Sign and meaning: from Plato and de Saussure to Derrida and Deleuze

The article concerns the problematic of sign and meaning. It starts with Plato’s explanation, which was to give rise to the tradition of Western metaphysics based on the dualistic divisions of logocentrism. De Saussure inaugurated the deconstruction of this approach based on the division of sign into signifier and signified, thus initiating linguistics. The most interesting versions of this problem are those of postmodernists, Derrida and Deleuze. The latter’s proposition is crucial because it is constitutive not only of meaning creation but also of the whole process of subjective becoming, of which meaningful creation is the most important part. The article is aimed at the presentation of this transformation: from Platonian representation to the power of affective intensities, where the life of the subject depends not only on reason and the rational correspondence to the idea, but above all on the sensitivity of its internal absorption, creatively developed by its encounters.