Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper begins by tracing a path through salient developments in semiotic theory regarding the visual. It examines the political functions of cultural and discursive semiotic systems through which graphic images and gestures are appraised, interpreted and given significance: it is not about what they mean, but rather how they construct meanings and how such meanings accrue importance. I consider the simultaneous material and social nature of both vision and representation. My primary focus is with the visual and social performance of the image of Che Guevara as derived from Alberto Korda’s famous 1960 photograph, El Guerrillero Heroico. Using this image as a heuristic in the case of Che Guevara’s image in East Timor during the time of Indonesia’s dictatorship and independence struggle, I will outline how the performative aspect creates a space of “ethical possibility” through visualizations. I will tease out anthropologist Alfred Gell’s (1997) radical notions of the agency of art and explore the possibilities of Donald Preziosi’s (2003) elaboration of Roman Jakobson’s addition of a fourth sign type, namely artifice. The inclusion of artifice is underwritten by an understanding of A. J. Greimas’(1987) semiotic square as a way to introduce complexity into binary or dual forms. I posit the square is as a dynamic, fractal-like construction. Building on this foundation, I articulate possible connections between artifice and the notion of the virtual as described by a philosophers and academicians from C.S. Peirce to Rob Shields, as a contribution to this theorizing and explore its relevance to the Che image phenomenon. Overall, it is the desire to find ways to speak about the Guerrillero Heroico’s social and political activity and resonance that drives the theoretical contributions in this piece.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.039 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.015 | 0.017 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".