Dominio e semiosfera. Politica e potere in Ju. M. Lotman: ricerche attuali e prospettive future

The present paper aims at reviewing the current state of research about the relationship between semiotics and power in Jurij M. Lotman. In the first part, the article will illustrate and review the current international researches that apply, in the political field, concepts derived from the Lotmanian theories. The article will examine two cases: the first will be that of cultural studies, where recently some scholars started employing Lotmanian concepts such as autocommunication, boundary, center/periphery. The second will be the case of the so-called semiotic theory of hegemony, developed in Estonia, that combines concepts from Lotman and Laclau. In the second part, the article will instead focus on the historical research concerning the political tropes of Lotmans theory, sparked by the reflection initiated by the researches shown in the first part. Starting from the cultural environment of Lotmans early years, the paper will illustrate how certain semiotic concepts, such as personality and dominant, acquire a political meaning when related to the cultural environment of 1930s Soviet Union.