Analysis of Self-Reference

About this poem

This poem, “Self-Reference,” playfully examines semiotician Charles Sanders Pierce’s philosophical rumination on the Self, regarding the Self as both the object and the subject of semiotic investigation. This poem makes the observation that the Self either as subject (Signfier), or as object (Signified), upon examination or scrutiny, behaves very much like physicist Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle relating to position and momentum of an atom noting, with regard to Self, that upon examination or scrutiny, it is difficult to pin down, evading permanence of placement, finding its locus in the movement of a cornucopia of ambiguous words on a page, in such a manner that one can never simultaneously know with certainty both variables of Self as subject or as object. In short, as the opening lines of the poem suggests, the Self is ever being transfigured, transmogrified, transliterated. more »