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Designating structures: cultural studies, philosophy and semiotics

SUMMARY In this article the author deals with the subject of the philosophical underpinnings of the field of cultural studies, with reference to the traditions within which and against which the field originally defined itself. The social and historical context within which cultural studies originated defined which theoretical agendas were valid for the kind of discussions that were possible in the field. While these may have been relevant for the time and place of the field's origins, the validity of the frameworks in contexts other than the original one may be doubtful. Against this, he suggests some directions in which to explore the possibility of reconstituting the idea of culture within alternative conceptual frameworks. These include the methodological semiotics and pragmatic semantics of C S Peirce, Wittgenstein's notion of the public essence of signification, and revisionist concepts in the Philosophy of Science.