The current relevance of the Tartu-Moscow School and cultural semiotics

Autores

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1980-4016.esse.2026.244316

Palavras-chave:

Tartu-Moscow School, Cultural semiotics, History of the Tartu-Moscow School, Juri M. Lotman

Resumo

This article addresses concrete aspects of the semiotics of culture developed by the Tartu–Moscow School of semiotics and is divided into three parts. Firstly, it provides an overview of the origins of this field between the 1960s and 1970s. Secondly, it discusses the transformation of the field in different stages, a process linked to the paradigmatic shift in the thought of its leading figure: Juri M. Lotman. Thirdly, it explores the current relevance of cultural semiotics and the TMS, since it explores the relationship between the own and the other — one of its main areas of interest. Specifically, in the light of the current geopolitical situation, it considers situations of both conflict and contact, the latter implying the integration (and dialogue) with other fields, such as decolonial thinking.

Downloads

Os dados de download ainda não estão disponíveis.

Biografia do Autor

  • Eduardo Chávez Herrera, Université Rennes 2

    Post-doctoral researcher at the Linguistics and Language Didactics Research Unit (LIDILE) of the University of Rennes 2, Rennes, France.

Referências

ANDREWS, Edna. Conversations with Lotman: The Implications of Cultural Semiotics in Language, Literature, and Cognition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

AVTONOMOVA, Natalia S. Yuri Lotman and the Moscow-Tartu School of Semiotics: Contemporary Epistemic and Social Contexts. In: BYKOVA, Marina F.; FOSTER, Michael N.; STEINER, Lina (eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought. Cham: Palgrave McMillan, 2021. p. 737-754.

BAREI, Silvia; GÓMEZ PONCE, Ariel. Lotman Revisitado. Perspectivas Latinoamericanas. Cordoba: Edicea-Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2022.

BARNAWI, Osman; R’BOUL, Hamza. Colonizability and Hermeneutical Injustice in Applied Linguistics Research: (Im)possibilities for Epistemological Delinking. Applied Linguistics, v. 44, p. 865-881, 2023. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amad047. Accessed on: June 06, 2026.

BRANDIST, Craig. Soviet Orientalism and Anti-Imperialism. In: RAY, Sangeeta; SCHWARZ, Henry (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2016. p. 1-6.

CÁCERES SÁNCHEZ, Manuel. Lotman en español: difusión y recepción crítica. Entretextos, v. 2, p. 89-109, 2003.

CHÁVEZ HERRERA, Eduardo. Pasos hacia la decolonización de la semiótica. In: PARDO ABRIL, Neyla G.; DELUPI, Baal (eds.). Miradas Múltiples de la Semiótica Latinoamericana. Córdoba: EDICEA. p. 205-228.

CHERNIGOVSKAYA, Tatiana V. “Shum” kak klyuch k semiozisu: mozg i kul’tura (40 let spustya). Slovo.ru: Baltiyskiy Aktsent, v. 13, n. 2, p. 24-36, 2022. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5922/2225-5346-2022-2-1. Accessed on: June 26, 2026.

CHERNOV, Igor. Historical survey of Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School. In: BROMS, Henri; KAUFFMAN, Rebecca (eds.). Semiotics of Culture: Proceedings of the 25th Symposium of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, Imatra, Finland, 27th-29th July, 1987. Helsinki: Arator Inc., 1988. p. 7-16.

CRANE, David. Invisible Colleges; Diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.

DE FINA, A.; OOSTENDORP, M.; ORTEGA, L. Sketches toward a decolonial applied linguistics. Applied linguistics, v. 44, p. 819-832, 2023. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amad059. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

DE SOUSA SANTOS, Boaventura. The End of the Cognitive Empire. The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

GHERLONE, Laura. Semiotics and interdisciplinarity: Lotman’s legacy. Sign Systems Studies, v. 41, n. 4, p. 391-403, 2013. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2013.41.4.01. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

GHERLONE, Laura. In the footsteps of the semiotic school Moscow-Tartu/Tartu-Moscow: Evaluations and perspectives. Semiotica, v. 235, p. 229-241, 2020. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2018-0065. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

GHERLONE, Laura. Introducción Dossier: Iuri Lotman (Primera parte). Eslavia, 7, 2021. Available at: https://eslavia.com.ar/introduccion/. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

GHERLONE, Laura. On binary opposition and binarism: A long-distance dialogue between decolonial critique and the Lotmanian semiotics. Sign Systems Studies, v. 51, n. 2, p. 254-272, 2023. Available at: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2023.51.2.03. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

GHERLONE, Laura; RESTANEO, Pietro. Semiotics and decoloniality. A preliminary study between J. Lotman and W. Mignolo. Lexia v. 39-40, p. 245-262, 2022. Available at: https://doi.org/10.53136/979122180426314. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

GRISHAKOVA, Marina; SALUPERE, Silvi. A School in the Woods: Tartu-Moscow Semiotics. In: GRISHAKOVA, Marina; SALUPERE, Silvi (eds.). Theoretical Schools and Circles in the Twentieth-Century Humanities. Literary Theory, History, Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2015. p. 173-195.

GROSFOGUEL, Ramón; MIGNOLO, Walter. Intervenciones Descoloniales: Una Breve Introducción. Tabula Rasa, v. 9, p. 29-37, 2008. Available at: https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.337. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

GRÜBEL, Rainer. Russian Structuralism and Semiotics in Literary Criticism and its Reception. In: MRUGALSKI, Michał; SCHAHADAT, Schamma; WUTSDORFF, Irina (eds.). Central and Eastern European Literary Theory and the West. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2023. p. 723-784.

HAIDAR, Julieta. Los procesos semiótico-discursivos de la resistencia desde la complejidad, la transdisciplinariedad, la decolonialidad. In: HAIDAR, Julieta (ed). Cosmosemióticas de la resistencia y decolonialidad. Mexico City: Sb Editorial, 2023. p. 25-46.

KULL, Kalevi; SALUPERE, Silvi; TOROP, Peeter; LOTMAN, Mihhail. The institution of semiotics in Estonia. Sign Systems Studies, v. 39, n. 2/4, p. 314-342, 2011. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2011.39.2-4.13. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

KULL, Kalevi; VELMEZOVA, Ekaterina. Spheres of Understanding. Tartu Dialogues with Semioticians. Berlin: De Gruyter-Brill, 2025.

LOTMAN, Juri M. The structure of the artistic text. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1977.

LOTMAN, Juri M.; Escuela de Tartu. Semiótica de la Cultura. Valencia: Cátedra, 1979.

LOTMAN, Juri M. Universe of the mind. A semiotic theory of culture. London: Tauris, 1990.

LOTMAN, Juri M. Acerca de la semiosfera. In: CÁCERES SÁNCHEZ, Manuel (ed.). La Semiosfera I. Semiótica de la cultura y del texto. Valencia: Cátedra, 1996 [1984]. p. 11-26.

LOTMAN, Juri M. Pis’ma. Moscow: Yazyki russkoj kul’tury, 1997.

LOTMAN, Juri M. El problema de la “enseñanza de la cultura” como caracterización tipológica de la cultura. In: CÁCERES SÁNCHEZ, Manuel (ed.). La Semiosfera II. Semiótica de la Cultura, del Texto, de la Conducta y del Espacio. Valencia: Cátedra, 1998 [1971]. p. 124-134.

LOTMAN, Juri M. Na poroge nepredskazuemogo. (Poslednee interview Lotmana s L.F. Glushkovskoi 6 iulia 1993 goda). KISELEVA, L.N. et al. (eds.), Vospitanie Dushi. St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo, 2003. p. 298-306.

LOTMAN, Juri M. Los Mecanismos de los Procesos Dinámicos en la Semiótica. Entretextos, 5, p. 80-91, 2005 [1992].

LOTMAN, Juri M. La caza de brujas: Semiótica del miedo. Criterios, 35, p. 17-36, 2006 [1998].

LOTMAN, Juri M. Culture and Explosion. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009 [1992].

LOTMAN, Juri M. The place of art among other modelling systems. Sign Systems Studies, v. 39, n. 2, p. 249-270, 2011. Available at: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2011.39.2-4.10. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

LOTMAN, Juri M. The Unpredictable Workings of Culture. Translated by Brian James Baer. Tallinn: TLU Press, 2013 [1994].

LOTMAN, Juri M. Culture, Memory and History: Essays in Cultural Semiotics. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

LOTMAN, Juri M. We Need Everything: There is Nothing Superfluous in the World… In: MONTICELLI, Daniele; MARAN, Merit; SEDDA, Franciscu (eds.). Semiotics of Conflict. A Lotmanian Perspective. Tallinn: TLU Press, 2024 [1993]. p. 329-340.

LOTMAN, Juri M.; IVANOV, Vyacheslav V.; PJATIGORSKIJ, Aleksandr M.; TOPOROV, Vladimir. N.; USPENSKIJ, Boris A. Theses on the semiotic study of cultures (as applied to Slavic texts). In: KULL, Kalevi et al. (eds.). Beginnings of the semiotics of culture. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 2013 [1973]. p. 51-52.

MACHADO, Irene. Semiotic boundary spaces: an exercise in decolonial aesthesis. Linguistic Frontiers, v. 52, p. 77-87, 2022. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2478/lf-2022-0018. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

MAZZALI-LURATI, Sabrina. Boris Uspenskij and the Semiotics of Communication: An Essay and an Interview. Semiotica, n. 199, p. 109–24, 2014. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2013-0121. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

MIGNOLO, Walter. Colonial semiosis and decolonial reconstitutions. ECHO Rivista Interdisciplinare di Comunicazione, v. 2, p. 8-20, 2020. Available at: https://ojs.cimedoc.uniba.it/index.php/eco/article/view/1204/1017. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

MIGNOLO, Walter; VÁZQUEZ, Rolando. Decolonial AestheSis: Colonial Wounds/Decolonial Healings. Social Text, 30, v. 4, p. 1–8, 2013. Available at: https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/decolonial-aesthesis-colonial-woundsdecolonial-healings/. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

MIGNOLO Walter; WALSH, Catherine. On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

MONTICELLI, Daniele. Thinking the new after the fall of the Berlin Wall: Juri Lotman’s dialogism of history, Rethinking History, v. 24, n. 2, p. 184-208, 2020. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2020.1813932. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

PELC, Jerzy. The methodological nature of semiotics. In: SEBEOK, Thomas (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986. p. 901-912.

PILSHCHIKOV, Igor. A vida como texto: Lotman numa casca de noz. RUS. Revista de Literatura e Cultura Russa, v. 14, n. 24, p. 256-290, 2023. Available at: https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2317-4765.rus.2023.208444. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

PILSHCHIKOV, Igor; TRUNIN, Mihhail. The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics: A transnational perspective. Sign Systems Studies, v. 44, n. 3, p. 368-401, 2016. Available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2016.44.3.04. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

POSELYAGIN, Nikolay. Image. In: TAMM, Marek; TOROP, Peeter (eds). The companion to Juri Lotman. A semiotic theory of culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. p. 225-233.

POSNER, Roland. Basic tasks of cultural semiotics. In: WITHALM, Gloria; WALLMANNSBERGER, Josef (eds.). Signs of power — Power of signs. Vienna: INST, 2004. p. 56-89.

PORTIS-WINNER, Irene. Semiotics of peasants in transition. Slovene villagers and their ethnic relatives in America. Duke: Duke University Press, 2002.

PRICE, Derek J. de Solla. Little Science, Big Science. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.

PUUMEISTER, Ott; KULL, Kalevi. Editor’s Preface: Lotmaniana and Semiotic Publications from Tartu. Sign Systems Studies, 50, n. 4, p. 471-472. Available at: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2022.50.4.01. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

RESTANEO, Pietro. Engaging the Difference. Multiperspectivist Themes in the Soviet History of Ideas. Bakhtiniana, 21(1), p. 1-29. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2176-4573e68915. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

RICKBERG, Merit. Lotmanian Perspective on Complexity in Cultural Systems. Semiotika, 17, p. 77-109. Available at: https://doi.org/10.15388/Semiotika.2022.26. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

RICKBERG, Merit; SALUPERE, Silvi. Lotman and the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics. In: TAMM, Marek; TOROP, Peeter (eds). The companion to Juri Lotman. A semiotic theory of culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. p. 91-104.

SALUPERE, Silvi. Tartu summer schools of semiotics at the time of Juri Lotman. Chinese Semiotic Studies, v. 6, n. 1, p. 303-311, 2012. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2012-0121. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

SALUPERE, Silvi; TOROP, Peeter. On the beginnings of the semiotics of culture in the light of the Theses of the Tartu-Moscow School. In: SALUPERE, Silvi et al. (eds.). Beginnings of the semiotics of culture. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 2013. p. 15-37.

SEMENENKO, Aleksei. The texture of culture: an introduction to Yuri Lotman’s semiotic Theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave-McMillan, 2012.

SÉRIOT, Patrick. Barthes and Lotman: Ideology Vs Culture. Sign Systems Studies, v. 44, n. 3, p. 402-14, 2016. Available at: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2016.44.3.05. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

TAMM, Marek. Introduction: Juri Lotman’s semiotic theory of history and cultural memory. In: LOTMAN, Juri. Culture, Memory and History. Essays in Cultural Semiotics. Switzerland: Palgrave McMillan, 2019. p. 1-26.

TAMM, Marek; TOROP, Peeter. The companion to Juri Lotman. A semiotic theory of culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.

TLOSTANOVA, Madina. Can the post-Soviet think? On coloniality of knowledge, external imperial and double colonial difference. Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics, v. 1, n. 2, p. 38-58, 2015. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17356/ieejsp.v1i2.38. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

TOROP, Peeter. Cultural semiotics and culture. Sign Systems Studies, v. 27, p. 9-23, 1999. Available at: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.1999.27.01. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

TOROP, Peeter. Peeter Torop conversa con Iuri M. Lotman. Entretextos, v. 1, p. 75-87, 2003.

TOROP, Peeter. La Escuela de Tartu como Escuela. Entretextos, v. 4, p. 138-156, 2004 [1995].

TOROP, Peeter. Semiotics, anthropology and the analysability of culture. Sign Systems Studies, v. 34, n. 2, p. 285-315, 2006. Available at: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2006.34.2.02. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

USPENSKIJ, Boris. Sobre el problema de la génesis de la Escuela semiótica de Tartu-Moscú. Escritos, v. 9, p. 199-212, 1993 [1987].

VELMEZOVA, Ekaterina. Les lois du sens: la sémantique marriste. Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2007.

VELMEZOVA, Ekaterina. Une École de paradoxes. In: Ekaterina Velmezova (ed.). L’école sémiotique de Moscou-Tartu/Tartu-Moscou. Histoire, épistémologie, actualité. Slavica Occitania, 40, 2015. p. 11-27.

VELMEZOVA, Ekaterina. Ferdinand De Saussure. USSR. 1950…. Sign Systems Studies 50, n. 1, p. 163-72, 2022. Available at: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2022.50.1.09. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

VELMEZOVA, Ekaterina; KULL, Kalevi. A paradox of the “semiotics of life”: Juri Lotman’s later works. Lexia, v. 39/40, p. 89–99, 2022. Available at: https://doi.org/10.53136/97912218042635. Accessed on: June 6, 2026.

WALDSTEIN, Max. The Soviet Empire of Signs. A History of the Tartu School of Semiotics. Saarbrüchen: VDM Verlag, 2008.

ZENKIN, Sergey. Lotman and French Theory. In: TAMM, Marek; TOROP, Peeter (eds.). The Companion to Juri Lotman. A Semiotic Theory of Culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. p. 311-320.

Downloads

Publicado

2026-08-31

Como Citar

Chávez Herrera, E. (2026). The current relevance of the Tartu-Moscow School and cultural semiotics. Estudos Semióticos, 22(2), 268-282. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1980-4016.esse.2026.244316