Self's Claim and Eschewing History: Semiotic Analysis of Popular Culture in Vandana Singh's Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories

In Indian popular culture, semiotic analysis offers a compelling framework for uncovering the latent subjectivities embedded in signs and symbols, exposing how they encode ideologies, negotiate meanings, and shape collective identities. This paper explores a collection of science fiction stories by an Indian woman physicist and writer Vandana Singh through the lens of semiotics and post-Anthropocene vision. Drawing on Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic model of the sign (representamen, object, interpretant), the study reveals how Singh’s short story collection destabilize fixed meanings and resist dominant historical and cultural paradigms. This work exemplifies the transformative potential of science fiction within popular culture to challenge prevailing ideologies and envision alternative futures beyond the Anthropocene.