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Primo Levi, Biosemiotics, and Freedom*
from Part III - Applications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2022
In the book’s final chapter, “Messages from Within,” Serenella Iovino analyzes the work of the Italian writer Primo Levi, particularly the short story “Man’s Friend,” which imagines a genetic poetics produced by a tapeworm infestation. Iovino then uses the story to explore the emergent field of biosemiotics. The chapter traces a genealogy of biosemiotics in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, Jakob von Uexküll, Denis Noble, and Wendy Wheeler (to whom the chapter is dedicated). Iovino also connects Levi’s writing to his experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp – a dehumanizing experience that deprived him of his freedom as well as his ability to communicate. Framing the chapter within reflections on the novel coronavirus pandemic, Iovino posits semiotic freedom as a fundamental imperative of all life.
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