Download Seminar on Signification, Conceptual Structures and Human Existence

Seminar on Signification, Conceptual Structures and Human Existence
Venue Committee Room, SLL & CS, JNU
Time: From: 10.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on 13th January 2015 at JNU
Centre for Linguistics in collaboration with Centre for English Studies, SLLCS, JNU proposes to
organize a one-day Seminar on Signification, Conceptual Structures and Human Existence on
13th January 2015. The main speaker of the Seminar will be Harjeet Singh Gill, Professor
Emeritus at JNU since 13th January, 2000. Professor Gill who turns 80 that day, through his
teaching, research and writing of academic books and papers has inspired nearly two
generations of students and colleagues in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences. He
opened up a new era and a new philosophical vision of studying and understanding language,
literature and culture, deriving primarily from the Indian social context and has been able to
inspire a large number of students and researchers in various parts of India, particularly Punjab
and Delhi.
Professor Gill's sustained and systematic orientation in Semiotics began during his days
of post-doctoral research with Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris,
between 1963 and 1969. He imbibed during his research, much of the intellectually stimulating
perspectives on Existentialism and Structuralism that were in vogue in Paris during the 1960s.
After his return to India in 1969, he put to effective practice at first in Panjabi University,
Patiala, and later at J.N.U., much of the profound ideas he had learned from the great French
philosophers of the day, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Louis Althusser, Claude LéviStrauss, Jacques Lacan, A.-J. Greimas, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. He made the study
of the structures of signification in language, literature, and culture (including folk and mythic
narratives) the central concerns in his teaching and research. This unique academic practice
attracted towards him a large number of disciples who did doctoral research with him in the
aforesaid areas. He was Professor of Linguistics and Semiotics in Centre for Linguistics and
English from 1984 to 2000.
From the end of 1980s he developed a more personal philosophical perspective derived
from and rooted in the philosophy of the medieval French philosopher Pierre Abélard. He was
convinced, and rightly so, that Abélard was the harbinger of much of the autonomous
philosophical perspective of Conceptualism that was to emerge in Europe, especially France,
from the time of Renaissance till the modern times. He understood that the discursive
structures which appear to and are experienced by the reader and beholder as structures are,
in fact, 'conceptual structures' that individuals themselves construct in relation to and in the
context of their own lived experience. Professor Gill went on to establish a worthwhile
connection between the Abelardian philosophy of conceptual structures and the Madhyamaka
philosophy and ethics of the Buddhists. The Buddhists, he claimed, while undermining the
notion of fixed signification, laid their emphasis on image-like conceptual structures, which had
a strong affinity with the Abelardian point of view.
The merit of such a conceptualist perspective is that it allows us to reject at any given
point of time the signifying structures, already established in and by conventional intellectual
discourses and practices. It enables us to understand, on the one hand, the cleavages and gaps
between the conscious and unconscious structures of cognition and signification, and on the
other, the dynamic movements in the context of discourses of any tradition. The former
approach takes us closer to the Lacanian-Freudian psychoanalysis, while the latter to the
Foucauldian 'discontinuities' in the archaeology of a given intellectual tradition. In other words,
it takes us to the threshold of the more recent poststructuralist positions.
The seminar is envisaged to foreground all the above issues and submit them to a more
rigorous contemporary rethinking. It is expected to encourage scholars in our own context who
have already researched on the above themes to connect up with their own current intellectual
concerns. It would familiarize the current batches of scholars both in the humanities and social
sciences, to discover Gill's paradigms and perspectives, in order for them to identify the ideas
and thoughts that would be useful to them. It is also expected encourage future scholars to
seek alternative intellectual trajectories that can radicalize their own modes of scientific and
academic thinking.
Colleagues who have agreed to actively participate in the Seminar:
1. Simi Malhotra, Professor, Jamia Milia Islamia.
2. Franson Manjali, Professor, JNU.
3. Saugata Bhaduri, Professor, JNU.
4. Ayesha Kidwai, Professor, JNU.
5. Vaishna Narang, Dean, SLLCS, JNU
6. Soumyabrata Choudhury, JNU
7. Anuradha Ghosh, JMI.
8. Saitya Brata Das, JNU.
9. Milind Wakankar, IIT, Delhi (to be confirmed)
10. Anil Bhatti, Professor Emeritus, JNU
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