Abduction according to Peirce: reflections from the south on the crisis of representation brought on by COVID-19

Paulina Aroch (2023, [Artículo, Artículo])

In this article, I reflect on the importance of abductive thinking for processes of material and conceptual reinvention in the context of the current public health crisis. Inseparable from the climate change engulfing the planet, this crisis provides the basis for a semiotic revolution. Therefore, I interrogate Peirce’s work without losing sight of my own time and place of interlocution. COVID-19 has brought with it a crisis of representation which, in contrast to that unleashed by the Holocaust and World War II, and to which the Frankfurt School responded, demands responses from the Global South. Beginning from Dussel’s call to defend life as a matter of ethical urgency in the face of its irresponsible objectification within colonial capitalist modernity –which arguably triggered the pandemic–, I trace a “nocturnal map” that registers the present meaning-making crisis, and allows for a reimagining and remaking of the world from elsewhere.

estudios de la comunicación semiótica crítica Sur Global crisis de representación COVID-19 HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS DE LA CONDUCTA HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS DE LA CONDUCTA Critical theory interdisciplinarity Global South crisis of representation