Congist'26: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Crisis

Epistemic Rupture in the Ottoman Semiosphere: Evidence of Semiocrisis in Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Music Culture

D2-S5-A7

14 May 2026, 16:50

20m

A7 (Istanbul University Faculty of Letters)

Oral Presentation Session 5.2 (Day 2)

Speaker

Peter Salvucci (Istanbul Technical University)

Description

This study employs historical musicology and Juri Lotman’s cultural semiotic theory to examine eighteenth-century Ottoman society as a pivotal point of socio-political transformation. Darling’s novel and alternative proposal for three main historical periods of Ottoman society demonstrates clear parallels Ottoman music culture. The first period of Expansion in Ottoman history establishes a political ideology defined by estrangement of the ruling (askeri) class from the public (reaya). In this period, the Ottomans adopted the culture of their subjects, which is reflected in the diverse sources of musical theories and ethnic plurality of musicians present in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The avoidance of Ottoman hegemonic dominance challenges Lotman's conception of the semiosphere, which is defined by a hegemonic core that competes for cultural dominance. An alternative Ottoman semiosphere model is thereby proposed, which carries into the period of Consolidation from the late sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. This period of relative stability is reflected in a greater standardization of theoretical musical systems and compositional forms. The final period of Transformation in Ottoman society is foregrounded by the Tulip Era (Lale Devri) in the beginning of the eighteenth century. At this time, a breakdown of the original Ottoman semiosphere occurred when society was directly confronted with the concepts of class struggle and dialectic cultural engagement endemic to the European (Lotman’s) semiosphere. This is evident in the decadent musical gatherings and feasts of the Tulip Era, where the ruling class abandoned its principles of dialectical disengagement and presented itself as aristocratic elites. Thus, Ottoman society lost its original axiological framework as the ruling class increasingly identified itself as “high culture” within the same semio-cultural structure as a polarized lower class.