The Gap Between Meaning (semantics) and Meaning Making (semiosis) in the Age of LLMs
I've written an essay inspired by a dance performance I saw some months ago about the material grounds of the symbolic frame through which we all express ourselves as language users.
It made me think about why I feel like meaning, in the sense of grounding being in something more than just linear causality, is disappearing from the world. We no longer draw sense from the impossible, but increasingly only from the probable.
The essay concludes that we are experiencing the death of the subject not only as a source of meaning (as the death of the Author by Barthes) but also as a constituent part of semiotic processes. I frame the argument through Badiou, who defines the subject as an "agency" within material worlds that can transform the space of the possible, as opposed to just acting according to pre-defined norms, like contemporary AI. Would love to hear what you think, it's not a paid Substack!