Episode 7: Critical Ideography

In this episode of Pythian School of Futures, Denis Maksimov presents critical ideography, a method with emancipatory potential to build languages within languages. Analyzing the impact of linguistics and semiotics on subjective thinking, Maksimov disavows taking established meanings of the words and images for granted. As a form of insurgency against a predetermined future built by what is deemed fixed or given, he proposes to employ language as a hacking tool to subvert our collective mindset. The episode is a call to coin new words, generate alternative meanings, and modify existing ones to liberate languages and therefore ourselves. Ideography is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. McGee uses the term in his seminal article “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology” which appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech in 1980. McGee explains ideography as “political language which manifests ideology seems characterized by slogans, a vocabulary of ‘ideographs’ easily mistaken for the technical terminology of political philosophy.” An ideograph or rhetoric is a word frequently used in political discourse that uses an abstract concept to develop support for political positions. An ideograph in rhetoric often exists as a building block or simply one term or short phrase that summarizes the orientation or attitude of an ideology. Such examples notably include liberty, freedom, democracy, justice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideograph_(rhetoric) Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." From Ancient Greece to the late 19th century, rhetoric played a central role in Western education in training orators, lawyers, counselors, historians, statesmen, and poets. Rhetoric is also used in the construction of true arguments, or in identifying what is relevant, the crux of the matter, in a selection of true but otherwise trivial statements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric Michael Calvin McGee was the first rhetorical theorist to propose the concept of ideograph, which he described as, "an ordinary-language term found in political discourse. McGee had many major contributions in the realm of rhetoric and in cultural studies. He published three major works: Rhetoric in Postmodern America, The Ideograph: A Link between Rhetoric and Ideology, and Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Calvin_McGee Donald John Trump is an American media personality and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. He entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and was elected in a close victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote. He was the first U.S. president without prior military or government service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump