On Wanting to Write This as Rose Selavy: Reflections on Sherrie Levine and Peircian Semiotic

Charles Sanders Peirce once proclaimed that “it is a primary rule of the ethics of rhetoric that every prose composition should begin by informing the reader what its aim is, with sufficient precision to enable him to decide whether to read it or not. If the title can do this, all the better” (1978, 276). This essay, then, is an attempt both to explore the work of contemporary artist Sherrie Levine in light of Peirce’s claim that “men and [signs] reciprocally educate each other” (EP 1.54) and to use Levine’s work to illuminate the contemporary significance of Peirce’s claim. I appeal to Levine in particular because her art consists in the appropriation, adaptation, and extension (see Cotter 1989) of the work of modernist male artists—perhaps most successfully, that of Marcel Duchamp. I will argue that, in so doing, it thereby emphasizes the roles of gender and sexuality in semiotic comprehension and production and illustrates the necessity of addressing some of the factors that shape how we understand ourselves and our world. That is, because gender is performed and thus subject to praise and punishment, our efforts to come to terms with our experience must involve exploring the meanings of femininity and masculinity.¹ Certainly, this is an immensely complicated endeavor, not least because the kind of gender education that we receive also depends upon our region, our race, our ethnicity, and our class. Nonetheless, it is my conviction that both successful art and Peircian semiotic are indispensable tools in this attempt.

To be sure, any treatment of gender and sexuality is, at best, only implicit in the latter. I take direction, however, from Vincent Colapietro’s insistence that “if there is any value to what Peirce has written, it resides in the power of these writings to open fields of inquiry and, once having opened these fields, to offer assistance on how to cultivate these areas” (1989, xvii). My hope is that, in this way, my feminist appropriation of Peirce will parallel Levine’s invocation of Duchamp, an effort that, like hers (see Lewallen 1993), draws inspiration from Duchamp’s playful adoption of his female alter ego, Rose Selavy. As he remarked to Pierre Cabanne, “I wanted to change my identity and first I had the idea of taking on a Jewish name. I was Catholic and this switch of religion already meant a change. But I didn’t find any Jewish name that I liked or that caught my fancy, and suddenly I had the idea: why not change my sex? That was much easier!” (quoted in Mink 2004, 71).²

Perhaps the best way of exploring what Peirce means by “man,” by “sign,” and by “the reciprocal education” that takes place between the two is to connect it with his opposition to nominalism. “Nominalism,” for Peirce, is the epistemological position that “the real” is categorically opposed to “the represented.” Consequently, because thought as thought is symbolic and therefore general, “the real” must be solely composed of particulars and thus forever beyond our complete comprehension.³ With specific respect to the understanding of art, a nominalistic perspective entails that there is a categorical distinction between the original (in its individuality or particularity) and its imitations.⁴ As we will see, Peircian semiotic—both as a comprehensive epistemology and in specific application to artistic production—will undermine these dichotomies. In particular, a semiotic approach to artistic production and comprehension will transform our conception of “originality” into what Joel Weinsheimer has christened originativity: “the power by which the original [itself ‘an interpretant of prior works’] gives rise to further works” (1983, 257). To anticipate further, I will argue that Levine’s “appropriationist” art, concerned as it is with issues arising from what she has characterized as “the difficulties of situating myself in the artworld as a woman” (Seigel 1985, 6), illustrates in a masterly fashion this notion of originativity.⁵ It does so because, as Peirce teaches us, all attempts at comprehension—including self-comprehension—demand that we understand that everything that persists and develops...