Revisiting Ostension in Folkloristics

Abstract

Semiotic analysis in folkloristics usefully centers on iconicity, ostension, and indexicality as modes of representation active in performances of expressive culture. In this essay I focus on the semiotic mode of ostension, wherein a thing is used to represent itself, which I have found helpful in thinking about the efficacy of artistic performances at the heart of my ethnographic research over the years. Here I draw on my previous work with a child’s fantasy play and with verbal narrative performance to signal the enormous analytical potential that lurks in this somewhat neglected member of the triad. In both of these instances, the turn to ostension stands in contrast to the enveloping framework of iconicity, representation through likeness, a move, I contend, that opens possibilities for an epiphany, a transcending of normally discrete ontological sectors. I close the essay with a treatment of ostension in a ritual setting, the mesa or ritual table of an Andean day of the dead ceremony, where it works in tandem with iconic and indexical elements to create a dynamic model of the cosmos, but with the specific mission of fostering remarkable levels of immediacy.   

Keywords: Semiosis, performance, play, narrative, ritual, immediacy, epiphany