man

[SEM] The hermeneutic code can be found in the ways  Man is articulated and the position and meaning that it relies on. Wikipedia’s use of their disambiguation link (“for other uses, see…”) subverts meaning, yet at the same time, closes off meaning. The tool shows the unstable and multiple meanings of abstract concepts such as Man, while simultaneously attempting to provide a stable identity to Man the signifier. 


[HER] Furthermore, Man as we had once 'known' him has changed ("Man is no longer man enclosed"). Man, in this iteration, functions as a referencial code. Since we no longer 'know' what man was (if we ever really knew) or in what ways he was enclosed, the text sets up, through the use of a semic [SEM] code, a new and unstable identity. [QST] Man is no longer enclosed, but is he open, or somewhat ambiguously not not enclosed? If we rely on antithetical codes, does not this slippery positionality that the text posits (Man is, but is not quite) complicate the very possibility? 


[QST: QUESTION]
[HER: HERMENEUTIC]
[SEM: SEMIC]