Dialogues with Peeter Torop

To mark the 75th birthday of Peeter Torop, this volume assembles a chorus of collegial voices to engage with his work. Each of the 36 chapters takes a “Toropian” concept, quote, or theoretical idea as its point of departure, resulting in a collection of new scholarship that branches out in remarkably diverse directions from a common intellectual core.

Reflecting Peeter Torop’s role in the study and reformulation of the concepts of translation and cultural polyglotism, the volume features chapters in Estonian, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, and Spanish, each accompanied by an abstract in English, the contemporary academic lingua franca. These dialogues are anchored by an interview with Peeter Torop himself, in which he discusses the history and future of semiotics, as well as by his bibliography, which comprises writings from 55 years of his career at the time of this publication.

Across the chapters, the Festschrift demonstrates the catalytic effect of Torop’s thought and its ongoing influence on the semiotics of culture and beyond.