The Return of the Windigo, Again

Abstract

I must thank Paul Manning, no enemy of irony, for remediating an unreconstructed structural reading of the Algonquian windigo in the other-than-structural (?) precincts of Semiotic Review [Brightman, “And Some Guys Dream Bad Thingsâ€]. Some people might take this Finnegan’s Wake-like resuscitation as occasion for reflecting on what specifically Peirce-inspired semiotic readings of windigo might consist of. A survivor of psychological anthropology (“culture bound syndromesâ€), functionalism, structuralism, cultural materialism, and even political economy, the windigo has yet to experience semiotic. I will briefly introduce the two here, gesturing wildly in brief transit at a few among many possible sites of connection.

Keywords: windigo; Peirce; metamorphoses; animism