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Girne American University is organizing the first Semiotics congress in Cyprus. The theme of the Congress is “LIVING IN BETWEEN” (east of west, west of east). Cyprus as an island in the Eastern Mediterranean, located at the point which western culture defines as “east” (of west) while at the same time staying “west” (of east) and located between the Greek side and Turkey. Moreover, it is located between the north and the east of the Mediterranean... But “being in between two points” is not limited to the island of Cyprus and the Cypriots. “Living in between”, “being in between”, “living in between points” is a spontaneous position which we are experiencing in our daily life. What does it mean to live “in between the points?” What are the points? The concept in between recalls oppositions. The notion of opposition has a double origin in semiotics, from philosophy, and logic in particular, where is has been current at least since the inception of Plato’s famous method for defining terms by binary divisions, and from Saussurean linguistics, particularly as this heritage was developed in the phonology of the Prague School. Sometimes such oppositions may appear to be resolved in favour of dominant ideologies, but tensions between them always remain unresolved. Derrida systematically demonstrates .
In this congress, we would like to put the emphasis on the phenomen of “living in between points”, “being in between” in terms of semiotics. Maybe that which lies beyond the two points is unknowable to the mind of man which has been composed by knowledge of the in-between?
Then the question is -Can semiotics have a role to decipher the “in between”?
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