Symbols that Stand for Themselves

by Roy Wagner

Overview

This important new work by Roy Wagner is about the autonomy of symbols and their role in creating culture. Its argument, anticipated in the author's previous book, The Invention of Culture, is at once symbolic, philosophical, and evolutionary: meaning is a form of perception to which human beings are physically and mentally adapted. Using examples from his many years of research among the Daribi people of New Guinea as well as from Western culture, Wagner approaches the question of the creation of meaning by examining the nonreferential qualities of symbols--such as their aesthetic and formal properties--that enable symbols to stand for themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226869292
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	05/17/1989
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	157
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Roy Wagner is professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia. Tim Ingold is chair of social anthropology at the University of Aberdeen.

Table of Contents

Preface
1. Introduction
2. Too Definite for Words
3. Metaphor Spread Out: The Holography of Meaning
4. Death on the Skin: Mortality and Figure-Ground Reversal
5. Epoch: Real and Unreal Time
6. The Western Core Symbol
7. Conclusion: Third-order Trope and the Human Condition
References
Index