In the light of discussions of Peter's paper...
one of the difficulties I am having with CHAT is thinking through the
relationship between tools that mediate human actions and specifically
semiotic artefacts or texts, *understood as* tools that mediate human
actions. Ontogenetically, phylogenetically, developmentally I can grasp that
the mediational or tool-like character of the sign must have been primary.
But at some point (development of writing? rise of the knowledge economy?
postmodernism? or perhaps immediately that the *idea* of the sign appeared
in a human culture?) the sign has retrospectively re-occupied everything.
For a person-with-language, even the most obviously 'tool'like tools are
linguistic objects first and foremost. More significantly, the human subject
of activity and the human aims of activity are also entirely *inside*
language as a system of signs. This would presumably be the starting point
of a poststructuralist refutation of activity theory. Every point of the
activity triangle, from the present moment of culture/history (i.e. inside
of semiosis) is already occupied by the sign.
Is there a moment in the history of a culture, and also in the history of
each individual member of a culture, at which the equation T-S-T (the tool
grasped as a sign) becomes S-T-S (the sign understood as a tool)? Is it
susceptible to the same kind of critique (immanent, grounded in collective
action) as the moment of capitalism (when capital engenders the production
of goods, in order to create more capital - rather than money being the
symbol of exchange which enables the free circulation of goods)?
Helen
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