A Semiotics of the Dramatic Text *

In 1981 the research field of “nuclear semiotics” was born. A group of interdisciplinary experts was tasked with preventing future humans from intruding on to a subterranean storage facility for radioactive waste, then under construction in the New Mexico desert. The half-life of plutonium-239 is around 24,100 years; the written history of humanity is around 5,000 years old. The challenge facing the group was how to devise a sign system that could semantically survive even catastrophic phases of planetary future, and that could communicate with an unknown humanoid-to-be.

Several proposals involved forms of hostile architecture: a “landscape of thorns” in which 15m-high concrete pillars with jutting side spikes impeded access; a maze of sharp black rock blocks that absorbed solar energy to become impassably hot. But such aggressive structures can act as enticements rather than cautions, suggesting here be treasure rather than here be dragons. Prince Charming hacked his way through the briars to wake Sleeping Beauty. Indiana Jones braved wooden spikes and rolling boulders to reach the golden idol in a booby-trapped Peruvian temple. Sometimes I wonder if the design task should be handed wholesale to the team behind the Ikea instruction manuals: if they can convey in pictograms how to put up a Billy bookcase anywhere in the world, they can surely tell someone in 10,000 years’ time not to dig in a certain place.

Robert Macfarlane, Generation Anthropocene: How humans have altered the planet for ever.

* O título do post veio-me automaticamente do fundo da memória: é o do primeiro livro que requisitei na biblioteca da Universidade. Dois mistérios permanecerão para as eras: 1) requisitei este livro porquê, se não fazia a menor ideia do assunto e não tinha a menor tenção de o ler (de facto, não o li, embora o tenha aguentado em casa renovação de empréstimo após renovação de empréstimo durante sei lá quantos meses)?; 2) por que raio me lembro perfeitamente deste e apenas deste título, se fui requisitando ao longo dos anos tantos outros segundo o mesmo despropósito? Hum?