Massimo Leone

The semiotics of the face studies the meaning of the human face in contemporary visual cultures. There are two complementary research foci: widespread practices of face exhibition in social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tinder; and minority practices of occultation, including the mask in anti-establishment political activism (Anonymous) and the veil in religious dressing codes. The meaning of the human face is currently changing on a global scale: through the invention and diffusion of new visual technologies (digital photography, visual filters, as well as software for automatic face recognition); through the creation and establishment of novel genres of face representation (the selfie); and through new approaches to face perception, reading, and memorization (e.g., the ‘scrolling’ of faces on Tinder). Cognitions, emotions, and actions that people attach to the interaction with one’s and others’ faces are undergoing dramatic shifts. In the semiotics of the face, an interdisciplinary but focused approach combines visual history, semiotics, phenomenology, visual anthropology, but also face perception studies and collection and analysis of big data, so as to study the social and technological causes of these changes and their effects in terms of alterations in self-perception and communicative interaction. In the tension between, on the one hand, political and economic agencies pressing for increasing disclosure, detection, and marketing of the human face (for reasons of security and control, for commercial or bureaucratic purposes) and, on the other hand, the counter-trends of face occultation (parents ‘hiding’ their children from the Internet, political activists concealing their faces, religious or aesthetic veils, writers and artists like Bansky or Ferrante choosing not to reveal their identity), the visual syntax, the semantics, and the pragmatics of the human face are rapidly evolving. The semiotics of the face carries on a comprehensive survey of this socio-cultural phenomenon.

The semiotics of the face studies the meaning of the human face in contemporary visual cultures. There are two complementary research foci: widespread practices of face exhibition in social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tinder; and minority practices of occultation, including the mask in anti-establishment political activism (Anonymous) and the veil in religious dressing codes. The meaning of the human face is currently changing on a global scale: through the invention and diffusion of new visual technologies (digital photography, visual filters, as well as software for automatic face recognition); through the creation and establishment of novel genres of face representation (the selfie); and through new approaches to face perception, reading, and memorization (e.g., the ‘scrolling’ of faces on Tinder). Cognitions, emotions, and actions that people attach to the interaction with one’s and others’ faces are undergoing dramatic shifts. In the semiotics of the face, an interdisciplinary but focused approach combines visual history, semiotics, phenomenology, visual anthropology, but also face perception studies and collection and analysis of big data, so as to study the social and technological causes of these changes and their effects in terms of alterations in self-perception and communicative interaction. In the tension between, on the one hand, political and economic agencies pressing for increasing disclosure, detection, and marketing of the human face (for reasons of security and control, for commercial or bureaucratic purposes) and, on the other hand, the counter-trends of face occultation (parents ‘hiding’ their children from the Internet, political activists concealing their faces, religious or aesthetic veils, writers and artists like Bansky or Ferrante choosing not to reveal their identity), the visual syntax, the semantics, and the pragmatics of the human face are rapidly evolving. The semiotics of the face carries on a comprehensive survey of this socio-cultural phenomenon.

Ventriloquo è colui che parla col ventre, che simula uno slittamento della voce dalla bocca allo stomaco, da un’interiorità che si apre all’altro attraverso l’inter-faccia del volto, a un’intestinità che nega l’altro nella figura dell’in-volto, dell’in-viso, da una parola nutrimento a una parola escremento, e non quello della sua eiezione naturale ma quello di una parola-vomito, borborigma che parla a sé stesso, che inverte la traiettoria del bolo dal dentro al fuori. Ma ventriloquo è anche colui che parla al ventre, nel senso che non si rivolge al viso, alle orecchie, alla bocca, al volto dell’altro, ma spinge l’interlocutore a dismettere il proprio volto per farsi ventre, per rimanere nel chiuso del proprio io, nel rimuginare la parola ricevuta dal ventriloquo finché essa non diviene a sua volta sterco, e non viene eietta come natura vorrebbe ma vomitata verso il volto altrui, negandone la purezza fenomenologica, frustrandone la funzione di volto, oppure spingendolo a diventare anch’esso pancia, in una asemiosi illimitata che spegne il senso invece di accenderlo, che chiude l’esistenza nell’angolo buio dell’essere, che restituisce i corpi alla natura e li rende ferini, invisi gli uni agli altri, nemici, barbari.

Les sémioticiens des cultures marchent sur des œufs. Ils doivent établir le profil, et donc les limites, d’une civilisation ; déterminer et sélectionner des artefacts culturels en tant que textes d’une telle civilisation ; analyser ces textes afin de comprendre s’ils partagent un dénominateur commun en ce qui concerne un objet culturel particulier ; comprendre et décrire les traits structurels d’un tel dénominateur commun afin d’élaborer un schéma typologique qui pourrait ensuite être comparé avec ceux qui se référent à d’autres civilisations, leurs textes, et leurs conceptions et représentations du même objet culturel. En d’autres mots, ils doivent construire une comparaison typologique de déterminations culturelles. Par conséquent, ils courent constamment le risque de déterminer les limites des civilisations de façon arbitraire, en extraire des textes de façon idiosyncratique afin de confirmer les hypothèses initiales et les préjugés du sémioticien dans un cercle vicieux herméneutique et développer des typologies et des comparaisons qui forcent brutalement la complexité de l’histoire dans des schémas structuraux réductifs.
La sémiotique des cultures ne dispose pas encore d’une méthode souhaitable pour comparer des civilisations ; cette méthode doit être fabriquée par bricolage de trois traditions sémiotiques différentes : celle de Lotman (école de Moscou-Tartu) ; celle de Greimas (sémiotique structurale), et celle de Peirce (sémiotique interprétative).
Cette option théorique sera présentée en relation à un cas d’étude et de comparaison spécifique : la sémiotique de la vacuité dans les cultures spirituelles chrétienne, islamique, et tantrique. En comparant des textes visuels (des diagrammes) issus de l’iconographie de l’hésychasme byzantin, de la calligraphie shiite, et des yantras du tantrisme indien, l’intervention essayera de répondre à la question suivante : comment les différentes cultures spirituelles évoquent par l’image l’idée de vacuité ? Est-il possible de dresser, par le biais de la sémiotique, une paradoxale typologie du vide ? Par quelle méthode de comparaison ?

The article proposes a typology of meaninglessness based on the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce: meaningless as indecipherable; as incomprehensible; and as uncanny. Each type is exemplified with reference to anecdotic semiotic experience gained while riding Japanese buses. Meaninglessness, however, is not insignificance. Insignificance is a much more disquieting anthropological condition, which the article describes with reference to two symmetrical processes: on the one hand, the euphoric passage from significance to insignificance, a passage meant as the “birth of new meaning”; on the other hand, the dysphoric passage from significance to insignificance, a passage which coincides with the alienation of human existence. Through several examples take from present-day societies, the article advocates for an active role of semiotics in warning human communities against the “emergence of insignificance” and its potential of violence and exploitation.

The amount of new semantic content circulated in a society is limited by implicit norms and explicit rules. Belonging to a community means knowing, mastering, and even interiorizing such restrictions. Some of them are imposed by economy, as in the case of copyright, some by moral, as with pornography, and some for political reasons. In times of international tension such restrictions are tightened, giving rise to state ideologies and rhetorics of taciturnity. The essay explores those that came about in Italy, German, and Japan during World War II but also those that were circulated in their democratic opposers, USA and UK. The study seeks to show the relevance of a semiotic analysis of this corpus of propaganda materials not only for the sake of historical knowledge but also so as to cast new light on urgent present-day issues concerning both private and public conversation.

An International, Interdisciplinary Conference Organized by


SILC, Semiotic Interdisciplinary Laboratory on Cultures, Shanghai University and University of Turin

Co-Sponsored by

The Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China

CIRCE, the Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Communication, University of Turin, Italy

The European Research Council (This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 819649 – FACETS).

Las fronteras tienen caras. No se trata solamente de atributos metafóricos, en el sentido de partes del espacio que una comunidad organizada dirige y muestra hacia lo exterior, sino de caras físicas, humanas, que contribuyen al funcionamiento semiótico de las fronteras como dispositivos creadores de comunicación espacial, geográfica, y política. Por un lado, las fronteras están habitadas por las caras de los hombres y de las mujeres que protagonizan estos entornos espaciales, o sea porque los presidian, o sea porque quieren cruzarlos, o incluso desafiarlos y destruirlos. Por otro lado, las caras se vuelven de sujetos objetos, a la vez en la iconografía de las fronteras (pinturas, fotografías, videos, películas, imágenes digitales) y en el control más y más automático de sus entornos. ¿Qué hacen las máquinas con las caras en las fronteras? ¿Quién está detrás de estos dispositivos de control bio-político, y qué forma de poder expresa? ¿De qué manera la pandemia de COVID-19 ha cambiado la presencia de las caras en las fronteras y el control que las máquinas ejercen sobre ellas? ¿En qué medida se desarrolla el proyecto bio-político de un control de las emociones que las caras expresan en el espacio físico, geográfico, y político de la frontera? ¿Nos espera un futuro en el que los dispositivos de control de las fronteras leerán en nuestros rostros no solamente nuestras identidades civiles, sino también nuestras emociones?

El ensayo se concentra en el caso de estudio uruguayo, de excepcional interés a la vez histórico e semiótico, del retrato del rostro de José Gervasio Artigas. Como no existe un retrato al natural del héroe nacional que lo represente en su juventud o en su madurez, y como el único retrato existente fue dibujado por Alfred Demersay en Paraguay cuando Artigas ya era muy mayor y en condiciones físicas precarias, la imagen arquetípica de su rostro se debe a una reconstrucción (y rejuvenación) de Juan Manuel Blanes, autor de la celebre pintura Artigas en la puerta de la Ciudadela (1884).
El viento caprichoso de la historia sopla a veces impetuoso, a veces con ráfagas sutiles como suspiros, y soplando encuentra paisajes, arboles, flores, animales, pero sobre todo hombres y mujeres, reproduciendo generación tras generación el destino de nuestra especie, e insinuándose entre sus cuerpos a lo largo de los siglos este viento inefable moldea lenguas, dibuja culturas, pinta gestos y palabras, un momento separando y el momento siguiente uniendo vidas, emociones, sueños, haciendo y deshaciendo comunidades, empujando los unos contra los otros en batallas sangrientas e interminables, o al revés sugiriendo caminos de dialogo y de paz, trazando y borrando fronteras, enfatizando o matizando límites, en un juego que no parece tener fin ni finalidad. A veces hombres o mujeres moldeados por este viento se iluminan de una luz distinta, se destacan del fundo ciego de la historia, se vuelven siluetas doradas, estatuas vivientes: comunidades enteras se cierran alrededor de estos héroes y de estas heroínas, se reconocen en sus vidas, su hazañas, sus valores y sus muertes, a través de ellos y ellas participan vicariamente en una humanidad diferente, más resplendente, cercana de lo divino, casi inmortal. Surge la necesidad de una cara, la cara del héroe o de la heroína, que no sea como la cara de los demás, sino pueda resistir al viento de la historia y dar aliento con su mirada a un mundo frágil de vidas cotidianas, nacimientos, casamientos, funerales, comidas y festejos, esperanzas y miedos. Los héroes nacionales fundan las naciones pero al mismo tiempo estas fundan a sus héroes atribuyéndoles no simplemente la cara con la que vivieron sino la cara con la que sobrevivieron, y resistieron al viento de la historia.

In societies that uncritically embrace and endorse a digitalization not only of memory but of the same idea of memory, déjà-vus manifest themselves as the impossibility of subtracting culture from a disquieting feeling of recognition. Similarly, a hallucinating culture is one that is not able to distinguish any longer between its fears and its current state. It is a culture in which fake news proliferates because individuals have lost contact with the capacity for distinguishing what is present to perception from what is presentified to it. The article carries on a cultural diagnosis of the abnormalities of present-day cultural memory and proposes some antidotes to them.

The experience of otherness might be shocking but it usually is, albeit sometimes painfully, enriching. The experience of extraneousness, on the contrary, is that of a semiotic suffering that is never rewarded, of an anxiety that never leads one from meaninglessness to meaningfulness, and never even promises the possibility of such passage. The emotional result of the encounter with otherness is curiosity, followed by inquiry, and, in fortunate cases, cultural intercourse. The emotional result of extraneousness is, on the contrary, fear, if not panic. It generates and hands down an imaginary of monstrosity and unbridgeable distance. There is, however, a degree of unfamiliarity that is even deeper than that of extraneousness since this, at least, manages to trigger a feeling of shock and, therefore, an opportunity for self-interrogation, although that does not turn into self-awareness like in the encounter with otherness. Indeed, the highest degree of blind unfamiliarity does not even manifest itself but remains concealed in the dumbness of unawareness.

In the passage of the Course in General Linguistics where Ferdinand de Saussure first foresaw the necessity to develop a new discipline called “semiology”, “nautical flags” are prominently listed among its objects of inquiry. Flags, indeed, are naturally interesting objects for semiotics, not only because they signify through a systematic display of forms and colors, but also because of the specific pragmatics of such display. A flag can be thought of abstractedly, as an array of symbols, but it features also a specific materiality, wherein two elements particularly stand out: (1) the flag is generally a textile; (2) this textile is meant to interact with a natural element, the wind. Flags are so symbolically important also because they seem to acquire an individual agency when they wave in the wind, and therefore to confer this autonomous agency to the cultural ideas which they stand for. The paper investigates this particular semiotics in relation to opposite ideological usages of the Italian national flag, meant to signify an either inclusive or exclusive identity.

Coined in 1688 by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer to designate a pathological longing for distant homeland, the word “nostalgia” was soon rearticulated temporally, to refer to a lost epoch one yearns for as one’s home. Nostalgia is not a new topic for semiotics. Emotion essentially stemming from absence, it epitomizes the semiotic mechanism: semiosis is the ontological result of something staying for something else, but nostalgia is the emotional result of it. Essential figure in Greimas’s structural outlook on passion, umbrella-concept in Baudrillard’s mourning of reality behind the simulacra, key notion in Culler’s and Frow’s dissection of the semiotics of tourism, nostalgia has become a buzz word in both critical and marketing studies, the former trying to unveil beneath it the foundations of Heideggerian ontology or the contradictions of post-modern society; the latter, seeking to exploit nostalgia as the last Trojan horse into the agency of the consumer. On the basis of copious and manifold literature on nostalgia, the essay takes an unexplored direction: can one talk, today, of a nostalgic semiosphere in Europe? Where hipsters, vintage furniture, and retro TV channels are nothing but symptoms of an emerging mentality?

Artificial intelligence is increasingly present in contemporary human existence. Its applications are everywhere, in private as well as in public life, in entertainment as well as in education. The course aims at interrogating the various signs, languages, and texts that compose artificial intelligence and its interaction with human beings. Specifically, the course seeks to familiarize participants with the most established theories and methods of digital semiotics, and to transmit interpretive sensibility and skills to those who mean to work in the world of AI-based communication. The central question of the course is: what is the status of meaning and language in artificial intelligence and in its interaction with human cognition, behaviors, desires, and needs?
At the end of the course, students a) will know the essentials of semiotic theory as applied to digital communication and will be able to understand the semio-linguistic characteristics of complex communicative phenomena and artifacts involving artificial intelligence; b) will be capable of applying the methods of semiotics to the analysis of various kinds of signs and texts revolving around artificial intelligence, with particular reference to the world of present-day communication and media; c) will develop the ability of autonomously interpreting the semiotic ideologies behind the algorithms of AI; d) will perfect the capacity to formulate and expose their interpretations in a technical language, suitable for a professional audience; they will also train in the comprehension of the technical English of digital semiotics; e) will be put in contact with a new discipline, thus bettering their comprehension skills in English.

Nuestro viajero pasea por calles feas, come en bares feos, compra por tiendas feas, encuentra por todo lado personas feas, pero al rodearse de esta fealdad siente como un brote de felicidad en su pecho, una felicidad que no podría experimentar paseando por las ramblas, o entrando en los bares de copas a la moda de Sant Antoni, o comprando ropas de diseño el El Born. Este brote de felicidad le dice: todo lo que te rodea es feo, pero es verdaderamente tuyo. Es horrible, en el sentido que es estéticamente opuesto a todo lo que la historia y la cultura te empujan a desear, pero es auténtico. Lo feo no se presenta como feo y tampoco se suele sospechar que lo haga. Lo feo es feo fenomenológicamente porque lo es ontológicamente. La belleza auténtica puede ser una mentira (como en una famosa serie de anuncios publicitarios de Dove), pero la fealdad auténtica no: no deseando gustar de ninguna manera a nadie, lo feo transmite a quien lo elija un momento de presencia absoluta: yo estoy aquí, en este lugar horrible, pero este lugar no me miente, no me propone nada y tampoco me pide nada: este lugar feo sencillamente es, como un dios primitivo.

Hay distintas maneras de escribir la historia del arte y de sus imágenes. En la tradición occidental, el relato de la pintura se origina en el siglo XVI como discurso que relaciona unas biografías de artistas con sus obras más importantes, juzgadas según el gusto personal del autor (Giorgio Vasari); a partir del siglo XIX, y sobre todo en consecuencia del enorme impacto de la teoria evolucionista de Charles Darwin sobre la cultura, teóricos como Alois Riegl, Gottfried Semper, o Aby Warburg empiezan a deshacer y reconstruir este relato de otra manera, como si las imágenes fueran organismos que encarnan en sus formas el paulatino pero inexorable cambio de la imaginación humana y de sus expresiones. En la segunda mitad del siglo XX, el aporte principal de la semiótica al estudio de las imágenes artísticas consiste en considerarlas como proyectos de comunicación en los que unas formas determinadas producen unos efectos especificos de sentido, según el contexto de recepción pero también a partir de un sentido visual común compartido por una “comunidad de interpretes” (Umberto Eco). Al mismo tiempo, la semiótica del arte se enfrenta con una dificultad mayor: no es posible reconstruir un código, y aún menos una gramatica, que formalize la manera en la que una cultura lee sus imágenes (Omar Calabrese). Las variables subjetivas y conceptuales son tan numerosas que todo proyecto de modelo universal es destinado a fracasar. Sin embargo, a partir de una intuición de Algirdas J. Greimas, desarrollada por Jean Marie Floch et Felix Thuerlemann, las imágenes del arte se pueden interpretar no solamente en su dimensión figurativa, o sea como conjuntos de formas que se refieren a la “macro-semiótica del mundo”, sino también en su dimensión plástica. Es esta la “vida secreta de las imágenes”, un hormigueo de lineas, formas, colores, y configuraciones espaciales que está debajo de las figuras y las anima. Analizar esta vida secreta permite sondear el nivel más profundo de las imágenes del arte, donde las culturas visuales expresan su contenido antropologico más universal y se manifiesta, por lo tanto, la posibilidad de una gramática transcultural, de una descripción general del funcionamiento plástico de las imágenes. Durante las tres conferencias, cada una dedicada a un aspecto distinto del nivel plástico de las imágenes, se intenterà comprobar esta hipótesis de trabajo semiótico con referencia a un corpus trans-cultural de imágenes provenientes de varias epoca históricas y areas geo-culturales.

Before the pandemic, forms of online or blended teaching already existed. Many universities could already rely on digital platforms so as to facilitate the transmission of contents from teachers to students, and the passage of didactic feedback both ways. There were even some universities whose entire teaching was based on the delivery of online contents, although they would still keep some form of face-to-face interaction (online universities would still tutor and in some cases examine students in person). In traditional universities, however, teaching was mostly based on the age-old activity of the teacher going to a classroom, finding some students there, and teaching them. Thus, even in those universities that could already rely on platforms, networks, software, and protocols for online teaching, the sudden and forced interruption of any form of face-to-face interaction came as a sort of a shock. Not only teaching, but also office hours, laboratory activities, seminars, exams, graduations, doctoral thesis discussions, up to contests for hiring new professors had to suddenly switch to an online form. Inevitably, the change was accompanied by recalcitrance, resistance, and even hostility by many, especially when, with the subsiding of the pandemic, cautiously reintroducing some face-to-face teaching became a matter of choice, inevitably involving personal options in terms of risk but also in terms of ideology of education. Most of the reactions to the change were, nevertheless, emotional, given the situation of serious stress in which they had been taking shape. Teachers, students, and parents approved or objected, endorsed or resisted, tolerated or opposed according to their personal mood and without a thorough consideration of what was actually changing in the change. The fact that teaching is, at least apparently, mostly based on the quite easily digitalizable senses of seeing and hearing resulted in the general overlooking of other semiotic aspects of the didactic experience that were less conspicuously modified by the change. Had one embraced an ideology of teaching as the mere transfer of notions from the teacher to the student, the online version of it could even be lived as satisfactory; it is not surprising that, withing this ideology, complaints would mostly concentrate on issues of transmission, such as the fastness of network, the reliability of platforms, or the possibility of controlling students during examinations.
But is online teaching only actually viable? Here is a semiotic point of view.

Il coraggio della contaminazione ragionata fra discipline e il coraggio dell’esemplificazione trasversale si uniscono, in Omar Calabrese, con il coraggio della teorizzazione. Abbracciare con un unico sguardo, all’interno di un volume densissimo ma pur sempre limitato, l’intera produzione culturale di un’epoca, o perlomeno delle sue linee di tendenza più evidenti, richiedeva infatti un’ipotesi di lettura articolata ma forte, che consentisse a Calabrese d’innestare su un nucleo comune una molteplicità multiforme di manifestazioni del senso. L’ipotesi che l’autore trovò per realizzare questa complessa strategia interpretativa è proprio quella che dà il titolo al volume, ovvero il neobarocco. Questa ipotesi si può oggi valutare secondo due criteri.

Arguably, the meaning of the human face is currently changing on a global scale: through the invention and diffusion of new visual technologies (e.g., digital photography, visual filters, as well as software for automatic face recognition); through the creation and establishment of novel genres of face representation (e.g., the selfie); and through new approaches to face perception, reading, and memorization (e.g., the ‘scrolling’ of faces on Tinder). Cognitions, emotions, and actions that people attach to the interaction with one’s and others’ faces might soon be undergoing dramatic shifts. Digital dating social networks are a fundamental arena in orden to understand these new cultural dynamics.

L'enigma dei volti artificiali è che non esistono volti completamente naturali, eppure non esiste volto che non sia anche naturale. I simulacri di volti, indi-pendentemente da come vengano creati-disegno, pittura, scultura, fino alle creazioni algoritmiche delle reti neurali-in fondo devono sempre basarsi su volti biologici preesistenti in qualche tempo, in qualche spazio e in qualche modo. Al contempo, ognuna di queste facce biologiche presenta un fenotipo che è influenzato dal linguaggio, dalla cultura e dalla moda, a inclusione della stessa moda dei simulacri facciali. I nostri ritratti rimandano a volti naturali, ma questi si atteggiano spesso prendendo quelli a modello. Lo studio semioti-co del volto non può però limitarsi a proclamare questo enigma. Deve anche sviscerarlo. Deve, per ogni categoria e caso di volto significante, delineare la soglia tra natura e cultura, trasmissione genetica e linguaggio.

Signatim è termine raro. Compare in un passo attribuito all’autore Caio, all’interno dei cosiddetti Gromatici veteres, una raccolta di testi di agrimensura compilata nel V secolo d.C. “Gromatico” è infatti tutto ciò che si riferisce alla misurazione, divisione, e rappresentazione di terreni. Il termine deriva da “groma”, uno strumento che gli Etruschi prima, e poi i Romani, utilizzarono per tracciare sul territorio allineamenti ortogonali, necessari per la delimitazione di nuove città, quartieri, e strade, ma anche per suddividere il terreno in quadrati o rettangoli, e renderne così calcolabile la superficie.
Nel passo di Caio si descrive una tecnica gromatica. Al fine di poter identificare anche in futuro i paletti interrati che delimitano il terreno, è necessario contraddistinguerli con un segno a forma di stella, la cosidetta “stella junior”. In questo contesto, “signatim” è dunque avverbio che designa la scrittura e la lettura di segni nella delineazione di frontiere. Quale parola più appropriata per evocare il lavoro della semiotica della cultura, la quale pure si occupa dei segni, delle tracce, delle marche che gli individui e le società producono nell’istituire la diversità? Per cartografare non colture ma culture, non gromatiche ma grammatiche, riconducendone le forme esuberanti all’ortogonalità di strutture soggiacenti?

The essay proposes a concise map of some of the current research trends in the semiotics of religion. Within the theoretical framework of Peirce's philosophy of semiosis as interpreted and developed by Umberto Eco, the essay situates the semiotic study of religion at the crossroad of nature and culture and singles out as its main task studying both the abstract level of religious ideologies of signification and the empirical level of religious systems of expression and communication.

Di tutte le annunciazioni che popolano la storia umana e le sue svariate tradizioni, al semiologo non interessa la fonte in sé, il numinoso che all’umano si rivolge per significargli di volta in volta la propria presenza, intenzione, sensibilità; interessa, piuttosto, il modo in cui a seconda delle epoche storiche, dei contesti culturali, delle vicende sociali, ma anche delle sensibilità individuali, uomini e donne hanno utilizzato i materiali del mondo, quelli dell’immanenza, per forgiare i significanti del divino. Ovvero, specularmente, il modo in cui hanno immaginato, e creduto con fermezza, che tali materiali divenissero d’un tratto appannaggio di una divina intenzione di comunicare, stoffa della rivelazione, parole annuncianti. Al teologo, non al semiologo, spetta immaginare la ricostruzione della totalità a fronte della quale si dipana il messaggio divino nella sua vicenda immanente. Al semiologo tocca invece un compito che è insieme più modesto e più costrittivo; innanzitutto raccogliere e inventariare queste tracce: in quali circostanze gli uomini e le donne hanno raccontato e raccontano di un loro incontro con il divino? Utilizzando quali segni? Piegandoli a quali necessità comunicative? Il compito successivo, più arduo, è analizzare questi segni, con gli strumenti di cui dispone la metodologia semiotica, per capire se si possano in qualche modo catalogare, suddividere in tipologie, distribuire in atlanti che, anche al di là e a dispetto delle differenze d’origine storica e confessionale, manifestino nondimeno dinamiche comuni nella costruzione e nell’elaborazione del linguaggio.

Les masques médicaux qui se sont imposés comme dispositif pour contraster la contagion de COVID-19 affectent lourdement la présentation et la perception du visage, en en altérant radicalement la phénoménologie et la sémiotique, et en en frustrant la singularité. La production culturelle globale a souvent réagi à ces contraintes inédites, soulignant l’importance éthique de l’intégralité et de la singularité du visage contre toute tentative de fragmentation, segmentation, et classement. L’article propose une lecture sémiotique générale des tendances culturelles qui, dans les sociétés contemporaines, opèrent au contraire vers une chosification du visage, et que la pandémie de COVID-19 n’a fait qu’accentuer. L’article se concentre, en particulier, sur les nouveaux procédés de traitement automatique des images faciales, dont il démasque la rhétorique d’accomplissement technologique. En conclusion, l’article suggère que la protection et la libération du visage en tant que rempart de l’humanité ne peut que passer par l’envisagement d’une nouvelle ère appelée « Prosopocène », qui garantirait un visage inaliénable à chaque forme de vie contre toute dé-figuration humaine ou robotique.

Concepire il mondo semioticamente, come un dualismo di significante e significato, o come un trialismo di representamen, interpretante e oggetto, implicitamente suggerisce una definizione allargata di censura: vi è censura in ogni scelta di significante che tarpa il significato, in ogni abito interpretativo o comunicativo che incanala il flusso della semiosi. Questa teorizzazione astratta della censura ha un rischio e un vantaggio. Da un lato, è importante distinguere i casi in cui la costrizione del linguaggio risponde all’intenzionalità di una prepotenza: qualcosa non è detto, dipinto, filmato, musicato, o addirittura non è pensato, o è pensato solo a metà, perché urta gli interessi di un’agentività minacciosa, gerarchicamente superiore, capace d’infliggere danno e dolore. Una riflessione semiotica seria sulla censura non può distogliere gli occhi dal problema del potere e dei suoi abusi. Dall’altro lato, pensare alla censura come dimensione semiotica aiuta a meglio identificare la sua tragedia ultima, che non consiste tanto nel dolore che infligge, o nella frustrazione che provoca, ma nell’ottusità che dissemina nel lungo periodo della storia della cultura. Una semiotica della censura è allora principalmente ricognizione delle forze che, nella storia, reprimono la libera innovazione del senso e, con essa, l’umanità.

The article summarizes and deepens two issues that, in the exegetical and representative traditions of the biblical text, have triggered a myriad of semiotic intelligences. First, the nature of the face of Cain at the moment of the sacrifice refused by the Lord, a face variously interpreted as angry, sad, dejected, depressed, dark. Second, the nature of the sign imposed by God on Cain after Abel’s fratricide. Having explored Jewish and Christian, ancient and modern exegeses, with some references to contemporary narrative versions (and especially to Saramago’s Cain), the article dwells on the issue whether this kind of exegetical questions can be part of the objects of a discipline like semiotics, the modern science of signs. The answer is affirmative, but only on the condition of developing a semiotics of exegetical cultures.

Modaioli, creduli, bastian contrari, cinici, trolls, complottisti, odiatori da tastiera, delatori, sciovinisti, falsi profeti, qualunquisti, fondamentalisti, populisti, censori: la comunicazione digitale contemporanea pullula di discorsi irragionevoli. Essi disgregano l'opinione pubblica, smantellano il senso comune, impediscono la formazione di una comunità d'interpreti, aizzano al conflitto, screditano le critiche, scardinano il gioco della conversazione sociale, con ricadute spesso pesanti per l'ambiente, la politica, l'economia. Stretta fra gli opposti pericoli dell'ermeneutica fondamentalista, che svilisce il testo vincolandolo a una sola interpretazione, e dell'esegesi decostruzionista, che pure lo frustra escludendo ogni idea di gerarchia valoriale, la semiotica deve colpire nel segno: alternativa sia alle scienze esatte e naturali, che si occupano di cause ed effetti, sia all'ideologia, che esalta o stigmatizza, la disciplina del senso guarda al linguaggio come filtro inevitabile della realtà, cerca un ordine nel caos apparente della comunicazione irragionevole, ne sottolinea i rischi, e soprattutto promuove un rinnovato senso della ragionevolezza, un'idea di gioco semiotico nel quale tante mosse sono permesse, ma pur sempre nel quadro di regole chiare e rispettate da tutti.

The topic of iconicity – resemblance between form and meaning – continues to be highly relevant for the study of language (in both spoken and signed modalities) and literature, but also for other semiotic systems and media involving gesture, depiction and music, and for interdisciplinary fields such as cognitive science and cognitive semiotics. At the theoretical level, the understanding of the concept of iconicity supposes a good understanding of the notions of resemblance or analogy. The theme of the 13th Symposium is therefore “Iconicity and analogy”.

Through comparison and contrast with similar discursive practices, the paper singles out some of the main semiotic ingredients of trolling: topic-insensitive provocation; time-boundless jest; sadistic hierarchy of sender and receiver; anonymity of both the troll and his or her audience; choral character of the ‘actant observer’ of trolling; etc.

The “Workshop on Visual Culture, New Media, and Contemporary Arts”, co-sponsored by CIRCE, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Communication at the University of Turin, Italy, The Critical Theory Research Center of Shanghai University, and the Editorial Department of the Journal of Shanghai University (Social Science Edition) is to be held in room 225, the Shanghai University press conference room, on June 23, 2018, during the 2018 International Short Term of Shanghai University.