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The term is heavy, I admit, but I am adopting it provisionally on the grounds of a double affiliation.* On the one hand it refers to the sign-board (enseigne), a panel bearing an inscription traditionally announcing an artisan's trade; on the other hand, I relate it to the recently gallicized term “enginry” (ingénierie), which evokes, beyond the activity of the engineer, the ensemble of appliances and mechanisms made use of by industrial society, and at the origins of which one discovers the term engine (engin) in its double etymological acceptance as tool, instrument, and also as ruse or wile. By signery, a term which I put forward provisionally, I thus designate the ensemble of signs, signals, inscriptions, and visual stimuli manifested in our modern cities.
* This chapter is an extract from a forthcoming book entitled Urbanocultzsre, urbanicoles. (Translator's note: the title Enseignerie is a neologism, and I have makes use of conceptual and verbal associations that do not translate into English. I have accordingly included the original French term on all relevant occasions).
* The name “arboricoles” has been given to those our ancestors who lived in the trees. I propose the name “urbanicoles” for us who live in cities.
1 The fundamental attitude of Western thought and science has been, and still is, the establishment of a clear distinction between subject and object, between the observer and the observed. It was this that led to advances par ticularly in physics. The social and human sciences have been inspired by this with no less success. However, ethnography and ethnology reveal limitations that were not formerly apparent. The scholar who studies the habits of a society tends, whether he wishes or not, to confine himself to externals. The analysis of habits upon which he is engaged complies with his own perspectives and imperatives. It is one thing to analyse behavior from the exterior, and quite another to experience it from within. Furthermore, the new ethnologies of the Chicago School (Active Anthropology) are attempting to reform their discipline in order to remedy this rift, whose resultant prejudices became apparent only over a long period.
2 Whence the errors of which we take insufficient notice: the driver insulting the pedestrian, knowing full well that the latter cannot hear him; or the pedestrian, no doubt absent mindedly, stopping at the stop-sign (this happens).
3 The passage from the "motorized-I" to the "motorized-self" stems from the distinction I have established between the "integrated" group and the "pack" group. This also goes for the passage from the "pedestrian-I" to the "pedestrian-self".
4 Prançois Enel, L'affiche, Paris, Mame, 1971; Abraham Moles, L'affiche dans la société urbaine, Paris, Dunod, 1970; Lo Duca, L'affiche, Paris, PUF, 1945; Davis Hillier, Histoire de l'affiche, Paris, Fayard, 1970. From the historical point of view, it is relevant to note that the modern poster dates back only as far as the end of the XIXth century, with the invention of color lithography, and that it has only become the way we know it since the development of the typography and the mass distribution employed in advertising compaigns. In our times, it may be considered as part of the mass-media, like the press, radio, and television.
5 Marcel Granet, La Pensée Chinoise, Albin Michel, 1968.
6 Serge Ledair, Psychoanalyser, Ed. du Seuil, 1974.
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