The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particul... more The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particular to the little known glam subculture. Subcultures have been the main research field of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, known for its interdisciplinary approach, and for its focus on the creative aspects of subculture. Hebdige, in particular, introduced many semiotic elements in his work, as the aberrant decoding after Eco and the cultural creativity via bricolage after Levi-Strauss. His definition of subculture as symbolic resistance has been criticized by the following post-subcultural researchers for its abstractness and lack of cohesion. Semiotics eventually have been expelled from the set of tools used in sociology for the analysis of subcultures. Nowadays, the studies on subcultures have a strong ethnographic focus. Due to terminological proliferation and a descriptive approach, it is difficult to compare them on a common basis. Textual semiotics, through ...
What follows is the analysis of the lyrics of three concept albums of different eras, backgrounds... more What follows is the analysis of the lyrics of three concept albums of different eras, backgrounds, success, connected with different subcultures. My hypothesis is that there is at least a common theme that subcultures share, namely the theme of authenticity. To define the subculture I will use the model of the lotmanian semiosphere as organizational structure determining center, periphery, boundaries and “other semiotics” (Lotman 2005: 213). The subcultural identity needs boundaries and enemies to manifest itself, and the central myth told in the lyrics here presented functions as a meta-language to set the value of authenticity as founding for the definition of the subcultural being.
dandelon.com, a search website meant to exploit library catalogues, already in use in German, Aus... more dandelon.com, a search website meant to exploit library catalogues, already in use in German, Austrian and Swiss libraries, offers a solution to the problem that a search machine working on word recurrence on a text is often useless for a scientific research. dandelon.com analyses through a thesaurus string the relevance of searched words in previously scanned indexes, and proposes a list of suitable texts and their location in libraries. Goal of dandelon.com is a more efficient words search and an easier approach to library catalogues, avoiding the problems of subject cataloguing.
The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particul... more The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particular to the little known glam subculture. Subcultures have been the main research field of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, known for its interdisciplinary approach, and for its focus on the creative aspects of subculture. Hebdige, in particular, introduced many semiotic elements in his work, as the aberrant decoding after Eco and the cultural creativity via bricolage after Levi-Strauss. His definition of subculture as symbolic resistance has been criticized by the following post-subcultural researchers for its abstractness and lack of cohesion. Semiotics eventually have been expelled from the set of tools used in sociology for the analysis of subcultures. Nowadays, the studies on subcultures have a strong ethnographic focus. Due to terminological proliferation and a descriptive approach, it is difficult to compare them on a common basis. Textual semiotics, through ...
The myth of the city, from a semiotic point of view, is the story lying behind the relationship b... more The myth of the city, from a semiotic point of view, is the story lying behind the relationship between space and people, grounding the identity of both. The rituals that citizens repeat in their everyday life can be seen as the practices that attest their belonging to the neighbourhood on one hand, and reaffirm the identity of the place on the other. Using the pattern of spacial arrangements, theorised by Landowski, this paper identifies how the different actors acceding the scene of the Hamburg district of St. Pauli (residents, tourists, architects, but also the spatial environment) adopt the myth. In recent years, the city district of St. Pauli is undergoing a dramatic development, as the architectural renewal brings with it a new kind of citizen and a general transformation of the rituals, practices, uses, taking place in a new environment. The changes caused by gentrification do not just destroy old buildings, they also leave behind a dangerous vacuum of identity, as the latter is bound to everyday rituals performing the myth, eventually decontextualised.
The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particul... more The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particular to the little known glam subculture. Subcultures have been the main research field of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, known for its interdisciplinary approach, and for its focus on the creative aspects of subculture. Hebdige, in particular, introduced many semiotic elements in his work, as the aberrant decoding after Eco and the cultural creativity via bricolage after Lévi-Strauss. His definition of subculture as symbolic resistance has been criticized by the following post-subcultural researchers for its abstractness and lack of cohesion.
Semiotics eventually have been expelled from the set of tools used in sociology for the analysis of subcultures. Nowadays, the studies on subcultures have a strong ethnographic focus. Due to terminological proliferation and a descriptive approach, it is difficult to compare them on a common basis.
Textual semiotics, through the concept of semiosphere developed by Lotman, allows to go back to the intuitions of Hebdige, organizing the semiotic elements already present in his work into a wider system of interpretation. The semiosphere offers a coherent theoretical horizon as a basis for further analysis, and a new methodological perspective focusing on the cultural. In this thesis for the first time the work of Lotman is applied to the study of a subculture.
The third KISMIF International Conference “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (KISMIF) DIY Cultures, S... more The third KISMIF International Conference “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (KISMIF) DIY Cultures, Spaces and Places” was help in Porto, Portugal, between 18th July and 21st July 2016. This edition was once again focused on underground music, but directing its attention this time towards the analysis of DIY cultures’ relationship to space and places. Thus, we challenged students, junior and senior teachers/researchers, as well as artists and activists, to come to the KISMIF International Conference and present works which explore the potential of the theoretical and analytical development of the intersection of music scenes, DIY culture and space under a multidimensional and multifaceted vision. Our intention was to enrich the underground scenes and DIY cultures analysis by producing innovative social theory on various spheres and levels, as well as focusing on the role of DIY culture in late modernity. Indeed, the role of music and DIY cultures is once more an important question — taking place in a world of piecemealed yet ever-present change. The space, spaces, places, borders, zones of DIY music scenes are critical variables in approaching contemporary cultures, their sounds, their practices (artistic, cultural, economic and social), their actors and their contexts. From a postcolonial and glocalized perspective, it is important to consider the changes in artistic and musical practices with an underground and/or oppositional nature in order to draw symbolic boundaries between their operating modalities and those of advanced capitalism. Territorialization and deterritorialization are indelible marks of the artistic and musical scenes in the present; they are related to immediate cosmopolitanisms, to conflicting diasporas, new power relations, gender and ethnicity.
The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particul... more The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particular to the little known glam subculture. Subcultures have been the main research field of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, known for its interdisciplinary approach, and for its focus on the creative aspects of subculture. Hebdige, in particular, introduced many semiotic elements in his work, as the aberrant decoding after Eco and the cultural creativity via bricolage after Levi-Strauss. His definition of subculture as symbolic resistance has been criticized by the following post-subcultural researchers for its abstractness and lack of cohesion. Semiotics eventually have been expelled from the set of tools used in sociology for the analysis of subcultures. Nowadays, the studies on subcultures have a strong ethnographic focus. Due to terminological proliferation and a descriptive approach, it is difficult to compare them on a common basis. Textual semiotics, through ...
What follows is the analysis of the lyrics of three concept albums of different eras, backgrounds... more What follows is the analysis of the lyrics of three concept albums of different eras, backgrounds, success, connected with different subcultures. My hypothesis is that there is at least a common theme that subcultures share, namely the theme of authenticity. To define the subculture I will use the model of the lotmanian semiosphere as organizational structure determining center, periphery, boundaries and “other semiotics” (Lotman 2005: 213). The subcultural identity needs boundaries and enemies to manifest itself, and the central myth told in the lyrics here presented functions as a meta-language to set the value of authenticity as founding for the definition of the subcultural being.
dandelon.com, a search website meant to exploit library catalogues, already in use in German, Aus... more dandelon.com, a search website meant to exploit library catalogues, already in use in German, Austrian and Swiss libraries, offers a solution to the problem that a search machine working on word recurrence on a text is often useless for a scientific research. dandelon.com analyses through a thesaurus string the relevance of searched words in previously scanned indexes, and proposes a list of suitable texts and their location in libraries. Goal of dandelon.com is a more efficient words search and an easier approach to library catalogues, avoiding the problems of subject cataloguing.
The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particul... more The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particular to the little known glam subculture. Subcultures have been the main research field of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, known for its interdisciplinary approach, and for its focus on the creative aspects of subculture. Hebdige, in particular, introduced many semiotic elements in his work, as the aberrant decoding after Eco and the cultural creativity via bricolage after Levi-Strauss. His definition of subculture as symbolic resistance has been criticized by the following post-subcultural researchers for its abstractness and lack of cohesion. Semiotics eventually have been expelled from the set of tools used in sociology for the analysis of subcultures. Nowadays, the studies on subcultures have a strong ethnographic focus. Due to terminological proliferation and a descriptive approach, it is difficult to compare them on a common basis. Textual semiotics, through ...
The myth of the city, from a semiotic point of view, is the story lying behind the relationship b... more The myth of the city, from a semiotic point of view, is the story lying behind the relationship between space and people, grounding the identity of both. The rituals that citizens repeat in their everyday life can be seen as the practices that attest their belonging to the neighbourhood on one hand, and reaffirm the identity of the place on the other. Using the pattern of spacial arrangements, theorised by Landowski, this paper identifies how the different actors acceding the scene of the Hamburg district of St. Pauli (residents, tourists, architects, but also the spatial environment) adopt the myth. In recent years, the city district of St. Pauli is undergoing a dramatic development, as the architectural renewal brings with it a new kind of citizen and a general transformation of the rituals, practices, uses, taking place in a new environment. The changes caused by gentrification do not just destroy old buildings, they also leave behind a dangerous vacuum of identity, as the latter is bound to everyday rituals performing the myth, eventually decontextualised.
The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particul... more The purpose of this work is to apply the methods of textual semiotics to subcultures, in particular to the little known glam subculture. Subcultures have been the main research field of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, known for its interdisciplinary approach, and for its focus on the creative aspects of subculture. Hebdige, in particular, introduced many semiotic elements in his work, as the aberrant decoding after Eco and the cultural creativity via bricolage after Lévi-Strauss. His definition of subculture as symbolic resistance has been criticized by the following post-subcultural researchers for its abstractness and lack of cohesion.
Semiotics eventually have been expelled from the set of tools used in sociology for the analysis of subcultures. Nowadays, the studies on subcultures have a strong ethnographic focus. Due to terminological proliferation and a descriptive approach, it is difficult to compare them on a common basis.
Textual semiotics, through the concept of semiosphere developed by Lotman, allows to go back to the intuitions of Hebdige, organizing the semiotic elements already present in his work into a wider system of interpretation. The semiosphere offers a coherent theoretical horizon as a basis for further analysis, and a new methodological perspective focusing on the cultural. In this thesis for the first time the work of Lotman is applied to the study of a subculture.
The third KISMIF International Conference “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (KISMIF) DIY Cultures, S... more The third KISMIF International Conference “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (KISMIF) DIY Cultures, Spaces and Places” was help in Porto, Portugal, between 18th July and 21st July 2016. This edition was once again focused on underground music, but directing its attention this time towards the analysis of DIY cultures’ relationship to space and places. Thus, we challenged students, junior and senior teachers/researchers, as well as artists and activists, to come to the KISMIF International Conference and present works which explore the potential of the theoretical and analytical development of the intersection of music scenes, DIY culture and space under a multidimensional and multifaceted vision. Our intention was to enrich the underground scenes and DIY cultures analysis by producing innovative social theory on various spheres and levels, as well as focusing on the role of DIY culture in late modernity. Indeed, the role of music and DIY cultures is once more an important question — taking place in a world of piecemealed yet ever-present change. The space, spaces, places, borders, zones of DIY music scenes are critical variables in approaching contemporary cultures, their sounds, their practices (artistic, cultural, economic and social), their actors and their contexts. From a postcolonial and glocalized perspective, it is important to consider the changes in artistic and musical practices with an underground and/or oppositional nature in order to draw symbolic boundaries between their operating modalities and those of advanced capitalism. Territorialization and deterritorialization are indelible marks of the artistic and musical scenes in the present; they are related to immediate cosmopolitanisms, to conflicting diasporas, new power relations, gender and ethnicity.
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Semiotics eventually have been expelled from the set of tools used in sociology for the analysis of subcultures. Nowadays, the studies on subcultures have a strong ethnographic focus. Due to terminological proliferation and a descriptive approach, it is difficult to compare them on a common basis.
Textual semiotics, through the concept of semiosphere developed by Lotman, allows to go back to the intuitions of Hebdige, organizing the semiotic elements already present in his work into a wider system of interpretation. The semiosphere offers a coherent theoretical horizon as a basis for further analysis, and a new methodological perspective focusing on the cultural. In this thesis for the first time the work of Lotman is applied to the study of a subculture.
Semiotics eventually have been expelled from the set of tools used in sociology for the analysis of subcultures. Nowadays, the studies on subcultures have a strong ethnographic focus. Due to terminological proliferation and a descriptive approach, it is difficult to compare them on a common basis.
Textual semiotics, through the concept of semiosphere developed by Lotman, allows to go back to the intuitions of Hebdige, organizing the semiotic elements already present in his work into a wider system of interpretation. The semiosphere offers a coherent theoretical horizon as a basis for further analysis, and a new methodological perspective focusing on the cultural. In this thesis for the first time the work of Lotman is applied to the study of a subculture.