‘Let be..’; We Defy Augury (2012), GCGCA(i)

We Defy Augury

Kronborg, Denmark

22 Dec 2012 - 20 Mar 2013

Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes?

- Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2

Hamlet — Act V / Scene 2; We Defy Augury (2012), GCGCA(i)

Augury is the practice from ancient Roman religion of interpreting omens. An augur was a religious official who observed natural signs, especially the behaviour of birds, interpreting these as an indication of divine approval or disapproval of a proposed action. Every sound and motion of each bird had a different meaning, according to the different circumstances, or times of the year when it was observed.

'We defy augury’ (Plummer); We Defy Augury (2012), GCGCA(i)

‘Special providence’ refers to the extraordinary occasion of God’s intervention in the life of people (e.g. ‘miracles’), as opposed to ‘general providence’, which refers to God's continuous upholding of the existence and natural order of the Universe.

The American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist Charles Sanders Pierce’s devised a theory of signs (semiotics). It was divided into three kinds of sign: icon, index and symbol. The icon physically resembles what it signifies (a picture of your face is an icon of you). An index features a indication or points to what is signified (an image of a skull indicates death). A symbol’s resemblance to the signified is based on convention - it is primarily culturally defined (a red rose can serve as a symbol of love).

‘..infinite jest..' (1); Series of Infinite Jest; We Defy Augury (2012), GCGCA(i)

In the essay ‘Semiotics and Experience’ by Teresa de Lauretis, Peirce's semiotics was articulated in relation to everyday experience as semiosis (as subject formation): ’If the modification of consciousness, the habit or habit-change, is indeed the meaning effect, the "real and living" conclusion of each single process of semiosis, then where "the game of semiosis" ends... is... in a disposition, a readiness (for action), a set of expectations.”

In Hamlet, the idea that the 'readiness is all’ relates to the question of 'augury' and the interpretation of the duel to which he has just been invited (as portending his demise).

What Adorno identified as the testimony of 'the reality of artworks’ - 'the possibility of the possible' - is part of the production of possibility as such, in relation to any desire to reclaim a future qualitatively different from the present.