Lotman, Konrad, and the cultural monad: a study in the history of semiotics

Abstract

The present paper explores the development of Lotman’s cultural semiotics from the point of view of the history of ideas. Focusing on the notion of “semiotic monad,” coined by Lotman in 1989 as the “minimally functioning structure” of culture, in the first part of the paper we will explore the origin of this unique term. We will present as its main source a 1967 epistolary between British historian Arnold Toynbee and Soviet Orientologist Nikolaj I. Konrad, where the term ‘monad’ is referenced in relation to the notion of ‘culture’. In the second part of the paper, we will reconstruct Konrad’s influence on Lotman’s theory of culture and translation.