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LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN ON COLOR CONCEPTS AND THEIR LOGIC // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 222-234

The paper suggests some keys to understanding Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late notes on colors. The authors point here at the crucial difference between the internal and external relations. This distinction is comparatively common for the later Wittgenstein and appears one of the main contexts in Wittgenstein’s investigations of colors as research of kinds of logical differences. The authors also consider Wittgenstein’s scattered notes in accordance with the following main contexts: language games and their dependence on perception, the relationship between color concepts and empirical judgments about the color of everyday objects, identity, interdependence between colors as a kind of a logical system and everyday language games. The paper also focuses on various exceptions from our color system (from the cases of color blindness to the natural relativization of color logic within a variety of language games). Finally, the authors consider the problem of meaning in connection with the study of color concepts.

Keywords: color, color concepts, identity, logic of colors, language games, internal and external relations

WITTGENSTEIN’S “REMARKS ON COLOUR”: FROM COLOUR LOGIC TO SOCIAL STUDIES OF COLOUR // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 2 (24). P. 25-38

The main theme in Wittgenstein’s “Remarks on Colour” is the logic (or grammar) of colour. We consider the logic of colour in the context of various reductionist projects in which logical relations between colour concepts are planned to be reduced to an objective definition of colour (it is the first variant of reduction and here we will take as an example a project of Jonathan Westphal) or are planned to be universalized within the framework of a certain explication (such may be the colour octahedron, etc.) (the second variant). When examined in detail, both variants show their own insolvency. We read Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour as a consistent criticism of any reductionist projects in the study of the relationship between colour concepts. In the first case (with Westphal) we adhere to the position of Elaine Horner. When considering universalistic reductions, we look in detail at the work of Gabriela Mras. In the final part of the article, we try to show how the universalist tendency (at the level of initial premises) influences some sociological and anthropological studies of colour (we briefly consider the works of William Rivers and Berlin & Kay). And our article can be taken as an additional commentary on the work of Martin Kusch.

Keywords: colour, colour concepts, logic of colours, language games, phenomenology, colour in sociology and anthropology

A GENTLE WOMAN BY ROBERT BRESSON // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 2 (32). P. 190-202

As known, Robert Bresson rejects the widespread theatrical forms of film adaptation of a literary text. The use of author’s expressive means in cinema creates a separate, unique (characteristic almost exclusively for Bresson) space for the interpretation of literary texts. Bresson’s style in cinema makes it possible to change (transform) the narrative structure of the text being filmed subtly but radically and, at the same time, to remain faithful to the spirit of the original text. So, any Bresson adaptation is interesting also as an original reading (in many ways different from literary or theatrical readings). In the article, I trace the author’s methods of transforming and at the same time preserving the spirit of the screened work on the example of the film A Gentle Woman based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s story “A Gentle Creature” or (sometimes translated as) “The Meek One”. In the first part of the article, I offer an immanent analysis of the story and try to show the meta-plot nature of the main intrigue (at the plot level, the decisive events are immediately known and do not constitute any intrigue). The main character and at the same time the narrator leads a monologue (the story is exhausted by the narrator’s monologue) to clarify the truth of the event (his wife’s suicide) and determine his own degree of guilt. Along with other underground types and characters, the main character gets confused in his own mind and hesitates between self-exposure (admission of guilt to the Meek) and self-justification. Against the background of the monologue of the protagonist (the diegetic narrator), the silence of the Meek, together with the uncertainty of the motives of her behavior and a very general description of her character, becomes an important key element in the structure of the narrative. I prove the inconsistency of interpretive attempts to break the silence of the Meek to explain her character or her suicide. In the second part of the article, I pay special attention to the context of Dostoevsky’s remarks about various types of suicide from A Writer’s Diary and show the impossibility of explaining the Meek’s suicide by any logical or explanatory schemes (which always work in the case of other Dostoevsky’s suicidal characters). For Dostoevsky, the Meek’s suicide differs from the other described suicides and remains incredible and inexplicable. In the concluding part of the article, I consistently trace the transformation of the text in the film. The erasure of the traits of the hero’s underground consciousness and the diminution of the role of diegetic narration (without which it is impossible to imagine the meta-plot basis of the story) in the film leave intact the understatement of the Meek’s character and the vagueness of the motives of her suicide. With the radical transformation of the story, Bresson retains the silence of the Meek as the main structural defining element. At the same time, the understatement of the character and the vagueness of the Meek’s motives in the film point to an insurmountable gap between possible explanatory schemes and an anguish pushing towards a suicide and a feeling of impossibility to live. Bresson also reproduces the ambiguity and uncertainty of the protagonist against the background of despair and belated admission of his own guilt.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, Bresson, underground consciousness (man), suicide, diegetic narrator