Anders Klostergaard Petersen is professor and chair of research at the Department for the Study of Religion at Aarhus University, Denmark (University presentation).
He has published extensively on methodological and theoretical questions pertaining to the overall study of religion and culture, on canon and rewritten scripture (publications).
Petersens' main focus is the fields of Religion, especially the Late Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity, but he has published within a wide range of subjects, from technology and education to archaeology.
He is currently involved in a grand project on cultural evolution with a special focus on the history of religion (The Religious Studies Project).
ATTR Research Seminar
Professor Petersen will give a research seminar on the following topic:
"Authoritative Texts and Their Reception in Light of Peircian Semiotics: Textual Apotheosis by means of Canibalisation and Usurpation"
Tuesday October 17, 2017, 0900-1030, Aud. 4, Jussbygget, University of Bergen.
Ascribing authority to texts and occassionally embedding them in processes of canonisation is a way of culturally prioritising certain signs over others. There is nothing enigmatic or strange about this. It can fairly easily be understood in light of general semiotics.
In this lecture I examine attribution of authority to texts and processes of canonisation from a Peircian perspective with special emphasis placed on his notion of habit and infinite semiosis. In the second part of the lecture, I turn cards by arguing that ascribing authority to particular texts and embedding them in canonisation processes may be seen as a way of making them irrelevant, canibalising them or usurping them for one's own purpose.
