K O D I K A S / C O D E 44 (2021) · No. 1 - 3 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Distortion. Verzeichnung (1988) Abstract: In the essay “ Distortion ” Eschbach is not aiming to set a definitive framework of discussion. It describes the cultural semiotic approach that is a way to define the term ‘ distortion ’ . This allows an ample scope to discuss the phenomenon and permits to explore fully the socio-historical, cultural-political, and aesthetic dimensions of the term. Eschbach sees the term ‘ cultural semiotics ’ as being best represented by the concept of the so-called ‘ secondary model-forming systems ’ of the Tartu School. The essay defines four main findings: 1. Distortion does not seem to be an inevitable consequence of any drawing process, but rather the result of a deliberate or negligent shortening of semiosis. Mainly deriving from short cuts and reductions of the semiotic triad. 2. In order to avoid shortcuts of the Semiotic triad, a Semiotic critique of signs is necessary, which, however, must not end with Mauthner ’ s skepticism, but should point out possibilities and limits of the traffic in signs. 3. Possibilities and limits of sign traffic cannot be determined in the style of many conventional sign theories by typologizing and formalizing, but rather require on the one hand a general sematology as a basic science and on the other hand a critical sociosemiotics that closes the gap between sign production, product, and reception that still exists today. 4. In order to meet this latter requirement, a high degree of semiotic research curiosity is necessary. My contribution to “ The distorted Prometheus ” symposium, titled ‘ Distortion ’ , was not designed to set out a definitive framework for discussion. This was neither the intention of the organizer nor was it within my capacities. I also had no wish to present an idiosyncratic understanding of the sign ‘ distortion ’ , as it rarely or never occurs in everyday language, and this would hardly contribute to getting closer to the phenomenon in question. Moreover, a definition or explication of the term ‘ distortion ’ in the sense of a setting or fixing is forbidden by fundamental considerations of linguistic philosophy and semiotics, as such an approach violates the Wittgensteinian postulate of permanence in linguistics. It is equally incompatible with the basic semiotic maxim of the process of interpretation developed by Peirce and others, according to which a linguistic sign is subject to continuous change and clarification in semiosis. This process has been used with pleasure and success in many contexts, discovering for example historical ways of using the term in question. One thinks, for example, of passage B203 in Kant ’ s Critique of Pure Reason, where the concept of distortion is used in the investigation of the axioms of Anschauung - in order to ascertain, by way of conceptual-historical and/ or etymological analysis, a current understanding. Here, however, we cannot apply this process, because we are not concerned with a term ’ s history but with its meaning. Reservations to certain ways of defining the term ‘ distortion ’ leave us with the cultural semiotic approach. This gives us ample scope to discuss the phenomenon and will permit us to explore fully the socio-historical, cultural-political, and aesthetic dimensions of the term. When we speak here of ‘ cultural semiotics ’ , we are not talking about the mechanical counterpart to ‘ natural semiotics ’ , if there is such a thing. The term ‘ culture semiotics ’ , like the term ‘ pragmatics ’ at an earlier point in time, has the function of a waste paper basket into which one may safely stuff everything that cannot be accommodated in a meaningful way elsewhere. I see the term ‘ cultural semiotics ’ as being best represented by the concept of the so-called ‘ secondary model-forming systems ’ of the Tartu School, insofar as secondary systems of religion, myth, law, art, and science unfold based on the primary constitution of signs - with gestural, mimicked, proxemic and above all, signs, of natural language. Such a conception can dispense with traditional, artificial dichotomies, such as between the natural sciences and the humanities, while also explaining specific semiotic achievements on the basis of an integral theory of signs. Cultural semiotics in this sense is a holistic concept, just as the concept of signs itself can only meaningfully develop holistically. The 19th-century philosophy of science, which is committed to the scientific ideal of which we are today ’ s heirs, has encouraged tendencies that accord with the principle of psychophysical parallelism. This assertion can be substantiated in a particularly striking way by looking at the effects of the principle since this is a way of looking at things that has a long chain of antecedents, yet also persists in the current crisis in semiotics. The psychophysical mechanists were confronted with the problem of having to make statements about psychic phenomena without being able to subject these psychic phenomena to their quantitative methods. If one does not want to call it a parlor trick, then one must at least call the chosenway out very daring. The shift from physical to the psyche, from material to immaterial sign bearer does not owe itself to a proper analysis but to a dialectical empty shell, a metabasis eis allo genos or ‘ Stoffentgleisung ’ (material fallacy), as Karl Bühler aptly characterized this cardinal error of thought. The substitution theory of the sign, which is already completely inadequate in itself, is thus further reduced and emptied of meaning. Charles W. Morris carried this procedure under the banner of behaviorism far into the realm of modern semiotics, absolving in advance traffic sign theorists, Wau-wau semioticians, and substance thinkers who wanted to limit their attention to observable reactions to certain stimuli. It is precisely this view that is largely responsible for the inflationary expansion of semiotics, for according to this universally applicable conception, not only do all human activities fall within the scope of semiotics, but so do zoosemiotics, and phytosemiotics. This global perspective lends itself to application in the semiotic study of contact between machines or between people and machines. It would be very hard to justify why, for example, the reaction of two chemical elements or the collision of boulders in a landslide could not be considered semiotic events. The only problem with such an expansion of semiotics is that it Distortion (1988) 105 is inversely proportional to the meaningfulness of semiotic analysis. Under this trend, only vague analogizing remains possible. The phenomenon of hypostasis is closely related. The phenomenon related to the material sign bearer is the distortion by which a phenomenon is marked that can be presented as a characteristic of the current crisis of semiotics. People have been thinking, speaking, and acting with the help of signs ever since they became human. People record their environment since it is a human trait to want to understand every process, interpret it meaningfully, and orient in relation to it intentionally. In this sense, ‘ distortion ’ is nothing other than a synonym for human intellectual activity. Even if one focuses on the unproblematic and mundane process of semiotization of the environment, an aspect of distortion comes to light that deserves our attention: what is on the one hand a completely normal semiotic process of representation, turns out to be a socio-culturally remarkable phenomenon of progressive autonomy and the self-dynamics of the sign, a phenomenon in recent French semiology. Jürg Altwegg states in this regard: Both the ‘ deconstruction ’ of structuralism and semiology as a science, indeed a worldview of signs, are more strongly under Heidegger ’ s spell than one might think. In Jacques Lacan as well as in Jacques Derrida, the traces are directly traceable, and in Michel Foucault, the effect can also be traced (Altwegg 1988: 17). Bernhard Waldenfels, who noticed the same thing, emphasizes: Finally, Heidegger ’ s destruction of metaphysics has not stopped at the classical phenomenological texts. The interpretation of Husserl was transformed into destruction and diagnosis by J. Derrida, G. Granel, and their successors. What was gained here in terms of exegetical meticulousness and textual skill was the flip side of a movement that replaced the motto ‘ Back to the things ’ (zurück zu den Sachen) with the slogan ‘ Back to the texts ’ (Zurück zu den Texten) - with the intention of finding the ‘ things ’ in the texts (Waldenfels, quoted from Altwegg 1988: 17), which indicates a close connection to our problem. Every form of dealing with signs - as Charles Peirce compellingly demonstrated - presupposes other signs to which the current sign process refers, in interpreting, commenting or correcting manner. The original object-binding of the sign recedes into the background so that the boundaries of representation that can be legitimized by the object are blurred and the representational performance of the sign, which is necessary for thought, demands the autonomization of the sign in due course. The triadic sign scheme helps us summarize this. Since we cannot say anything about the ‘ pure object ’ , which is a thing in itself, the object finds its way into the semiotic process only in the form of the immediate object. Peirce, who made these differentiations, emphasizes the necessity of distinguishing the immediate object, by which he understands the object as represented by the sign, from the dynamic object, which he defines as the object that actually takes effect but is not immediately present (cf. Peirce, C. P. 8.343). We see, then, that the source point of semiosis can be described as a process of beginning. On the basis of his semiotic analysis, Peirce not only arrived at a distinction between the immediate and the dynamic object but also considered a threefold distinction of the interpreter. With the concept of the immediate interpreter, he described an interpreter who is represented or signified by a sign. The dynamic interpreter characterizes the impact of the sign on the interpreting consciousness. The logical interpreter, which I would call the regulative idea, characterizes, according to 106 Distortion (1988) Peirce, the effect that is achieved by the sign in the interpreting consciousness, when a process of thought is sufficiently advanced by acommunity of researchers (cf. ibid.). In the phenomenon of distortion, then, the fact is manifested that in the process of representation, the designated, unmediated object is extended by the sign, since the sign as a sign, i. e. in its triadic relationality consisting of the relation (0, R, I), adds the designation to the object in such a way that a naturally non-existent relation to the the interpreter is established for the first time. In the process of designation, therefore, we see a semiotic surplus or surplus value that is available to the user of the sign in the same way as a commodity. It is precisely at this point that it is necessary and meaningful to speak of distortion. Then, and precisely then, when the social surplus value of signs is thematized, when the characteristic relations of sign and value are analyzed, and when the political economy of the exchange of signs is under discussion (cf. Baudrillard 1972), we must speak of distortion. Distortion is thus not primarily meant to express the fact that the world is populated by more and more signs, although today there may well be talk of semiotic environmental pollution, but rather than characterize the processing of the sign into a commodity. But if it is true that all intellectual and artistic acts are indispensably dependent on signs, and if it is also true that the process of representation has an unavoidable tendency to become distorted, so that sign-mediated object manipulation is replaced by sign-mediated sign manipulation, then the analysis of the political economy of the sign must become a central task, or what I call ‘ critical ’ semiotics. My late friend Ferruccio Rossi-Landi addressed this problem in a whole series of publications and especially in his “ Theory of Sign Residues ” (Rossi-Landi 1977). In a lecture given in August 1977 on the occasion of the Third Austrian Semiotics Symposium, he examines the relationship between sign systems and social reproduction, guided by the basic principle that ‘ social reproduction ’ must be conceived of as a model concept encompassing the whole of human reality, within which sign systems are a constant factor. Without going into Rossi Landi ’ s argument in detail here, his main conclusions can be summarized as follows: If one or more elements of the sign are isolated from the semiotic triad, one destroys, willingly or unwillingly, the all-encompassing signifying potency of the triadic sign, which alone is capable of doing justice to the socio-historical reality of man. If, for example, one reduces semiosis to the sign-bearer, if one restricts this sign-residuum to its mere materiality, then one cuts it off from the social work that was necessary to declare naturally existing matter or energy, or an artifact in a secondary process of production, to be a bearer or representative. Likewise, other abbreviations of semiosis are conceivable, by Distortion (1988) 107 radicalizing the interpretant function and separating it from its material basis. One might be inclined to parallel such abbreviations with certain traditional styles of thought, insofar as both mechanical materialism and subjective idealism seem to propose just such totalizations. When we describe the problem of signification in the categories of certain philosophical histories, however, the dangers involved should rather be minimized or concealed, because the conceptual camouflage does not make it adequately clear that significations of this kind do not mean a somewhat reduced but ultimately acceptable signifying process, but rather highly aggressive forms of totalitarianism. This finding is in close correspondence with the reflections that Edmund Husserl developed in his famous lectures on the crisis in European science. The crisis, which Husserl spoke about in 1936 at the invitation of the European Cultural Association in Vienna, was the gap between human experience and reality that presented itself to the sciences of the 19th century. Instead of attuning humankind to its reality, scientism led to ever greater alienation. A schism between the life-world of the human and the world as an object of scientific thought developed. Too often are questions about the why and wherefore suppressed in favor of the engineering question, how. In this way, however, science in its scientific guise has lost the actual function of science, which is to theoretically penetrate relations between the human and its environment. It has lost its own function of meaning. This is the fact that Husserl calls critical.The situation is not critical, however, for science that is committed to the scientistic ideal, since it can flourish undisturbed in its self-woven and self-elected cocoon. The situation is critical, however, for modern humankind as the subject of this science, because, due to the loss of the scientific function of meaning, he runs the risk of foregoing science and its inherent rationality altogether and creating irrational fetishes for himself, or, as has already been said, of substituting sign-mediated manipulation of signs for sign-mediated manipulation of objects. This state of affairs is reminiscent of an observation by Milan Kundera, who points out in an essay on Federico Fellini that Franz Kafka has ingeniously captured the ‘ essence of technology ’ in his novels. (cf. Haller 1988: 214): The world in the castle is archaic, and yet technology reigns in it: in this world, man is dominated by forces he can no longer cope with. Husserl ’ s analysis of the crisis in European science arose little more than fifty years ago. And despite a change in circumstances, they retain an almost frightening degree of timelessness. Husserl recognizes the tendency of people to fall back regressively behind their own possibilities in order to submit to the power of the natural sciences. The idea of not having to surrender to the real world, which is only possible at the price of surrendering to the myths of irrationalism, for example in the form of the new inwardness or the seductive whispering of new-age apologists is nourished by the modern cult of the information society. If before there was talk of voluntary surrender to the myth of irrationalism, the evidence for this could justifiably have come from history. I recall a decidedly shameful example: when the first Jewish rector of a German university, Professor Ernst Cassirer of Hamburg, met the first Nazi rector of a German university, Professor Martin Heidegger of Freiburg. Benedetto Croce wrote to his friend and colleague Karl Vossler on August 30, 1933, that 108 Distortion (1988) Germany was now bound to Heidegger (cf. Schneeberger 1962: III), whereas Ludwig Englert noted euphorically: The difference between the two scholars (i. e. Cassirer and Heidegger) lies in the different final basic positions that we were able to experience in that unique working community, which, with necessity, led to a difference in their conception and opened up in their attitude towards man as a finite being. For Cassirer, man ’ s sphere of action is only the point of departure, the ‘ terminus a quo ’ from which he progresses to the symbolic space situated above it, the autonomous and free realm of the spirit; only through this detachment from the world of preoccupying action does man gain the possibility of comprehending himself in his world and the world in himself; for this, he needs that symbolizing and spontaneous energy which is to be distinguished in principle from every mere vital force. Based on Uexküll ’ s theory, Cassirer developed the concept of ‘ human space ’ in contrast to ‘ animal space ’ , the first is the mythical world, followed by the artistic space of representation and the mathematical-physical space of meaning. Of fundamental importance for Cassirer is the grasp of the phenomenon of language. For it is a language that makes the step from the world of action to objectification possible for him. The last keystone of Cassirer ’ s elaborations was the discussion of the problem of death. In it, he developed that man is indeed finite, but at the same time also that finite being that knows about its finitude and in this knowledge, which itself is no longer finite, rises above finitude. In this sentence lies the last and sharpest contrast to Heidegger, which came to light even more clearly than in the lectures in a working group. While Cassirer ’ s approach focuses on the autonomous realm of the spirit, Heidegger ’ s thinking is primarily directed towards the world of concerned action, towards dealing with what is at hand. For him, it is a matter of being - as a problem of existence, his philosophy is quite existential, not formal, and while Cassirer ’ s thinking is strongly functionally directed, Heidegger ’ s appears more static (Englert, quoted by Schneeberger 1962: If.). It is now quite understandable that people use their regular way of “ handling available stuff ” to think creatively about their lives on this planet, as the constant hunt for the worrier and its surrogates confuses them about the limits of human possibility. Critical reflection has been replaced by a flood of unmanageable information, presented with the claim that it makes our lives easier. The abundance of potentially available data means that the question of the relevance of our actions no longer arises. The threatening loss of thought covered by the alluring myths of the computer age, which finds its most terrifying expression in the loss of the freedom of the imagination, is the core problem with the notion of distortion. What presents itself as a progressive virtuality in the handling of data sets turns out, on closer analysis, to be the replacement of sign-mediated object manipulation by signmediated sign manipulation. In a particularly intrusive way, this principle comes to the fore in the garish colorfulness and squiggly playfulness of so-called postmodern architecture. What appears to be greater freedom and virtuosity in the use of an exuberant repertoire of forms lacks the functional commitment of the exterior to the interior. This styleless architecture renounces the interaction between the community and the environment it builds, to chat about itself. Postmodern architecture does not develop out of mutual social communication, but out of the one-sided entertainment our media has accustomed us to. We Distortion (1988) 109 expect TV stars and sports celebrities to have a suitable outfit - think pop stars and athletes at the Olympic Games - and therefore settle into the functionless extroversion of the façade world. Postmodern architecture, which is based on the empty principle of pre-substitution, is self-deception in a dangerous sense. At the end of his essay on the false perception of postmodernism, which is well worth reading, Dieter Koll formulates this as the rift between being and wanting to be can be read in the increasing willingness to “ let the present disappear behind the façades of history ” (Koll 1987: 62). A similar complaint was made recently by the American writer James Michener, who, when asked about the reasons for the approval of Ronald Reagan ’ s policies by so many Americans, replied that this understatement was “ a result of the fact that the American people are not in favor of Ronald Reagan ’ s policies. The fact that the conservatives did not agree deeply with his policies, but rather that “ we are content with symbols as long as they radiate hope and the optimistic message is presented in a pleasant tone ” (Michener 1988: 198). The controversy between Cassirer and Heidegger referred to above was not only intended to remind us of one of the most disastrous chapters of the German past; nor was it intended merely to provide a historical foil to an otherwise novel phenomenon: Rather, this controversy shows with all clarity the abyss into which the delivery of the available stuff must inevitably steer! However, instead of tracing the terrible entanglements of large parts of German science in national socialism, I would like to present some implications of Cassirer ’ s position, because this important thinker, who is one of the very few modern German philosophers, who have recognized and understood the necessity and fruitfulness of critical-semiotic thinking, has provided valuable guidance on how to counter the apparent automaticity of the process of distortion. Previously we have heard that Cassirer, following von Uexküll, developed a semiogenetic model that takes the world of action into the world of symbolic forms, where he assigns a prominent role to language. In this context, it may be of interest to note the connection to statements by Jost Herbig, developed in his book Im Anfang war das Wort (Herbig 1984). I would also like to refer to André Leroi Gourhan ’ s work Hand und Wort (Leroi-Gourhan 1980), in which he reconstructs the evolution of technology, language, and culture in an analogous way. To conclude this short list of affirmative references, I refer to the cultural semiotic work of Jurij Lotman, who developed the very fruitful concept of the semiosphere. In a lecture he gave in 1987 in Helsinki in German, Yuri Lotman explained that the ‘ semiosphere ’ was about: The treatment of semiotic facts, which goes back as far as Saussurean linguistics, can no longer satisfy the present state of semiotics. After 20 years of semiotic research, we can now assume that strictly bounded and functionally unambiguous systems, taken in and of themselves, cannot function in isolation. They function only within a semiotic continuum filled with heterogeneous images at different stages of development. Such acontinuum - according to the concept of biosphere elaborated by V. I. Vernadsky - we call the semiosphere. The semiosphere is such a semiotic space, outside of which even the existence of semiosis is impossible (Lotman 1987: 1). Central to this understanding of the semiosphere is the limits of homogeneity of sign systems and the inequality of these systems at the structural level, insofar as the hierarchy of texts and languages is constantly violated. Lotman explains this concept as follows: 110 Distortion (1988) Let us imagine a museum hall, where exponents from different epochs are displayed in shop windows, signatures in known and unknown languages, instructions for deciphering, the explanations worked out by the Methodist, a touring scheme, and rules for visitors are gathered, let us add visitors ourselves and this results in something resembling real semiosphere (ibid.: 8). I would like to focus on another aspect of Cassirer ’ s approach, namely the role of language in the construction of the world of objects, which he examined in his contribution to the Hamburg Sprachtag of 1931. Starting from a critique of the image theory of cognition, which in the end is not even capable of repeating the determinations inherent in the object, and referring to the Copernican turn that Kant made when he stressed the innovative character of the synthesis of the manifold, which can only be performed by the subject itself. Cassirer emphasizes that: If we still continue to see in knowledge, in art, in language, as mere mirrors of the world, we must always remain aware that the image produced by each of these mirrors does not depend on the nature of the reflected object alone, but on our own nature, that it does not merely repeat a preliminary drawing already given in the object, but that it contains within itself an original act of preliminary drawing. It is therefore never a mere copy, but the expression of an original-forming power. The spiritual mirroring of the universe, which we possess in knowledge, in art, and in language, are therefore - to use a Leibnizian term - ‘ living mirrors ’ : miroirs vivants de l ’ Univers ’ . They are not merely passive receiving and recording apparatuses, but they are acts of the spirit. - and each of these original acts builds up for us its own and new environment, a certain horizon of objecthood. They do not simply come from the finished object, but they lead to it and towards it; they are constitutive conditions of its possibility (Cassirer 1932: 135). Decades earlier, the American semiotician Charles S. Peirce, who, like Cassirer, was oriented towards Kant, had already developed the only epistemological conclusion, abduction, which was popularized by Umberto Eco in his novel The Name of the Rose, in which Eco presented it as a prototypical case of a full semiosis. It was Peirce, however, who invested all efforts to distinguish abduction from the ultimately static, mimetic induction, which is good for nothing other than confirming what is already known, i. e. one ’ s own prejudices. But how is one to evade the mere repetition of the pre-drawing already given to the object? How can the existing dangers of distortion be avoided? Peirce answered this question on the one hand with a scientific-ethical appeal not to block the path of research and his conception of the permanent discourse of the research community, and on the other hand, developed his incomplete semiotic hypothesis theory. Another participant in the Hamburg Language Day, the psychologist Karl Bühler, who, like Cassirer, was convinced of the necessity of a semiotic answer to the questions under discussion, sketched a conception in his Theory of Language of 1934 which he called the organon view of language (Organonbetrachtung der Sprache (cf. Bühler 1934: 24££.)). Bühler previously didn ’ t see the necessity to talk about the origin of the language, because he equated being a human and the control over an orientation device for community life (cf. ibid: 48) in the same place. In his own words: The fact that language [ … ] belongs to the ‘ devices ’ or, in Platonic terms, that it is an organon, means nothing other than to consider it in relation to those who deal with it and are its doers. In the axiom of the sign nature of language, linguistic research thus encounters the thought model of homo faber, a maker and user of devices (ibid.). Distortion (1988) 111 But have we not, with Bühler ’ s organon view of language, arrived again precisely at Heidegger ’ s accessible stuff criticized by Cassirer? Let us, for the sake of clarity in order to answer this question, Bühler will have his say once again: Plato explains in the Cratylus that one must go to the weaver in order to find the principles of weaving, and to the carpenter who made the loom in order to explore the ‘ principles ’ of the organon ‘ loom ’ . Should he who wants to find the principles of linguistic research enjoy a course with the weaver and be spared a trip to the carpenter? That is what I do not believe. The correct analog to the course at the carpenters is the study of the intersubjectively regulated conventions of language. It is true that, like everything else we have inherited from our fathers, ‘ language ’ also wants to be received and must live out its resurrection in the monadic space of the speaker. But reception and self-creation (extraction and setting- Entnahme und Setzung) are two different things; to setting belongs the Husserlian freedom of the meaning-conferring acts, so as a limit to this freedom and correlative to it belongs the limitation of extraction, in extraction. To use linguistic entities in intersubjective intercourse or for the construction of a unique linguistic work, to use them like all other linguistic comrades, is one thing; and to give them the precision of meaning provided for in the construction of language itself, from case to case, and beyond that, here and there, a uniquely modified meaning, is another thing. And because these are two things, it is not possible, as logical investigations attempt to do, to account for the whole of the doctrine of meaning from the act. [ ] The theory of entities derived from the genuine organon model of language and thus from the objective view of language in the old way, and with it the social moment of language, must be described as logically prior to, or at least logically equivalent to, a subjectrelated theory of acts. Anything else would be individualism and subjectivism insufficient in relation to language (ibid.: 68 f.). In relation to the problem of the recording, a series of related consequences can be drawn in a preliminary summary, the appealing character of which should not be missed: 1. According to the findings so far, distortion does not seem to be an inevitable consequence of any drawing process, but rather the result of a deliberate or negligent shortening of semiosis, whereby the most diverse epistemological, aesthetic, ideological, etc. presuppositions can motivate this shortening. The overpowering object orientation, which Cassirer characterized as a pre-signification, could be distinguished from the fetishized role of the representative name, which is discussed here under the heading of distortion, and a hypertrophied emphasis on the function of the interpreter led to the individualism and subjectivism criticized by Bühler. Taken as a whole, however, all three reductions are shortcuts of the semiosis triad, which, from the point of view of relational logic, cannot even be forcibly dissolved into dyadic relations. 2. In order to avoid shortcuts of the Semiotic triad, whether they occur in the form of presigning, signification, or the one-sided emphasis on the interpretant relation, a Semiotic critique of signs is necessary, which, however, must not end with Mauthner ’ s skepticism, but should point out possibilities and limits of the traffic in signs. 3. The possibilities and limits of sign traffic cannot be determined in the style of many conventional sign theories by typologizing and formalizing, but rather require on the one hand a general sematology as a basic science and on the other hand a critical sociosemiotics that closes the gap between sign production, product, and reception that still exists today. 112 Distortion (1988) 4. In order to meet this latter requirement, a high degree of semiotic research curiosity is necessary. I think that Umberto Eco ’ s Lector in fabula (Eco 1987) has already pointed the way for further research. References Altwegg, Jürg 1988: “ Heidegger in Frankreich - und zurück? ” , in: Altwegg, Jürg (ed.): Die Heidegger Kontroverse, Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum: 14 - 25. Bühler, Karl 1934: Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache, Jena: Fischer. Cassirer, Ernst 1932: “ Die Sprache und der Aufbau der Gegenstandswelt ” , in: Kafka, Gustav (ed.): Bericht über den XII. Kongreß der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie in Hamburg vom 12. - 16. April 1931, Jena: Fischer. Eco, Umberto 1987: Lector in fabula. Die Mitarbeit der Interpretation in erzählenden Texten, Munich: Hanser. Herbig, Jost 1986: Im Anfang war das Wort. Die Evolution des Menschlichen, Munich: DTV. Husserl, Edmund 1976: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaft und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. By Walter Biemel, 2. Edition, Den Haag: Nijhoff. Kant, Immanuel 1976: Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Koll, Dieter 1987: “ Hochbetrieb im Leihaus der Geschichte. Anekdoten am Bau oder: Das falsche Aufsehen der Postmoderne - Verwirrte Flucht aus der Eintönigkeit der Nachkriegs-Architektur ” , in: Die Zeit, No. 46: 62. Leroi-Gourhan, André 1980: Hand und Wort. Die Evolution von Technik, Sprache und Kunst, Frankfurt a. M. Suhrkamp. Lotman, Jurij 1987: Über die Semiosphäre. Lecture at the university of Helsinki on June 4 th , 1987. Michener, James 1988: “ Es ist eine furchterregende Entwicklung ” , in: Der Spiegel 42 (1988): 198 - 205. Peirce, Charles Sanders 1979: Collected Papers. Vols. 7 and 8. Ed. By Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio 1977: Towards a theory of sign residues, Masch. Schneeberger, Guido 1962: Nachlese zu Heidegger. Dokumente zu seinem Leben und Denken, Bern: selfpublished. Distortion (1988) 113