scope networks “have two different organizing frames and parts of both of them are used in the blend as well as in a new emergent structure” (Birdsell 2014: 80). The cross-linguistic naturalness of “calf ” → “thigh” shifts is directly analogous to the cross-linguistic naturalness of “forearm” → “upper arm” shifts. This tendency points to a potential source of primary grounding for double-scope networks. Both linguistically and experientially, humans are prone to think of legs and arms (“two different organizing frames”) analogously such that their partitions are used in blended shifts semantically “as well as in a new emergent structure” (2014: 80). The new emergent structure in this case may actually be as old as the evolution of doublescope conceptual blending itself. The tendency to shift semantics from calf to thigh below the waist and from forearm to upper arm above the waist is a single embedded instance of a primary double-scope network functioning tacitly in a much larger network of networks that emerges cross-linguistically. Treated in isolation each of these shifts could only be called unidirectional semantic mappings. This sense is captured in each individual arrow listed in Figure 6.3. This figure constitutes a major reorganization of Wilkins’ own individual mappings for these schemas. Until now, no development of this pathbreaking research has drawn attention to the unified analogy implicit in the data above and below the waistline. It is important to keep in mind in pondering this diagram that the mere absence of a shift in a given language family is not proof that this aspect of the macronetwork is only weakly supported. First of all, Wilkins’ dataset is limited—such

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The Semiotics of X finger nail Dr, B, AN B, AN

hand

E palm B, I

arm IE, AN Dr forearm

Dr upper arm

shin/calf

thigh Dr, B , IE

sole B, D r nail

AN

toe

IE

foot

IE

B, TB

,A N leg

Figure 6.3 Reframing Wilkins’ (1996: 276) diagram of “Attested semantic changes involving visible parts and visible wholes” as a pattern of inverse multipleparadigmaticity. Language family abbreviations: AN=Austronesian, B=Bantu, Dr=Dravidian, IE=Indo-European, TB=Tibeto-Burman.

relations may still be discovered in further treatments. Second, as mentioned above, some distinctions in the chart are usually realized as semantic composites in various language families (hand-arm and foot-leg tend to be unified lexemes in Bantu and Burmic languages for instance). Third, simply because a pattern is not lexically realized does not mean it is not experientially realized. On the contrary, the strength of this analogous pattern cross-linguistically suggests that the full paradigm is at least a tacit universal for human perception and cognition. Fourth, and most importantly, the overall pattern is the point. Human languages across the millennia provide conceptual categorical evidence of an underlying universal experience of our extremities, patterned in nested sets of analogous relations above and below the waistline. This provides empirical, evolutionary evidence of a primary source for double-scope conceptual blending. Further empirical evidence comes from linguistic anthropology and cultural mapping processes known as embodied meronymy.

Feet for roots: Meronymic mapping In the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo, Apollo the son of Zeus carelessly hurls an insult at Cupid the god of love. Cupid promptly retaliates, striking Apollo in the heart with a golden arrow. This causes Apollo to fall in love with Daphne, a local wood nymph. To round out his revenge, Cupid then strikes Daphne with an arrow of lead causing her to resist Apollo’s advances. As Apollo pursues her, she flees deep into the forest. When at long last he catches up to her, and reaches toward her verklempt with longing, Daphne reacts with an abrupt surprise. On the spot she transforms herself into a laurel tree—ensuring that she will never be forced to marry Apollo. This moment of woodland magic is made intelligible by a spell of linguistic magic—a radically embodied rhetorical spell. According

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to Ovid, in ramos bracchia crescunt, pes modo tam velox pigris radicibus haeret: “her arms grow into branches, sluggish roots adhere to feet that were so recently so swift” (8CE [2004]: 37). This is a classical Latin instance of embodied meronymic mapping, one that is easily intelligible cross-linguistically. Body parts are mapped onto tree parts (arms/hands → branches; feet/legs → roots); and even though these body parts actually become the tree parts, the tree parts are still in some sense body parts. In short, what results is a complex primary blend with a paradigmatic corporeal anchor for input space 1 and a paradigmatic material anchor for input space 2. Extrusions above and below the waistline blend with analogous extrusions above and below the tree trunk. The person is now a tree, but the tree is also a person. Whereas most of the mappings in the previous section can be identified as intrafield embodied meronymy, Ovid’s classical Latin example is an instance of interfield embodied meronymy. Through the centuries many painters and sculptors have attempted to capture this moment of transformation. In most instances Daphne is depicted with arms raised and hands sprouting branches as her parted feet succumb to roots. This is vividly illustrated in the Figure 6.4 reproduction of a late thirteenth-century painting by Italian artist Antonio del Pollaiolo. Daphne’s posture in the painting incorporates the spread-eagle pose; and the visual rendering of the primary blend draws attention to a cross-linguistic lexical phenomenon as well. In a “stratified probability sample” of body-part mapping strategies across world languages, Hilpert (2007: 82, 85) finds that a full 15 percent maintain lexical extensions from bodily “arms” to tree limbs. Although this may seem unimpressive, it occurs in languages from widely diverse families. This gives us reasons to assume not only that the individual lexical mappings emerged independently but also that they are a feature of our shared human experience—a universally available concept rooted in tacit, embodied cognition situated in similar environments. The fact that English speakers lexicalize an inverse mapping—from tree “limbs” to bodily arms (and legs)—suggests that the primary blend in question is a mirror network at the level of tacit cognition. At the level of lexical mapping in any given language, it should be identified as a single-scope network (mapping from source domain to target domain). In other words, at the level of pre-linguistic, tacit cognition, the meronymic mapping in question can function in both directions—much like our understanding of Daphne’s arms. Even when they shift into branches, we still know the branches as Daphne’s arms. Once the primary mirror blend becomes lexicalized, a default unidirectional mapping is established.

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Figure 6.4 Apollo and Daphne by Antonio del Pollaiolo, c.1475.

Although they are not represented in Hilbert’s sample, the Phula languages of Yunnan, China (Tibeto-Burman > Burmic > Ngwi > Southeastern, see Pelkey 2011a,b) are among the languages of the world that make the “hand/arm” →

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branch mapping lexically explicit. What makes the Phula languages worth mentioning in this context is the fact that many of them round out the blend with a foot/leg → root complement. I wish to suggest that this dual linguistic mapping moves the primary “single scope” network into the domain of primary “double-scope” conceptual blending. The double-scope meronymic blend in question is especially notable among the five Phula languages listed in Table 6.3. Morphemes cognate with Alugu ɕi³³ are glossed “wood” and/or “tree” in these languages; while morphemes cognate with Alugu i³³ are noun class prefixes for organic material. Thus the mappings above the transverse plane can all be glossed roughly “wood hand/arm” while those below the transverse plane can be glossed roughly “organic foot/leg” or—in the case of Phala—“wood foot-leg.” These five languages descend from four distinct sub-branches of Southeastern Ngwi diachronically (Pelkey 2011a), suggesting that the dual transverse mapping was a feature of the ancestor language. The ljɛ²¹~lɛ³³ variation in Southern Muji “hand/arm” → branch is due to historical lexicalization processes (see Pelkey 2013c). The Phola-Phala pairing represents two closely related sister languages that have only recently diverged. In all four cases, then, an explicit lexical mapping is preserved at the primary blend across the transverse plane. Another reason it is plausible to posit this primary blend as a universally available concept across cultures is the marked nature of orthogonality that humans share with trees. Both humans and trees share “upright posture”: the life lines of both exist at perpendicular angles relative to the earth. Combining this basic experiential analogy with shared slender torsos or trunks, and combining these observations with a spread-eagle frame, trees provide a prime domain for mapping primary blends across the transverse axis. They also provide a plausible Table 6.3 Lexicalized body-part → tree-part mappings in four Phula languages: Inverse parallelism in embodied meronymy across the transverse anatomical plane

Khlula

Transverse Tree Parts

la5²

→

ɕi³³la5²

lɑ³³pə55

→

sɿ³³lɑ³³ ɕi³³ka²¹lɛ³³

→

si̠³¹lɑ³³kɑ̠³¹

Alugu

ʦʰa³³ʨʰi³³

→

i³³ʨʰi³³pə³³

Khlula

ʦʰɿ²¹

→

ɨ³³ʦʰɿ²¹

ʦʰɿ²¹

→

i²¹ʨʰi²¹

kʰi55bo³³

→

ɕi³³kʰi55mi²¹

Muji, Southern Phola

‘foot/leg’

→

lɑ³³bɛ̠²¹

ROOT

ljɛ²¹

Phola

Muji, Southern

BRANCH

Alugu

Transverse Body Parts ‘hand/arm’

Language

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mechanism for the formation of one of the first sets of mental space projections capable of functioning at the level of primary double-scope blending. The salience of upright transversality shared between humans and trees does not prevent us from mapping the primary blend space of our bodily extremities onto other mobile orientations in space, such as the caudal-rostral/ dorsal-ventral orientation discussed in Chapter 1, even though it is more typical of nonhuman animal locomotion (and that of four-wheeled vehicles). This point is vividly illustrated in one of the most famous examples of embodied meronymic mapping: the Western Apache analogy for parts of an automobile as recorded by Keith Basso (1990: 13–24). In Western Apache, automobile parts are systematically named according to a detailed and elegant embodied template, such that bidáá “eye” is extended to headlight, biyedaa’ “chin/jaw” is extended to front bumper, bijíí “heart” is extended to distributor, and so on. Although the example is frequently cited and has been discussed from numerous angles in the literature, one aspect of the elaborate analogy has gone unnoticed. The data in question are listed in Table 6.4. The paired “hand” and “foot” mappings to front and rear wheel, respectively, are analogous to the blended body-tree meronymies among the Phula languages. The blend spaces are doubled in Western Apache, however, making for an even more elaborate paradigm that includes the inversely (a) symmetric relations between analogous body-part relations—relations that link up bodily extremities with the torso. hand/arm: shoulder:: hip: leg/foot)—and the immediately adjacent car parts—front wheel: front fender:: rear fender: rear wheel—respectively. Given the visceral level of embodiment featured in this network, the Apache automobile should also be identified as an instance of primary blend extension. It also helps illustrate how radically embodied relations can be theorized as the wellspring of our capacity for double-scope conceptual blending and abstract paradigms in general. Primary blending across the transverse plane can also help us account for other features that inform human cognition and human language such as markedness relations. Table 6.4 Transverse embodied paradigm in Western Apache car part meronymy Western Apache Term

Body Part

Car Part

bigan

“hand/arm”

bikee’

“foot”

→

rear wheel

biwos

“shoulder”

→

front fender

bikai’

“hip/butt”

→

rear fender

→

front wheel

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Markedness, upside-down As discussed at length in the previous chapter, we find in languages and cultures around the world that the inverse lateralization of brains and extremities has evolved physiologically to favor left-brain + right-hand dominance. This explains the normalization of the dextral (right) over the sinistral (left) in these same cultures, thus setting up not only a powerful template for the infinite generation of antithetical binaries in these same cultures but also a scheme by which one member of the binary comes to be privileged, taken for granted, or simply “unmarked.” My working hypothesis is that markedness relations in language are deeply rooted in this same experiential, kinesthetic memorybased template. But this asymmetrical left-right template does not account for the full story of the origins of markedness. In fact, as I have already suggested in Chapter 5, the nature of tranversalization sets up markedness relations in quite a different mode. The inverse status of the upper half of the body relative to the lower half creates an integrated field for experimental, but systematic, classification. This, in turn, allows not only for the emergence of lexicalized primary double-scope networks of arm-leg partonymy but also novel primary double-scope networks like the foot-finger integration of upper and lower extremities featured in the FiveFingers footwear blend discussed in the introduction to this chapter. With this in mind, let me suggest that lateral relations provide grounding for our analytic capabilities as human beings while transverse relations provide grounding for human-specific modes of analogic modeling. Whereas the markedness of left-right lateral relations is more a priori and ideologyoriented (i.e., “analytic”), the markedness of upper-lower transverse relations is more a posteriori and analogy-oriented (a.k.a., “synthetic”). One of the central arguments of this book is that these relations—both of which come into their own with upright posture and both of which are most vividly realized in spreadeagle formation—are crucial primary sources of our pension for both analytic presupposition and analogic imagination. Whereas analytic thinking is often humorless and devoid of nuance, with analogy comes humor, irony and paradox. Even if the upper limbs are construed as superior to the lower limbs for their “angelic” ability to reach up high into the sky, toward the very heavens, it takes only a moment’s reflection to recall that the “inferior” lower limbs are more in touch—“more rooted” more “down to earth”— and “actually going places.” Both sets are dominant for certain correlative tasks, subordinate for others. Emphasize either to the neglect of the other, and the

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tables are easily turned. Transverality, in short, affords a very different kind of markedness. As we saw in Chapter 5, schematic mappings that inevitably draw on these transverse body memories construe the upper as the place of universal propositions, the place of normative gender binaries, the place of the ideological given. But these privileged statuses are easily upended across the transverse plane, whether through an upside-down logic like Peirce’s existential graphs, upside-down gender differences that call normative binaries into question, or upside-down escape routes from ideological double-binds. The upside-down effect is a radically embodied feature of human experience. We might well anticipate that it could play some role in the organization and development of our cognitive/affective faculties. We understand someone head-over-heels in love, for instance, with reference to acts as mundane as a somersault or a series of cartwheels. Thinking of arms as legs and legs as arms in a more sustained, experiential way is made possible by viewing or doing a handstand—or, better, by seeing (or being) someone walking on their hands. German athlete Mirko Hanßen even skates on his hands for YouTube audiences of thousands. He specializes in performing stunts while wearing customized inline skates on his hands—jumping ramps and navigating obstacle courses all in sustained handstand position. He calls it (what else?), “Handskating.” The captivating spectacle and its intrinsic humor owe themselves in large part to what I am describing in this chapter as “transverse markedness reversal.” Transverse reversals can also play an explicit role in mythical and ritual systems. As African ethnographer John Middleton (1960) reports, the Lugbara people of Uganda and Congo traditionally assumed that cultural outsiders such as Europeans and neighboring tribes such as Logo and Keliko peoples would “walk about upside down” until they were spotted by a Lugbara, at which point they would pretend to walk about on their legs (1960: 234, 241). Similarly, according to Myerhoff (1978, as cited in Norrman 1999), Huichol aboriginals of the Sierra Madre Occidentál in north central Mexico incorporate complex series of reversals into ritual practices. This can happen in speech, including reversals in terms of reference (calling the old “young” and the young “old”), and in gesture, including the substitution of a foot for a hand in ritual performance Furthermore, at the paradigm level of systematic reversals, the FiveFingers blend this chapter opened with highlights (and exploits) our ability to think of toes as fingers and fingers as toes—hands as feet and feet as hands. Humans have developed highly specialized uses for their hands and fingers relative to feet and toes. Because of this specialization (and its construction through

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patterns of markedness and opposition), the shoe’s ability to evoke the grotesque is conspicuous. The reactions of fashion critics cited in the introduction to this chapter provide good evidence for this claim. Further evidence can be observed in social semiotic situations featuring the shoes. Take the Vimeo web series High Maintenance for instance. FiveFingers footwear is leveraged as a semiotic strategy for characterization in the series. Lead actor Ben Sinclair plays “The Guy,” a marginalized pot dealer who makes private house calls on his bike wearing a shirt, jeans and FiveFingers shoes. This footwear decision contributes to pardoxical feelings of comic relief mixed with uneasy revulsion between the dealer and his clients—clients for whom he incidentally provides counsel and therapy. In short, the toe-shoes help The Guy maintain a kind of “professional distance” with his otherwise satisfied customers. In an episode entitled “Stevie,” The Guy and a rather obsessive compulsive client work their way through a difficult conversation to a genuine moment of connection and relief that might easily lead to “something more” if the writers were following a predictable script. Instead, her gaze shifts casually to the dealer’s shoes, as if by accident. The moment evaporates instantly. She censures the footwear as “disgusting,” and the conversation is over. To be sure, there is something repulsive (and hilarious) about even so much as imagining the act of extending one’s clean fingers deep into the toe(s) of a smelly shoe. There is also something profane, or ridiculous, about the image of trying to force one’s toes into the fingers of a glove. But the ambidirectional blend happens effortlessly and instantly in ways that are beyond our conscious ability to control thanks not only to the product name but also to the design. In an apparent effort to turn the tables on this visceral PR problem, Vibram devised the ad listed in Figure 6.5, suggesting that perhaps the truly “weird” state of affairs is our normalization of the single “toed” shoe. Social construction can be bizarre, but can the FiveFingers blend itself be dismissed as a freak product of fitness mania and marketing hype? The mapping may be a cultural novelty for many, but it is by no means unparalleled. The much earlier “toe-sock” design leaves the finger-toe blend implicit, but the German compound Handschuh (hand+shoe), which translates to English “glove,” illustrates an inversely analogous mapping in a closely related sister language that is equally explicit. More importantly, as discussed above, my argument is that the shoe is much more fundamentally a product of our unique human ability for double-scope conceptual blending. Even more importantly, since both Handschuh and FiveFingers shoes emerge from viscerally embodied modeling processes that directly involve inverse paradigm sets in unstable

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Figure 6.5 Vibram ad for FiveFingers footwear: “Isn’t is weird that people think fivetoed shoes look weird?” (Twitter).

(paradoxic, humorous) relationships of markedness above and below the waist, they may be said to constitute blending activity at a level of primary embodiment—hence my proposal that such phenomena should be dubbed “primary blends.” Markedness emerges with very different characteristics via primary blending across the transverse plane. Semiotically informed analyses of markedness phenomena since Jakobson have insisted that markedness theory is a theory of interpretants (Shapiro 1983: 17; Andrews 1990: 1, 45). If the interpretant is a “living habit” (Peirce) that prepares us to interpret events, or anticipate an outcome, or make assumptions in a particular way, the interpretant

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becomes much more immediately salient in analogic modeling processes. This is vividly apparent in primary blending activities across the transverse plane. Contrary to Heine’s assumptions (1997: 135), we cannot say that the upper body or upper limbs are unmarked; we can only identify the purpose for which they are unmarked. Hands are unmarked for object manipulation. This is an activity which, in its unmarked modality, is best accomplished using bare skin. Hence hands are unmarked for digit differentiation. Feet, by contrast, are unmarked for things like standing and locomotion. This latter is an activity which, in its unmarked modality, is often best accomplished using protective covering. Since protective coverings are more efficiently produced without digit differentiation, the unmarked shoe is manufactured with a singular “toe.” As we have seen above, any of these relations may be upended, often suddenly, and usually in ways we find surprising (if not revolting) and often hilarious. Because of this, we should consider the possibility that oppositions shared across the waistline—above and below the transverse phase—are of a different experiential/ cognitive class from oppositions shared between left and right—the two halves of the sagittal plane. My term for the transverse phenomenon explored above is “arm-leg syncretism,” and my thesis is that the phenomenon is an indispensable source of primary blending—a blend source robust enough to create an analogic base grounded in body memory that would be suitable for the creation of more abstract double-scope integration networks, or creative analogies. Creative analogy is a feature of human language that sets human cognition and communication apart from all other species. This means it is quite possible that there is something about the mundane (cognitive, embodied) experience of living with arms and legs that is at least partly responsible for the evolution of language. This surprising possibility warrants far more attention and critical exploration. As a promissory note for future development, I revisit the theme once more in the final chapter. For now it is important to stress again that arm–leg syncretism could not have emerged and would not have served as embodied grounding for the evolution of language apart from an organizing frame. Upright posture fostered this frame by reconfiguring our anatomical planes relative to the earth, thereby revolutionizing our bodily experience of symmetry and asymmetry. By raising our hands high into the air we could look bigger and feel bigger and act bigger. Did the X-pose eventually also make us think bigger? Maybe so, but not as a lone performance. Solitary threats and solo celebrations are the stock-and-trade of modernity; and to be a modern is, all too often, to be a closet solipsist.

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XXX: All Alone in the Solipsistic Crowd

Return of the lonely X “You’re only in my head. We have to remember that.” These are the words of Elliot Anderson, a character played by Rami Malek in USA Network’s critically acclaimed series Mr. Robot. The lines are spoken confidentially out of a blackened screen to an anonymous audience-of-one as part of the opening voiceover of the show’s first episode (June 24, 2015). Elliot is a troubled digital techie by day, who turns vigilante hacker by night. By the end of the same episode, we see him stride into Times Square in a state of elation. His own elaborate cyber hack has led to the arrest of a corrupt CEO. He stands alone in the square, surrounded by onlookers and towering digital displays. Eyes wide, lips parted in wonder, he removes his hoodie: “it’s happening; it’s happening; it’s happening; it’s happening,” he whispers to himself as the camera perspective orbits around him. A triple-X cascade flashes into oblivion on a screen above his head. He extends his arms high into the air, spread-eagle—a gesture of triumph. But his solo celebration does not last. Indeed, his fortunes quickly reverse, as the final two minutes of the pilot reveal. Let me suggest (with all due spoiler alerts for the discussion to come) that Elliot Anderson can be used as a model-in-miniature for summarizing key elements of this book’s argument so far. The character also serves as an analogic ground for moving the argument into fresh territory—the territory of solipsism. Solipsism is a philosophical doctrine that holds one’s own self—one’s firsthand experience—to be the only true reality since it constitutes the only reality known from the inside out. If this is so, Elliot Anderson’s predicament is primarily our own. He confides in an audience that is only in his head. His audience is thus reminded of their own alienation from him. But if he is only in our head, who is the “we” he speaks of inside me? Is Elliot dreaming me, or am I dreaming Elliot? Clearly the latter from the solipsist’s perspective—along with the glitz of New York’s Times Square, the glamour of award-winning television

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serials, the sadness of depressed digital security engineers and the existence of evil corporations. Conveniently, this might even absolve me of responsibility for grappling with the problems such “realities” introduce. Drawing on ideas from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Georg Simmel, Charles Taylor and others, this chapter argues that this position is cut from the same fabric of experience as the X mark. The discussion helps account for the ubiquity of both the X mark and the solipsist attitude in contemporary culture and provides a basis for better understanding each. Considering the book’s argument up until this point, we recall that the first three chapters build on each other by examining multimodal layers of clues related to spread eagle posture and the X mark. This evidence suggests that the latter proceeds from the former and that spread-eagle performances are not only prone to extremes but also to extreme reversals. Chapters 5 and 6 build on these insights by exploring further layers of evidence relevant to our patterned experience of arms and legs. Clues in these chapters suggest that the source of experiences examined earlier in the book has everything to do with the reorganization of the anatomical planes introduced by upright posture and its affordances. Among other things, these chapters show how dynamics such as the tacit comparison of arm-leg contrasts and partitions help provide explanatory grounding for unique human modeling capacities involving opposition, markedness, logic and creative analogy. With this overview in mind, we may condense the book’s argument up to this point still further by noting three principal layers of self-experience that emerge from the embodied dynamics of spread eagle posture: (1) the experience of polarized extremes, (2) surprising reversals between extremes, and (3) the blended integration of extremes. What has been left largely implicit until this point, however, is that the examination of self-experience in a vacuum is itself problematic— and ultimately unsustainable—being enmeshed in the same oscillating traps as solipsism: the trap that forms the philosophical centerpiece of USA Network’s Mr. Robot.

Solipsism and the lonely X Spoiler Alert: Although he does not realize it until it is too late, Elliot Anderson is Mr. Robot. Elliot is a gifted techie with lucid insight into the sickness of the contemporary social order; but he is also clinically depressed. Worse still, he suffers from social anxiety and dissociative identity disorders. He joins up with

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an anarchist/ hacktivist network entitled “fsociety,” led by the series’ namesake, Mr. Robot, who turns out to be his own long lost father—or so he thinks. Not until the end of the first season do we discover, along with Elliot, kneeling at his father’s gravesite, that Mr. Robot has been a projection of his own psyche all along—“only in my head,” as he puts it. The series screenwriters grant us something of an open invitation to consider Elliot as a study in solipsism. As the opening monologue continues from the lines quoted above, Elliot chastises himself for addressing his audience: “Shit! It’s actually happening: I’m talking to an imaginary person.” But the episode ends with more of the same. After being whisked away from Times Square by force in a black Cadillac Escalade, he is taken to the executive offices of the very corporation whose CEO he incriminated. As he enters the boardroom, which is aswarm with the corporation’s top brass, he stands stunned and then looks directly into the camera: “Please tell me you’re seeing this too,” he says again to his audience of one. Part of Elliot’s difficulty is his sense of alienation from everyone around him. A competing problem is his desire to relate to and empathize with those around him. A third problem is the helplessness and powerlessness he succumbs to in fits of depression. A final problem is the curious sense of power and importance that accompanies his self-absorption, driving him to take on the most powerful elites in the world. In the words of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “We are thus brought back to solipsism, and the problem now appears in all its difficulty, I am not God, but merely lay claim to divinity” (1945: 359). The four corners of Elliot’s problem present not a dilemma but a tetralemma, a vicious set of double-binds that crucify the solitary psyche spread-eagle, as discussed above in Chapters 2, 4 and 5. In relation to psychoanalysis (and since Elliot himself regularly sees a shrink), it may be helpful to recall that Lacan’s L-Schema, discussed in Chapter 4, also assumes the existence of a solipsistic individual—someone unable or unwilling to lose their self in another or the Big Other out of fear that self-identity will itself dissolve. The oscillating, self-reinforcing chiasmus this contradiction generates was identified with the hourglass pattern in Chapter 4 and with the semiotic square in Chapter 5. In Chapter 2, the lone psyche was treated at length as well— in solo performances of spread-eagle athletes and their counterparts—victims of torture—for whom the posture is frozen at length by force. All such dynamics are brought home to their most basic structure in Wallace Steven’s (1947) poem “The Motive for Metaphor,” discussed near the end of Chapter 2: “The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.”

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Narcissism, alienation and X In the same discussion above, I make the claim that Steven’s poem juxtaposes the harshness of self-absorbed certainty with the comfort of self-forgetful imagination. We might find other ways of describing this distinction as well, such as the juxtaposition of agony, ideology and the pleasure of inquiry—or contrasts between the stricture of control and the freedom of understanding. Whatever the case, the solipsist’s tetralemma is at least partly wrapped up in a particular attitude toward reality and imagination. Stevens suggests that there is a peculiar kind of comfort and wholeness that comes from losing oneself in the interplay between natural reality and the linguistic imagination—not needing to control or to be in control of the output or input of experience: a place “Where you yourself were never quite yourself/And did not want nor have to be,” as he puts it. The worldview we have inherited from Descartes and the moderns is quite a different place. Cogito ergo sum: “I think therefore I am”? If disembodied ideas in the solipsistic mind are accepted as our starting place, this place also becomes the wellspring of narcissism, dogmatism and competitive consumption—the source of our unrelenting desire for absolute certainty in which the self is center stage (see Berman 1981). Suspicion of the imagination is a consequence of insisting that only “clear and distinct ideas” be admitted (see McGilchrist 2009). The desire to gain mastery over others and to exploit the natural world beyond repair are unwitting consequences of this worldview as well (see Taylor 1991). In the worldview of modernism nothing trumps the assertion of the individual self (or so we pretend): Against the social world I can always avail myself of my sensible nature, close my eyes, stop up my ears, live as a stranger in society, treat others, ceremonies and institutions as mere arrangements of colour and light, and strip them of all their human significance. Against the natural world I can always have recourse to the thinking nature and entertain doubts about each perception taken on its own. The truth of solipsism is there. Every experience will always appear to me as a particular instance which does not exhaust the generality of my being, and I have always, as Malebranche said, movement left wherewith to go further. But I can fly from being only into being. (Merleau-Ponty 1945: 360)

As Merleau-Ponty reminds us in this passage, solipsism is ultimately an inauthentic position to espouse, simply because of being and doing. Here Maxine Sheets-Johnstone would add moving. When Elliot strides into Times Square whispering “it’s happening; it’s happening; it’s happening; it’s happening,” he is

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experiencing what Wallace Stevens refers to as “the exhilaration of changes.” He is no longer quite himself. He is beside himself. He has forgotten himself; but he is, nonetheless, somehow more fully and authentically himself as a consequence— no longer Elliot the solipsist but Elliot the situated person. Merleau-Ponty goes on to add that “Solipsism would be strictly true only of someone who managed to be tacitly aware of his existence without being or doing anything, which is impossible, since existing is being in and of the world” (1945: 361). The consequences of this observation are profound. Solipsism as a philosophical position has been broadly equated with “epistemology” (Deely 2012). Far more than simply “theory of knowledge,” epistemology can be critically evaluated as a kind of theoretical excitement over the assumption that what we seek to know (reality) is somehow fundamentally distinct from the way in which we come to know it (human cognition). To this degree epistemological commitments tend to entail an antievolutionary stance, which assumes that human language and culture somehow share no fundamental continuity with natural processes and natural phenomena. As the history of modernity shows — from Descartes to Locke, from Kant to Hegel, from Marx to Freud, from Saussure to Derrida to Foucault—for every new generation of moderns who follow this path, the excitement is short-lived, something like the basket-toss cheer stunt discussed above in Chapter 2. Afterward, if sustained, the possibility turns into a kind of torture of the body-mind, a feeling closer to being tied to the rack: vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant; and then, behold: the dominator dominated. This leads not merely to bad philosophy but to widespread self-absorption and inflated self-importance, ultimately leading to alienation, fragmentation and displacement: in a word? Loneliness. If “one” is the loneliest number of all, “X” is the loneliest figure. A grim episode from the life of a former US President illustrates this point vividly.

Uses and meanings of X When Theodore Roosevelt was twenty-six years old, he was blindsided by a double tragedy. Within the span of eleven hours, on February 14, 1884, his wife died of kidney failure and his mother died of typhoid fever. The shock was acute. Later that day he left a devastating entry in his diary, reproduced in Figure 7.1. He then retreated to the wilderness of the Dakotas, where he lived in relative solitude on his own rustic ranch for two years before returning to politics. The

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Figure 7.1 Theodore Roosevelt diary entry, February 14, 1884. Complements of Theodore Roosevelt Papers: Library of Congress Manuscript Division (Roosevelt 1884: 11).

lone X writ large on the page communicates the agony of his sorrow and loss with a palpability that goes beyond the visual or the symbolic. We feel it in our bones: a permanent, powerful, pre-linguistic mark that rings with the pain of a tortured psyche. Simply noting that X means death or denial or the unknown or the nameless would be to misread the mark in this context at a fundamental level. Lone X-marks have been part of the human visual design repertoire since time immemorial. A series of caves named El Castillo in Spain preserve solitary X patterns that date to the late Paleolithic (27,000–16,000 years ago)—well over ten millennia prior to the development of the first known writing systems. Based on tell-tale composition elements known to archaeologists, one X pattern type in the El Castillo caverns is thought to be male, another female (Breuil 1952: 367; Leroi-Gourhan 1967: 334, 481). This suggests that the X-mark has long been associated with the human person. By present day the X-mark is too easily dismissed as an arbitrary letter of the alphabet, a logical operator or a symbol for “ten” cooked up by the Latins. Nonetheless, its nonphonemic, nonnumeric, nonalgorithmic uses are far more ubiquitous in contemporary globalized life than they were in Paleolithic petroglyphs. SpaceX wows us; Tesla’s Model X intrigues; Generation X eludes us; Google X teases. There are X-ratings, X-Games, X-Planes and Xtreme sports. We can pause the X-Files on our XBox

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to watch The X Factor via an Xfinity subscription projected onto an Xscreen while texting on our Galaxy X. With the partial “Xception” of Xtreme sports, in none of these cases is the content plane grounded in phonic function or numeric sense. If we are not obsessed with X and seduced by X in ways that go beyond the alphanumeric, why are such branding decisions so widespread—and arguably quite successful? And yet, in spite of such proliferation, the X-mark receives precious little attention from anthropologists, cultural theorists, sociologists, psychologists or others who might provide insight. As stated in the first chapter of this book, this neglect beggars belief. Perhaps the question “What does X mean?” simply seems nonsensical or unanswerable. A key motivation in writing this book is to show that not only is the question answerable, the sense of X is also far more rich and complex—though revealing and basic—than we might guess at first. As mentioned in Chapter 2, previous studies on the semiotics of X have tentatively discussed the figure using the written alphabet (Roy 2001) and mythic symbolism (Danesi 2009a) as respective guides to inquiry. Marina Roy’s treatment is a book-length impressionistic survey of the topic, intent on drawing attention to “the open-ended nature of X” (Roy 2001: 209). Marcel Danesi’s treatment is a chapter-length discussion of the topic in a book devoted to mythic symbolism in popular culture. Both studies are brimming with insight. My project in this book is not so much to disagree with either of these studies as it is to provide a more sure footing for both—and for future studies to come. If X is primarily alphabetic, studies of X can only be rooted in the arbitrary (ahistorical) biases of the literate mind. If X is primarily archetypal, we are still left asking after the origins of its organizing archetypes. More critically still (although this is not the stated aim of either), both approaches are ultimately disembodied. If Roy’s ultimate purpose is to celebrate the ambiguity of X, Danesi’s aim is to define the polarized structure of X. Both studies remark on the many opposing meanings of the figure that inform its radical ambiguity and polysemy. Here is a sampling, which I have organized into an implicational cline: destination vs. blockage destiny vs. unknown named vs. nameless choice vs. prohibition specification vs. mistake clarity vs. mystery logical vs. mythical kiss vs. cancellation

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sex vs. pornography Christ vs. death the sacred vs. the profane

This final oppositional pair is proposed by Danesi as the sum of the meanings of X. In his own words, “X is essentially a logo, reverberating with a psychic tension that oscillates back and forth between the sacred and the profane” (2009a: 14). He goes on to argue that this is made possible due to its status as “a symbol that brings out the crisscrossing of psychic levels in its very form” (Danesi 2009a: 25). This position has much to recommend it, but what are these psychic levels? Or rather where are they situated? How do they function? Are they to remain nameless mysteries forever or might we insist that they be named with clarity? Do we have a choice or are we prohibited from asking? I have saved this specific conundrum for now in order to draw upon the full weight of the argument in The Semiotics of X up until this point. Extremes and reversals, whether they be between choice and prohibition, clarity and mystery, the named and the nameless—along with the sacred-profane binary Danesi champions—can all be accounted for in the lived structures of body memory intrinsic to the reorganization of our bodily planes afforded by upright posture and best typified in spread-eagle formation, from which the X mark takes its shape. I propose that this is currently the most elegant, most explanatory hypothesis since it accounts for the largest scope of data with the greatest parsimony. It also has the greatest potential for grounding the discussion in the cross-cultural, experiential realm of human bodily dynamics. With this in mind, we are also armed with an explanatory toolkit for better understanding many other dynamics in which X marks are involved. Consider three X marks in a row for instance, or for starters, two.

XX semiotics If X is at its core an embodied cognitive representation of the lone psyche— suspended between extremes with extremities extended—what happens to our perception psychologically and phenomenologically when two X marks are placed side by side? It is all too easy, once again, in our distracted, literate state—now also electrically connected and digitally extended—to be content with encyclopedic network approaches to such questions. We can do a quick web search for answers. The internet tells us of namesake albums, bands and

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beers—of sizes and songs and chromosomes. XX pairs populate the world with stronger brews, hipper indie pop stars and (most notably) females. Such nodes of interconnected info eventually lead to network derivatives like Double X—A New Web Magazine from the Women of Slate—and Dos Equis beer, the brew preferred by “The Most Interesting Man in the World”: stay thirsty, my friend. This is all well and good; such trivia could be catalogued and dissected endlessly with much fascination. But we would have skipped the actual question in doing so: What does XX mean at its core? And co-requisite with this question: How does it mean what it means in an embodied semiotic, experiential sense? Let me suggest that this set of questions should be explored prior to performing semiotic analysis on any XX derivative. For one thing, if a solo X-mark grabs the attention of our body memory (see discussion in Chapters 2 and 3), a double X-mark may be doubly likely to do so. Such a hypothesis could be tested empirically, but we must leave the possibility aside for now. Instead, consider as a thought experiment the psychic drama of two tortured, solipsistic narcissists— both splayed spread-eagle. Does either exist for the other? Does each doubt the veracity of the other’s existence? Does the other exist only for the self? Now imagine me as one of the figures and yourself as the other. In the words of Merleau-Ponty, You capture my image, my appearance; I capture yours. You are not me, since you see me and I do not see myself. What I lack is this me that you see. And what you lack is the you I see. And no matter how far we advance in our mutual understanding, as much as we reflect, so much will we be different. (c.1960: 231–232)

On this account we have two mutually defining selves that are, nonetheless, cut off from each other. This feedback loop can be described as a double hourglass chiasmus, a point that is congruent with Merleau-Ponty’s prose-level syntax. As a result, the alienation of each lone, tortured psyche is entrenched still further: you own part of me that I can never have, and I have part of you that you can never own. As we will see in the next chapter, there are ways out of this trap. One escape route even features Jean-Paul Sartre in conversation with the Dos Equis beer label. Any mode of escape, however, will require relinquishing the philosophical commitments of modernity—narcissism and solipsism chief among them. As long as the X mark is focal, however, and as long as two mutually defining X marks are locked in a neurotic contest of self-other alienation, there is no exit. There is only cause for heightened competition and intensification of threat.

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XXX semiotics If XX is double trouble, XXX is triple threat: hard-core porn, hard-core alcohol, hard-core warning, hard-core competition. If double X is locked in a battle of endless oscillation between self and other, triple X is locked in a battle for supremacy outright. XXX is a communication strategy intent on unmitigated domination and mastery of the other. It is the visual and kinesthetic equivalent of Whitman’s “barbaric yawp”—a roar or raw announcement of absolute supremacy and unconditional control. However long this has been the case in human history, it has at least been so since the early modern period, being just as true 300 years ago as it is today. To test these claims, it is helpful to revisit the Jolly Roger theme introduced in Chapters 3 and 4. Consider the dread banner of Billy “One Hand” Condent (c.1718) in Figure 7.2. In light of evidence discussed in earlier chapters, the spread-eagle origins and implications of the design are manifest. What is novel about the pattern, relative to all other Jolly Roger banners discussed above, is the triple intensification of an already extreme threat: the triple threat. As Thomas H. Maugh II reports (2001), “They were not the best-known pirate gang in history, but they were probably the most successful.” XXX: triply vital, triply arrogant, triply fatal, triply dominant.

Figure 7.2 Triple threat pirate flag of British Captain Billy “One-Hand” Condent, c.1718.

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The core meaning of the pattern remains unchanged in the twenty-first century. Consider the film series xXx (first installment, Cohen 2002), starring Vin Diesel as “Xander Cage.” Xander (X1) is an extreme sports athlete (X2) commissioned by the US government as a secret (X3) service agent. As Glen Fuller describes the film, “xXx is hard core; everything in the film has been modified to the extreme” (2005: 9, emphasis in the original). Fuller goes on to elaborate, for example, that “the aggressive façade of the film’s eponymous character xXx’s heavily tattooed, heavily muscled body is a ‘modified’ version of [James] Bond’s svelte tuxedo-wearing masculine worldliness” (2005: 19). Fuller’s essay focusses on Xander’s muscle car, a 1967 Pontiac GTO, as the hypercharged expression of an unrivaled machismo. This hypercharged masculinity is also expressed in the film series’ logo, a triple X design with the central figure dominant over its alternates (see Figure 7.3). This choice has a remarkable effect, making explicit a dynamic left implicit in typical XXX branding patterns—from porn and beer to error messages and pirate flags. The figures themselves are not merely communicating to an audience, they are also in communication with each other. Of course, this is only true, if you or I in our role as interpreters assume an empathic identification with one or another of the X marks in the pattern by mirroring the mark in our own perceptual body memory. What the xXx design forces closer to the surface of our awareness in this event is the social striving for mastery over other selves—the hyper-masculine competitive drive intrinsic to XXX designs: deliberately intent on the reckless domination of the other. At this level, the lonely, narcissistic X is finally confronted with the problem of its extreme isolation with fever-pitch intensity. In order to maintain the modernist illusion of the solipsistic self—cut off from the natural world, unable to know oneself or others, locked in infinite webs of ideological delusions and yet smugly unaccountable for the imminent destruction of the planet—the persistent suggestion of the consciousness of others can only be met by a struggle

Figure 7.3 Logo for the film series xXx, starring Vin Diesel as Xander Cage. Debut direction by Rob Cohen: Revolution Studios, 2002.

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to outperform, and outcompete, to outmaneuver and overmaster the other until ultimate triumph of the solitary self prevails. In the words of Merleau-Ponty: Consciousnesses present themselves with the absurdity of a multiple solipsism, such is the situation which has to be understood. Since we live through this situation, there must be some way of making it explicit. Solitude and communication cannot be the two horns of a dilemma, but two “moments” of one phenomenon, since in fact other people do exist for me. (1945: 418)

The problem of the existence of other people, and the necessity of their existence in order to verify and validate my own, involves us in puzzles of social semiotics that Jean-Paul Sartre (drawing on Hegel) identifies with the vicious paradoxes of master-slave dynamics.

XX, XXX and master-slave dynamics Whether locked in a battle for outright supremacy (XXX) or locked in the endless oscillation between self and other (XX), the solipsistic X is trapped in master-slave paradoxes. In the words of Sartre, “While I attempt to free myself from the hold of the Other, the Other is trying to free himself from mine; while I seek to enslave the Other, the Other seeks to enslave me” (1943[1956]: 364). The double syntactic chiasmus here is far from incidental—Self: Other:: Other: Self::: Self: Other:: Other: Self. Others exercise power over me by constant observation, judgment, categorization and labelling; I do the same to them. But it will not do for us to pursue isolation from others, much less the annihilation of the other; because if the other ceases to exist, so too does their affirmation of my own existence—that part of me I cannot generate alone. “Please tell me you’re seeing this too,” pleads Elliot Anderson. What the solitary X desires is the satisfaction of possessing the other’s freedom; but if the other’s freedom is possessed, they are no longer free. If the other relinquishes their freedom to my control, on the other hand, they gain a kind of backward power over me in return. In the (chiastic) words of Ta-Nehisi Coates (2013), “The good slave will always know the master in ways that the good master can never know the slave.” Dynamics as twisted as these make for a life in which human relations are doomed to endless cycles of conflict and struggle—cycles from which there is, according to Sartre, no exit. Indeed, the year after publishing Being and Nothingness (his existential response to Heidegger’s Being and Time), Sartre published a gripping play (1944) in which three people (read: XXX) find themselves locked in a room from which there is no escape to

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torment each other under calculating gazes and master-slave maneuvering for all eternity. Hence Sartre’s famous dictum: “Hell is other people.” Such dynamics play themselves out in the most mundane ways imaginable, from the workplace to the home, from courtship relations to marriage, from the classroom and the public square to the political sphere and the search for social justice. Irish poet Richard Murphry sums this up nicely at the level of the love relationship in his poem “Moonshine” (2000), making liberal use of chiasmus patterning in the process: Moonshine To think I must be alone: To love We must be together. I think I love you When I’m alone More than I think of you When we’re together. I cannot think Without loving Or love Without thinking. Alone I love To think of us together: Together I think I’d love to be alone …

The poet’s use of chiasmus in the piece works both at the micro-level of individual stanzas and at the macro- level of the overall poem. For an illustration of the first point, see the third stanza (think: love:: love: think). Comparing the first and final stanzas illustrates the latter point (think … alone: love … together:: love … together: think … alone). The overlapping chiasmi in the poem serve to articulate the pair of double-binds constructed between self and other, a set of hourglass-type chiasmi by which the author feels trapped. For many further reflections on the human social predicament in this vein (many of which also employ overt chiasmus patterning at the level of syntax and discourse structure), see R. D. Laing’s (1970) book of poems entitled Knots. The master-slave dynamics that entrap the lone psyche spill over into many other domains as well, some of which may seem more abstract. Contemporary

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progress in the critical re-evaluation of the myriad oppressive binaries of social construction comes up against similar paradoxes for example. Journalist and author Lionel Shriver makes this observation in relation to recent advances in confronting gender-based oppression. She expresses her own personal dismay over ways in which the expansion of the gender spectrum intended to liberate individuals from the oppressive masculine-feminine binary (discussed above in Chapter 5) are inevitably constructed relative to the poles of the self-same social construction. Yet consider: in order to construct this spectrum, it is necessary first firmly to establish what it means to be “man” and “woman.” Even if you are “genderqueer”—convinced that your gender identity does not conform to the social norms associated with your sex—alienation from social norms depends on the perpetuation of social norms. Thus if you are a gruff, muscular, assertive woman who has adopted the genderqueer label, girlishness must continue to be associated with garrulousness, weakness, and passivity for your identity to scan. In short, the spectrum depends on stereotypes. (Shriver 2016)

Shriver’s observation on alienation is of particular interest here. Even the desire to extract oneself from the social order, much like poet Richard Murphy’s wish to be alone in spite of his love relationship, tends to reinforce the very aspect of the social system against which one is reacting—further entrenching the oscillating (hourglass) chiasmi of master-slave dynamics in the experience of the solipsistic self.

X all alone in the solipsistic crowd As demonstrated in preceding chapters, the feeling of X is a peak feeling of isolation: not in the unpeopled chambers of solitary confinement but in the midst of a crowd—the lone individual as the spectacular center of attention, much like Elliot Anderson’s spontaneous spread-eagle performance in the middle of Times Square rounding out the first episode of Mr. Robot. As Georg Simmel (1923) reminds us, isolation is actually a form of interaction—even at a great physical distance—in which past (or abstracted) relationships with another, or others, are strongly present to the imagination: “The feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense […] as when one is a stranger […] among many physically close persons, at a ‘party’ or on a train or in the traffic of a large city” (1923: 119). Because of such dynamics, as Charles Taylor elaborates still further in The Malaise of Modernity, shallow attempts to radically reinvent oneself or one’s

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philosophy, or to perfectly individuate oneself against the social order—at the expense of social and historical relations—will ultimately be futile: reinforcing the very social and historical relations against which one reacts. This psychosocial phenomenon is not only congruent with but derivative of the reversal in feeling experienced by an isolated X-figure when frozen or trapped into place—a reversal from blissful suspense into suspended horror. Alone, X yields little more than oscillating paradoxes and double-binds, a situation associated with unstable extremes in which communication is perceived as truncated, or artificially isolated within the imagination of a “lone” individual. In examining the lonely X figure as a potent expression of the consequences of modernity, this chapter has drawn attention to chiasmus patterning at work in modern experiences of fragmentation and alienation. Relationships between the X-pose, solipsism and epistemology were explored with reference to contemporary social and conceptual problems. Although a better understanding of the meanings of X is afforded through these insights, no real solutions or antidotes emerge by focusing on the figure in isolation. As XX and XXX dynamics illustrate, no coherent sense of self is possible in utter isolation; but are there no solutions to the master-slave traps of tortured social existence such dynamics introduce? If so, what do they look like? And what then becomes of the lonely X?

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XOXOXO: Figure Meets Ground

The oldest human symbol? Digging deep into the sediment of a coastal cave in South Africa, a team of archaeologists recently uncovered the earliest known example of human symbolic expression (Henshilwood et al. 2009, 2011; d’Errico et al. 2009). Engraved on a fragment of red ochre are multiple crisscrossing X figures, incidentally forming rhombus, or “diamond,” shapes between them (see Figure 8.1a). The motivation, or meaning, behind the pattern is unclear. Given the remote time depth and scarcity of context, it is tempting to assume that such questions might lead only to fruitless speculation. But in light of the embodied semiotic grounding discovered to inform the X mark in the chapters above, possible connections inevitably suggest themselves. To dismiss the potential for such relationships out of hand would be in violation of the consequent premise to the first rule of logic, identified by C. S. Peirce: “do not block the way of inquiry.” Pierce’s first rule of logic is also relevant here: “That in order to learn you must desire to learn and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think” (1898[1998], EP2: 48). The chapters above (and the previous chapter in particular) might make us inclined to think that multiple X marks all in a row could only be interpreted as lone individualists locked in power struggles for significance. But the path of inquiry that unfolds in this chapter takes quite a

Figure 8.1 Basic lattice networks featuring figure-ground (X, ◊) oppositions from widely diverse cultures: Detail from (a) Blombos red ochre incisions, c.71, 000 BCE, South Africa (Henshilwood et al. 2009); (b) Navaho rug design, c.1890, Southwestern US (Washburn & Crowe 1988); (c) Traditional Yombe mat weaving pattern, Lower Congo (Gerdes 2004a).

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different turn—leading us back into the territory of complex integration and the self-forgetful fields of creative analogy. Returning for now to the 73,000-year-old ochre incisions found buried in Blombos cave, Henshilwood & d’Errico (2011) insist that the pattern is symbolic only in a strictly abstract sense—as “a sign that has no natural connection or resemblance to its referent” (2011: 89). How warranted is this assumption? While it may be true that the pattern has no natural correlate in the external visual world, I wish to argue in light of the evidence presented in previous chapters above, that these marks do indeed have experiential correlates in the human Umwelt—the embodied cognitive realm of human phenomenological and psychological experience—and, consequently, the Lebenswelt to which these give rise. Fortunately, the Blombos inscription is not an isolated instance of this design, as Figure 8.1 illustrates. In fact, the lattice motif appears and reappears across cultures and millennia (see also Figure 8.2) as one of a highly selective set of salient patterns (see LewisWilliams & Dowson 1988; Froese et al. 2013a). According to Froese et al. (2013a), this fact poses “a kind of universal selection bias” that calls out for explanation “but which has so far remained mysterious” (2013a: 208). From a semiotic perspective, the systematic relations shared between such designs function at the level of the Iconic Legisign, or diagram type. Although each token (or “Iconic Sinsign”) of the pattern varies slightly, the sheer number of analogous repetitions congeals via habit in the memory as a gestalt or generalized icon. More importantly, given that such patterns arise independently around the world and across millennia, in spite of their absence in the natural world, they may be identified as Indexical Legisigns, or unwitting “symptoms,” presenting a stubborn problem in need of diagnosis—posing a semiotic riddle to all who will pay attention. In short, the origins of these patterns, and human motivations for producing and reproducing them, remain unclear. Even less clear (and less noted) than the recurring crosshatching lattice network patterns featured in Figure 8.1 are the reasons why lattice repetitions of X and the rhombus geometries they incidentally produce, as “figure and ground,” are so often brought together to overlap or blend. Once again, this can be observed in cultural designs that span the globe, throughout history. A sampling from diverse societies originating on four continents is illustrated in Figure 8.2. Naturally, just as it is possible for physical symptoms to deceive the pathologist, it is possible for generic indices to deceive the semiotician. Indexical Legisigns can only be tested against, and interpreted in light of, other signs—preferably including an immense network of other indices that can together be admitted

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Figure 8.2 Overlapping lattice networks featuring figure-ground blends from widely diverse cultures. Detail from (a) Han Dynasty tomb carving, c.100 BCE, Sichuan, China (Dye 1937); (b) Intarsia knitting design, seventeenth century, Argyll, Scotland; (c) Mbukushu traditional beaded apron pattern, Botswana (Washburn & Crowe 1988); (d) Bora traditional twill-plaited basket weave, Peruvian Amazon (Gerdes 2004b).

as a collateral index or “assemblage of symptoms” (Peirce 1903: 223). Observed similarities are crucial, but no more crucial than critical inquiry. To better understand the nature of the patterns that are focal in this chapter, then, it will be helpful to explore four natural/cultural possibilities that might be proposed to explain-away their widespread persistence: (1) long-distance cultural contacts, (2) cross-generational transmission prior to (and following) distant migration, (3) material affordances, (4) inherent geometric constraints. Perhaps none of these four factors can be conclusively ruled out as conditioning correlates; but, as we will see, neither do any of them ultimately satisfy the riddle these patterns pose. I propose that of these four possibilities, the first three are the least satisfactory for guiding us to answers; and the fourth has already been answered implicitly in the preceding chapters. Consider each critical proposition in turn, starting with long-distance cultural contacts. While it is possible that these basic designs are the result of a single innovation that spread and was modified via cultural contact and cross-generational transmission, the complex nature of human cultural evolution around the globe, and across millennia, make such an account implausible. This point becomes more vivid when considering the isolated cultural practices and geographic situations in which most of the designs in Figures 8.1 and 8.2 are historically rooted. While it is potentially plausible to hypothesize that the traditional Yombe mat weaving pattern from the Lower Congo in Figure 8.1c may have been inspired by the same archaic design tradition as the Mbukushu traditional beaded apron pattern from Botswana in 8.2c, for instance, any such link between ancient China (Figure 8.2a) and the Peruvian Amazon (Figure 8.2d) would beggar belief—shifting the burden of proof to anyone proposing such a claim. More importantly, however, mimesis alone cannot fully account for any aspect of

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cultural transmission and evolution (Castro & Toro 2004). As will become clear below, regardless of design influence and transmission, we must also ask what makes such patterns worth reproducing. It is at this crux that the persistence of the pattern emerges as a riddle or Indexical Legisign. As for material affordances, it is important to note that the materials used to produce and reproduce these patterns are as diverse as human material culture itself. Even in the small sample presented above, we find such designs being generated on everything from ochre and granite to woven rugs and plaited mats. Paper, dirt and sand are other common traditional media. While it may have been more natural early in the evolution of culture to produce angular designs on certain surfaces such as ochre, rounded designs would have been just as easily produced on other media. As for the fourth critical proposal that might dissuade us from embracing an embodied cognitive hypothesis as grounding for lattice networks featured across human material cultures, here is the critical proposal: Could it be that the inherent constraints of geometric space might explain (away) the phenomenon, making the patterns introduced above more likely to emerge and re-emerge than others? This, in fact, is a conditioning factor that can serve to enhance the embodied cognitive account this chapter suggests in light of the book’s larger argument. A pivotal distinction to consider in this connection, however—one that keeps this account from being merely reductive—is the recognition that geometry is not itself a set of disembodied abstractions. Two-dimensional Euclidean mappings in particular are widely claimed to be manifestations of embodied human relations, both experienced and remembered (Johnson 1987; O’Keefe 1993; VanLier 2003). When such designs come to be reflected not only visually but also in patterns of speech and social organization, we find potential common ground shared between symmetrical visual designs and symmetrical reasoning. Although relationships shared between linguistic (a)symmetries and cultural dynamics are only beginning to be explored, the results of early explorations suggest that careful reflection on intertwining relationships implied by cultural and linguistic patterns in this class can help make sense of structures, practices and transitions that would otherwise seem illogical or contradictory (see Douglas 2007; Strecker & Tyler 2009; Pelkey 2013a, b, c, d; Wiseman & Paul 2014; Strecker 2011, 2014; Paul 2014; Tyler 2014). In considering explanations for persistent symmetrical structures found across languages, John Haiman argues that only a “creative esthetic drive” (2008: 47) could explain the ongoing reproduction of

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such patterns across time and space by widely diverse generations of speakers. The same explanation also seems necessary to account for the intertwining gestalts described above. Interestingly, the most widely discussed possibility for the emergence of these patterns across cultures relies on appeals to trance-induced states stemming from some combination of social crisis, physiological trauma, ritual ceremony and the use of narcotics. At least one source (Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1988) frames the origin of these patterns as a by-product of trances induced by class struggle, as lone individuals worked out their internal social strivings in the recesses of caves. Lewis-Williams & Dowson propose that regular geometric entoptics known as “Turing patterns” (Turing 1952) were first perceived by these striving loners due to dream states induced by their isolation. Others argue that this fails as an explanation since we need to account for both the biological/ physiological origins and “the cross-culturally shared value of these specific kinds of geometric patterns” (Froese et al. 2013a: 200) that would make them worth expressing at all, much less reproducing. In short, Froese (2013; Froese et al. 2013a) agrees that these symmetrical designs are rooted in Turing patterns and “form constants” (Klüver 1966), perceived by some during altered states of consciousness. Lattice patterns and interlacing symmetries are often described in such instances. But Froese goes on to argue that such patterns are reproduced only because the states that induce them tend to be experienced as significant or meaningful. While this account is plausible, and likely to play a role in the solution of the riddle posed above, not everyone who reproduces lattice designs such as those in Figures 8.1 and 8.2 has had a “form constant” experience. Furthermore, the origins and nature of form constant entoptics are themselves unclear; indeed, body memory might itself be a critical underlying mechanism giving rise to such phenomena. What is more, neither symmetry creation nor symmetry perception is merely (or even primarily) visual in nature (Bateson 1958; Nöth 1998; Carter 2010; Hodgson 2011). Even the recognition of visual symmetry is now known to involve far more than a simple imprint on the retinal wall that is then reprocessed at the back of the brain in the visual cortex. Instead, complex feedback loops are involved that would otherwise seem to be unrelated to the visual experience at all (Rhodes et al. 2005; Williams et al. 2008; Poirier & Wilson, 2010; Treder 2010; Froese et al. 2013a). Three key elements involved are movement, memory and an obligatory mapping between two and three dimensions. Each of these nonvisual components, and others, coordinate with vision in the human perception and production of visual patterns in space.

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We resume this line of critical reflection once again later in the chapter. For now, we turn to the proposed relationships that constitute the heart of the chapter and the book: extreme body memories underlying the semiotics of X and their implications for better understanding chiasmus and human cognition. Could a radical embodiment hypothesis for the origins of lattice networks found in material cultures around the world be just as robust as the embodied grounding established for the X-pose in previous chapters? Additionally, could it be that lattice networks provide insights that might help us move beyond the crippling paradoxes and master-slave dynamics typified by spread-eagle figures and X-pose strings? First it will be helpful to illustrate ways in which spreadeagle dynamics extend to spread-eagle lattice networks.

Lattice people in folk art Returning once more to Marshall McLuhan’s perspective on ads as folk art (mentioned above in Chapter 1 and explored further in Chapter 3), we resume our search for signs—foraging through the contemporary forest of brandmarks and graphic designs for clues and case studies. As demonstrated in earlier chapters, content analyses of brandmarks and ad designs can facilitate a better understanding of the object of inquiry. First consider the two design sets collected in Figure 8.3. In each set, the figure at left assumes a solo spread-eagle pose; to the right of each is a complementary graphic design representing the same product in a different mode. In the first set, the X-posed design is a movie poster, while the lattice-posed design (featuring two X-poses) is the LP jacket for the movie soundtrack recording. In the second set, the X-posed design is an ad for a training package and the lattice posed design is a film still from the actual product training DVD. Notably, the lone X is in each instance a white male. And in each instance the same individual is then foregrounded in the accompanying lattice design extension. In the first instance (Figure 8.1, top), the lone spread-eagle male is Fred Astair, playing “Danny O’Neill,” a jazz musician down on his luck but vying for the attention of Paulette Goddard’s character “Ellen Miller.” By the end of the film, Danny is able to turn his career around by dance-conducting his own composition for the Artie Shaw orchestra. Astair’s ephemeral X leap in both instances, along with Goddard’s in the album cover, is congruent with discussions in Chapter 2 of peak performance experiences in which the self is the celebrated center of mass spectacle. Unmistakable XX-level master-slave

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Figure 8.3 Two Sets of X-pose advertisements with lattice-pose complements. Top Left: Movie poster for Second Chorus (Paramount Pictures 1940), starring Fed Astaire and Paulette Goddard; Top Right: LP Album cover of Second Chorus movie sound track. Bottom Left: P90X Extreme Home Fitness ad poster; Bottom Left: Still frame at 21:38 of a P90X training video.

dynamics (see Chapter 7) emerge in the album cover composition as Astair’s left limbs are placed in front of Goddard’s with his right palm rotated to face her in a blocking gesture—both signs of dominance or domination. In the second set (Figure 8.3, bottom), Beachbody superstar Tony Horton is featured in a suspended X-pose, not only congruent with the X in “P90X” and the “x” in “extreme home fitness” (see further discussion in Chapter 1) but also congruent with the liminal suspension between fitness training and torture that the posture implies at the experiential level—that is, extreme exertion to

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the point of severe pain and exhaustion. Fittingly, in classical and koine Greek, the term for “torture” or “punish,” ὑπωπιάζω, was also used in lingo for sports activities such as prize-fighting, representing the discipline of one’s own body through acts of training (Liddell & Scott 1940). Extended to videographic choreography, this pose and its mythic embodied sub-text comes to participate in master-slave dynamics at the XXX or (xXx) level as explored in the previous chapter. Notably, the alpha male is situated front-and-center— his lesser training associates backing him up for a visual/cinematic triple-threat assault on the trainee’s will and ego. Although the two multi-person spread-eagle compositions clearly feature embodied semiotic elements that are extensions of patterns identified in the previous chapter, they also feature something else—something new. In neither case are the “lattice-posed” figures strictly a string of bodily X-poses; otherwise, hand would be touching hand, and foot would be touching foot. Note that in both cases the limbs of the spread-eagle figures in the right column are depicted as overlapping to some extent. In proxemic terms, this means that the body space of the other person has been ruptured. Visually, this also creates further X-marks. The detail may seem minor, but the distinction is pivotal. The new crossings or “chiasma” introduced as design elements in these figures point to a new possibility. Chiasma is the Romanization of Greek χίασμα meaning “crossing”—the root of the term, naturally, being identical with the chiasm in “chiasmus.” In English usage, the term is primarily restricted to biology in references to the crossing of ligaments or nerves—the most famous instance being the neural optic chiasma in vertebrate species that feeds visual input from the eyes to the visual cortex after crossing mid-brain. Less well-known, but more relevant to the present discussion (in a visual diagrammatic sense), is the genetic chiasma event that occurs during chromosomal meiosis, as illustrated in Figure 8.4 schematic, drawn from a study guide used by students at Harvard University (Stimolo 2007). During meiosis prophase I, compatible chromosomes pair up side-by-side and then enter a mode of interactivity known as “synapsis.” Wherever there is a chiasma between strands, crossovers can occur, leading to recombination of chromosome strands and the exchange of genetic material. The themes and metaphors of chiasma, crossover and productive information exchange are particularly salient here. Although I cannot presume to make sweeping evolutionary/developmental claims between chromosomal crossovers and the mapping of embodied interactivity onto patterns in material culture, there is nonetheless an important analogic or diagrammatic lesson to be learned from

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Figure 8.4 Illustration of chiasmata in laterally paired chromosomes yielding genetic recombination during meiosis prophase I (Stimolo 2007).

this schematic. Simply put, chromosomal chiasma can be used as a guide to understanding chiasma in bodily interaction that are then mapped onto the intertwining designs of lattice networks and come to inform their tacit meanings and our own, in reflexive feedback loops. Before proceeding, let me acknowledge that some elements of this analogy do not transfer. Humans are incapable of swapping forearms and lower legs; chromosomes do not have arms and legs—nor do they stand up. These aspects of the blend are simply suppressed (a common feature of conceptual blending, see Fauconnier & Turner 2002). Consider, in spite of these potential distractions, various aspects of the blend space that map quite well between chromosomes and X-people. Chiasma and crossovers in bodily interaction, best typified in spread-eagle arrays, also involve us in dynamics of exchange, recombination and integration. This could be summed up in the phrase “productive communication.” Alternatively, as William Croft points out (2000: 18–20), it should come as no surprise that “intercourse” is so strongly polysemous between interpersonal procreation and interpersonal communication. To test these claims and further develop the hypothesis, we may turn to more stylized logos and their interpretive semiospheres. Consider the three exemplars listed in Figure 8.5. The first logo (Figure 8.5, top-left) is drawn from the New Yorker magazine’s regular “Dance” section, announcing upcoming dance-related events along with reviews and reports on recent dance events in the Big Apple. The two spreadeagle figures’ adjacent limbs are not only engaged in a state of double chiasma, the two have interchanged to the degree of coming to share the same mind presumably: in the act of dancing, the two become one. Themes of cooperation and interchange are so vividly on display that distinctions between the two have

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Figure 8.5 Three spread-eagle lattice logos. Clockwise from top-left: New Yorker “Dance” section logo; Logo for European Commission Website on Integration (ec. europa.eu/migrant-integration); Doing Family Right logo (doingfamilyright.com).

in some sense become unimportant. In other words, would-be master-slave dynamics implicit (and inherent) in XX designs are subverted or obliterated by dynamics of chiasma and crossover. The second logo (Figure 8.5, top-right) comes from the European Commission Website on Integration (ECWI). The logo is intended to be used for linking back to the ECWI website from other sites on the World Wide Web. As the executive branch of the European Union, the European Commission is, among other things, charged with the successful integration of migrants to member states. Thus, while XXX (or xXx) dynamics of hard-core experience and triple-threat are still implicit in the logo, the migrant status of the immediate interpretant and the source-path-goal component of the visual icon suggest a reversal in perspective from threat to threatened—from oppressor to oppressed. Flight from danger or dire straits to the open arms of the ECWI is implied in the logo design and its stated purpose. Furthermore, the spread-eagle figures are not

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only crossing interpersonal boundaries along the proxemic dimension but also crossing paths along the temporal dimension. These design elements work well with themes of integration and repatriation that serve as the final interpretant of the design. Thus once again, chiasmata between the limbs of spread-eagle people not only introduce design elements of simple lattice networks but also suggest dynamics of productive exchange and shared experience. Finally, consider the third logo (Figure 8.5, bottom), drawn from an organization entitled Doing Family Right. All that keeps the logo itself from being realized as a strict triple-threat (XXX) spread-eagle array is the figureground reversal relative to more typical brandmark design choices (contrast with the other two logos in Figure 8.5 set). This is no insignificant detail since it foregrounds an alternative pattern that the otherwise triple-threat spread-eagle figures create together simply by coming into contact. Since the X-posed figures blend with the background, we are also unable to identify with certainty the limits of the extremities. This makes the design an implicit lattice network instead of a strict XXX array—even suggesting an overlay of X and rhombus suggestive of the argyle design discussed further below. The thoughtful design choice to make individual identities less prominent than the pattern they create by coming together to create shares meaningful congruence with the organization’s own mission statement: “dedicated to helping you build lasting, more satisfying marriages and stronger, healthier families.” The site goes on to describe the organization’s number 1 core value thus: “We believe life is relationships. To be successful in life, you need to be able to love and be loved well. The better your connections with the people closest to you, the deeper your satisfaction in life will be.” This is the strongest verbal statement of a theme already distilled from the graphic designs analyzed in Figures 8.3–8.5. I suggest that it shows the way beyond the lonely X via two design elements of embodied experience: network chiasma (meaningful, reciprocal exchange) and figure-ground reversal (losing oneself in collaborative projects). The latter becomes focal in the next section.

Dos Equis beer and the rhombic reversal When two or more X figures are placed side-by-side, they create a third space— the space of the in-between. As mentioned above, the new space can be described as a “diamond” pattern—that is, an inverted hourglass or “rhombus.” The visual, phenomenological dynamics that result are illustrated vividly in the logo design for Dos Equis beer, reproduced in Figure 8.6.

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Figure 8.6 Dos Equis Beer Logo: Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery, Monterrey, Mexico.

First brewed in 1897, the beer was originally dubbed Siglo XX to mark the turn of the twentieth century. The brew traces back to Wilhelm Hasse, a German entrepreneur who immigrated to Mexico to help start the Moctezuma Brewery in Monterrey, Mexico. The human face situated between the two X-marks is a depiction of Aztec ruler Moctezuma II, a heroic figure who resisted Spanish occupation in the sixteenth century. From a semiotic perspective, multiple levels of polysemy suggest themselves in the basic XX design: Denotationally we may note the explicit narrative celebrating the turn of the twentieth century expressed in Roman numerals. At a more general, historical level of denotation, we may also note the traditional brewery practice of listing double and triple X-marks to index the relative strength of the beer in question. Connotationally and interculturally, the two X-marks may also represent contact between colonial powers Germany and Spain. This interpretation is suggested by the presence of a third culture, the Aztec civilization, that emerges via visual metonymy in the central image of Moctezuma II—also echoed in the name of the brewery. Additional

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levels of connotation can also be noted, such as the politically problematic appropriation of indigenous cultures for commercial ends, and the use of color toward psychological ends. Given the focus of this book, however, it will be more useful to shift our attention to the embodied meaning of the design — that which tacitly undergirds or structures the sense of all other elements in the design. Returning to the troubling dynamics of the XX-pattern discussed in the previous chapter, we recall that double-X arrays are implicated in antagonistic self-other feedback loops that further entrench the alienation of each from the other via master-slave dynamics. Such dynamics are rooted in body-memory and in the philosophical and technological commitments of modernity that lead to lifestyles of hyper-individualism and solipsism. Given the higher-order analysis presented above, it should be observed in this connection that the rhomb space between the two X-marks introduces not only a third space inhabited by a third culture but also a new interlocutor by which the alienating dynamics of the other two come to share common ground. In the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery and the Dos Equis brand, Germany meets Spain in the colonized territory of the Aztecs (and other indigenous peoples of Mexico). The rhomb space of the in-between that emerges as their ground shines with golden rays emanating from a visual blend of the sun and the emperor’s headdress. The rhombus ray pattern even escapes the bounds of both X figures to create a rhombic background, pulling all elements of the design together as one. In short, the two find common ground, and it is this ground or environment that grants meaning to the figure. Thus, in spite of the many problematic political and racial dynamics also involved in the logo’s appropriation of indigenous culture, we should note that design elements are in play at a more fundamental level—the level of embodied semiosis. My suggestion is that the Dos Equis design provides a fundamental image of interpersonal (and intercultural) communication that transcends the otherwise vexing experience of double X, without denying or ignoring its tensions: XX, after all, is still stated loudly—in bold red with thick strokes. The Dos Equis logo is an exemplary token of a broader type. Treated together with the chiasma dynamics discussed in the previous section, we find a way, both diagrammatically and experientially, to move beyond the alienation of the lonely X and its XX and XXX derivatives. The new pattern type can be referred to as “rhombic reversal.” The rhomb is the ground to the XX figure and the reversal is a reversal of attention between XX figure and rhombic ground. In rhombic reversals, the meeting ground or middle ground comes into focus,

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shifting attention away from oppositional binaries and their petty, self-absorbed antagonisms. Reflecting on X as a diagram of oneself, this may suggest to some degree, a model for loss of interest in the self. It also models for the self the loss of interest in the other’s validation (or nonvalidation) of one’s own self-hood—all in favor of a shift in focus—a shift toward some fresh, surprising possibility—the creation of something new that could not have come into being without the meeting of oppositions. The other is then indirectly (and perhaps unintentionally) in a position of potential reconciliation to myself and myself to the other. Double-X is then open to being reframed as a model of partners or collaborators in some new venture or endeavor—each less likely to pose as threatening master or undermining slave to the other. The pattern does not represent full integration, and it can easily reverse perspectivally back to the XX figure; but as long as the rhombic middle is in focus, the basic feeling may be summed up as “wonder”— the feeling of losing oneself in something new and unexpected. Let me suggest that the rhombic reversal represents a key aspect of what C. S. Peirce refers to as “thirdness”—an aspect of thirdness that often goes overlooked (Pelkey 2013d). Thirdness, to put it simply, is in the middle. In the ontological categories of Peircean semiotics, firstness (quality) and secondness (reaction) are diametrically opposed. Thirdness (mediation) comes between the two to introduce meaningful growth. In short, the semiotic pattern is not sequential 1-2-3 but nonlinear 1-3-2. This abstract pattern can be both pictured and felt clearly in the XX dynamics of self vs. other and the shift of focus to the new rhombic reality between the two. In chiasmus studies, this is known as the “third term” (Wiseman & Paul 2014). As sociohistorical anthropologist Mary Douglas (2007) finds to be true of chiasmus patterning in ancient texts around the world, the meaning, or “interpretive key,” in such designs is to be found in the middle. With this in mind, we turn again to the embodied status of the chiasmus figure across a range of types.

Chiasmus in embodied interaction As a leading scholar and interpreter of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Boris Wiseman (2007, 2009) draws attention to chiastic reversals and chiastic structures that typify many of the structural anthropologist’s major insights and contributions. Moving beyond classical treatments of chiasmus, Wiseman clarifies that he is not merely concerned with chiasmus as a stylistic device or figure of speech; he is intent, rather, on

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exploring chiasmus as “a pattern of thought, an organizing schema, a structure that determines, from behind the scenes, the form and content” of both Lévi-Straussian theories and “the process of anthropological understanding” more generally (2009: 87). Wiseman then goes on to show the chiasmus figure functioning at formative levels in many of Lévi-Strauss’ major works. From relationships between painting and music across cultures (in Lévi-Strauss 1994) to relationships between hot and cold societies across time (1995), to relationships between games and rituals across events (1966), to relationships between self and other across cultures (1955, 1978, 1994), Wiseman finds a kind of “chiastic logic” in Lévi-Strauss. Far from merely organizing oppositional structures, chiasmus patterning functions as a hidden but dynamic figure of thought fulfilling a “reconciliatory function” in these works, serving “as a means of bridging seemingly insurmountable differences, of integrating heterogeneous elements” (Wiseman 2009: 93). In an earlier phase of life, however, Lévi-Strauss had ended his Tristes Tropiques (1955) in a tone less optimistic about the possibility of productive interchange between self and other. Wiseman identifies this early pattern of thought with a static, circular chiasmus, in which ethnographic understanding came to seem impossible to Lévi-Strauss due to his temporary assumption that the ethnographer’s goal was to abolish differences between poles of “disjunction” and “conjunction,” ultimately reducing other to self and self to other (Wiseman 2009: 97–100). Harkin’s (2010: 29) appraisal of this notion (of self-other trading places) as a “tired trope” is especially relevant in this connection. Although a merely oscillating notion of chiastic thought would not come to mark LéviStrauss’ work as a whole, Wiseman goes on to show in the remainder of the essay that the larger distinction involved is crucial for gaining a better understanding of the chiasmus figure. As insights in previous chapters have shown, drawing on perspectives of embodied chiasmus and embodied interaction, what Wiseman identifies as a “circular” chiasmus may be better identified as an oscillating hourglass pattern or a set of double-binds. If interaction between self and other is in focus, the double X hourglass dynamics from the previous chapter are once again more relevant and also help explain the disillusion both Lévi-Strauss and Harkin attribute to the idea. Once again, the search to ground chiasmus dynamics in bodily experience is more illuminating that the application of piecemeal metaphors. As mentioned in the introductory chapter of this book, my wish to expand the discourse and understanding of embodied chiasmus is the extension of a project initiated by French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty finds basic correlates with chiasmus patterning to pervade the lived dynamics of

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bodily experience. He demonstrates that the distinction shows much promise for moving beyond the gridlock of dichotomies such as subject vs. object and self vs. other. In his own words, perhaps the self and the non-self are like the obverse and the reverse and since perhaps our own experience is this turning round that installs us far indeed from “ourselves,” in the other, in the things. Like the natural man we situate ourselves in ourselves and in the things, in ourselves and in the other, at the point where, by a sort of chiasm, we become the others and we become the world. (c.1960: 160)

Notably, Merleau-Ponty also applies “obverse/reverse” phrasing to chiastic experiences of one’s own body, such as we find in our left-hand touching our right (and the right touching the left): “The body sensed and the body sentient are as the obverse and the reverse, or again, as two segments of one sole circular course which goes above from left to right and below from right to left, … one sole movement in its two phases” (c.1960: 138). Considering the dynamics of embodied interaction in light of patterns discussed above, we must ask whether or not the level of cognitive chiasmus Merleau-Ponty identifies in either of these two cases of “obverse/reverse” patterning actually moves us beyond the oscillating dynamics of hourglass dynamics and the problems of the solipsistic self they entail. As C. S. Peirce mused some seventy years earlier, “your neighbors are, in a measure, yourself, and in far greater measure than, without deep studies in psychology, you would believe. Really, the selfhood you like to attribute to yourself is, for the most part, the vulgarest delusion of vanity” (c.1892, CP 7.571). While such proposals may help in moving beyond strictly solipsistic dilemmas, they are no comfort to thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre. Recent insights from Toadvine (2012) and Gallagher (2014), mixed with the diagrammatic pattern solving above, suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s chiastic phenomenology does not necessarily escape the problem of solipsism completely. Toadvine argues that Merleau-Ponty’s chiasm between sensible and sentient ultimately remains in the territory of “auto-affection,” self-touching, self-enfolding much like the reflexive self-questioning of Western philosophy in general: “an interrogation of being about the being of interrogation” (Toadvine 2012: 344), or in the words of Merleau-Ponty, “the simultaneous experience of the holding and the held in all orders” (c.1960: 266). “It is the characteristic of the philosophical questioning that it return upon itself,” Merleau-Ponty adds, “that it ask what to question is and what to respond is” (c.1960: 119–120). This is well and good: self-reflexive attention may justifiably be asserted as one of the triumphs of modernity. But if this is the sole end of inquiry and interaction, such activities have little purpose.

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Sean Gallagher (2014) argues in this connection that it is Jean-Paul Sartre who picks up where Merleau-Ponty leaves off by introducing an “Intersubjective turn.” Sartre (1943[1956]) introduces a distinction between the “body-forothers” and the “body-for-itself.” The former is seen by the other as an object. This, in turn, comes to influence my own perception of myself: “not only is my body seen by the other, it is experienced by me as seen by the other” (Gallagher 2014: 12), thus introducing an exterior perspective that creates a feedback loop, influencing one’s own interior perspective of the self. Considered in terms of the basic gestalts of embodied chiasmus under consideration in this book, I wish to suggest that the respective theories of embodied interaction identified by Merleau-Ponty and Sartre both function at the level of oscillating hourglass chiasmi—the frozen X figure—or two oscillating hourglass patterns in relation. The lone figure expresses the dynamics of self-touching MerleauPonty describes. Double-X dynamics differ between the two primarily in that for Merleau-Ponty such dynamics are benign and nonintrusive, while for Sartre such dynamics are not only malignant (leading to master-slave relationships) but lead to the equivalent of hell on earth, as discussed in the preceding chapter. It would be more accurate to note that Merleau-Ponty’s theory of chiasmus in embodied interaction is more phenomenological than social. It is also important to clarify that Sartre was distraught at being unable to escape such dynamics—a problem with which Merleau-Ponty was unconcerned. Merleau-Ponty’s metaphor of “intertwining,” after all, is itself the beginnings of an escape route from the endless oscillation between self-and other—showing the way beyond the current impasse via the collaborative construction of new networks (typified in the lattice figure), shifting attention from figure to ground (typified in the rhombic reversal) or incorporating the third space created with another into one’s own identity (typified in rhombus-X blends, popularly known as “argyle”). Each of these phases call for far more treatment than this introductory volume can manage. Together they suggest a diagrammatic typology of chiasmus dynamics that is not only gradient and developmental but also robustly grounded in the patterned experience of body memory. A more clear articulation of this typology is my next priority.

An embodied typology of chiasmus The first to treat the topic of systematic typology for linguistic chiasmus is Anthony Paul (2009, 2014). Paul does not seek to ground his typology in patterns

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of body memory, but his inquiry involves experiential modeling—parsing out the various types of psychological, emotional and logical experience conditioned by linguistic chiasmus in its spoken and written phases. His 2014 proposal “From Stasis to Ékstasis: Four Types of Chiasmus” is not only groundbreaking in this regard but also lyrically accomplished and richly illustrated. As I will show, the four basic categories of chiasmus patterning he identifies have strong correlates in the embodied pattern types identified above in this book. My modifications of Paul’s typology, then function as an affirmation of his discoveries as much as a revision and clarification. And the many congruences between Paul’s findings and my own serve as a kind of independent verification of their relevance and salience. However, the grounding supplied in this book provides a more unified, diagrammatic account based on embodied structural dynamics for shifting what Paul discusses as “Cross,” “Mirror,” “Circle” and “Spiral” types toward a more continuous series of grounded types. These can be construed colloquially as (X), “Hourglass” (⧖), “Diamond” (◊) and “Argyle” (⧖ ◊) types, respectively. Further derivative types of chiasmus may be suggested by the embodied approach as well. Paul begins his inquiry (1992 and 2009) by simply asking why and how it is that chiasmus can be used in some instances as gratuitous verbal play, in other instances as anxiety-inducing paradoxes, and in still other instances (later explored in Paul 2014) as a means of discovering wholeness and meaning where none had seemed possible. To illustrate instances of the first two distinctions, Paul (2009) uses examples of chiasmus patterning in two of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet and Macbeth, to explore this question. He suggests that empty, fatuous uses of chiasmus in Hamlet, such as Polonius’ statement “‘tis true, ‘tis true, ‘tis pity,/And pity ‘tis ‘tis true”(Act 2, Scene 2), are congruent with the trivial nature of relationships among “the Danish court, the play’s metaphor for the world, … a place of hollow forms, doubleness, insincere smiling appearances” (Paul 2009: 107). This stands in sharp contrast to feelings evoked by the form in Macbeth, evident in lines such as “fair is foul and foul is fair,” a doubly antithetical contradiction that also functions as a microcosm of the broader ecology of meaning in the play: namely, “a trap—mental, moral and existential” (2009: 110). In the play as in social life, unless we are able to identify such double-bind patterns, we remain with Macbeth, locked into paralyzing habits conditioned by contradictory social codes (as explored in Bateson et al. 1956). Paying attention to chiasmus patterning, then, can help us distinguish between social situations in which we are masters of rhetoric and those in which rhetoric masters us (Paul 2009: 105).

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The first chiasmus type is widespread, and may indeed be one reason why chiasmus studies are not yet widely undertaken as a serious pursuit. Toadvine discusses chiasmus in this mode as “tritely ornamental” (2012: 336)—citing such examples as “Stars don’t make movies, movies make stars”; “We’re not better because we’re bigger; we’re bigger because we’re better.” Really. Trust us. Hariman deems chiasmus in this mode to be “vapid”—“a rhetoric in miniature” (2014: 45, 48). Such statements may be generated endlessly with little meaning. In Poor Richard’s Almanack (1733), Benjamin Franklin assures us, for instance, that “A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough.” How should one respond to such an aphorism? What? Why? Sure. Whatever. Similarly, according to John Keats, a certain Grecian Urn assures us that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (Keats 1820). Logically, such constructions are known as “tautology”; stylistically, they are known as “pleonasm.” Ideologically, all such constructions correspond with the comfortable affirmation of received knowledge, whether or not it may be true. Don’t ask questions: “that is all you know … and all you need to know.” Given the frequently grave, dry and oppressive nature of ideologies, however, other tokens that fall under this category may not seem trite or shallow at all— especially if announced by a well-respected figurehead. Thus, when Vygotsky states that “In our conception, the true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the socialized, but from the social to the individual” (1932), the decorative verbal stunt is likely to make his pronouncement seem all the more believable, and all the more authoritative—whether or not it is true. Chiasmus in this mode, then, may even become manipulative. Whatever the case, according to Paul, this type “may respond to our desire to see a proper and healthy order of things affirmed or restored, or it may help us comprehend available alternatives … or at any rate give us the idea that we have a better grip on [them] since [they are presented] in such a neatly packaged formulation” (2014: 26). Because of such dynamics, a typology of chiasmus cannot be constructed without reference to pragmatics. What is the speaker trying to accomplish in such cases? The motive is clearly to impress, to please, to move (see Hariman 2014: 48)—an attitude akin to that of the show-off or the people pleaser. The speaker feels a kind of smug satisfaction. In short, linguistic chiasmus in this mode is the verbal equivalent of an ephemeral spread-eagle leap or feat in spectator sports. The audience is impressed and moved; the athlete is happy and satisfied. Once again, though, this all changes when the figure is frozen to a torture rack—locked into a pose of absolute difference.

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The oscillating hourglass pose, introduced in Chapters 4 and 5, boxes in the spread-eagle figure with double-binds. Paul (2014) refers to chiasmus in this mode as “mirror chiasmus” stating that it “presents irreconcilable oppositions, bringing about stasis and a sense of life as fate or an insoluble riddle” (2014: 28). Again, Paul brings up the witches’ incantation from Macbeth cited above. He also explores similar dynamics in Marcel Proust, summed up as “the torment of desire and the impossibility of its satisfaction”, resulting in prose level chiasmus structures congruent with feelings of “despair and paralysis” (Paul 2014: 31). It may be tempting to think such dynamics are unique to the plight of modernism, but we may note similar dynamics far beyond the Western world and far before the present. Consider the following lines for example from Laozi’s classic Daode Jing (c.500BCE: 58, translation my own): 知者不言, / 言者不知。 知

者

不

言,

/

言

者

不

知。

zhī

zhě

bù

yán,

/

yán

zhě

bù

zhī

know

rel

not

speak,

/

speak

rel

not

know

‘those who know don’t speak;/those who speak don’t know’ In the chiasmus, knowing and speaking are alienated from each other. To do either in the interest of the other is to step into a trap laid by the Sage; and, indeed, even the sage is in danger of falling prey to his own trap. Anyone who reads these words aloud not only undermines herself in the act of reading but undermines confidence in the veracity of the statement in the very act of listening to the spoken words. This may be read as an ancient Chinese version of the “liar’s paradox.” With contradiction and difference poised to strike at every corner, the suspension of the psyche in a tortured state is the very purpose of the prose, and chiasmus is called forth to achieve the effect. Chiasmus in this mode realizes the “primitive matrix of dialectics in its Hegelian form,” a mode of thought “explicitly taken up by post-structuralists such as Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida in terms of its fundamental asymmetry, displacement and resistance to closure” (Toadvine 2012: 337). For these reasons, I propose that chiasmus in this mode be recognized as “hourglass” chiasmus—in keeping with the continuity of patterning realized in the embodied dynamics of spread-eagle posture established earlier in this book (see especially Chapter 4).

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Paul’s next chiasmus type is clarified substantially when resituated within the embodied patterns under consideration in this book. He discusses this third type as “Circle” chiasmus and claims that it is associated with melancholy and troubled passages of labyrinthine movements. I propose that Paul’s own analysis suggests otherwise—as does grounding this chiasmus type in patterns of body memory. Based on dynamics outlined earlier in this chapter, I suggest that this type should be considered instead as “Diamond” or “Rhomb” chiasmus and associated not with melanchony but with wonder, bliss or the experience of being lost in some fresh insight. As discussed above, a “rhombic reversal” may occur between figure and ground when hourglass dynamics that were previously intensified between two figures alienated by double-binds—suddenly opening up to create an escape route via self-forgetfulness—or a loss of self-concern in some new common ground. Thus, when Paul (2014: 34) cites Petrarch’s line in translation, “I am already weary of thinking how/my thoughts of you do not weary me” (Cazoniere, Number 74), rather than reading these lines as melancholic wandering, the poet’s tone might also be read more so as a state of wonder. The poet is, after all, reflecting on the nature of love (an emergent space distinct from, but created by, both lover and beloved). Nor does the poet find the musement altogether unpleasant. Likewise, transitioning to a discussion of Leopardi’s “L’infinitio,” Paul notes that chiasmus dynamics in the poem are used to “present us with the human mind brought up against the mysteries of existence, almost giving way to existential terror but at last surrendering to the insoluble, and letting thought drown in the immensity of the mystery of the universe” (2014: 36): wonder indeed. Musement over some dilemma that refuses to submit to either-or dynamics may qualify for this mode as well (prior to committing to some hypothesis on the matter). Thus, when Baudrillard wonders, “Is it the media that induce fascination in the masses, or is it the masses who direct the media into the spectacle?” (1994: 84), both possibilities are presented as equally plausible. As long as the matter is undecided, the effect is “Rhombic.” If an either-or verdict is given, the chiasmus becomes a basic X-type—a new ideology or assumption about how the world works. If a both-and verdict is granted, in which the two dynamics are found to be interdependent, the chiasmus pattern transitions into a fourth type. Paul refers to this type as “Spiral”; but situated within the embodied grammar of chiasmus I am developing in this book, the type should be construed as derivative of bodily design elements congruent with overlapping lattice networks—something closer to the pattern popularly known as “Argyle.”

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In Argyle chiasmus, wonder shifts into overdrive in the form of inquiry. In terms of embodied gestalts this is represented by (and rooted in) the overlapping or blending of figure and ground in which the space of wonder created in a state of oppositional contrast with another becomes a sustaining part of the self—the self sustaining it in turn. This is congruent with a dynamic Peirce refers to as “the development of concrete reasonableness” (1901: CP5.3) or the growth of the final interpretant. Indeed, meaningful growth of understanding is the hallmark of chiasmus in this mode. Mutual reciprocity, symbiosis and interdependence are other ways of describing the structure of this chiasmus type. In a recent discussion on the interdependence of linguistics and anthropology, for instance, R.M.W. Dixon employs a syntax-level chiasmus to express the chiastic relation, arguing that “any decent linguist must invoke a fair dose of anthropology, and that in order to achieve significant results, an anthropologist should harness the essentials of linguistics” (2014: 29). Becoming aware of the benefits and importance of chiasmus in this mode is something of a priority in an interconnected age, especially since the digital world we inhabit is itself in a relation of reciprocity with ourselves thus connected. In the words of McLuhan, “our central nervous system is technologically extended to the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us” (1964: 4). Notably, McLuhan’s chiastic statement takes the inverse form of a similar pronouncement made some 2,500 years earlier by Heraclitus on the importance of reconciling oppositions in general: ἐκ πάντων ἓν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα: “from all things one, and from one all things” (Fragment 59, Patrick 1889, underline formatting my own). As mentioned in Chapter 1, Heraclitus identifies the chiasmus principle with ‘oppositional harmony’ (Miller 2011): Παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη (palintropos harmoniē). Similarly, Toadvine remarks on chiasmus’ ability to reveal the “underlying unity of conceptual oppositions” (Toadvine 2012: 337). Harmony and unity sound well and good at face value, but since the same might be said of ephemeral Type 1 chiasmus dynamics above, we do well to recall that for the blend between Type 2 and Type 3 to be maintained as Type 4, some degree of tension, wonder and uncertainty must be kept alive. The push for synthesis, in other words, cannot be allowed to capitulate to the bland Hegelian sublation of oppositions discussed in Chapter 4. With these distinctions and interrelationships in mind, we are able to map Paul’s four chiasmus types onto a unified grammar of embodied chiasmus. The embodied chiasmus types are summarized in Table 8.1, flanked by a basic descriptor of the relevant phenomenological category of movement on one

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Table 8.1 A diagrammatic typology of embodied chiasmus Phenomenology of movement

Embodied Basic type Mnemonic gestalt term

General mode

General mood

Paul (2014)

spread-eagle leap

⨉

X

spread-eagle torture

⧖

Hourglass Rack

Double-bind Crisis

“Mirror”

space between other

◊

Diamond

Rhomb

Insight

Wonder

“Circle”

blend with third space

⧖ ◊

Argyle

Rheme

Inquiry

Growth

“Spiral”

Rote

Tautology

Satisfaction “Cross”

side and Paul’s originally proposed terms on the other. In between are further summary descriptors drawn from the preceding discussion, with one additional column presenting an alliterated mnemonic set (Rote, Rack, Romb, Rheme). What sets this table apart, among other things, is that the distinctions, categories and descriptions are strongly motivated instead of merely arbitrary. They are motivated by networked relations of resemblance that can be rooted in memories of bodily movement and embodied feeling in an upright frame. In other words, this table is a multiply embodied diagram—a diagram of structured, experiential relations that build on each other incrementally. In his discussions of diagrammatic thought, Peirce recommends that a successful diagram should involve common experiential iconic relations “which anybody who reasons at all must have an inward acquaintance with” (c. 1906[1976], NEM 4: 316). Similarly, elsewhere, he argues that a successful diagrammatic heuristic “should be carried out upon a perfectly consistent system of representation, one founded upon a simple and easily intelligible basic idea” (1903: CP 4.418). The diagrammatic typology of embodied chiasmus meets these criteria. But this does not mean it is the sum of chiasmus.

Language, chiasmus and creative analogy Other aspects of bodily chiasmus also play a role in the emergence of creative analogy, or so I have argued in Chapters 5 and 6. Reorganized by a new, habitually orthogonal relationship to the earth, upright posture frees our upper limbs for active reflection. Left–right sagittal relations become more pronounced and more conceptual, yielding positive grounds for the development of oppositional markedness as a cognitive, cultural tool. But this is not all: upper–lower transverse relations draw attention to another mode of markedness—functional

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markedness between part–whole sets that can be used for creative analogical reflection, forming a cognitive/conceptual base for extension to other domains. I have not argued that these embodied evolutionary dynamics are the sum of the origins of creative analogy (and thereby the language faculty)—but only that they are a likely to be a profoundly important component. These possibilities are also profoundly neglected. The neglect of embodied dynamics as at the level of primary modeling underlying the emergence of analogy is partly due to widespread biases against enactive, embodied approaches in general. Another challenge such accounts face in this instance at least is due to other widespread biases against any value being placed, whether—logically, aesthetically, theoretically or cognitively—on the lower half of the human body. These dynamics were illustrated in Chapters 4 and 5 from the perspectives of analytic philosophers and cognitive linguists. It is, naturally, somewhat embarrassing to admit the lower half of our bodies may be crucial to consider in accounting for the fundamental nature of human cognition. The lower half reminds us most clearly of our animal nature. We are not disembodied spirits or angels hovering above the earth. We are drawn to the earth, padding with our paws from place to place; voiding, rutting, mating and bearing young no differently than the vast branching varieties of our mammalian next of kin. Furthermore, symmetries observed to hold between left and right seem far more perfectly reversible—or “enantiomorphic”—than those imagined to hold between upper and lower. Thus, when confronted with an unfamiliar Huichol ritual cited in Myerhoff (1978) from north central Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidentál, Norrman (1999) declares that the Huichol ritual practice of substituting a foot for a hand is a “watered-down enantiomorphism”—a corrupted version of “symmetry-proper” (1999: 66). Norrman has good company in making such assumptions. Contemporary symmetry theory is founded on bilaterality and (mis) construes bilaterality to be perfectly mirror symmetric or “enantiomorphic.” Wherever else in nature this may be true, it is not true of the human body. Even human faces are not truly bilaterally symmetric, except in the ideal. Subtle dissymmetries and asymmetries, such as variant patterns of freckles and differing striations of wrinkles, along with more dramatic antithetical symmetries, such as a twinkling left eye, a scar on one side of the chin, or a mole on one upper lip, are the norm. Likewise, as discussed in Chapter 5, our two hands are not perfectly symmetrical but antithetically symmetrical due to lateralization (or handedness) and reflective function (vs. static reflection). Not only is hand physiology marked and unmarked due to specialization, but hands do not match

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simply by rotating one 180 degrees (in which case one faces front and the other back). Thus, in human experience opposition is the norm—marked symmetries, not pure symmetries. The modern fixation with bilaterality, typified in Norrman’s obsession with enantiomorphy, cuts two ways: it obscures the oppositional dynamics that structure our experience across the sagittal plane; and it obscures our conceptual awareness of analogical relationships across the transverse plane. As discussed in Chapters 1 and 5, this fixation appears to be due to an analytic bias introduced as late as the eighteenth century (Hon & Goldstein 2008), one that is not only conceptually foreign to ancient civilizations but also to many traditional societies around world in contemporary times (Levinson & Brown 1994; Danziger & Pederson 1998; Danziger 2011). This is not to say that tacit relationships of markedness or “lateralization” across the sagittal plane are foreign in these same cultures, however. On the contrary, at a conceptual level, antisymmetry seems to be more familiar or salient in human cultures than mere symmetry. In order to model the “the psychic unity of mankind” (Boas 1938), it will eventually be necessary to account for the organizing influence of the anatomical planes of the bipedal person—a basic experiential reality shared by humankind. The visceral origins of markedness in language range both wider and deeper than the experiential knowledge of lateralization. Left and right are important tacit experiences for the cultural organization of logical and semantic relations that underly social constructions, but upper-lower dynamics are equally important for ensuring that such systems can be called into question, re-framed, disrupted and kept fluid. As Mosko implies, both sets of dynamics are central to cultural systems around the world: [C]ontradictions are not merely tolerated in many if not most of the world’s cultures but they are central aspects of much cultural or symbolic reasoning and the hallmark of their internal complexity. […] The reasoning embedded in human mythical and non-mythical cultural systems seems not only to allow the possibility of such complex nonlinear analogical relations but, again as LéviStrauss has argued, positively centers upon it. (Mosko 2005: 170)

Given the centrality of contradiction, opposition, analogy and symmetry dynamics in languages and cultures around the world (all of which can be captured more elegantly in the term chiasmus), such phenomena should also be given pride of place in our ethnographies, analyses, descriptions, methods and theoretical modeling. Picking up on a similar proposal to this effect from Roy F. Ellen, introduced in Chapter 5, Ellen argues of arm-leg systems that “it is important to recognize that their complementarity or similarity does not rest

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solely on morphological or functional criteria, but is set in the broad context of body symmetry” (Ellen 1977). In light of these connections, to select chiasmus as a central figure for understanding cultural patterning would also be to select bodily structures as the analogical base from which these structures derive. Body parts and body partitions would then play a key role in understanding the very emergence of analogy as derivative of “expressive form”—a term borrowed from Susanne Langer. Langer defines expressive form as “any perceptible or imaginable whole that exhibits relationships of parts, or points, or even qualities or aspects within the whole, so that it may be taken to represent some other whole whose elements have analogous relations” (1947: 20). If embodied chiasmus patterning and analogical modeling are so closely related (see Silverman 2015: 12 for further corroboration of this assertion), we might expect overt syntactic chiasmi to be a regular feature of discussions related to creative analogy. Allow me to offer two brief examples to illustrate this point as a thesis for future exploration. First consider an exposition of creative analogy at work in the mind of Albert Einstein, under consideration in Hofstadter & Sander’s (2013: 477) sweeping tribute to analogical thinking. The authors quote Banesh Hoffmann (1973: 81) on the matter: “In his paper of 1905 Einstein said that all energy of whatever sort has mass. It took even him two years more to come to the stupendous realization that the reverse must also hold: that all mass, of whatever sort, must have energy.” The powerful potential of chiasmus for modeling possible worlds should not be underestimated. Consider, as another example, Fauconnier & Turner’s (2002: 131–134) discussion of “digging one’s own grave” as an example of double-scope conceptual blending (see Chapter 5 for further discussion of this concept). The blend has two inputs: “grave digging” and “unwitting failure.” Since digging one’s own grave is an undesirable activity, one would be foolish to be unaware of this. The authors note that “in the construction of the blend, a single shift in causal strucure—The existence of a grave causes death, instead of Death causes the existence of a grave—is enough to produce emergent structure, specific to the blend” (2002: 133, emphasis in the original). If Fauconnier & Turner are correct in claiming that “The impulse to achieve integrated blends is an overarching principle of human cognition” (2002: 328), much less the original source of the language faculty (2008), sustained inquiry into the origins of this impulse should be considered a priority. One salient hypothesis generated in the chapters above is that the emergence of creative analogy and the chiastic patternings that mark its structural processes are

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dependent on, and derivative of, the reorganization of our anatomical planes and the tacit awareness of new markedness relations between parts and wholes these developments entail. The new habits of thought forged from identifying such relations across the transverse plane open up primary blends from which more abstract blends can develop. But what motivated this development? Just as the lattice networks and intertwining cultural symmetries introduced at the beginning of this chapter would not have emerged without the perception of some meaningful value motivating their production, so it must be with analogy.

The motive for analogy The human penchant for creative analogy clearly has survival advantages, but most individual analogies do not. Even in the case of highly useful analogies, their survival advantages are only apparent in retrospect—hence the consonant tropes of the “mad” scientist and the “starving” artist. Both specialize in creating new analogies that seem at first to be either trivial or absurd. Some stand the test of time and reshape our consciousness in ways that grant us new and lasting leverage on life; some live on as secret pleasures appreciated only by a select few; but the vast majority of creative analogies do very little to aid us in meeting our basic animal needs. No one experiencing the free play of imagination is given assurance that the analogies they entertain will lead to breakthroughs with longterm survival advantages, and even to suggest that this might be relevant to the individual immersed in musement may well be taken as an insult. What, then, is the motive for creative analogy or “double-scope conceptual blending”? What, for instance, could have motivated Einstein to analogize by chiasmus patterning in his thought experiments discussed above? According to Hoffmann (1972, in Hofstadter & Sander 2013: 477), Einstein was led to such conclusions “by aesthetic reasons.” Hofstadter & Sander summarize the internal process as follows: Einstein’s initial glimpse of a new kind of mass in 1905, as well as his lack of full understanding of it […] gave rise to such serious tension in [his] mind that he was eventually forced to make a daring esthetics-driven extension of that initial notion (that is, of strange mass), getting rid of the conceptual schism and thereby re-establishing conceptual unity, thus leading to a harmonious new state of understanding … (2013: 477)

In the previous chapter, and in Chapter 2, we discussed Wallace Steven’s poem “The Motive for Metaphor,” arguing that “you” (whom the poet addresses) are

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motivated to generate metaphor partly in order to escape the harshness of selfabsorption and dogmatic certainty implicit in Steven’s references to “The weight of primary noon,/The A B C of being/…. The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.” The positive half of this motivation is the comfort of losing oneself in creative analogy—the emergence of some new ecology of meaningful possibility: “The obscure moon lighting an obscure world/…. Where you yourself were never quite yourself/And did not want nor have to be,/Desiring the exhilarations of changes…” When fully realized, chiasmus patterns-in-process enable us to experience Steven’s “exhilarations of changes.” Rhombic reversals between figure and ground help us overcome the oppression of antagonistic binaries without needing to ignore or obliterate the binaries themselves. If a given binary is false, it will fade away. If something about it is true, its truth will become more authentic. We no longer need to care. We have become captivated by a third possibility, and this captivation leads us to the development of a new habit of mind with implications that may ripple like an overlapping network of tessellated lattice into other domains as well. Russell articulates an instance of this point in relation to the mental/material binary inherited from classical modern thinking when he states that “Overcoming mind/body dualism to understand thought as shaped by bodily experience and bodies as shaped by ideas about the world may help us to overcome human/animal dualisms as well” (2010: 16). With this in mind, a further motivation for creative analogy—and for paying closer attention to the chiasmus figure as creative analogy—lies in the figure’s “potential to shatter expectations and conventions (and establish new ones)” (Strecker 2014). This finding is articulated best by Ivo Strecker and other thinkers in the Rhetoric Culture Project, who find that the figure can assist in identifying false or misleading dichotomies (see Paul 2014: 40–41; Hariman 2014: 50, 57–59), enabling us to overcome or cope with the influences enforced by socially constructed prison houses of language and thought (see Hariman 2014: 60). This, in turn, can enable us to supersede familiar categories (Paul 2014: 38). It is in this way that chiasmus is useful for opposing dogmatism (Paul 2014: 42), helping us wake up to ideological traps so that we can find a way out. Because of this, chiasmus is discussed as a figure that is potentially healing or liberating (see Usher 2014: 157, 158; Bollig 2014: 164, 169; Wiseman 2014: 233)—even transforming (Strecker 2014: 87) and regenerating (Wiseman 2014: 225). According to Strecker (2014: 87), however, such benefits can only result from working through less pleasant experiences of surprise or shattered expectations. This facet of chiasmus is discussed as a “(dis)organizing principle”

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(Usher 2014: 157) and as a “destabilization agent” (Bollig 2014: 164). From this perspective, to the degree that chiasmus patterning is structural, the structure itself is unstable (2014: 173). Because of this, chiasmus can easily be experienced as a face-threatening act, an unwelcome, asocial intrusion (Strecker 2014: 73, 78–80, 85). In this connection, the figure may also function as “a basic operation of censorship in the psyche” (Vanier 2014: 143), and can even be construed as dangerous in some cultures (Lewis 2014: 188, 195, 197). The reverberation and confusion that result from chiasmus in this phase are similar to what some have identified with experiences of novel metaphor (see Strecker 2014: 75). Other aspects of experience also appear to overlap between novel metaphor and chiasmus, such as juxtaposition, semantic tension and interaction (2014: 74, 81). Similarly, as I have argued above, chiasmus patternsin-process may well prove to be involved in or identical with what theorists in cognitive semantics now identify as “conceptual blending” (Fauconnier & Turner 2002). A few contributors to Wiseman and Paul (2014) come close to suggesting such relations in discussions of synesthetic experience, which are identified as intrinsically chiastic (see Paul and Wiseman 2014: 15; Strecker 2014: 81). In chiastic modeling, the “place of mixing and merging” (Wiseman 2014: 224) that results from blending two extremes can be identified as the creation of a “third term.” This distinction is crucial for moving discussions of chiasmus beyond assumptions of binary modeling that have tended to mark the topic (as referenced in Bollig 2014: 167; Vanier 2014: 146, see also detailed discussion in Pelkey 2013c). The significance of a third term that emerges from oppositional contrasts in chiasmus patterning is discussed by several volume contributors (Paul 2014; Strecker 2014; Hariman 2014; Wiseman 2014). These discussions go back to Wiseman’s (2009) essay on ethnographic chiasmus in Lévi-Strauss introduced above. What keeps the anthropologist from being either cut off from the other or absorbed into the other is a third, mediating position between self and other (see Wiseman 2009: 99), a role that can be filled by language learning, which results inevitably in a kind of interlanguage (see also 2009: 100–101). Thus, the emergent “third term” in chiasmus modeling serves an “osmotic function” (Bollig 2014: 172), opening up a blended space of reciprocity and new possibility.

X and the meaning of argyle When two or more X-figures are placed side-by-side their pattern dynamics reveal at least three key layers of embodied symbolism: (1) alienation, (2) chiasmata,

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(3) rhombic reversal. The first possibility was introduced in the previous chapter, where double-X interchange was found to be locked in master-slave feedback loops between self–other relations. The second possibility, introduced at the beginning of this chapter, occurs when adjacent ‘limbs’ overlap—crossing into the personal space of the other, not only bringing individuals into contact but suggesting possible ways of transcending sheer differences into new networks of figure-ground relations. The third possibility occurs when the space created between the two is brought into focus, resulting in a state of self-forgetfulness or wonder. With these distinctions in mind, a fourth possibility can also be noted. Chiasmus patterning in this mode involves an admixture of the first three, combined with a further transformation: a merger between figure and ground. This is illustrated in a number of Renaissance-era renditions of the Vitruvian Man, discussed in Chapter 1, including Geoffroy Tory’s (1529) mapping of the spread-eagle figure onto its rhombus ground and then projecting both onto the letter “O” (see Figure 8.7). In English this rhombus-X blend, along with its fractal tiling iterations, is known as “argyle.”

Figure 8.7 Embodied X-O-Rhombus merger in Geoffroy Tory’s Champ Fleury 1529.

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A second book is needed to adequately introduce the embodied semiotics of argyle patterning in relation to chiasmus and cognition, along with the implications these insights hold for changing the way we think about the way we think. Since this book has reached the margins of its outer limits, I can only hope to pose a clarifying analogy for the time being as a promissory note. Consider, then, some of the ways in which argyle patterning might be congruent with symbiotic modeling between organism and environment. If an array of X-figures represents a collection of organisms, their environment corresponds with the rhombus geometries that emerge between them as their necessary ground. Symbiotically relating to each other is what organisms and environments do. The uniquely human quest involves an ongoing effort to make sense of relations that are symbiotic. As a fundamental mode of human modeling, chiasmus’ latent promise is largely stored in the leverage it affords for grappling with (and feasting on) what Roger Lohmann has dubbed “delicious dueling dualisms” (2010: 1). Andrew White (2015, drawing on Mosko 2005) affirms what anthropologists continue to discover and rediscover around the world: that is, the “apparent universality of contradictory, dualistic, and/or oppositional symbolic structures embedded in human cultures” (2015: 146). As Lohmann goes on to claim, “problematic as they are, binary pairs are congenial to human thought” (2010: 1). But are they? Perhaps Lohmann, along with the rest of us, could be missing something important. Polarized dichotomies are certainly congenital in human thought, but are they also congenial to it? As the Rhetoric Culture Project shows, it may much rather be the case that the problematization and reconciliation of antithetical binary pairs is what proves truly to be congenial to human thought. The conditioned acceptance or subconscious assumption of polar oppositions, on the other hand, is often less than helpful, whether we are attempting to ward off harmful escalations, understand new material, learn new skills, forge fresh dialogues, identify hidden power structures, or make new discoveries. Consider, for instance, the various entrenched binaries inherited, in many Western cultures, from Cartesian dualism: nature–culture, subject–object, body–mind, animal–human, thinking–feeling (see Merleau-Ponty c.1960; Johnson 2007; Russell 2010: 5). Unless we are able to construct and identify deliberate models that call them into question or bring them into dialogue, such polarized dogmas will continue to hamper and hamstring our understanding of the nature of human being, in anthropological theory and practice. Of the many dichotomies that may be identified in contemporary anthropology as a social movement, one emerges as a “profound divide” (Harkin 2010: 34), separating “postmodern” Boasian relativists on one hand from

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“science”-oriented, data-collecting empiricists on the other (2010: 28ff.). From Andrew A. White’s perspective, “Tensions between the study of the particular and the study of the general, between the emphasis on history and the discovery of process, between anthropology as a scientific humanity and anthropology as a humanistic science, remain unresolved today” (2015: 143). To feel as if one must decide between anthropology as humanity and anthropology as science, to assume that one must engage either in cultural criticism or cultural fieldwork, is part of the problem, since both approaches are needed; the other half of the problem emerges from suggestions that there might be no distinction between the two. This is the problem of mere holism (see Harkin 2010: 37). Taking clues from Lévi-Strauss’ (1966) paradox of suppressed differences, Harkin (2010) finds that in some way such divides need to be both called into question on one hand but affirmed and protected on the other. This, in fact, is a key function of chiasmus: to keep apart while bringing together. Properly considered, however, this is not the end of chiasmus. The leverage chiasmus provides also enables us to transcend oppositions by bringing a third (or further) blended possibility into view—new modes of mutual interdependence through which the oppositions themselves become more authentic, more enriched, more full of possibility. Chiasmus in its most developed mode is chiasmus at its most meaningful— consonant with the embodied semiotics of thirdness or mediation. This, as Peirce suggests, includes “Sympathy, flesh and blood, that by which I feel my neighbor’s feelings” (Peirce c.1875: CP1.337). For this reason it is unlikely that the lone X figure at the heart of this study is culturally more basic than a string of X figures, a lattice network or an interlacing pattern like argyle. It may rather be the case that individual X figures are artificially extracted, isolated and alienated from such ecologies of meaning. This interpretation would accord with the history of modernity. Understanding our contemporary plight, then, may be consonant with understanding the semiotics of X. Insights into the semiotics of X are not restricted to high and heady themes. As I have shown elsewhere in the book, reflecting with more care and clarity on the semiotics of X can help us better understand everything from country music and television shows to quirky footwear and corporate logos. Paying closer attention to the semiotics of X can also cast new light on topics ranging from poetry and rhetoric to archaeology and mythology. It is also my hope, among other things, that these insights contribute to the semiotics of symmetry, the semiotics of diagrams, the semiotics of solipsism and to the semiotics of gesture—a more robust evo devo account of the origins of gesture (Bouissac 2006), in particular, “opening a vista on the way the gestural competence of each individual is rooted

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not only in each one’s proximal history but also in a long evolutionary lineage which explains the possibility of this history” (2006: 201). My argument since the first chapter has been that a better understanding of spread eagle posture provides a plausible account for better understanding not only the origins of gesture but also the evolution of language as the human capacity for modeling possible worlds. Such suggestions are only a beginning, however; and they are certainly not an attempt to begin again from scratch. They are, rather, a new beginning in medias res—an alternative approach that moves beyond disembodied internalist accounts and missing-body externalist accounts of the nature of language and meaning, without being dismissive of the unmistakable contributions and insights such approaches provide for advancing the science of language. The findings and connections presented in this book should serve to move cognitive semiotics and cognitive linguistics into new phases of inquiry. The object of inquiry can be framed as the grammar of embodied chiasmus and the embodied chiasmus of grammar. Finally, given the radical polysemy of the figure, the meanings of X will still seem to extend far beyond spread-eagle posture. Even so, evidence presented in these pages suggests that wherever X is, there too is body memory—the inverse structured relations shared between our extremities afforded by movement in an upright frame. Whether or not we are aware of such dynamics conceptually, the vast array of symbols and symbol systems derivative of X (from logic and analogy to brandmarks and petroglyphs) must themselves be understood through structured memories of body movement if they are to be understood at all. In the words of Carl G. Jung (1949: 92), “The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body and they express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et anima.”

Notes Chapter 1 1

Although a recent study by Ranehill et al. (2015) calls into question earlier claims on hormonal and risk-taking effects, the basic power pose effect (i.e., feeling more powerful) is supported.

Chapter 2 1

2

3 4

5 6 7 8

9

See, for example, issues 1, 10, 14, 28, 36, 41, 49, 56, 89, 103, 104, 111, 126, 129, 135, 147, 157, 162, 166, 184, 189, 199 (1963–1985). Cover images available online: http://bit.ly/1jsdah5. More technically speaking, this is an Iconic Legisign (in Peircean semiotic parlance) working as a corporeal gestalt or “image schema” (in the parlance of cognitive semantics). Conversely, those who were too tall for the bed, had their limbs lopped off: ultimately including the giant himself. In the words of McLuhan and Nevitt (1972: 66), “Man is an extension of nature that remakes the nature that remakes man.” But this remaking does not take place apart from embodied movement. Involving, among other things, the activity of mirror neurons (Sheets-Johnstone 2012a). But also commonly used as signage for various inns and pubs and in miscellaneous historic heraldry from Germany to Persia. Not cited in the OED entry. Including Iconic Qualisigns, Sinsigns and Legisigns involved in multiple modalities: A point that will be further explored in the final section of the current chapter, and elsewhere in the book. Naturally, the activity of diagrammatization can only be clearly identified in retrospect, and even to the degree that some particular course of development might have been vaguely predicted, predictions prior to the fact could not have been made with any precision in terms of chronology and sequence due to the unstable nature of the constantly evolving nature of the complex linguistic system.

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10 Permission granted under license from Faber and Faber Ltd to republish the poem in full. 11 Myriad other embodied relations can be identified that involve polarized crisscrossing dynamics, such as the mechanics of eyesight, the phenomenology of touch, neurological organization, diagonal chains in physiology, experiences of synesthesia, reversals between speech and hearing, inverse correlatives between birth and speaking, and more (see further discussion in Merleau-Ponty c.1960; Pelkey 2013a). Such dynamics are more complex than the basic global pattern focal in this book. This point will become clearer in Chapters 8 and 10, which set the stage for more advanced discussion of intertwining patterns in language, culture and cognition that also have their grounding in lived, visceral and social experiences, building on the globally embodied X. 12 And, thereby, a more general approach to continuity—that is, the ways in which human experience is continuous with other nonhuman modes of life. 13 Also known as “image schemas” (Johnson 1987), “corporeal schemas,” “body schemas” (Zlatev 2007) or “kinetic melodies” (Sheets-Johnstone 2012b). 14 “Diagram” used in Peircean parlance is “an icon of intelligible relations” (1906, CP 4.531), and therefore consonant with the image schemas of cognitive semantics, since, in the words of Mark Johnson (1987: 75) relative to this topic, “There can be no meaning without some form of structure or pattern that establishes relationships.” 15 Tokens are replicated (as Rhematic Indexical Sinsigns) and experienced in each unique instance (as Dicent Sinsigns) while being coalesced into general types (as Rhematic Indexical Legisigns) and simultaneously organized into relational networks (as Iconic Legisigns), all below the surface of deliberate or explicit cognition.

Chapter 3 1

While it is worth noting that the spiral might also represent the circular movements of a backrub in its broader network of polysemy, the broader class to which this logo belongs determines that its default orientation be construed as a front-facing design.

Chapter 5 1

As noted in earlier chapters, this distinction is rooted in the work of Cornelia Müller (2008).

228 2

3

Notes As Bernhard (2008) notes, this stands in stark contrast to Frege’s analytic model, which is intended to form the basis of a language of pure thought. Interestingly, relations between Frege’s version of the four propositional relations emerge as inverse correlatives of the language of actual thought proposed by Peirce. These chiastic reversals hold potentially rich (and relatively untapped) potential for insight into sociocognitive processes (see Pelkey 2013b and Corso 2014: 80–87 for intimations of things to come).

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Index abdomen 46 abduction. See logic absurdity 188, 219 advertisements. See marketing affordances xiii, 75, 126, 144, 178, 195–6 agency 46–8, 51, 54, 115 aggregate analysis. See semiotics alcohol 100, 185, 187, 203–5 algorithms 146, 182 alphabet 4–5, 33–4, 56, 61, 75, 97, 182–3. See also X figure alterity. See also dialectics; ideology; self alter-ego 88 otherness 33, 92, 188–91, 193–200 self vs. other 1, 86, 91, 93, 206, 208 analogy. See also conceptual blending; diagrams; paradigms; semiotics creative 141, 151–66, 175, 178, 194, 215–19 experiential 169 guessing at systematic resemblances 59 kinetic 130, 154 and language 140, 175 lexicalized 57 as metaphor and metonymy 131 motive for 219–21 narrative based 61, 177 and paradigms 162, 166, 171 partial 201 primary 126, 133, 151 projected 8, 57, 167, 170 reanalysis of 57 reversals and interactions between parts and wholes 36, 173 selective 140 syncretic 141 and synthesis 171 and transversality 132, 138, 162, 165 and word coinage 21, 57, 87 Anati, Emmanuel 9–10 anatomical planes. See also orthogonality caudal-rostral 128, 170

conronal 127–8, 132, 164–5 cranial-caudal 15, 128, 170 dorsal-ventral 15, 128, 170 experience of 88, 130–1 reorganization due to bipedalism and habitual upright posture 15, 71, 118, 147, 154, 178, 217, 219 sagittal (bilateral) 127–8 transverse 17, 36, 127–8, 140, 153, 159, 169, 175 anatomy, human transverse relational. See also analogy; spread-eagle ankles and wrists 45–57, 151–3 appendages, xiii, 35–6, 58, 131, 138, 147, 152, 160, 162 arms and legs, xiii, 4, 7, 17, 42, 48, 131, 140, 147–75, 178, 201 elbows and knees 151, 153, 155–6, 159, 163–4 elbows and ankles 156 face and groin 48, 163 fingerprints and footprints 160–1 fingernails and toenails 153, 156, 162, 164–5 fingers and toes 15, 43, 139–42, 147, 151, 153–61, 165, 171–3 fingertips and tiptoes 147 foot-leg and hand-arm 136, 155, 166, 169 forearm and calf/shin 153–6, 165–6, 201 hands and feet 15, 48, 111, 140, 142, 151, 158, 162 limbs 14–15, 39, 43, 48, 58, 61, 69, 71– 2, 79, 88, 107–8, 128, 130, 151–67, 171, 175, 199–203, 215, 222, 226 palm and sole/heel 153, 156, 162, 166 shoulder and hip 160, 170 shoulder and knee 20, 153, 156 thigh and upper arm 36, 48, 153, 160, 164–6 angst. See misery

250 angularity 30, 128, 130, 196 animals. See also anthropology; anatomical planes; aposematism; bipedalism; quadrapeds bears 12 bighorn sheep 10 claws 31, 125, 164, 165 dogs 14–15, 113 emu 7 hominids 11–12 horses 12, 46 paws 11, 216 primates 128 puffer fish 12 rutting and mating 216 skunks 12 snakes 9 annihilation 188 anthromorphs 6–11 anthropology, xiii, 1–2, 4, 6, 15, 33, 68, 77–8, 88, 95–6, 113–14, 120, 142, 149–50, 154, 166, 183, 206–7, 217, 221, 223–4 anthropomorphization 33, 65, 77 antimetabole. See chiasmus antisymmetry. See symmetry antithesis. See dialectics antonymy. See semantics Anttila, Raimo 6 anxiety. See misery aposematism 12, 17. See also power-pose; spread-eagle posture archaeology 7, 9, 34, 68, 182, 193, 224 archetypes. See mythology architecture 15–16, 133, 154 argyle. See patterns Aristotle 36, 117, 120, 122 arms. See anatomy arm-leg syncretism 151–60, 175. See also anatomy; conceptual blending Arnheim, Rudolph 20 arrogance 4, 35, 40, 53–57, 62, 75, 179, 181, 186, 220 artifacts 11, 68, 86, 107–8, 120 Astair, Fred 198–9 Astonishment. See surprise asymmetry. See symmetry athletics. See sports audience

Index as participants 35, 39, 44, 51, 69, 138, 177, 179, 187, 211 as spectators 44, 46–9, 80, 172, 190, 198, 211 auroras 8 austerity 31, 33 auto-affection 208 awakening 99, 111, 115, 133–8, 219. See also transformations Ayscough, Anne 44 balance 18–20, 25, 48, 123 ballet 43 Basso, Keith 170 Bateson, Gregory 90, 113–14, 197, 210 Baudrillard, Jean 213 BDSM. See torture beer. See alcohol behaviorism. See ideology beliefs. See ideology Berman, Morris 4, 34, 180 Bhavacakra. See Buddhism bias. See ideology bilaterality. See anatomical planes; enantiomorphy; symmetry binaries. See polarity bipedalism 13–14, 30, 128, 147, 217. See also orthogonality; upright posture birth 101, 105–6, 109, 227. See also rebirth blends. See conceptual blending; imagination blockage 87, 107, 115, 134, 135, 183 Blombos. See caves Boas, Franz 217 body. See also anatomy; image-schema; movement; posture; spread-eagle abstracted 27–9, 143, 225 (See also disembodied) alienation from 4, 13 body-for-itself vs. body-for-others 209 body image 8, 18, 39, 52, 127–30 body language 49, 51, 58 body lines, xiii, 4, 17, 30, 129–30, 169 (See also anatomical planes; lines) body memory, xiii, 13, 29–30, 57, 59, 61–5, 79–83, 93–8, 107–8, 125–32, 144, 152, 157, 164, 172, 175, 184–5, 187, 197–8, 205, 209–10, 213, 225 bodymind 97, 181

Index body-mind dichotomy 28–9, 220, 223 body parts (See anatomy) body partonomy 148, 151, 155–6, 218 body schema 29, 129 body-symbol blends 225 body-tree blends 170 body-world/body-earth blends 97–9, 101 conceptual-physical-experiential distinction 148–51 in counting 157–8 experience of (See phenomenology) lived 28 in sports 42–4 temperature 12 topology 44, 46, 48–9 in torture 44–7 bodybuilder 32, 42, 71 Bouissac, Paul, xvi, 6, 13, 30, 94, 138, 224 Bradley, David 160 breakthrough. See awakening Broden, Thomas 6, 115, 118, 134 Buddhism Bhavacakra 87, 109–11 Buddha 110 Buddhist heaven vs. hell dichotomy 109–10 dependent co-arising 21 Samsara 109, 111 Yama 111 Burning Man festival 69–70, 74 capitalism 79 cars 170, 187 cartwheels 58, 172 categories of chiasmus 210–15 familiar 220 Peircean 206 categorization 188 caves Blombos (South Africa) 193–4 cave art 7–8, 35, 182, 193–4 Cueva de la Serpiente (Mexico) 9–10 El Castillo (Spain) 182 vision quest trances 197 caverns. See caves cheerleading 42–3, 75–6 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith 51 chiasm. See chiasmus

251

chiasmus. See also analogy; dialectics polarity; spread-eagle; symmetry antimetabole 21 chiasma 200–5 chiastic logic 207 discourse-level 98–9, 189 double chiasmus 185–8 embodied 17–20, 22, 26–30, 37, 47, 100, 164, 198, 207–15, 218–23 functions 22–6, 86–7, 92, 101, 104, 189, 206–7, 209–15, 217–23, 228 history 21–3 inversion 4, 10, 17, 26, 42, 46, 48, 54–7, 65, 88–93, 97–100, 106–11, 122–3, 140, 142, 156, 162–73, 203, 214, 225, 227, 228 nonlinguistic 22, 108, 206–9 optic chiasm 200 oscillating 87, 179, 190, 207 patterning 20–1, 87, 185, 206 phrase-level 56–7, 210–14 reflexivity 13, 23, 127, 162, 201, 208 reversals 47, 206 rhetorical figure 2, 21–2, 37, 47 semantics 56–7 sentence-level 21, 86–7, 102, 185–8, 209–18 third term 206 typology 37, 87, 104, 134, 200–6, 209–15 children child figure 7 child digit (pinkie) 160–1 early childhood development 48, 61, 88, 106, 144 One Laptop Per Child 63–4 chirality. See lateralization chiropracty 70, 76–8 Chomsky, Noam 118 Christianity St. Andrew 44–5, 60–1 St. Andrew’s cross (See saltire) devotion to 100 heaven vs. hell 135–8 Jesus 184 priest 115–16, 136–7 circle-x. See XO closures 25, 62, 135, 212 clues 5, 8, 31, 33, 59, 79, 101, 117, 178, 198, 224. See also semiotics

252

Index

Coates, Ta-Nehisi 188 coat-of-arms 126–7 codes. See also communication; semiotics arbitrary encoding 13 encoded meaning 7, 89, 97, 134 open coding 67 social codes 210 cognates 126, 160 cognition. See embodied cognition communication 3, 12–13, 37, 49–50, 54, 69, 75, 81, 89–90, 95, 101, 114, 119, 151, 158, 175, 182, 186–91, 201, 205 communities 9, 37, 149, 155 competition 53, 75, 105, 180, 185, 188 complementarity 24, 31, 36, 51, 54–5, 58, 62, 99, 104, 121, 143, 154, 156, 169, 198, 199, 217 complexity 77–8, 122, 164, 217 compression. See conceptual blending Comrie, Bernard 158 concepts 3, 14–29, 36–7, 54–9, 67–8, 86, 106, 111, 115, 117, 121, 142, 158, 164, 166–9, 214–25. See also conceptual blending; metaphor; semantics; semiotics conceptual blending 36, 57, 140–75, 201, 218–21 artifact-emotion blend 61 compression 100, 140, 145 conflation 75 double scope conceptual blending (See creative analogy) FiveFingers blend 139–42, 173 grounded blends 146 human scale 145–6 human-animal blend 7 human-tree blend 74, 166–9 hybrid 158 marketing strategies 32, 81–2 primary metaphor as input 146 congruence. See analogy; iconicity; meaning; symmetry connotation. See meaning context. See meaning continuity 18, 104, 142, 150, 181, 212, 227 gradience 75, 149–51, 156, 209 spectra 44, 46, 75, 190 contradiction 22–4, 51, 57–8, 62, 86, 90, 100, 108, 114–17, 121, 123–7, 132, 179, 196, 210, 212, 217, 223. See also dialectics

contraries 19, 25, 37, 50, 62, 71, 98, 100–1, 117, 120–4, 175, 217 counterexamples 159–61 contstraints, xiv, 101, 115, 122, 126, 140, 144, 195–6 conundrums 3, 14, 21, 78, 184. See also paradoxes; double binds cooperation 75, 201 corollaries 26, 61, 125, 138, 160 correlation 8, 18, 64, 80, 99, 118, 120, 124, 132, 156, 171, 194–5, 207, 210, 227, 228 counting 157–8 countries, regions and continents. See also languages and cultures Africa 3, 35, 158 Andaman Archipelago 1 Asia 3, 118, 223 Australia 7, 35, 44, 73, 76, 141, 149 Baja California 7–9 Canada 32–3, 70–1, 73–4, 79, 161 China 35, 152, 164, 168, 195 Columbia 70, 74 Congo 172, 194–5 Denmark 34 Egypt 45 England 61, 80 Europe 31, 46, 172, 202 France 74, 86 Germany 34, 204, 205, 226 Great Britain 3, 51, 85, 154, 187 Greece 31–3 India 1, 7, 36, 82 Israel 122 Italy 7–8 Japan 32, 33 Mexico 7, 9, 172, 204–5, 216 Netherlands 70, 74 North America 10, 34, 53, 113 Papua New Guinea 113, 149, 155, 156 Peru 195 Scandinavia 34 Scotland 60–1, 81, 195 Siberia 150 Spain 80 Sweden 34 Switzerland 79 Tibet 87, 109–11 Uganda 172 United States 34, 52, 70–1, 73–4, 113

Index Vanuatu 158 Wales 36, 85, 87, 96 creative analogy. See analogy creativity 80, 87, 92–3, 100, 102, 131–2, 141, 151–66, 175, 178, 194, 215–19. See also conceptual blending Croft, William 145 Crossing. See also lattice; X figure crisscross 20, 184, 193, 227 cross 35, 42, 46, 60–1, 210, 215 crossing 101 crossbeams 46–7 crossbones 79–82, 85 (See also jolly roger) crosshatching 194 crossover 200–2 crucifixion. See torture culture. See languages and cultures cybernetics 95–6 cycles 87, 90, 92, 104, 108–11, 115, 188 Da Vinci, Leonardo 15–17, 77–8. See also Vitruvian Man Damaru drum. See Hinduism dance 2, 42, 108, 198, 201–2. See also ballet Danesi, Marcel xiv, 6, 26, 61, 125, 183–4 Danziger, Eve 27 death 9, 11, 27, 35, 40–6, 56, 74, 80–3, 85, 99, 101, 105–11, 125, 182, 184, 218 deconstruction 26, 108 deduction. See logic Deely, John, xiv, 6, 22, 181 delusion. See ideology denotation. See semantics depression. See misery Derrida, Jacques 22, 181, 212 Descartes, René 180, 181 design 7, 17, 27, 30, 34–7, 46, 52, 60, 63–81, 173, 182, 186–7, 193–206, 213, 227 dextrality. See lateralization diagrams 6, 17–19, 23, 36, 57, 87–8, 90–111, 120–7, 165, 200, 205, 209–10, 224, 227. See also analogy; patterns; semiotics diagram token 59, 64, 67, 72, 75, 104, 227 diagram type 57, 59, 94, 104, 194, 227 diagrammatic continuity 104

253

diagrammatic mapping 83 diagrammatic reasoning 95, 215 (See also heuristics) diagrammatic typology 215 diagrammatization 52, 54, 57, 82, 128, 208, 226 embodied diagrams 37, 52, 69, 88, 101, 115, 118, 127, 134, 162, 206, 215 formal constraints or conceits 101 models, xiii, 2, 6, 23–7, 33, 36, 42, 54, 68, 88, 90–5, 99, 108, 113, 127–59, 171–5, 206, 210–28 dialectics 23–6, 47, 83, 87–111, 115, 212. See also contradiction; correlation; hourglass; Hegel; Kant; logic; polarity; semiotic square both-and 91, 93, 213 counterpoint 53, 91 either-or 26, 91, 93, 213 neither-nor 26, 91, 93 opposites, xiii, 21, 47, 50, 101 opposition 4, 6, 9, 13–17, 21–4, 28, 36–7, 46, 50–1, 56–7, 92, 95–101, 109–11, 113–33, 140, 173, 175, 178, 184, 193, 206–7, 212–17, 221–24 synthesis 23, 26, 30, 50, 91–2, 130, 150, 214 thesis vs. antithesis 23, 53, 90–2 dialogue, xiv, 6, 17, 23, 37, 47, 223 diamonds. See rhombus dichotomies. See polarity digits. See also anatomy; counting disembodiment 18, 28, 66, 146–50, 180, 183, 196, 216, 225 dissymmetries. See symmetry Dixon, R. M. W. 214 doom. See misery double binds 36, 113–15, 133–7, 172, 179, 207, 210–19 dilemmas 83, 114, 179, 188, 208, 213 tetra-lemmas 114, 179–80 double-scope conceptual blending. See conceptual blending double-x. See XX Douglas, Mary 21, 196, 206 dualism. See polarity Eco, Umberto 5 ego 88–90, 104, 200 Einstein, Albert 218–19

254 Ellen, Roy 154, 217–18 embodied cognition 6, 18–34, 40, 58–70, 118–22, 126–7, 133, 138, 142–54, 162–75, 177–81, 198, 216–23, 227 empiricism. See ideology enantiomorphy. See symmetry Enfield, N.J. 95, 148–50, 155 entoptics 10, 197. See also phosphenes epistemology 37, 181, 191 equilibrium 18–20 equinox 9–10 essentialism. See ideology etymology 52, 126, 160, 162 euphoria. See happiness evocation 80, 85 evo-devo 13, 162, 224 evolution 13, 26–7, 54, 77, 118, 125, 140, 147, 157, 165–6, 175, 181, 195–6, 200, 216, 225 existential graphs. See logic existentialism 91, 188 extreme sports 40, 42, 46 extremes xiii, 3–4, 6, 32–5, 43, 65, 72–9, 88, 108, 110, 178, 186–7, 198–9. See also polarity extremities xiii, 16, 33, 54–5, 108, 121, 138–41, 152–7, 160–71, 184, 225. See also anatomy Fahnestock, Jeanne 21–2 Fauconnier, Gilles 20, 34, 37, 57, 140, 164, 201, 218, 221 feeling. See phenomenology feet. See anatomy femininity. See ideology fetal position. See posture figure-ground 72, 106, 193, 195 fingers. See anatomy foot. See anatomy footedness. See lateralization forearm. See anatomy foreground-background. See figure-ground Foucault, Michel 181 Freeman, Margaret 29 Freud, Sigmund 34, 88, 106, 181 Fuchs, Thomas 4, 29, 57, 59 Gallagher, Shaun 27–9, 143, 208–9 Gasché, Rodolphe 22–3

Index gender. See ideology geometry 15–18, 119, 128, 196 diagonals 21, 46–7, 65, 123, 130, 227 quadrants 45, 57, 89, 93, 117, 124–5, 131, 133 rectangles 45, 60, 72, 130 rhombs 17, 20, 37, 97, 193–4, 203, 205–6, 209, 213–15, 220–3 squares 15–17, 20, 36, 39, 57, 60, 72, 113–38, 177 (See also semiotic; square triangles) gestalts 18, 20, 25, 35–6, 42, 59–65, 81–3, 85–8, 94–8, 104–11, 115, 121, 123, 127, 194, 197, 209, 214–15, 226. See also diagrams; patterns; schemas gesture 1–6, 9, 11, 13, 28, 35, 40, 49–51, 58, 77, 97, 172, 177, 199, 224–25. See also spread-eagle Gibbs, Raymond 26–7 Google. See internet Grammar xiii, 22, 33, 86–7, 148, 155, 213–14, 225 Greimas, Algirdas Julien xv, 34, 36, 115, 117–20, 122–5, 134, 138 gymnastics 42, 69, 71 hallucinogens 10–11, 197. See also entoptics; phosphenes hands. See anatomy handedness. See lateralization handstand 172 happiness 20, 55, 67, 72, 74, 104, 106, 120, 144, 211. See also misery bliss 35, 40, 46, 49, 54–7, 101, 191, 213 celebration 2, 13, 42, 49–51, 69, 74, 77, 81, 115, 175, 177, 198 climax 35, 40–6, 54 euphoria 119 freedom 13, 105, 180, 188 joy 2, 46, 70, 74, 113 love xiv, 135, 166, 172, 189–90, 203, 213 musement 213, 219 peak 32, 35, 39–44, 57, 65, 79, 198 triumph 49–50, 76, 115, 177, 188 union 92, 101 victory 2, 49–50, 57, 100 wonder 177, 206, 213–15, 222 Hariman, Robert 22, 24, 211, 220–1

Index Harkin, Michael 207, 223–4 heaven vs. hell. See Buddhism; Christianity Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 23, 93, 87, 90–3, 108, 181, 188, 212, 214 Heidegger, Martin 87, 90–4, 108 Heine, Bernd 34, 37, 148, 149, 150, 157–61, 175 Heraclitus 21, 214 heuristics 87–8, 94, 109, 117, 123, 215 Hinduism Damaru drum 108–9 kalasha 7 Shiva 108 hips. See anatomy Hofstadter, Douglas 34, 37, 152, 218–19 holism 23, 224 sublation (aufhebung) 91–2, 214 hominids. See animals Homo erectus 3, 11 Homo sapiens 3, 11, 30, 128 hourglass. See patterns humanity 4, 10, 13, 33, 145, 150, 171, 223 iconicity. See semiotics ideology 119, 133, 135, 160, 171, 180, 213. See also semiotic square; double binds; dilemas; tetralemmas behaviorism 91, 149–50 belief 90, 146, 203, 211 bias 14, 59, 126, 129, 157, 183, 194, 216–17 delusion 187, 208 dogmatism 6, 23, 124, 180, 220 empiricism 91, 149, 224 essentialism 94 femininity 134, 190 gender 134, 172, 190 hyper-individualism 193, 205 idealism 18 machismo 187 masculinity 134, 187, 190 meaninglessness 127, 132 nativism 91, 149–50 narcissism 180, 185, 187 nihilism 91 nominalism 94, 96 presupposition 133 racism 133

255

rationalism 91, 149 sexism 133 solipsism 6, 37, 175, 177–91, 205, 208, 224 stereotypes 113, 190 image-schemas 18, 25, 142, 226–7 imagination 18, 20, 26, 28–9, 49, 55, 88–90, 96, 104, 115, 129–31, 140–2, 146, 171, 179–80, 218–19. See also conceptual blending; analogy collective imagination 85, 102 self-forgetful imagination 55, 180, 194, 213, 222 inquiry xiii–xiv, 5, 6, 18, 21–5, 33–4, 95, 115, 120, 123, 143, 180, 183, 193, 195, 198, 208, 210, 214–15, 218, 225 integration 22, 27, 37, 59, 128, 171, 178, 151, 194, 201–3, 206–7. See also conceptual blending interdependence 21–2, 138, 213–14, 224. See also reciprocity; symbiosis internet 14, 65–6 Amazon.com 140 and encyclopedic distraction 184–5 and freedom of speech 105–6 Google.com 58, 67, 182 if a dog wore pants meme 14–15 source of global branding 65 Twitter.com 174 Vimeo.com 173 virtual worlds and global capitalism 66 Youtube.com 172 interpretant. See semiotics interpretation. See semiotics interrelationships 27, 94–5, 138, 214 intersections 17, 105, 109, 128 inversion. See chiasmus irony 3, 23, 81, 92, 136, 138, 171 isomorphism. See symmetry Jakobson, Roman 34, 36, 174 Jameson, Fredric 115, 119, 125, 130, 132–6 Johnson, Mark 4, 18–20, 25–7, 29, 34, 40, 58–9, 106, 121, 143, 150, 196, 223, 227 jolly roger 79–83, 85–6, 186 junctures 106, 120, 130 Jung, Carl Gustaf 106–7, 225

256

Index

Kant, Immanuel 18, 91, 181 Keats, John 211 kinesthesia 29–30, 39, 48, 78, 81, 118, 120, 127, 129–30, 140–5 knees. See anatomy Kockelman, Paul 93 Kress, Gunther 121 Lacan, Jacques 34, 36, 87–90, 92–5, 104, 179 Laing, R.D. 135, 189 Lakoff, George 18, 26, 34, 58, 106, 150, 153 Langer, Susanne 29, 218 languages and cultures Alugu (China) 169 Apache 34, 170 Api (Vanuatu) 158 Athabaskan (North America) 160 Austronesian 161, 166 Aztec 204–5 Bantu 155, 161, 166 Bora (Peru) 195 Burmic 152, 155, 160, 166, 168 Danish 210 Dene (Canada) 34, 160–1 Dravidian (India) 161, 166 French, xiv, 15, 27, 34, 36, 85, 87–8, 207 German 34, 91, 159, 161, 172–3, 204–5, 226 Greek 15, 21, 31–4, 36, 45, 90, 93, 166, 200 Hausa (Nigeria) 159, 161 Hebrew 125 Hlepho (China) 152–3, 155, 160 Huichol (Mexico) 172, 216 Indo-European 21, 126, 161, 166 Inuit 10–11, 34 Irish 189 Italian 35, 167 Japanese 31, 35 Kewa (Papua New Guinea) 155–6, 158, 160 Khlula (China) 169 Latin 75, 125–6, 167, 182 Lugbara (Uganda, Congo) 172 Mamvu (Central Africa) 158 Maya 126 Mbukushu (Botswana) 195

Muji (China) 169 Navaho 193 Ngwi 35, 152, 160, 168–9 Nilo-Saharan 158 Pali 21, 214 Papuan 154, 161 Phala (China) 169 Phowa (China) 36, 152–3, 242 Phula (China) 168–70 Phupa (China) 164 Russian 60, 125 Savosavo (Vanuatu) 154–5, 160 Scots 60–1, 195 Sentinelese 1–4, 13 Sino-Tibetan 161 Spanish 204 Tibetan 87, 109–10 Tibeto-Burman 126, 152, 160–1, 166, 168 Vanuatu 158 Yombe (Congo) 193, 195 Zulu 158 Laozi 34, 238 lateralization 123–33, 171, 216–17. See also anatomical planes; symmetry brain hemispheres 171 chirality 125 dextrality (right handedness) 125–6, 171 footedness 134, 136 handedness 125–6, 134, 216 sinistrality (left-handedness) 125–6, 171 lattice. See patterns Lebenswelt (lifeworld) 96, 194 left vs. right. See lateralization leg. See anatomy legisigns. See semiotics Levinson, Stephen 27, 217 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 24, 88, 95, 125, 154, 206–7, 217, 221, 224 lifeworld. See Lebenswelt limbs. See anatomy, trees lines xiii, 4, 17, 30, 89, 92–3, 109, 124, 129–30, 169 linguistics. See also languages Cognitive Linguistics xiii–xiv, 6, 26, 33–37, 40, 120–1, 126, 138–57, 216 historical linguistics xiii, 33, 77, 161–3

Index linguistic anthropology 6, 33, 142, 166, 214 psycholinguistics 163 Lissner, Patricia Anne 18, 21, 23, 25 locomotion. See movement logic 28, 42, 58–9, 95–6, 111, 114, 123, 172, 178, 193, 207, 225 abduction 13, 59, 93, 123, 183 analytic 91, 117–23 deduction 136 existential graphs 117, 122, 172 induction xiii, 36, 40, 65, 87, 95–6, 158, 185–6, 194, 201 a priori 64, 118, 171 quasi-logic 114 square of opposition 36, 57, 95, 115–17, 120–3, 127–8, 132 universal propositions 121–3 logocentrism 22 loneliness. See misery love. See happiness L-schema 88–90, 92–3, 104, 179 Manning, Paul 66 markedness 36, 126, 132–3, 138, 140, 159–60, 170–4, 178, 215–19 marketing 30–5, 63–83, 173, 106–7 ads and advertising 30–2, 35, 42, 58, 65–6, 80, 198–9 ads as folk art 30–2, 65, 198 brands and branding (See brandmarks and logos) brandmarks and logos 63–83, 183, 187 Marx, Karl 181 masochism 47, 57 master-slave dynamics 188–91, 198, 200, 202, 205, 209, 222 mathematics 5, 15, 24, 30, 124, 157–8 Matisoff, James 126, 152, 160, 163 McGilchrist, Ian 27, 126–7, 180 McLuhan, Marshall 21–2, 30, 34–5, 40, 47, 65–6, 198, 214, 226 meaning xiii, 2, 4, 8, 20–37, 39–40, 47–50, 55–62, 67, 69, 74, 77, 86–9, 97–101, 107, 111, 115, 119, 124, 127, 138, 140, 143, 150, 154–5, 158, 181–4, 193, 197, 200, 210, 221, 225–6, 227. See also analogy; embodied cognition; imagination; semantics; semiotics

257

congruence 14, 19, 32, 48, 51, 56–7, 63–4, 85, 87, 92, 94–5, 99, 104, 123–4, 152–3, 157, 185, 191, 198, 199, 203, 210–14, 223 connotation 51, 54–6, 75, 204–5 context xiii, 4–5, 13, 31, 37, 44, 67, 73, 90, 94, 101, 108, 115, 127, 146, 148, 154, 169, 182, 193, 205, 210, 218 growth 57, 92–3, 132, 206, 214–15 (See also diagrammatization) implications 4, 17, 25–7, 31, 34, 60, 82, 90, 97, 120–1, 124, 128, 132, 155, 162, 186, 198, 220, 223 implicational cline 183–4 implicit meaning 17, 19, 31, 33–7, 50–2, 54, 63, 78, 82, 85, 90–3, 97, 99, 106, 118, 135–6, 145, 162, 165, 173, 178, 187, 195, 202–3, 220 intention 3, 11, 13, 24–5, 49–51, 56, 80, 87, 91, 101, 161, 183, 186–7, 206 interpretive key 10, 20, 24, 28, 30, 48, 67, 89, 97, 110, 134, 149, 158, 165, 177, 183, 206, 218, 224 nonsense 23, 183, 211 nuance 59, 149, 171 polysemy 51, 63, 74–5, 149–52, 155, 158–64, 183, 191, 201, 204, 225, 227 possibility 219–20 reciprocal exchange 203 tacit vs. explicit 201 meaninglessness. See ideology; meaning memento mori 80–1, 85. See also jolly roger memes. See internet memory 25, 30, 35, 49, 94, 131, 138, 140, 194, 197 accretion and sedimentation 88, 129 body memory (See body) mnemonics 21, 215 semiotics as science of 6, 30, 138 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 22, 25, 43, 28–9, 34, 37, 40, 97–8, 149, 178–81, 185, 188, 207–9, 223, 227 meronymy 36, 166–70 metalanguage 148. See also reflexivity metaphor 18, 20–1, 23, 25, 37, 55, 94–5, 101, 131, 200, 207, 209–10, 220. See also analogy; conceptual blending; rhetoric

258

Index

conceptual metaphor 20, 106, 142–6 mixed metaphors 53 The Motive for Metaphor (poem) (See poetry) novel metaphors 145, 221 primary metaphors 120, 142, 144, 146 sleeping metaphors 57–61 metonymy 131, 162–3, 204 mimesis 8, 77, 195 mirror images. See symmetry; chiasmus misery 109. See also happiness alienation 4, 37, 177, 179–81, 185, 190–1, 205, 212–13, 221, 224 angst 100 anxiety 24, 39, 88, 178, 210 catastrophe 44, 46, 106, 109, 111 crisis 9, 35–6, 46, 65, 75, 79, 83, 85–88, 93, 101–2, 105–9, 197, 215 depression 88, 178–9 disillusion 207 doom 79, 81, 85, 88, 105, 109, 111, 188 fragmentation 127, 181, 191 horror 49, 54, 72, 80, 126, 191 humiliation 4, 49, 53–4, 57 illness 76, 178 impotence 24 loneliness 37, 76, 177–8, 181, 187, 191, 203, 205 malaise 190 melancholy 213 neurosis 88–9, 185 pain 59, 67, 72, 76–7, 101, 107, 182, 200 pathos 14, 109 repulsion 1, 173 sickness (See illness; pain) struggle 100, 187–8, 193, 197 suffering 42, 61, 105, 109, 111 suicide 100 trauma 35, 40, 57–61, 83, 87, 197 models. See diagrams modernity 26, 37, 175, 180–91, 205, 208, 212, 224 monsters. See mythic figures morphemes 75, 153, 160, 169 motocross 43–4 movement xiii, 2–4, 13, 26–37, 39–62, 65–6, 77–8, 88, 99–101, 108, 118–20, 126–31, 136–8, 143–4, 180, 197, 208, 214–15, 225–7

and body memory (See body) locomotion 11, 170, 175 and in-utero neural development 29 Müller, Cornelia 34, 57, 61, 227 Musgraves, Kacey 113, 115, 135, 137 music 207 country 113–16, 119, 137, 224 heavy metal 81–2 jazz 198 mythology 5, 7, 9, 24, 30–1, 34–5, 45–6, 61, 64, 73–4, 77, 80, 87–8, 97, 109, 111, 172, 183, 200, 217, 224 archetypes 7, 35, 40, 61, 65, 81, 85, 97, 107, 183 mythic figures: Apollo 36, 74, 166, 168; Atlas 73; Blackbeard 86; Burning Man 69–70, 74; Cupid 166; Daphne 36, 74, 166–8; Hamlet 210; horned serpents 9; Incredible Hulk 39; James Bond 135, 187; Macbeth 134, 210, 212; Pokémon 31–3, 35; Procrustes 46; Prometheus 45–6; Quinkan spirits 7; Spiderman 39; squatter man 8; Superman 43; Theon Greyjoy 46; Tunghak spirits 11; Vitruvian man 15–16, 18, 77–8, 98, 222; Wolverine 40; Xander Cage 187; Xerneas 31; X-Men 34–5, 39–41, 78; Yama (See Buddhism); Zeus 46, 73, 166 mythic symbolism 9, 87, 183 (See also archetypes; mythic figures) Nänny, Max 21 neuroscience 27, 120, 143, 226 nihilism. See ideology nominalism. See ideology Norrman, Ralf 21, 25–7, 172, 216–17 Nöth, Winfried 6, 95, 118, 125, 132, 197 nothingness. See nihilism nuance. See meaning opposites. See dialectics opposition. See dialectics oppression 4, 115, 190, 202, 211, 220 orthogonality 14–15, 71, 128, 132, 147, 169, 215 oscillation. See chiasmus otherness. See alterity Ovid 167

Index paintings 7–9, 111, 167, 207 paradigms 82, 142, 143, 148–55, 161–73. See also analogy; diagrams paradoxes 24, 35, 37, 40, 47–53, 61, 86, 100–4, 113, 121, 136, 171, 174, 188, 190–1, 198, 210, 212, 224 parallelism 56–7 curious parallels 151–70 paralysis 87, 115, 134, 135, 210, 212 part-whole relations 18, 36, 79, 131, 140, 147–55, 162, 216 patterns. See also chiasmus; crossing; entoptics; geometry; gestalt; symmetry; X figure argyle 37, 203, 209, 213–15, 221–24 hourglass 35–6, 83, 85–111, 127, 129, 132, 179, 185, 189–90, 203, 207–15 lattice 193–203, 209, 213, 219–20, 224 lattice-pose 198–200 patterns-in-process 220–1 plane-patterns 68–71, 99 rhombus (See geometry) Paul, Anthony 37, 87, 134 Peirce, Charles Sanders 6, 17–18, 34, 37, 40, 58–9, 95, 117, 122, 172, 174, 193, 195, 206, 208, 214–15, 224–8 pelvis. See anatomy perception 14, 27, 29, 40, 61, 65, 90, 98, 100, 107, 109, 130, 158, 165–6, 180, 184, 187, 197, 209, 218–19 perlocution 50 petroglyphs 182, 225, 7–10, 31 phenomenology 5, 17, 22, 27–36, 40, 58, 88, 91, 96–101, 114, 120, 129, 143, 194, 203, 208–9, 214–15, 227. See also embodied cognition; kinesthesia; movement; proprioception philology 52. See also linguistics philosophy xiii, 5, 22, 27–37, 58, 87–8, 90–4, 104, 122, 132, 148, 177–8, 181, 185, 191, 205–8, 216 phosphenes 10–11. See also entoptics Piaget, Jean 124 piracy 79–83, 86, 186–7 poetry 5, 28, 33–4, 40, 55, 87, 96, 100, 104, 213, 224, 219, 227 “Moonshine” (Richard Murphy) 189 “The Motive for Metaphor” (Wallace Stevens) 55–7, 62, 179–80, 219–20

259

“Vision and Prayer” (Dylan Thomas) 96–102 polarity. See also dialectics binaries 9, 23, 26, 128, 132–4, 149–50, 171–2, 184, 190, 206, 220–3 dichotomies 26, 28, 36, 86, 208, 220, 223 dualism 150, 220, 223 duality 9, 22 duplicity 100 loggerheads 106 opposing poles 17, 46, 101, 149, 190, 207 (See also opposition) polarity-sensitivity patterns 122–3 polarization 16, 37, 54–5, 81, 86, 101, 110, 119, 122–4, 178, 183, 223, 227 polysemy. See meaning pornography 184, 186–7 a posteriori. See logic poststructuralism 26, 91 posture. See also spread-eagle and confidence 13, 75, 226 fetal position 48 and gesture 1–4, 9, 11–13, 28, 35, 40, 49–51, 58, 77, 177, 199, 224–5 and sexual selection 13 power-pose 13, 75, 226. See also aposematism; spread-eagle pragmatics 5, 13, 35, 50–2, 81, 104, 211 pragmatism 27, 29, 193–4 precarity 36, 80, 87, 90, 102, 107 primates. See animals a priori. See logic propositions. See logic proprioception 29, 37, 39, 44, 48, 65, 79, 81, 87, 118, 120, 130, 131, 138, 143–5, 164 Proust, Marcel 212 psyche 30, 36, 87–94, 114, 118, 179, 182, 184–5, 189, 212, 221 psychiatry 27, 87–8. See also psychoanalysis psychoanalysis 5, 33–4, 36, 87–90, 93, 96, 104, 106–7, 114, 179 psycholinguistics. See linguistics psychology 13, 20–3, 34, 36, 44, 54, 59, 65, 86, 113–14, 124, 136, 183–4, 194, 205, 208, 210 psychosis 88–9

260 punishment 44–6, 200. See also torture puzzles 138, 188 quadradic structure 17, 45, 114, 115. See also square quadrapeds 14 racism. See ideology rationalism. See ideology realism. See ideology rebirth 10, 109–11 reciprocity 21–2, 28, 203, 214, 221 reconciliation 26, 28, 101, 108, 130, 149, 206–7, 212, 214, 223 reconstruction 3, 5, 9, 51–5, 77–9, 157, 162 reflexivity. See chiasmus representation. See semiotics resemblances. See iconicity rheme. See semiotics rhetoric xiii–xiv, 2–3, 6, 20–5, 34, 37, 64, 73, 115, 145, 166, 210–11, 220–4 riddles 194–7, 212 right vs. left. See lateralization rituals 7, 10, 24, 35, 39, 40, 42, 45–9, 58–61, 113, 154, 172, 197, 207, 216. See also torture rite of passage 74 role-reversal 113 Roosevelt, Theodore 181–2 roots 48, 99, 151, 166–7 rotation. See symmetry rupture 23, 87, 200 sagittal. See anatomical planes saltire 35, 42, 60–2 samsara. See Buddhism Sartre, Jean-Paul 37, 178, 185, 188–9, 208–9 satire 81 scaffolding 157 schemas. See diagrams Sebeok, Thomas A. 5–6, 26 semantics 5, 21, 26, 36, 52–4, 56–7, 96, 104, 106, 119–20, 124, 126, 148, 150, 152, 155, 166, 217, 221. See also semiotics; meaning antonymy 56 denotation 204 semantic shift 36, 159–6

Index sememes 124, 126 synonymy 21, 56, 59, 88, 162 semiotics. See also codes; communication; meaning; mythology; semantics semiotic square aggregate analysis 30, 66, 75, 101, 178, 195 embodied semiotics (See embodied cognition) firstness, secondness, thirdness 206, 224 iconicity 10, 15, 19, 34, 40, 54, 56, 59, 63, 66, 69, 71, 77, 81, 90, 95, 97–8, 100–1, 131, 152, 157, 194, 202, 215, 226, 227 (See also analogy; diagrams) indexicality 15, 40, 48, 59, 66, 71, 90, 154, 194–6, 204, 227 interpretant 174, 202–3, 214 interpretation 10, 15–17, 30, 33, 40, 56, 67, 81, 98, 100, 107, 115, 119–20, 174, 204, 224 legisign 40, 59, 77, 194, 196, 226 rheme 63, 65, 77, 215, 227 semiosis 59, 128, 132, 205 semiospheres 67, 201 semiotic square 36, 57, 96, 113–38 (See also geometry; quadratic structure) sign 1, 4, 12, 37, 52, 59, 70, 106, 194, 198–9 signification 73, 106, 123 signifier 89, 119 sinsign 40, 59, 194, 226–7 structuralism 88, 95, 113, 154 symbolism 2, 5, 7, 9, 20, 31, 34–5, 37, 40, 58–62, 63, 65, 69, 77, 79–82, 85, 87, 89, 90, 95, 97, 108, 154, 182–4, 193–4, 217, 221, 223, 225 sex 12–13, 47, 51, 57, 101, 184, 190 sexism. See ideology Shakespeare, William 21, 34, 104, 134, 210 shamans 10–11 shapes. See geometry; patterns Shapiro, Michael 6, 54, 174 Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine 4, 27, 29–30, 40, 59, 77, 87, 118, 120, 129–31, 143, 180, 226–7 shoulders. See anatomy signs. See semiotics Silverman, Kaja 152, 218

Index similarity. See iconicity Simmel, Georg 34, 37, 178, 190 sinsigns. See semiotics skating 42–3, 53, 172 skiing 42–3 skull-and-crossbones. See jolly roger skydiving 43–4 slavery and enslavement. See master-slave dynamics Slingerland, Edward 145 solipsism. See ideology somersaults 172 Sonesson, Göran xiv, 10 spectators. See audience spectrum. See continuity sports 35, 40, 42–4, 46–7, 49, 51, 53–4, 58, 75, 77–9, 182–3, 187, 200, 211 spread-eagle. See also analogy; anatomical planes; chiasmus; gesture; torture; X and creative analogy 139–75 and crisis 85–111 as gesture 49–51 historical development of term 51–5 in marketing 30–3, 63–83 and modernity 177–91 as paleo-gesture 1–15 and the semiotic square 113–37 and upright posture (See aposematism; evolution; power pose; threat display) and the Vitruvian man 15–20 square. See geometry; semiotic square squatter man. See mythic figures stereotypes. See ideology Stevens, Wallace 34–5, 37, 40, 55–6, 62, 180–1, 219–220 Stjernfelt, Frederik 6, 26, 40, 59, 95 strangeness 5, 44, 49, 113, 115, 123 Strecker, Ivo xiv, 22–4, 196, 220–1 structuralism. See semiotics surfaces. See topology surprise 4, 11, 18, 20, 22, 42, 51, 56, 115, 126, 134, 148, 166, 175, 178, 206, 220 swaddling 48, 61 symbiosis 21, 214, 223. See also interdependence; reciprocity symbolism. See semiotics

261

symmetry antisymmetry 89, 125, 217 asymmetry 22, 48, 72, 106, 125, 144, 158, 171, 175, 212, 216 congruence (See meaning) dissymmetries 71, 216 enantiomorphy 216–17 invariance 29, 95 isomorphism 68, 151, 154 mirror 8, 20, 42, 57, 89, 104, 131–4, 140, 143, 164–7, 187, 210–16 reflection 27, 68–2, 89 rotation 68–72, 199, 217 syncretism. See arm-leg syncretism; conceptual blending synonymy. See semantics syntax 24–5, 27, 56, 104, 124, 185, 188–9, 214, 218 synthesis 23, 26, 30, 91–2, 130, 150, 213 tautology 26, 132, 211, 215 Taylor, Charles 34, 37, 178, 180, 190 television series Game of Thrones 46 High Maintenance 173 Mr. Robot 7, 178–9, 190 X-Factor 183 X-Files 182 temporality 46, 48, 129, 133, 150–1, 203 tensions 11, 20, 30, 44, 76, 101–2, 106, 129–30, 184, 205, 214, 219, 221, 224 therapy 72, 75, 173 thighs. See anatomy Thomas, Dylan 34, 36, 87, 96–101 threat-display. See aposematism, powerpose Toadvine, Ted 22, 28, 208, 211–12, 214 tokens. See diagrams topology 44, 46, 48–9 torture 35, 39–42, 44–7, 49–61, 74, 83, 86–7, 101–2, 108, 115, 138, 179, 181, 199–200, 215. See also misery; double binds BDSM 47, 49 bed of Procrustes 46 crucifixion 40–5, 60–1, 101, 179 drawing-and-quartering 46 eternal punishment of Prometheus 45–6

262 maritime 44 military 44–5 pressing (peine forte et dure) 46 psychological 36, 87, 114, 182, 185, 191, 212 skin-flaying 46 stop and frisk 44 torture rack 44, 51, 211 Tory, Geoffroy 16–17, 222 totems 52, 57 trances 10–11, 197 transformations 11, 68, 167, 222. See also awakening transversality. See anatomical planes traps . See also double binds trauma. See misery trees 11, 55, 58, 74, 95, 166–70 triads 143 triple-x. See XXX triumph. See happiness tropes 20, 23, 207, 219 Trudeau, Justin 20 Turner, Mark 20, 25–7, 34, 37, 57, 140, 164, 201, 218, 221 Turner, Victor 154 Tyler, Stephen 22, 23, 92–4, 108, 196 typology. See chiasmus Uexküll, Jakob von 58 Umwelt 40, 194 universal claims 91, 119 universal experience 47–8, 83, 144, 148–60, 166–72 universal propositions. See logic universal tendencies 148–60, 194, 223 upper-body. See anatomy upper-lower. See verticality Van Lier, Henri xiv, 15, 128, 196 verticality . See also anatomical planes; bipedalism; transversality; upright posture violence 8, 47, 88, 99 Vitruvius Pollio, Marcus 15–16, 19 vulnerability 11, 46, 48–9, 60–1 Vygotsky, Lev 211

Index waistline. See anatomical planes Washburn, Dorothy 68, 193, 195 websites. See internet Whitman, Walt 186 Wierzbicka, Anna 148–50 Wiseman, Boris, xiv, 22–4, 196, 206–7, 220–1 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 94 X. See also chiasmus; crossing; semiotic square; spread-eagle; XO; XX; XXX algebraic operator 4–5 brands and brandmarks 30–3, 63–83, 203–6, 182–3 cave art 182, 193 crux 31, 35, 61, 63, 65, 77, 196 Generation X 39, 58, 182 Google X gestalt 20, 25, 35, 42, 65, 81, 83, 85, 87–8, 94–8, 104–9, 115, 123, 127, 196, 209, 214, 215 implicational cline of polarized meanings 183–4 letter 4–5, 21, 33–4, 58, 61, 65, 75, 97–8, 182–3 meanings of 35, 181–4, 191, 198, 224–5 nexus 26, 28, 30 proto-X reconstruction 77–9 roman numeral X 5 Space X 182 Xbox 182 X Factor 183 (See also television series) X-Files 182 Xfinity 183 X Games 58, 78, 182 X-Men 39–41, 58, 78 X-planes X-posture (See spread eagle) X-ratings 182 Xtreme sports 32, 76, 79, 182–3 X-schema 20, 35, 39, 86, 95 Xscreen 183 XO 63–4, 77–8, 193–206, 215, 221–25 XX 184–5, 188, 191, 198–9, 202, 203–6 XXX 177, 186–91, 199–203, 205