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Seeing Language Differently: Saussure’s Personal Approach to the Linguistic System

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Dürer’s Saussure. Aquarelle. AI image Introduction: A Shift in Perspective One of Ferdinand de Saussure’s lasting contributions is that he alters not only linguistic theory but also the way we perceive language itself. He urges us to question what normally seems self-evident—namely, that words attach to pre-existing ideas, that speaking is a physical performance, or that communication is nothing more than the transmission of messages. Against these intuitive assumptions, Saussure offers a vision of linguistic activity that is simultaneously cognitive, social and structural. His analyses grow out of concrete experiences of speaking and hearing, yet they culminate in a conception of language as an intricate system of relations. When read carefully, his reflections on the linguistic faculty, the speech circuit and the logic of differences reveal a radically new way of seeing something as familiar as everyday discourse. The Linguistic Faculty: Beyond Physiology Saussure begins with ...
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Return to Saussure: A Lost Lecture from the Cours de linguistique générale

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Rauschenberg’s Saussure . AI image     Albert Sechehaye , a young man who had just earned his teaching licence, saw an announcement posted for Saussure’s course in Greek and Latin phonology, to start in November. Although he had done no previous study of linguistics, Sechehaye registered for the course, as well as for the other one Saussure was giving, on Sanskrit. Only later in the semester would Charles Bally , a teacher at the Collège de Genève, begin attending the lectures, without ever registering as Saussure’s student. More than twenty years afterwards, Sechehaye still vividly recalled how:   The professor entered, and we were immediately captivated by his person. He hardly seemed ‘professorial’! He looked so young, so ordinary in his bearing, yet at the same time his air of exquisite distinction and finesse, with that slightly dreamy and distant look in his clear blue eyes, gave us a foretaste of his power and originality as a thinker. Standing beside the black...
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The Prosthetic God: AI, Talent, and Human Anxiety

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The Prosthetic God. AI image Introduction A few days ago, I encountered a social-media remark that caught my attention: “I don’t interact with anyone who uses AI in writing or encourages its use. To me, using it means you’re not a real writer. If you disagree, please move on.” At first glance, such a statement reads like exaggeration, the product of rigid attitudes or personal frustration. Yet beneath the harsh tone lies a tension many people feel today: uneasiness when abilities honed through persistence collide with tools capable of producing comparable outcomes. What fuels this intensity? Why do otherwise open-minded individuals react so defensively when confronted with algorithmic creativity? A century ago, Sigmund Freud offered a striking image that helps illuminate this response: the human being as a “prosthetic god.” His phrase, drawn from  Civilization and Its Discontents , offers a lens through which current anxieties surrounding intelligent tools come into focus. ...
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The Solitude of the Critical Thinker: A History of Recurrent Rejection

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Note: This text was originally written in Spanish and is presented here in English translation. Introduction In recent years it has become common to describe the isolation of intellectually inquisitive individuals as a by-product of neoliberalism: the performance society, the imperative of emotional productivity, or the pressures of hyperconnectivity would have turned conversation into a superficial exchange from which many withdraw. Although this diagnosis captures certain features of our present, it falls short. The phenomenon has far deeper roots and spans very different historical periods. From antiquity to today, those who seek an interlocution that does not merely reaffirm the immediate often encounter a climate of mismatch and, frequently, a subtle form of ostracism. This article examines that process without victimhood, focusing on the psychological and social mechanisms that generate rejection, as well as the historical paradox by which the very figures once marginalized e...
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The Myth of the Omniscient Eye: Why We Don’t See the Origin of an Image

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Introduction: Analog, Digital, and Synthetic We live a moment both familiar and uncanny. The recent proliferation of images produced by generative systems has revived an enduring prejudice: the suspicion that artificial creations lack authenticity. We argue passionately over whether a “true” image must emerge from chemical film, a sensor, or a generative model. Yet almost no one acknowledges the uncomfortable obviousness: the eye does not perceive the technical genealogy of an image. The distinction that structures this debate—analog, digital, AI—does not belong to visual experience but to cultural myth. In fact, the observer apprehends only what lies before them; everything else is narrative, belief, nostalgia. This simple premise undermines most of the purist rhetoric. It becomes even clearer when considered through an analogy as elegant as it is devastating: language. The Invisible History: A Lesson from Linguistics In linguistics, the distinction between synchronic and diachr...
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Putting One’s Name on the Line: Nietzsche’s Otobiography and the Politics of Inheritance

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In the desert, you can remember your name The Event of the Name When Nietzsche writes Ecce Homo , he transforms autobiography into a philosophical experiment. “I know my fate. Someday my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous,” he prophesies, turning his signature into an event rather than a label. The proper name—Nietzsche—becomes a force that detonates the conventions of authorship, identity, and remembrance. “I am no man, I am dynamite,” he declares, and in doing so he inscribes philosophy into the explosive space between life and writing. Jacques Derrida, in his 1979 lecture Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name , seizes precisely this explosion. Yet Derrida does not seek to interpret Nietzsche’s confession; he listens to it. His neologism otobiography —from oto , the ear—suggests that life-writing is never purely self-generated. It is heard, transmitted, inherited. Nietzsche’s “I” is already plural, resonating in...
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Saussure without Saussure: Otobiography, Signature and Death

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I've been through the desert On a horse with no name   Before the Signature In 1916, three years after Ferdinand de Saussure’s death, his students published Cours de linguistique générale , the book that would define modern linguistics and structuralism. Yet Saussure never signed the book. What we read as the Course is a reconstruction compiled by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from student notes of three lecture series delivered in Geneva between 1906 and 1911. In their preface, the editors admit that Saussure “probably would not have allowed” these notes to appear in print and that they assume full responsibility for any distortions or gaps: “ We are fully aware of the responsibility we owe not only to our readers but also to Saussure himself, who perhaps might not have authorised the publication of this text. We accept this responsibility, and it is ours alone. Will critics be able to distinguish between Saussure and our interpretation of Saussure ?” From the outset...
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