Signs, Meaning, Interpretation: C. S. Peirce’s Critique of Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism

Abstract

From the perspective of Peircian semiotics, this paper presents a prolegomenon of “a science of pragmaticist aesthetics.” Following the fundamental epistemological categories of C. S. Pierce, San Juan reads Michael’s Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost as unraveling the anatomy of terror in Sri Lanka. Such a reading, for San Juan, “elicit signs of whether we, and others in the collaborative enterprise, embody,” quoting Pierce, “an intelligence capable of learning by experience.”