AKMA has a provocative “semi-random” trio of statements about our powerlessness in the face of signifying. 1. Everything we do signifies (projects meaning), he says. 2. Signifying always escapes our ability to control it: Your wearing of an orange jacket on St. Patrick’s day will be taken as having a particular significance whether you intended it or not. 3. From this AKMA concludes that there can be no ethic of signifying, just as there’s no ethic of gravity. (Pardon my recapitulation. Read the original. It’s written with AKMA’s usual clear-eyed panache.)

The main point of his conclusion is (and I trust AKMA will correct me if I get this wrong) that because signifying isn’t something we do, and isn’t something that we even fully understand, there’s no “real” signification, intended or otherwise, that we can authoritatively unearth. Our simple model of communication (inner thought expressed in outer signs) misrepresents the actual situation.

My question for AKMA: Within the broad swath of signifying, some of it is on purpose (as AKMA acknowledgeds, of course), so shouldn’t we be held responsible for it? Does he general law absolve us of responsibility in particular cases? Somehow I doubt it, but I don’t understand the connection.

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