Argentinian semiotician, sociologist and media theorist, editor of the journal LENGUAjes and author of more than 14 books and many articles and essays.
Texts available in English include:
‘Mediatization Theory: A Semio-anthropological Perspective’ in Lundby, Knut, ed. Mediatization of Communication (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014)
“The time has come, perhaps, to concentrate our efforts in the comprehension of the rules that give form to the multiple strategies activated by the socio-individual systems to cope with an increasingly mediatized environment. In other words we must find new methodological paths to have access to the processes through which the socio-individual systems use mediatic phenomena to assure their own self-organisation. Contrary to Luhmann, who speaks of “communication” as the central concept when dealing with systems and sub-systems, and of “consciousness” when dealing with what he calls the ‘psychic systems’, I think that the semiotic processes are in one sense or another isomorphic. The qualitative difference here results not from an ontological difference between “communication” and “consciousness” but from the simple fact that the social and the socio-individual are different auto-poietic systems - the socio-individual being organic systems, which the social systems are not. In other words, the qualitative difference between the logics operating in production and in reconnaissance is a result of a systemic factor not a semiotic one. This is not surprising: it would not be improper, at the level of the species, to see the socio-individual systems with their increasingly mediatized social environment as an endless conversation of Homo sapiens with themselves” - page 171
One of his most influential essays is “Qui Sait?”, written for Persee special issue on Roland Barthes and based around an inscription from Barthes to Veron: « A E.V., un espace sémantique peu social... mais, qui sait ? » FULL TEXT in French
‘Science on TV: Forms and reception of science programmes on French television’ full text in English (co-authored with Suzanne de Cheveigne)
Conducta, estructura y comunicación (1968)
Imperialismo, lucha de clases y conocimiento: 25 años de sociología en la Argentina (1974)
A produçao de sentido (São Paulo, 1980)
Construire l'événement (1981)
Construir el acontecimiento (Eng: Building the event) (1983). Castellano edition of Construire l'événement, translated by Horacio Verbitsky.
Perón o muerte: los fundamentos discursivos del fenómeno peronista (1986). Peron or death: the discursive foundations of the Peronist phenomenon (1986). En colaboración con Silvia Sigal. In collaboration with Silvia Sigal.
La semiosis social. The social semiosis. Fragmentos de una teoría de la discursividad (1988) Fragments of a theory of discursivity (1988)
Espaces du livre (1989) Espaces du livre (1989)
Semiosis de lo ideológico y del poder (1995) Semiosis of the ideological and power (1995)
Esto no es un libro (1999) This is not a book (1999)
Effectos de agenda (1999) Calendar effects (1999)
El cuerpo de las imágenes (2001) The body of images (2001)
Espacios mentales. Mental spaces. Effectos de agenda 2 (2002) Effects of schedule 2 (2002)
Fragmentos de un tejido (2004) Fragments of tissue (2004)
