Non-Purposive Semiosis: On the Open-Endedness of Sign-Processes in Cosmic Play and Equipoise

Abstract This essay considers sign-processes in their open-endedness. The concern is specifically the non-purposiveness of semiosis for what it might intimate about the provisional nature of forms and the possibility of a radical openness to self-transformation. Sikh philosophy ( gurmat ), semiotics, and deconstruction here offer a heterogeneous problem-space for considering the anteriority of non-purposiveness in cosmic play ( līlā ) and equipoise ( sahaj ). The study first finds a recurrent commitment to the non-purposiveness of play across diverse approaches in metaphysics, modern aesthetic theory, and the more recent so-called ludic turn, developing from this thread a constructive treatment of cosmic play consisting of latitude, excess, indeterminacy, generativity, and expenditure, or endless textural differentiation . This essay then elaborates an account of equipoise in practical involvement whose pursuit of action is alive to that which is imperceptible amidst this endless textural differentiation, developing an account of action that realizes its own ludic workings in a non-coercive creativity as intimated by Peircean considerations of musement and cosmic love . Findings offer the study of signs an orientation to the un-fore-seen ( im-pro-visus ) constitutive of semiosis, in doing so heightening for social semiotic analysis a sensitivity to the indexical excess that conditions the formation of any text. In each instance, Sikh philosophy is found to offer key sources for considering semiosis as open-ended, non-purposive, and ludic-equipoisal.