Contingent structure
Stanton Wortham (swortham who-is-at abacus.bates.edu)
Tue, 12 Mar 1996 12:37:26 -0500 (EST)
I thought Dr. Martin's question was an important one. As we discover that
improvised and contingent aspects of human activities are more important
than decontextualized, structuralist accounts of meaning would have us
believe, we face the question of how to understand contingency. Our
analytic tools point us toward structure and consistency. But we need to
understand contextualized structure. Jay's comments raised the
possibility that salient (ie, causally efficacious) contingent events
might be less structured than we expect. But how could they have meaning
(semiotic value) if there is no structure at all?
Stanton Wortham