Signifiers Quotes

“No one in his right mind will try to grow grapes by the luminosity of the word "day.”
― Paul De Man

“Of course, there is no way to avoid being a hypocrite, even when seeking to remove oneself from the falseness of this material existence. And perhaps, this attribution of ‘falseness’ is not sufficiently accurate as a descriptor either; yet, how else is it to be articulated if something of it seems inauthentic and insincere as though existence itself were mediated through codes and objects and structures that constrained the domain of possibility, or rather relegated the notion of free will as becoming a reaction to prompts and the construct of independent action as having emerged from latent subsets of choices that presented themselves according to the dynamic interplay of obligation, code, preservation and groupthink?”
― Ashim Shanker, Inward and Toward

“The signifier of myth presents itself in an ambiguous way: it is at the same time meaning and form, full on one side and empty on the other. […] The meaning will be for the form like an instantaneous reserve of history, a tamed richness, which it is possible to call and dismiss in a sort of rapid alternation: the form must constantly be able to be rooted again in the meaning and to get there what nature it needs for its nutriment; above all, it must be able to hide there. It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth.”
― Roland Barthes, Mythologies

“For all fields, and especially architecture, comprise two aspects: that which is signified and that which signifies it. [... ] Therefore it is evident that a man who wants to proclaim himself an architect must be proficient with regards to both aspects.”
― Vitruvius, Vitruvius: The Ten Books On Architecture

“Insignificance by Stewart Stafford

From the emerald Draco star,
Fell the coiled Rosslyn figure,
Unwinding into elongated form,
The golden crozier of St Patrick.

Faded gods upon ruined temples,
All came alive, screeching creeds,
Overwhelming minds and bodies,
Fanatics expiring from confusion.

In the shamanic ritualistic dance,
Of an in-out, Hokey-Cokey culture,
Spins the stained mah-jongg piece,
The missing link apes checkmate.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford