Sometimes a Great Notion? Histories of Animal Communication Studies in the Early Sixtie

My research aims at providing a critical history of biosemiotics and zoosemiotics, thus casting light on the way these ambitious multi/interdisciplinary fields emerged in the 1960s. It follows a period of 'holistic' and 'enchanted' theories on biology that were in contradiction with Darwinian claims, which is not the case for biosemiotics. The research will compare the archival findings with the ways in which current biosemioticians tell their own history. This research seeks to illuminate how the field adapted, reacted and interacted with and within other fields, areas, set of theories and political events, such as the birth of ethology, the heyday of psychoanalysis, parapsychology and sociobiology controversies, the cognitive revolution moment, environmental hermeneutics and neuroethics.