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III.The Semiotic Square

In this final section I am using the semiotic square to re-examine the implications inherent to binary pairs, by making explicit the hidden terms that help to stabilize meaning and generate significance, and I am to a large extent relying on a similar application of A. J. Greimas's semiotic square developed by N. Katherine Hayles. 31 The semiotic square is a technique of discursive analysis which begins with the choice of a binary pair. Presence and absence can form a pair and the primary duality of such a square. The duality of presence and absence in the semiotic square signifies concepts in dynamic interplay with each other rather than as independently existing terms. The purpose of choosing the second duality is to detect the implications contained in the first pair. Since my interest lies in representations of the body in relation to presence-absence within the juridical terrain, I will choose hysteria (its physical presence, juridical absence) as the third term. The fourth term is generated by taking the negative of hysteria: AIDS (its physical absence, juridical presence).

Since the interplay between presence and absence generates a specific material inscription in the social-political context (through the juridical system and other apparatuses connected with law), the axis connecting these terms should be a juridical (material) inscription:

juridical (material) inscription Presence ---------------- Absence

The interplay between hysteria and AIDS generates different representational inscriptions, with the axis connecting these terms forming representational regimes:

representational regimes AIDS ---------------- Hysteria

Now that both sets of duality are in place, the semiotic square can be used to investigate the implications of the shift from the real effect of photography to the impact of the virtuality of new media and technology to different systems of representation, moreover onto different ways of inscribing the body within the visible and the political context.

These implications are made explicit by considering the relationships that connect different terms.

juridical (material) inscription Presence ---------------- Absence

hyper-realmutations representational regimes documentary /realeffect

AIDS ---------------- Hysteria

The diagonal, connecting presence with hysteria, can be labeled "replication"32: when presence and hysteria coincide, object and form are united without dissonance or separation. This is the realm of mimesis, ruled by common sense assumptions about objects that retain their form. The diagonal connecting absence and AIDS can be labeled "disruption"33. Just as absence disrupts the abundance of presence, AIDS disrupts the mimesis effect that was, until now, sufficient to anchor the disease within the social field, making it visible, but not going much further than that. The vertical axis connecting absence and hysteria alludes to the "real" effect of documentary photography. We can label the vertical axis connecting presence and AIDS (as a result of the interplay between the axes of juridical material inscriptions with representational regimes) hyper-real mutations. When AIDS becomes physically manifested in an image it "disappears", the image is disembodied. AIDS is thus capable of disrupting the established and accepted conformity of the photographic documentary effect of hysteria at any moment.

The four nodes of the semiotic square, according to Hayles, recall the four quadrants of a Cartesian graph which help to explain why the positive term of the second pair, hysteria, is placed on the lower right rather than lower left. 34 In Cartesian grids, the lower right quadrant represents a positive x-value combined with the negative y-value. We should recall that hysteria is generated by absence of the positive first term - presence. The fourth term, AIDS, is produced by the negative of the third term, hysteria, which is already marked by negativity. "Thus the fourth term represents a negation of negation. Because of this double negation, it is the least explicitly specified of all the four terms and therefore the most productive of new complications and insights."35 It is from the double (elusive) negativity of the fourth term that the "new" is likely to emerge, for the fourth term carries within it the most open and critical potentiality.36 The same semiotic square was used by Donna Haraway to travel to the virtual space: "To get through the artifactual to elsewhere, it would help to have a little travel machine that also functions as a map" 37: A. J. Greimas's "infamous" (Haraway's term) semiotic square. The semiotic square, so subtle in the hands of Frederic Jameson, was used in a more rigid and literal way in it's essay just to keep four spaces in differential and relational separation, while she explored how certain local/global struggles for meanings and embodiments of nature are occurring within them. The four regions through which Haraway moved were: (A) Real Space or Earth; (B) Outer Space or the Extraterrestrial; (not-B) Inner Space or the Body; and finally, (not -A) Virtual Space or the SF world. 38 The virtual space takes the same position as AIDS in my semiotic square. What can we learn from such an application of the semiotic square? It schematically shows possible relations that can emerge when the juridical realm and representation influence each other, thus providing a theoretical framework in which such apparently diverse ideas can be understood as different manifestations of the same underlying phenomena. The devastating effects this interplay between AIDS and presence within the realm of representation can have on traditional concepts of identity appears in different modes, one of them being that the physical durability of the body is just an illusion. On the one hand, the specific institution of the subject within the visible established in hysteria was possible or at least was the result of a specific ideological mechanism of the optical "truth" which is intrinsic to the photographic apparatus. On the other hand, this same apparatus reinforced the position of juridical absence of the insane person. The disruption of the visibility of hysteria by AIDS is thus as inevitable as the linkage of AIDS with death.

The film, Blue, forces the viewer to ask "who is speaking" and dismantles traditional hegemonic narrative structures. The speaker, of whom the film is about, does not emerge as a subject, but is referred to indirectly, and is therefore present by his absence, existing as a void in the text. Maybe this alternating identification is what Jarman was implying with the Blue's extreme immersion into discursivity, which makes possible that people afflicted with AIDS will not only be represented, but will be the ones who will participate in the production and articulation and of new meanings of their own condition.

- Marina Grzinic, Ljubljana

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