The Temporality of Signs and the Endless Hermeneutics:

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Associate Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

This essay is dedicated to exploring the intricate and intertwined relationship between signs and meaning within the realm of modern philosophy, with a particular focus on the genealogy of interpretive systems in Michel Foucault's intellectual framework. Through conceptual and comparative analysis of the ideas of Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx, the author identifies three distinct temporalities in the functioning of signs and mechanisms of interpretation: the expiration time in classical sign systems, the linear time in Marxist dialectics, and the cyclic time in modern hermeneutics. By tracing the historical shift from "benevolent" signs of the sixteenth century to "malevolent" signs in the modern era, Foucault reveals that these three thinkers have contributed not merely to the proliferation of signs but also to the fundamental transformation of the ontological nature of signs. The present essay demonstrates Foucault's stance against modern hermeneutics, which presupposes the primacy of interpretation over signs. Within this framework, the essay examines and analyzes the endless suspension of meaning, the refusal to achieve a fixed origin, and the intertwined relationship between immanence and transcendence as fundamental components of modern thought. It elucidates how, according to the hermeneutics of suspicion—which Foucault attributes to the aforementioned thinkers—every interpretation is itself an interpretation of another interpretation, rendering the sign in a state of instability, fluidity, and temporariness.

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Main Subjects

Literary Theory and Criticism

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 17 July 2025

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