Abstract

The question of being in today's global communication-production system concerns all life forms over the planet. Global semiotics describes life and semiosis as converging and in this framework faces the question of ontology. Three contexts for a critical approach to the study of signs include the socio-economic, the phenomenological, and the ontological. These are closely interconnected and in this paper are considered from the perspective of global semiotics and semioethics. Politics, war, communication, and subjectivity are critiqued in terms of a dialogic approach to life, signs, and human relations, where dialogism is not only viewed as a cultural but also a biosemiosic phenomenon implying detotalization and otherness beyond the logic of short-sighted identity