Semiotic Shift

In the book [Seven Stories] Five of the story cycles have titles which express a movement “from” something “to” something else: “from” something established and ingrained “to” something unexpected and new. It is a real movement, one happening at the level of human perspective and meaning. If we think for a moment about normal changes in human life, say from childhood to adolescence, or from being single to being married, we can easily understand how the change will bring a real shift in how we see and relate to the world. Different things become important to us, our values change, the very things and the words we use about them change. But what is being talked about in Seven Stories is not a normal mutation built into the pathway of  human life. We are talking about a shift in the fundamental way in which the world is constructed for everyone, in every situation and at every level. 

Imagine that the actual eyes we see with are filters which only let in a certain amount and certain type of information. Then, somehow, we are given new eyes which reveal to us completely new perspectives and possibilities! But even this metaphor doesn’t quite do it. Because what the Biblical transformation is offering are new eyes and the reality to go with them. Without the new eyes the new reality is simply not there. With new eyes a new reality dawns. As Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is focused [‘single’ in the Greek], your whole body will be full of light!” 

Let’s take, for example, the second story cycle, “From Violence to Forgiveness.” What is happening is not simply some way of dealing with violence through a subsequent forgiveness; say, for a particular episode of offense. No, it is a matter of going from a world constructed in and through violence to one constructed in and through forgiveness. With this shift in perspective creation is authentically new!

The phrase used for this huge change is “semiotic shift.” It means a shift in the way the world is figured and shaped at the most basic level, the level at which the signs that give and convey meaning are generated. There is a new generation of meaning all together. So forgiveness is no longer in a kind of equal partnership or back-and-forth with violence. Instead, it replaces it entirely!

Another thought about the way story works can help. In many thrillers or detective stories there is the big moment of revelation, what is sometimes called “the reveal!” This is the point when all the bits fit together and the reader finally understands what has been going on in the many details of the story. The jigsaw suddenly makes sense. There also may be a “twist” at the end that turns the whole thing on its head once more. The semiotic shift is both the reveal and the twist, a credible explanation and a sudden astonishing re-dimensioning that changes everything. At the end of John’s gospel the Risen Jesus meets Mary Magdalen in the garden near to the tomb. In the text she is seen to “turn” twice, before she recognizes Jesus. Mary experiences a “twist” and yet another “twist,” before finally she gets the radical “reveal” of the whole story, the one that changes the meaning of everything.  

However, in order to get to that final twist we first must have a continuity of narrative which can bring us to that point. In order for the new to arrive there must first be the familiar and known. Thus Seven Stories includes cycles on the Land of Israel and the Jerusalem Temple. These institutions and their symbolic value provided the necessary historical and narrative arc within which the plot of the new could emerge.  In the Seven Stories understanding, the Land of Israel and the Jerusalem Temple are the stable rock of ordinary human culture in and through which the stresses of the new show themselves, and finally break through into new creation!

Extract from ‘Seven Stories’

Tagged as: Semiotic Shift, Rene Girard, Anthony Bartlett, Seven Stories, Mimetic Theory.