Semiotics and Documentary Film: The Living Sign in the Cinema (Semiotics, Communication and Cognition [SCC], 11)

__Semiotics and Documentary Film: The Living Sign in the Cinema__ engages with very vital problems posed by Peirce's philosophy in an innovative and inter-disciplinary fashion by examining how documentary film practice can engage with the question of emergent human agency within a wider biosphere shared by human animals and non-human animals alike. The book is in many ways a celebration of human inquiry, taking liberally from Peirce's semeiotic and parallel ideas within recent visual anthropology. Through an analysis of the work of three renowned filmmakers - Jon Jost, Johan Van der Keuken, and Rithy Panh - __Semiotics and Documentary Film: The Living Sign in the Cinema__ reasserts human agency within a global age, dominated by philosophical scepticism and an unquestioning subservience to mechanistic military techno-culture. The author argues that an approach to documentary inquiry, broadly derived from Peirce's sign theory, phenomenology, and overall philosophical outlook, has strong advantages over atemporal formal approaches derived from Saussurean semiology. Nevertheless, this project is also both critical and self-critical. It also bears direct testament to the many tumultuous and life-destroying events of the late 20th century and reminds us of the moral and philosophical problems which we are still grappling with in the early 21st century. Hence - the Living Sign.

Semiotics and Documentary Film: The Living Sign in the Cinema engages with very vital problems posed by Peirce's philosophy in an innovative and inter-disciplinary fashion by examining how documentary film practice can engage with the question of emergent human agency within a wider biosphere shared by human animals and non-human animals alike.
The book is in many ways a celebration of human inquiry, taking liberally from Peirce's semeiotic and parallel ideas within recent visual anthropology. Through an analysis of the work of three renowned filmmakers - Jon Jost, Johan Van der Keuken, and Rithy Panh - Semiotics and Documentary Film: The Living Sign in the Cinema reasserts human agency within a global age, dominated by philosophical scepticism and an unquestioning subservience to mechanistic military techno-culture.
The author argues that an approach to documentary inquiry, broadly derived from Peirce's sign theory, phenomenology, and overall philosophical outlook, has strong advantages over atemporal formal approaches derived from Saussurean semiology.
Nevertheless, this project is also both critical and self-critical. It also bears direct testament to the many tumultuous and life-destroying events of the late 20th century and reminds us of the moral and philosophical problems which we are still grappling with in the early 21st century. Hence - the Living Sign.

Acknowledgements Abstract List of tables and figures Notes on citations and tables Preface 1 Peirce’s Semeiotic and the Living Sign 1.1 What is a Sign? 1.2 One, two, three: a few sundry notes on triads, phenomenology, and the categories 1.3 Nine sign divisions and ten sign classes 1.4 The Decalogue: how signs grow 1.5 A Body Awakes 1.6 Icons, Photography, and Mimicry 1.7 Dialogue, index, and dynamic object 1.8 Habit and the growth of the symbol 1.9 Inner dialogue, self-control, and dissent 2 Parallel Developments and Divergences 2.1 New Dialogues 2.2 Documentary as Text? 2.3 Theorising Practice 3 Rupture, Dissent, and Conflict in the Cinema of Jon Jost 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Me, You, and We in Jon Jost’s Speaking Directly 3.2.1 Violence and Authority 3.2.2 Inner dialogue and semeiotic autonomy 3.3 London Brief: Conformity and War 3.4 Passages: Apage and Sacrifice 4 War and biophilia in the cinema of Johan van der Keuken 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Herman Slobbe: the pain of growth 4.3 Ecology and self-control in the The Flat Jungle 4.3.1 Greed and Animosity 4.4 Face Value: Love and Death in the City 4.4.1 History as Outward Clash 4.4.2 Global War and Media 4.4.3 Love Cycles 5 Terror and love in the cinema of Rithy Panh 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Love, chance, and hope in The Land of the Wandering Souls 5.3 Self-cultivation and Reconstruction in S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine Conclusion References Index Review text: "This book contributes to an important change in the critical discourse surrounding documentary. It offers an intellectually serious and rigorously argued case for a new approach and it engages with an impressive range of sources that cut across the conventional boundaries of scholarship."--Professor Anna Grimshaw, Emory University, co-author of Observational Cinema: Anthropology, Film and the Exploration of Social Life "Hing Tsang's monograph provides a bridge between documentary and ethnographic film, and phenomenology, pragmatics, and theories of documentary film. It also makes a very important contribution to the field of documentary studies by exploring the specific contribution that has been and is still being made by visual anthropology and by updating and extending the ways in which Peirce's ideas can be seen to be relevant."--Helen Hughes, Senior Lecture in Film Studies, University of Surrey, author of Green Documentary: Contemplation, Irony, Argument "This book reintroduces key ideas from Peirce's philosophy in a fashion that is accessible for non-specialists. It also provides a detailed and engaging analysis of the work of three world-class filmmakers." - John Berra, Lecturer in Film Studies at Tsinghua University, editor of the Directory of World Cinema: American Independent This volume reintroduces Peircean ideas within documentary studies. Taking from Peirce's semeiotic and parallel ideas within recent visual anthropology, it defends documentary practice as a vital form of human inquiry. Through the work of three renowned filmmakers - Jon Jost, Johan van der Keuken, and Rithy Panh - this book attempts to reassert human agency within a global age dominated by skepticism and an unquestioning subservience to mechanistic military techno-culture. The Series: Semiotics, Communication and Cognition This series focuses on the state of contemporary semiotics and its current applications. Each volume in the series places its topic within a general understanding of today's semiotics, an interdisciplinary field which investigates the application of sign theory not only to culture, but also to nature. The books are accessibly written and communicate with an academic readership that is not overspecialized. Book jacket Peirce's semeiotic and the living sign Parallel developments and divergences Rupture, dissent, and conflict in the cinema of Jon Jost War and biophilia in the cinema of Johann van der Keuken Terror and love in the cinema of Rithy Panh.