Transformative Criticism, Virtual Meaning, and Community: Peirce on Signs and Experience

Abstract

In two fairly early papers, Charles Sanders Peirce claims both that should teach us how to be masters of our own (EP1,126) and that meaning of a thought is altogether something virtual (EP 1, 42). For those of us still struggling to free ourselves from Cartesian subjectivism, with its elusive and misleading ideal of certainty (Lachs 1996, 20), these claims appear difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile. For Peirce, however, science and modern logic (EP 1, 28) show us that the problem becomes how to fix belief, not in individual merely, but in (EP 1, 117). As a consequence, he will insist that the existence of thought now, depends on what it is to be hereafter, so that it has only a potential existence, dependent on future thought of (EP 1, 54). My aim in this article, therefore, is to explore Peirce's analysis of cognition as essentially communal and historical in order to emphasize its political and epistemological value. Borrowing also from insights of contemporary feminist science scholarship and art criticism, I will argue that, because of its potential to correct and enlarge upon our individual efforts at thought and meaning making, Peirce's appeal to community of inquirers renders our attempts to reflect upon experience not just full of risk but a source of hope. 1 will illustrate this by considering Lucy Lippard's discussion of a failed feminist performance art piece from 1980 Times Square Show. (To anticipate, what makes this particular work of interest is audience's reaction to its didacticism.) Before doing so directly, however, I must first offer a brief exploration of Peirce's early account of cognition. Fueled by his distrust of introspection's claim to transparency, Peirce will begin his analysis by asserting that only permissible supposition to make in this endeavor is that the mind reasons (EP 1, 30). In good pragmatic fashion, he will define reasoning as find[ing] out, from consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know (EP 1, 111) and will apply this understanding of point and purpose of reasoning to his account of mental