SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

lyo I Social Theory and Social Action
move in certain ways characreristic of people belonging to court society. (Elias
1983:231-32)
And since the king and the palace at Versailles were the focal point of the entire
system, proper behavior of those at the lower reaches of the court hierarchy was
rendered meaningful by being oriented toward the same point as was the behavior
of their superiors.
A final example of the institutional basis of conventionality comes from
Lotman's (1985) analysis of Russian culture in the eighteenth century, a case in
which the nobility went to extremes to highlight the hyper-conventionality of
their behavior. Lotman begins by locating the natural/conventional distinction
in two levels of behavior, everyday norms considered by members of society as
ordinary, instrumental and "natural," on the one hand, and ceremonial, ritual,
and nonpragmatic "poetic" behavior regarded as bringing to contexts of action
an independent signification, on the other hand. While both levels are, from the
point of view of an outside observer, fully conventional, the semiotic character
of the former level vanishes from the actors' point of view, or so Lotman claims:
When a language is first recorded and studied, descriptions of everyday speech
are generally oriented toward rhe external observer. This correlation is not coincidental;
like language, everyday behavior belongs to the sort of semiotic system
that "native speakers" view as natural, a part of Nature and not Culture.
Its semiotic and conventional character is apparent only to the external observer.
(Lotman 1985:68)
As the data Lotman presents reveal, however, this "external" perspective is not
reserved for the theoretical observer but can characterize the perceptions of social
groups who experience some significant "other" as proof of the relativity of
custom.
From the period of Peter the Great, Lotman documents a process in which
the nobility increasingly adopted, even flaunted, behavior patterns borrowed
from the European middle class, to the degree that they acted like foreigners in
their own country. The motive for this seems to be that these nobles ensured that
their conventional behavior could resist being naturalized through repetition precisely
because it appeared foreign, thereby demanding—in a perfect reversal of
Benveniste's argument—an attitude of externality. The resulting need for intensive
instruction of children, the publication of manuals of polite conduct, and the
value placed on learning foreign languages further differentiated nobility and
peasants.
This "semiotization of everyday behavior" took many forms, from the
heightened theatricality of costume to the ritualization of what had previously
been "natural" activity. What all these "poetic" forms of behavior had in common
was the availability of alternative norms or styles, again contrasting with
peasant behavior regulated by the invariable boundaries of the agricultural cycle.
Naturalization of Convention I 191
(Curiously, but predictably, Peter himself inverted this inversion by displaying
strikingly unaffected, "natural" behavior in ceremonial contexts.) The extremes
to which this hyper-conventionality could run is illustrated by the case of one
Vasilii Vasil'evich Golovin, a learned gentleman whose daily schedule was a cross
between a theatrical performance and liturgical rite:
If anything prevented the master from falling asleep right away, he did not stay
in bed and was restless for the entire night. In this case, he would either begin
reading aloud his favorire book, The Life of Alexander the Great by Quintus
Curtius, or he would sit in a large armchair . . . and intone the following
words, now raising and now lowering his voice: "Satan, get thee to the barren
places, to the thick woods and to the crevices of the earth, where the light of
God's countenance shineth not. Satan, Enemy of Mankind, unhand me, get
thee to the dark places, to the bottomless seas, to the shelterless uninhabited
mountains of the wilderness where the light of God's countenance shineth not.
Cursed wretch, be off to the Tartars! Be off, cursed wretch, to the inferno, to
the eternal fire and appear to me no more. Thricedamned, thriceheathen and
thricecursed! I blow on you and spit on you!" After finishing these exorcisms,
he would rise from his chair and begin walking back and forth through all
seven of his rooms shaking a rattle. These strange habits naturally provoked
curiosity, and many of the servants peeked through the cracks to see what the
master was doing. But this too was taken into account. The housemaids would
begin shouting, employing various witticisms and proverbs, and pour cold
water on the eavesdroppers from an upper window. The master approved all
these actions, saying, "It serves the culprits right. Suffering means nothing to
them, thricedamned, thriceheathen and thricecursed, untortured, untormented
and unpunished!" Stamping his feet, he would repeat the same thing over and
over again. (Quoted in Lotman 1985:79—80)
Lotman observes that this carnivalization of daily life implied not only that individuals
played theatrical roles but also that life itself was viewed as a textual plot,
often intentionally patterned after literary heroes (see also Lotman 1976).
Conclusion
Philosophy commences when this immediate synthesis [of ethos and
worldview] falls apart, when physis and nomos become distinguished and their
relation is transformed into a problem. Its history is that of constant attempts
both to reformulate this distinction and to construct a relation between the
concepts distinguished. Its end is present when the relations between nature
and convention, objects and values, facts and norms, science and morality, etc.
are no longer seen as a meaningful problem.
—György Markus (1980:24)
The theoretical and ethnographic examples in the preceding sections are intended
to challenge the simple idea that social conventions always appear arbi-