Like other cultural phenomena, constitutions communicate social meaning through a complex network of signs and symbols. In his timely book, Martin Belov explores this network. It offers a synthesizing study of shadow constitutionalisms in their textual, symbolic, imaginary and visual forms. The author successfully challenges and questions simplistic identifications of constitutionalism and legalism with modern rationalism. The conscious meaning of legal arguments and theoretical conceptualizations is contrasted by Martin Belov with the spontaneous "underground waters" of societal and cultural constitutionalizations, which are subsequently analyzed through a metatheoretical approach based on constitutional semiotics.

Prof. Jiri Przhiban

Director of the Institute for Society and Law,

Content

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………..7

I. Constitutional signification of meaning: between rational embedding, signifying potential and constitutional imagination ………………………………………………………………..31

1. Constitutional semiotics as a system of theories and metatheories ……………….. 31

2. Quantum constitutionalism as a factor of a paradigmatic turn and the role of constitutional semiotics for its correct understanding ………… 40

3. The rationalist trap of constitutional modernity ……………………………….. 62

4. The concept of rational constitutionalism and the need to turn to shadow constitutionalisms based on a semiotic approach ………………………………………….. 68

5. Structure of constitutional semiotics: signifiers, signifieds and signification of constitutional and constitutionally relevant meaning ……….. 75

II. Textual constitutionalism and its importance for constitutional semiotics ……………………………………………………..83

1. Concept of textual constitutionalism …………………………………………………….. 83

2. Constitutional communication through the prism of the semiotic perspective towards textual constitutionalism ………………….. 88

3. The Constitution as a discursive semiotic project: constitutional narratives, constitutional narrators and a constitutional semiotic community... 96

4. The constitutional text and constitutional textuality from a semiotic perspective: the role of open textuality for constitutional semiotics ……………………………. 112

5. Concept of an authoritative constitutional text and its functions for constitutional semiotics …………………………………………………………………… 121

III. Symbolic-imaginary constitutionalism …………………….127

1. Concept of symbolic-imaginary constitutionalism ……………………………. 127

2. Constitutional semiosis through symbolic-imaginary constitutionalism at the crossroads between constitutional conscious, subconscious and unconscious …………………………………………………….. 149

3. Constitutional semiotic landscapes: teleology and functionality of symbolic-imaginary constitutionalism as a play of constitutional semiotic imaginaries ………………………………………………. 154

4. Constitutional codes …………………………………………………………………………………….. 175

5. Normative ideologies and ideas …………………………………………………………………….. 185

6. Constitutional myths and mythologies ……………………………………………………………….. 202

7. Constitutional utopias ………………………………………………………………………………. 217

IV. Visual constitutionalism …………………………………………………….235

1. Visual constitutionalism as a postmodern semiotic concept ….. 235

2. Official visual constitutional semiotics: constitutional relevance of official public visuals …………………………………. 248

3. Visual constitutionalism and digital constitutional semiotics: iconization, emojification and memefication as forms of signifying constitutionally relevant meaning ……………………………… 252

4. Visual constitutionalism as a real form of constitutionalism, based on a semiotic and socio-legal approach ………. 257

5. Visual constitutionalism in pop culture and pop art …………………………… 264

6. Visual constitutionalism in architecture ………………………………………… 271

V. Constitutional Geometry and Algebra as Semiotic Paradigms for Explaining and Ordering Constitutionalism, the Constitution and Constitutional Law ………………………………287

1. Arranging and explaining constitutional order through mathematical metaphors: an introduction to the semiotic theory of constitutional geometry and algebra ……………………………………………………. 287

2. Inspiration, imagination and signification through rationalization: the concept of constitutional algebra ……………………………………………………………….. 296

3. Concept of constitutional geometry: imagining, signifying, understanding and arranging the constitutional order through geometrical metaphors …………………………………………………………………………. 302

4. The semiotic role of structured constitutional imaginaries ………… 311

5. Constitutional geometry as an explanatory and ordering paradigm of constitutionalism ………………………………………… 322

6. Theoretical constitutional geometry ……………………………………………………………… 335

7. Imaginary constitutional geometry and the concept of cloud constitutionalism …………………………………………………… 344

8. Westphalian, post-Westphalian and neo-Westphalian constitutional geometry …….. 354

Used literature ……………………………………………………………………………..376