Complexity in the tensive hypothesis of Claude Zilberberg

Abstract

Complexity occupies a prominent place in the tensive hypothesis formulated by Claude Zilberberg. The focus of this article is to promote, as a tribute, a reflection on the theoretical treatment given by him to this phenomenon. Zilberberg (2010, 2011a) assumes a "development complexity" that allows the coexistence or "collaboration" between discrete and gradual units and that maintains the theoretical coherence of the concept of tensiveness in the semiotic description. Despite being a conciliatory position, this theoretical movement represents for many the passage from a semiotics of difference to a semiotics of interval. However, it should be noted that the coexistence of magnitudes should not imply exactly graded operations in the description of the sensible, let alone the subordination of the operations opposed to those considered scalar, as some interpretations of tensive semiotics suggest. Zilberberg’s theoretical formulations allow us to think of a simulation of graduality through a complexification of the discontinuous dimension, in which certain analytic operations dilute the boundaries between the discrete units, without, however, eliminating them completely. It is, in our opinion, a gradation of difference, by another differential operation, of a metalinguistic order. With the adoption of this view, complexity would not give rise to any substantialist or ontologizing interpretation and would gain epistemological status as an instance of mediation between semiotic approaches that direct their attention to the dimension of both the continuous and the discontinuous perspectives. Moreover, the postulate of difference, a sine qua non of scientific intelligibility, remains intact in the description of affections by the bias of tensivity.